Chapter 6

T hree days. I’ve been a prisoner for three whole days, during which time I’ve learned that Doctor Death is my kidnapper. He lives, works, and plays in Dunhaven’s city limits, all while the town allows it to happen. They hide away and turn their heads so he can come and go as he pleases.

Why?

Why has he been allowed to roam free when he’s clearly bloodthirsty like a monster? As I sit up in bed, not knowing what time it is but knowing that I can’t sleep any longer, I’m careful not to tangle my strings. Yesterday, I tested their strength when he’d gone to bed, tugging on them to see if they’d give.

They didn’t.

I’d gone to sleep defeated and annoyed, uncomfortable, as my strings were impossible to sleep with. I’ve walked the entire house, trying to find imperfections in the track system and find any way out of here. I found nothing.

I sigh and flip again, strings tangling as I get frustrated and growl, tears staining my cheeks as I sit up in defeat.

“Can’t sleep, little puppet?” His voice carries through the room from the doorway.

I look over, sniffing and wiping my face. He’s perched against the doorframe, hands in the pocket of his sweats. His abs are on full display, rippled and perfect.

It’s fucking annoying, to be honest. He’s perfect. Chiseled, annoyingly perfect. And yet, he has me hostage and hanging from the ceiling of this hell he built.

No one’s come for me, and the longer I’m his prisoner, and no one bursts through the front door to save me, the more I worry time will run out on Christmas Day. I’ve gotten the impression a few times that Christmas is the day that ends it all.

His game is done then.

He’ll go back to work to save lives after mine is stolen.

“Puppet,” he warns, coming closer.

I sniffle again. “No. I can’t sleep. The strings are just getting to me tonight.”

“Mm, but you understand why you must have them, right?”

“Because I’ll run?”

He smiles, slinking up the stairs at the side of the bed. “ Because every puppet has strings. How are you to be mine if you’re untethered?”

“But you’re going to let me go in the end, right?”

Then, this will only be a nightmare. The hoops are going to scar, though. I’ll never forget. Not that I could ever forget him.

With all that he is, he’s alluring. When he touches me, it’s as if he commands every nerve in my body, ordering my pleasure on a whim, conjuring satisfaction the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. Fuck, when I had him in my mouth, it was unholy, the way my center awakened at the sounds coming out of him.

A flash of him backhanding me moves through my head, and I sigh, remembering. I felt embarrassed at first, foolish, even. Then he straightened out, beckoned me back on his cock, and I felt whole again.

Something in my psyche is breaking already from pretending to be his good little puppet to survive.

It’s almost as if I genuinely want to be just that.

His perfect doll behaved and pristine.

“Is that what you want? To be free of me? Of this place?” he asks me, and I tug away from my berating thoughts.

I can’t deal with how I feel around him right now. I have more significant problems, like surviving to get away from him.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?” It had come out a bit harsher than I’d meant it, and I shifted as I sat up a bit straighter. “ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that… it’s just that this isn’t my home.”

“Understandable, puppet.” He turns away from me, his feet resting on the first step on the side of the bed. “I’ve been too kind to you, maybe. Too much leeway makes you too complacent. That’s my fault.”

I swallow.

What have I done?

“Lie down, puppet. I’ll help you sleep.”

I don’t want to lie down, but I do so not to anger him. Even more than I already have.

He moves back onto the bed and straddles me. Methodically, he removes each of my strings from their hoops, letting them dangle freely over the bed.

I all but sigh as the last one is released.

“I never used to speak to my girls, you know?” he tells me, but his eyes are far off, like he’s speaking to himself aloud.

“Probably smarter that way,” he adds. “You’ve been afforded more comforts than they were, yet you still seem to want the same thing they wanted. Freedom. When that’s exactly what I offer.”

He’s working something over from the corner of the bed, but I can’t see it through the darkness.

When I hear the rustle of metal, fright dances in my chest.

“Master, I?—”

“Hush now, puppet. I haven’t spoken to you.”

“No, but… ”

His eyes snap back to mine, growing darker even in the dusk surrounding us. “If I haven’t spoken to you, foolish girl, keep your lips sealed. Before I teach you a lesson that I’d rather not.”

I swallow audibly and nod.

He works cuffs over my wrists and ankles, which attach to the four corners of the beds, somehow becoming anchors.

If I thought the strings were terrible, this is literal hell. Tears fall freely and silently down my face.

“Are these more comfortable for you?” he asks as if he’s liberated me somehow.

“Yes, master,” I answer softly. It’s almost a whisper.

He’s breaking my spirit more than he’s breaking my mind. I don’t know who I’ll be if I do escape him.

“Good. Now, I think you should be punished for waking me up, don’t you? Good little dolls go to sleep when told to, wouldn’t you agree?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes, master.”

Every defiant fiber in my body wants to lash out and tell him to go fuck himself. But my body is exposed. My bralette is barely over my breasts, and my thin panties aren’t a very good barrier against a monster.

I don’t want him to get any fucked up ideas, so I have to agree with him. No matter what he does to me, I have to survive.

Mom is looking for me. She has to be.

“Mm, let’s see, shall we?”

I shiver against his eyes as they take in my body. I look like a starfish, laying on my back, ready for him to do whatever hellish thing he decides to.

He could rape me.

The realization has my heart thumping rapidly in my chest.

Please, God. Please, no.

I keep pleading with the deity as my kidnapper moves off the bed and out of the room, claiming he has some grand idea of how to punish me.

I’m sobbing by the time he comes back and gets onto the bed a little too giddily.

“Oh, don’t cry, darling. You’re going to love what I have in store. And if you don’t, you brought it on yourself, didn’t you?” He shrugs as I nod in agreement.

By the end of this week, I think I’ll be begging for death.

At first, I thought he wouldn’t come back, but then I heard him clambering back through the house. He’s got a black box with him, and he gets back on the bed between my spread legs. I lift my head to watch him work, and he acts as if he’s consumed by thoughts of whatever the box he has offers.

“What is that?” I ask, forgetting the new rule about speaking when spoken to altogether .

“Don’t worry, puppet. We’re going to fix that mouthy little issue you have.”

He takes out what looks to be a probe with a cord attached. The cord splits into two small plugs, which he plugs into the small device. He then lays the device down on the bed.

“This, my darling, is a TENS unit. They’re used for nerve stimulation. What I use it for, however, is a far cry from relieving pain. I use it to train whores to know their place.”

I bite back my anger, barely, at his words. Fire rages in my chest. Who the fuck does he think he is…

The thought dies as he invades my center with the probe. It’s cold and hard, unfamiliar.

Once he has it deeply seated inside me, he sits back and grabs the small box attached to it.

“Now, we test it.”

He turns a dial on the top of the box, and a jolt of electricity shoots through me. I arch off the bed and scream bloody murder.

“Please, please, stop. I’ll behave!” I beg.

It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t want him to do it again. It’s like every nerve in my body clamped down at once, like being electrocuted from the inside out.

His dark chuckle only strums me like the aftershocks of an earthquake. “Will you, now?”

I nod frantically.

“A lie, clearly. ”

He turns the dial up again, this time further, leaving it on longer.

My body seizes off the bed, arching into the power rumbling through me, and my teeth and jaw clench tight.

“Help!” I manage to scream before he dials it up further.

“They can’t hear you scream, puppet. They’re all too afraid to save you.”

He turns the dial off, and I pant in relief. The thrumming of my center is all I can focus on.

The second throb of my core is becoming unbearable. He crawls over me on the bed from where he’d been between my legs, hovering his face over mine.

“They’d rather save themselves, darling. They’d turn the other cheek even if they knew you were here. I’m the only one who cares.”

I lick my lips, unabashedly looking at his as I imagine how they’d feel on mine.

Madness, he’s torturing you. Don’t fall for his allure.

I can’t get caught in the spider’s web.

He’s venomous.

“Do you?” I ask.

“Do I what, puppet?” His face drops even further, and my already throbbing core tightens even more, begging for whatever this man will give me.

Scraps, even.

“Do you care?”

His lips dust mine, his face moving back and forth, the soft skin of his lips driving me wild with need .

“Oh, darling girl, why would I be here, teaching you lessons, if I didn’t?”

I delete the distance between us by lifting my face.

He pulls back quickly, evading my kiss.

Grabbing the box, he has me arching under its power again, and this time, I don’t think he’ll ever let up.

Orgasm is around the corner, but he turns it back off, diminishing it.

“I don’t kiss.”

“Why?” The question comes out as a plead.

He turns the dial, but not enough. “Because it’s too personal.”

I lift my head off the pillow to argue that this experience is too personal, but he turns the dial full out, and I seize again.

“No more words, puppet. Scream for me.”

I do just that. Over and over, he takes me to the very edge of pleasure, only to rip it away.

I’m a sniveling, shaking mess, dripping with sweat and begging for relief by the time he pulls the device from my body and shoves two fingers inside me, hovering over me like the maniacal god that he is.

“You need to come, puppet?”

“Please,” I whisper because it’s all I have the strength to do. “Please, master.”

“Mm,” he groans, satisfaction in his voice. “You’re so beautiful when you behave for me, Grace. It’s like you’re the only star in my galaxy. The center of my universe. All is right when you’re a good little puppet. ”

I’m right there. All the torture I’ve endured this last hour is about to be rewarded. My belly burns low, and my body is culminating in an orgasm that will be transcendent. But then, he pulls his fingers out, leaning down to kiss my forehead.

“Good girls get rewarded. You weren’t my good girl, darling. Goodnight.”

In all my frustration, I want to fucking rage. But all I can do is watch him take his godly fingers and little black box back to his room as he leaves me tied to the bed at four points, throbbing and wishing I’d been his good little puppet.

And that last thought scares the shit out of me.