Don't Let Go by Skye Warren Page B

one. One brand and one type. Twin-sized. Even rich people were content to let their kids sleep on whatever-the-fuck.
    But I’d seen this bed with large looping wheels made of metal and a sheer pink cloth draped over the top, and I’d begged my father. To this day, I don’t know why he gave it to me. Or why he’d even care what I wanted. Was he crazy only some of the time? Was his violence reserved for people not related to him by blood? If so, I’d fucked that up by tattling on him. He’d attacked me in the jail just fine.
    I slept on the princess bed until the day Child Protective Services took me away. The foster homes weren’t as nice, of course. I had old, lumpy mattresses, some of them lousy with fleas. I had foster “brothers” who smirked at me when I got out of the shower and threatened to join me in bed that night. But they never did. It was a shitty environment and a shitty life, but no one ever hurt me.
    Until now. Until someone had drugged and kidnapped me. Until he’d tossed me on the softest, most luxurious bed I’d ever imagined. The irony was almost enough to kill me, and I prayed it would, really. I’d looked at enough case photos to know what lay in store for me. I remembered the blood on my father’s hands. This wouldn’t end prettily or without pain, and I was helpless to change my fate. Maybe I always had been.
    A sound caught my attention, the gentle squeak of hinges followed by booted feet on hardwood. My mind sketched in the picture, starting with me and radiating outward. Blindfolded and bound. Fully dressed, as far as I could feel. No, wait. My jacket was gone. No bulk around my shoulders. The tautness around my chest felt like my bra and dress shirt. The skirt was there too, thick and unwieldy as ever. Between my ankles, I felt the thin netting of my pantyhose.
    I heard him coming. A man approaching, a quiet one. He stalked me. Maybe my mind was adding that element, because I felt so much like prey. But his step was fast enough to be purposeful and slow enough to be predatory.
    My heart beat so wildly, and irrationally, I felt sure he must hear it. I swallowed thickly against the dryness in my throat, and I was certain he heard that too. Every brush of my sleeve against the bedspread, every throb of discomfort in my shoulder. Every sound and sensation magnified under the weight of sensory deprivation and pure, absolute fear.
    A gentle hand brushed back the hair from my face. It tickled, and on instinct, my nose scrunched. He laughed softly. Oh God. I was amusing him. He thought I was cute. This was some sort of twisted flirtation, a touch and a response. An advance and a surrender.
    “Special Agent Samantha Holmes,” I said between clenched teeth, rattling off my badge number. Name, rank, and serial number. In case this guy was sane enough to care about the punishment for cop killing.
    Fuck you, I added silently.
    He didn’t laugh this time. At the first touch of his hand, I flinched away. But I only succeeded in pressing myself against the impossible plushness beneath me. He stroked my hair again, fingering the strands softly before letting them drop. He was exactly as gentle as the first time. Almost caring.
    Don’t engage. That was standard operating procedure for a prisoner of war—and the drug trade was war. Wait for rescue. Yeah, that was un-fucking-likely. I could be almost anywhere by now. In a room with a bed wasn’t exactly specific. Besides, I sensed he was something else, and I was too, like maybe this was personal. And that had a totally different set of rules. Reach out, humanize yourself, make him want to help you.
    But either way, one thing was clear. If I had the chance to escape, I would take it. That chance didn’t have to be large. It could be a single hand free, jamming his throat into the footboard of the bed until he passed out. It could mean running away from a man with a gun and letting him shoot me in the back. Criminals had been resorting to suicide by