Abduction (32 page)

Sometimes, when we sit side-by-side out on the porch, or stand talking in the kitchen while something is cooking, I feel aroused, and at the same time intimidated, by the realization of how large he is. Typical me, even though the fear is real, almost unnerving sometimes, at the same time it intensifies my arousal. Sitting next to him, his arms, his thighs, are so big compared to mine. Standing near him, the center of his chest is at my eye level. When I look at him, so tall and broad and hard—not like a bodybuilder with bulging muscles, sinews and veins everywhere, but like a man designed by nature to be large, who has toned and developed his natural bulk with physical labor—and when I think of how I ran from him that first day, and how he caught me, out in the mud, forcing me to the ground, holding me from behind, I feel myself twinge with fear at the same time an arousing warmth spreads through me.

Remembering that night, imagining what he might have done to me, imagining other, similar encounters with him, for the first time ever I've gotten myself off with thoughts of being with a real person.

Day 12 at cabin

Tonight we sat together by the fire. I had a drink, and it made feel warm and soft inside. I felt myself getting very excited, with him next to me, so close to me, as we talked quietly. Every accidental touch felt like a tiny electric shock, startling and on the verge of being dangerous. I thought, what if he made love to me tonight? The images that played behind my eyes in short sequences of him taking me, possessing me, thrilled me and made me ache sweetly between my legs. It was something I'd never experienced. Desire. Something beyond physical want, anticipation of pleasure. It was a physical sensation of…I don't know what to call it. A deep, tender affection.

Then I felt him touching me, caressing my face. Then his tender little kisses, that made me think of a shy schoolboy on his first date, frightened of rejection and, at the same time, a man who's experience told him how to handle a frightened, inexperienced girl like me. The feeling his kiss aroused in me surprised me—not only in intensity—but by its nature. It was joy. A sweet, warm joy, orange like sun spots left to view on lids closed against a bright sky. When he lay me back and I felt him on me I believed that I would give myself to him tonight. That we would go to bed together, make love, fall asleep in each others' arms. But that next kiss terrified me. I don't even know why, or how. It was masterful, perfect in sensation. But its power, felt at the moment I felt his strength, sensed his erection, panicked me. I tried to remember Vaughn, that I was there with Vaughn, that this was Vaughn kissing me, holding me. But it felt one moment as though Conrad had taken his place, at the next like I was back in that cabin with those strange men, that one of them was on me, the others waiting their turn.

Sweet Vaughn. He noticed right away that something was wrong, he stopped so quickly. I knew I was trembling, that after all that had already happened Vaughn would 284

fear he had hurt me, that he had frightened me, done something wrong. But I felt utterly incapable of telling him what I was going through, what had happened. I left him so abruptly, I so wanted to ease his mind, tell him that he was wonderful. But I just mumbled good-night and hid myself here, in my room.

I'm scared now that I've lost my chance with him. I'm sure the last thing he needs is some ingénue, some utterly inexperienced, flighty child seesawing like a schizo, implicitly promising everything, then scaring and running off. I feel indescribably sad, like I had something, for a brief moment, that I'd never even dreamed could be mine, and then I destroyed it before even experiencing the having of it. I mean, I'm not stupid, I'm not kidding myself that there'd be some big romance between the two of us. I get it, that for him this would be a little dalliance. But for me, it's enough, a monumental thing, to find myself feeling so deeply for him, to find that with him I'm capable of feelings of real desire, and maybe tiny little seeds of something like love.

SEVEN: Someone Wicked

Vaughn hadn't read more than a paragraph or two before he'd had to close the journal. A cold fist squeezed his stomach as his grip on the binding turned his knuckles white. God. Oh god, something awful had happened to her.

In one miserable moment the meaning of it all crashed down on him. Someone had hurt her, sweet, strange Devan. And she'd had the terrible misfortune, after, of being trapped there with him, with all his ugly mistrust, his violence. He was terrified to open the notebook again, to face what she'd been through, to read, knowing the whole time what he'd done to her.

What a fucking coward. If she could survive it happening, he could damn well take reading about it. Willing his shaking hands to turn back the cover, Vaughn forced his stinging eyes over her slanting words. Sitting alone by the fire he read her story.

Went for her ride.

Rage and pity welled up in him as he thought of the gentle, fragile girl he had come to care for as she was tormented, touched by that man, forced to confess her fantasies. How could anyone do it? Take someone so innocent, so shy, bare her body that way? Touch her, talk to her like that? Even though she'd escaped, still a virgin, and even though she had admitted her own confused excitement at being touched and watched, he felt she had been raped. Even worse, in spite of her own words suggesting that it had been some kind of liberation, he felt the tracing of her fantasies to her, her forced recitals, was in some ways a crueler violation. A rape of her mind.

But the whole time, as he burned with bitter anger another heat suffused his body. He didn't want to admit it. He tried to pretend it was just his rage. But the images she described prodded him with the stirrings of dark arousal. Her hem lifted to reveal the soft curve of her sex, its contours discernible through her panties, the kidnapper’s gentle caresses of this girl who was a virgin to such caresses, her first climax. Her, blindfolded, masturbating to her own vivid fantasy before those aroused men. He felt like an asshole, a lascivious voyeur, wondering about those fantasies of hers when the point was what had been done to her.

When he got to what she had written about him, he stopped. Maybe she hadn't meant him to read it. He badly wanted to know as much as he could, what she'd been thinking about him, but maybe she'd forgotten that she'd written about their time together at the cabin when she gave him the journal to read. In the end his curiosity defeated his self-restraint with the rationalization that she'd intended the presentation of the journal as a message to him.

He read. He read how he'd scared her. How she'd thought, that night of his arrival, that he would rape her. Beat her. God, even kill her. It was the worst pain he'd ever felt, knowing that after all she'd been through he'd caused her fresh fear, made her feel overpowered and imprisoned once again. He felt sick. Even though he had deliberately threatened her with his size, with his strength, he almost couldn't believe he really had that awful power. His was such an odd life of isolation through solitude juxtaposed with isolation through population—he was, almost inevitably, either completely alone or surrounded by groups, sometimes mobs of people. With the exception of his wife, in the last few years he had seldom been alone with a woman.

And, big as he was, one thing he'd never been accused of was being scary. But Christ, the way he'd been with her…

After a while, when he'd tired of torturing himself with thoughts of all the ways he'd hurt her, he opened her journal again, and read on. Knowing he'd ruined it all, let himself feel the torment of a little joy as he read how she'd started to feel about him. He even laughed at himself a little, feeling silly that the tentative affection of a woman, barely more than a girl, could actually make his belly do that little flip. He'd been sure, for a long, long time now, that he was far too jaded to feel anything like this. But there they were. Butterflies. Like ninth grade or something.

And, god, she'd really been about to…give herself to him. The idea, so remote, so impossible now, instantly drove a painful ache into his groin. That he had been the source of strange new feelings for her, that he had been the object of her desire, that he had given her even a few moments of pleasure almost made him forget, for a moment, how completely he had ruined whatever had been unfolding between them.

There was no vain spark of hope that there would be a reprise of their attempt at romance—at least none he did not snuff out immediately. He only hoped that his baseless, reckless brutality had not done harm to Devan's chances of happier romances in the future.

For hours he sat there by the fire, his mind jumping from thoughts of what he would say to Devan in the morning, to the erotic images indelibly transferred from the pages of her journal to his mind, to the imagined face of Conrad, to the images of all the ways he had hurt her, too. Punished her that day for imagined transgressions. He really 288

had been about to rape her—not her in his mind, but the other woman, the woman he had believed she might be. Like those others. An intruder, a spy, a rapist.

But he'd been an idiot. No. Worse. Deluded. Insane. It was her, Devan, that he had done that to.

Already sick with shame, he was caught in a violent undercurrent of sudden grief.

As quietly as he could he slipped outside to cry where he wouldn't wake her. He hated himself. He was poison. The things he'd done to her.

Behind him he heard the door open. He wiped at his face with his sleeve, then turned, found her standing in the doorway, framed in fluttering firelight.

"I couldn't sleep," she said simply.

Seeing her there, hearing her voice, his impulse to hold her overwhelmed him, but his guilt, the thought of her cringing at his touch held him back, frozen.

All there was room for in his thoughts was the slow, painful reconciliation of this girl standing before him, this girl he knew, for whom he felt so many conflicting things, with whom he shared such a brief but intense history, with the girl in the journal. The girl who'd been abducted, molested, and—Jesus, he had to fight back tears as he thought of it—almost brutally gang raped. That was who he'd been living uneasily with these last few days. That was who he'd held in his arms by the fire. That—he clenched his jaw and his fists against a whimper of useless regret—was who he'd chased down, dragged from the woods, wrestled to the bed, and…

"Mind if I stay with you a while?" she asked. "Would you rather be alone?"

Her voice was so soft he wasn't sure if he knew what she'd said because he'd heard it, or because he'd read her lips. He forced what he hoped was a gentle smile..

He didn't trust his voice to make a sound soft enough.

"No. No."

He stepped toward her, almost without thinking, then stopped. In this agonizing moment he felt his size more painfully than usual. Like a Cyclops in a small cave with a wood nymph. He didn't want to be towering over her with his bulk, didn't want to be looking down at her as she spoke. Farther and farther he backed away from her, their gaze leveling a little with each step, but never enough. She was watching him intently, and he was hoping she'd laugh derisively at his miserable awkwardness, show a little of the hate he deserved. But she only looked sad and nervous.

"I'm so sorry, Devan," was the best he could come up with.

"I know you are."

She said it so sweetly, so sincerely, in such a gentle voice, with such warmth in her eyes that he felt as though she were offering her sympathy, rather than accepting his. He took one little nervous step nearer to her.

"I wish there was something I could do," he said lamely, making some awkward, incomplete gesture.

She looked shy and sad as she smiled at him, then slowly came toward him, watching his face as she did. The thought of her coming near him made him happy and afraid at once. Maybe she read it in his face, maybe that was why she looked so unsure, why when she rested her head against his chest and put her arms around him, he could barely feel her there, as if her embrace were a timid question.

He put his arms around her, pulled her to him. Just to feel her pressing herself warmly to him, soft and trusting, soothed him, overwhelmed him with joy. This was all there could be, after what he'd done, but it was so much. To comfort her, to let her feel safe, to be her friend until she could get back home. It was so wonderful to hold her he didn't want to let go. But he began to feel guilty anxiety creeping in, and opened his arms. She went on, holding him tightly, and he wrapped his arms back around her. He was trembling. Or she was. Maybe it was both of them.

"Do you want to go inside? Where it's warm?"

"No, let's stay out here a little while. It feels good to be outside." She smiled sweetly.

It was a crisp but dry October night. When they finally let each other go, they sat down at the edge of the porch, their feet dangling.

"Devan…"

He didn't know what he could say. No words were up to everything he was thinking and feeling.

"You don't have to say anything, Vaughn. Especially…well…I hope…"

"What?"

"After I gave you the journal I was afraid…"

"You regret letting me read it."

"No, I…I wanted you to know…how I got here. And I wanted you to see that I really could understand some of what you'd been through. I guess, when I read your journal, I just couldn't believe how much the things you said you felt were like what I was 291

feeling. I was so sad that it had happened to you, but it was such a comfort, thinking that maybe to one person…"

She turned to him, met his gaze.

"…to you, what I'd experienced, the way I'd been through it all, wasn't so strange.

Does that make sense?"

"Yes."

"But, what I wrote at the end…" she was blushing and nervous, "I don't want you to think…"

He knew. God, she didn't have to say it. She couldn't want him, care for him now, after the things he'd done to her.