The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(121)

But she didn’t have an answer.

“Time to leave The Tower, Rapunzel.” The man knelt down by her, lifting her into the space as if she weighed nothing. Folding her legs against her chest, he looked at her and she finally saw the fierce, tawny brown eyes behind the mask. There was no mercy in that gaze, only hate, and then they disappeared as he shut the door.

Darkness surrounded her like a suffocating blanket.

She tried to shift but her muscles wouldn’t respond at all as the cart started to move. Her wrists were pinpoints of pain in the dark, and she tried to hold on to them, to consciousness—but then the black behind her eyes swallowed her whole like some ancient sea monster. Sending her down deep where no thoughts, no pain, no panic could reach her.





Chapter Two





Everything came online slowly, first her mind, head pounding like she’d had too much to drink, and then her body lit up in sections. Pain pinged reminders across her skin, forcing her out of the daze of sleep. Rebecca knew she was awake, knew her eyes were open, but the room was pitch black. No difference whether they were open or closed. Blinking, she tried to lift her hands and heard metal clatter as the cuffs dug into her already aching wrists. “Shit,” she hissed between her teeth as the pain spiked and then ebbed.

Oh God.

She had been taken. It wasn’t some horrible nightmare.

Her heart started to race, beating too loud in her ears as the panic threatened to take over, but she pushed it down and tried to breathe, to evaluate her surroundings. ‘Think’, her mind urged. ‘Survive.’

There was a hard chair under her, her arms run through slats in the back so she couldn’t sit up all the way, and something was holding her legs wide to the outsides of the chair. Not cuffs, rope?

No. It felt smoother than that, sharper on the edges.

Worst of all she was completely naked now. She could feel the absence of cloth over her breasts and the brush of cool air across her skin. The memory of the man sent a threatening chill down her spine, but she was bound to a chair and—even though she was quite sure she knew who would answer when the darkness finally abated—there was nothing she could do but call out.

Swallowing against the dryness in her throat, Rebecca raised her voice into the black, “Hello?”

Instead of light, a huge television suddenly blinked to life in front of her. For a moment it only showed a blank screen behind the plastic shield that surrounded it—then a video started. It was her, in a black and white image from a high angle, sitting on the couch in her apartment. She watched as her mouth moved, but no sound could be heard. She watched as she set the wine down and started to mess with the remote. Then the dark figure of the man walked into the frame from the right, standing just behind her as she leaned forward to cue up the news report.

No, no, no… he’d recorded it?

It was eerie the way he stood completely still while she leaned over the remote, fidgeting with it. When the figure on the screen suddenly grabbed her and yanked her over the back of the couch, she clenched her eyes tight. “Stop! I don’t want to watch this!” Screaming into the emptiness, she tried to forget the sensation of his hands on her skin, of the things he’d done.

Even unable to see the video her mind was filling in the blanks, tracing the aches across her body like a transcript. Dropping her chin to her chest, she shook her head, her long hair falling like a curtain against her cheeks as if she could shut off the movie inside her own brain. But her eyes snapped open when the sound of her father’s voice bled through speakers into the room.

Dad?

Snippets of interviews from over the years started to play. Daniel Sinclair, always smiling and well dressed, dimples punching into his cheeks when he laughed. It flashed through clips of him at public premieres of new software and technology, discussing business on what should have been private virtual stockholder calls, and too many others. Then they grew shorter.

Quick, abbreviated snippets of his voice over, and over, and over.

His smile, his laugh, and just as the videos started to speed up to a dizzying rate—the videos started to zoom in on her. Always sitting just to his left or right, her waist-long blonde hair cascading behind her as she appeared in a variety of designer clothes—Daniel Sinclair’s voice always running over the top of it. It should have been soothing to hear him, but the videos were all of her and too strange. Slowed down clips of her half-smiling during press conferences, her staring down at her hands in her lap, her standing in elegant heels to clap. Just her, over and over, and it only made her tense. “STOP!”

The last image of her clapping and smiling in a skirt and blouse froze. Hands almost touching, she looked like she might have been praying.

Finally, the television went black for a moment, and then a single scene played on the screen at normal speed. It was her father standing outside The Tower, speaking to a gathering of reporters. “My inspiration for what I do with Monarch Systems?” He chuckled, all charm and wit, blue eyes sparkling as he nodded at the microphones. “Well, I want a better world for my daughter. She’s my everything. Without her—I’d have nothing.”

The television clicked off and bright lights instantly flared to life from either side of the television, effectively blinding her. “Dammit!” She flinched, closing her eyes tight as she heard a door open somewhere to her left. It shut again, the sound heavy and metal. Rebecca tried to look, but the bright lights were impossible to see through.