My Captor's Lover

My mouth is like sandpaper, gritty and dry, and my eyelids feel heavy like someone has stapled them shut. My skin is hot and sticky, like the air surrounding me.

I try to move my limbs but they’re like lead and refuse to cooperate. I manage to crack one eye lid open ever so slightly, it’s bright, too bright and it stings my eye.

I’m not at home, that much I know but my memories are jumbled, and I can’t seem to focus.

My ears are muffled, but I hear the quiet murmuring of voices, there is a constant almost whining noise in the background and the air smells funny, am I flying? How did I get on an airplane?

From the limited sight that I have, I see shadows move around me, but I can’t make out what or who they are.

My mind feels like it’s full of cotton, I'm confused and disorientated, and I struggle to make sense of what’s going on. At that moment one of the shadows approaches, then speaks.

‘She’s coming around,’ I hear their deep voice announce, his voice echoes and it hurts my ears.

What does he mean, coming around? Around from what? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?

I try to speak but it won’t come, and I feel panic begin to swell inside me and constrict my throat. I start to pant, trying desperately to draw in precious oxygen.

‘Top her up, we won’t be there for another couple of hours,’ I hear a gravelly voice from further in the distance instruct.

Top me up with what? someone tell me what’s going on? My mind screams.

‘Sure, thing boss,’ my closer shadow complies, I suddenly feel a sharp scratch on my neck, it stings like hell, but I quickly feel myself begin to float away and then there is nothing but darkness…

12 hours previously…

My driver, Frank opens my door and I step out of the limousine that picked me up from my apartment fifteen minutes ago.

It’s November and the cold New York wind has bitten, making me shiver in the silk gown I’m wearing. It’s a new gift from my father, and one he insisted that I wear this evening. It has spaghetti straps; it cuts low in the front and has no back. It clings to my hips and flares on the floor with a slit up to my thigh on my right leg.

I admit, I love it and it goes some way to soothe my annoyance at having to attend tonight.

My long blonde hair is soft around my face and pulled up into a loose knot at the nape of my neck, my eyes are smokey which makes my green eyes look twice as big and my lips are high gloss.

I’ve always hated my father’s work events, ever since I turned sixteen and he insisted that I start accompanying him. To keep up the family image apparently, yep you can hear me eye rolling.

My father and I have, what I’d call a strained relationship. He’s a cold man in nature, quick to censure but never praise, his business is his baby, and he cares for it with more love and attention than he has ever shown me.

I was raised by my old Nanny; Marie and my driver Frank more than I ever was by my father.

As a child, I used to think that he just missed my mother and felt sad, who died in childbirth with me. However, for many years now, I’ve decided that he’s just an asshole, much like most of the men in the room I’m about to enter.

I honestly don't know why I bother to put up with it anymore, I have my own job, my own apartment. I refuse to take a penny from my father, much to his annoyance but I know that's only because he wants the control that will bring if I'm in his debt.

But at the end of the day, he's my dad and he's all I've got, so I take a deep breath, plaster a fake smile on my face and straighten my spine.