gavel and bangs it on the table. “Meeting adjourned.”
We leave the chapel, and Striker puts his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go get a cold one.”
I shake my head and shrug him off, heading for Bishop’s room where my little Wildcat is waiting for me, naked, bound, and ready for my use.
“Nope.” I give him a grin over my shoulder. “It’s time for me to make a little thief scream.”
10
Hollow
I stand there for what feels like an hour, but is probably only minutes, seething.
When I’d started working at The Devil’s Den, Spider had given me a watch, but I wasn’t wearing it when we left Casper’s, so I don’t have it now. There’s nothing on the dresser except a handheld mirror, and nothing on the nightstand beside the bed except a lamp. No clock in the room. There is a window above the desk, the sunlight the only indication I have of how much time has passed.
The sun is still up, but the light has faded a little as dusk approaches. I’d guess it’s close to nine or so. It’ll be dark soon. Spider said the meeting would go for about a half hour, but I have a feeling it will seem a lot longer.
Footsteps sound on the stairs, men making their way heavily up and down, voices running over each other. There are a lot more men here than at the Diamondback clubhouse, and they seem rowdier. It’s unnerving.
My mouth quickly goes dry with the bandana stuffed in it, but I don’t dare spit it out. I have no idea what he’s going to do to me when he gets back, and I won’t give him reason to make it worse.
He didn’t tie the binds on my wrists overly tight, only enough to keep them in place, but all my twisting about earlier has caused the cloth to chafe against my skin so that when I try to move my wrists, the skin burns. There’s no hope of untying myself.
A knot sits in the pit of my stomach at the thought of what’s in store for me, tightening with every second that passes. I let my anger and my hatred for Spider scour away my fear. It’s all I can do to keep the anxiety at bay.
Unfortunately, as the minutes pass, the animosity slowly burns itself out, leaving me with nothing but the panic that chews away at my resolve.
After what must be about a half an hour, fatigue works its way into the muscles on my arms, outstretched and raised up for so long. I groan, putting my head back.
Spider doesn’t return.
My gaze collides with the crucifix on the wall. It’s such a strange thing to have on the wall of a room where a biker once slept. There’s nothing else in the room other than the bible. The open closet is empty, and one of the drawers is partway open, also devoid of clothing, so I assume whoever used to stay here has moved out. Why would the room’s former occupant have left his bible and his cross behind? I feel an almost childish dislike for the man, having chosen to leave those, of all things.
I glance at the bible and then at the crucifix, an intricately carved wooden one. The sight of both objects brings my mind careening back to my life in the Colony, adding to my anxiety. It makes my being here, stripped nude and waiting for Spider to do whatever depraved things he intends to do to me, feel sinful in a way that I haven’t really felt since my first night at Casper’s.
No. I had felt that shame more recently—earlier today at that restaurant, in the hall, while Spider was…
My cheeks heat at the memory, a low ache pooling in my sex.
I had felt that guilt, that humiliated sense of taboo today, but it’s more intense now, looking at that cross. These past few weeks, it’s gotten easier to tell myself that the Colony is no longer my life, that I’m no longer beholden to its church, and that the pain they caused can’t touch me. That it was all in the past. But having that crucifix there makes me feel the same as if the symbol for the Colony itself, the cross and sunburst, were mounted on the wall instead.
Suddenly, my two worlds are one, and I’m no longer beyond the Colony’s reach or beyond the influence of its indoctrination. The God that had hitherto abandoned me is glaring at me