No Strings Attached

Chapter Nine

“Who is this?” she knew the answer, she heard it in the French twang beneath that one syllable.

“Do you not recognise the voice of your master, pet?”

Clearing her throat, she steeled her voice, her jaw clenching with the effort, “What do you want?”

“I told you what I want,” he breathed out, and she heard the steady pump of flesh against flesh. Nausea rose up inside her. “I told you that night at Tourniquet exactly what I wanted - just before you began the chase, running off like you did. I’ll admit it’s wounded me that you never called ...”

“Shit happens,” she spat out, with a sinister sarcastic smile on her lips, trying to mask the frantic pounding of her heartbeat behind her chest. Her hands clenching into fists – her long fingernails piercing at the flesh of her palm.

“That it does, my little slut. I can see I’ll be needing to punish your insolent little mouth the next time I see you, this will be fun! What a shame you went to Asylum Saturday, and never came to visit your true master, pet, we could have finished off what we started at Tourniquet ...”

“Fuck you!”

His menacing chuckle was breathless as she heard him build up to his orgasm at the other end of her phone, and she pulled it away to end the call, not before she heard his haunting, “I intend to, slut ...” echo out of the speaker.

Launching the phone to the wall, she heard the screen crack and splinter, but she was too gone to care. Fear rolled through her – haunting, paralysing fear the likes of which she’d not experienced since she was eighteen years old.

It was so much worse than what that photographer had done. Somehow rape, well you could pull it away from sex, it didn’t really have anything to do with desire – it was a sporadic violation of the body, but it was nothing in comparison to that overwhelming mix of power, obsession and violence that her father had put her through, at least not to her. Those taunting, humiliating words that he’d throw at her; he kept her on a knife edge of fear and apprehension her entire life, until Nate set her free.

She couldn’t go back to that.

How did Sebastienne know that she was in Asylum? How had he known that she’d been in the city at all? Why would he be calling now? After seven months?

Her lungs constricted in her chest as she battled questions at herself, and she dropped to her knees with a thump, feeling her body being overtaken with a panic attack as she struggled to pull in a breath. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and black spots began to dance behind her eyes so that when the door burst open, and she heard Jayden’s demanding voice in the background, she reached an arm out blindly into the space before her until she clasped onto a small, warm hand.

Tori’s voice pounded into her head, but she couldn’t find the words and her tears became panicked until she felt paper crumpling into her free hand, “Shan, Shannon, can you hear me babe?”

She jerked her head in response, bringing the large brown bag to her lips as she blew into it. She’d had panic attacks on a regular basis as a teenager, and when she’d first moved to London as well, but not once since she’d quit her prescription for the anti-depressants had she been so overcome with anxiety that she collapsed.