Page 12 of Pulse Zero
“Yeah?” That snarky tone of his I heard earlier creeps back into his voice. “Tell that to your dick.”
He’s still rubbing his ass against me, rolling his hips in a shaky but incessant rhythm, no longer seeming to care that I’m literally holding a gun to his head. I definitely should stop him, but…yeah, apparently my cock likes it. It’s currently filling with blood in my jeans.
“You’re grinding your ass against it,” I rationalize.
There are probably a dozen reasons I should absolutely put a fucking stop to this, least of which is because I’m really not gay.
I’m fourteen years older than him.
When this is all over, he’ll never see me again.
If his uncle doesn’t pay, I might have to put a bullet in his head anyway.
Leaning forward, I whisper roughly in his ear, “But maybe I’m actually just hard from the thought of shooting you.”
I push off of his back, causing his breath to punch out of him. Grabbing his shirt, I pull him away from the wall, then shove him into his room. He just barely manages to stay on his feet and turn around to face me. His face is flushed, eyes bright with unshed panic despite just grinding his ass against my dick, jaw clenched tight like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
Returning my gun to its holster, I peer down at the deconstructed sandwich littering the floor before turning my gaze on Cason and narrowing my eyes.
“Enjoy your fucking dinner.”
With that, I exit the room and close the door behind me. The lock seals with a heavy, mechanical finality. I stand there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the solid metal like it might say something back. Like maybe an explanation as to why my dick got fucking hard.
It doesn’t give me an answer.
I force myself to move, to walk back to the desk, to sit. The chair whines under my weight. I welcome the irritation, something mundane to anchor me. My pulse is still too loud in my ears as blood rushes back to the rest of my body. My hands feel tight, restless, like they don’t quite belong to me.
I thought I had Cason figured out.
I think now I was wrong.
He’s not stupid. I got that right, at least. He’s also not broken, not a typical victim who’s going to plead and beg for his life. Right now, he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched. His hands are curled tight into fists between his knees as he stares at the floor like it’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve, like he believes there’s a pattern here if he just looks hard enough.
We’re just two men on opposite sides of the same wall, bothconvinced the answers are trapped inside them.
I lean back and exhale slowly, controlled, counting it out like I always do when something threatens to slip.
This job just got a lot more complicated.
And I don’t like complications.
I shut off the monitor.
It’s been a weeksince I was kidnapped. At least, I think it has. Time gets a bit slippery when you can’t see the sun. It stops behaving like a line and starts acting more like a suggestion. Morning and night are concepts for people with windows. I have four walls, a door, and the creeping suspicion that if I stay in this room long enough, I’ll forget what time is supposed to feel like in the first place.
I measure days the way most prisoners probably do—by routine, by hunger, by the sound of footsteps outside the door.
Twice a day, the door opens. That’s my clock now.
He brings me food on a paper plate or in a paper bowl, always simple and mundane. A sandwich, sometimes chips. Cereal. Apples. No conversation. Just him, the dishes, and the world’s most committed refusal to acknowledge my existence as a person with questions.
I’ve counted meals obsessively. Fourteen. Unless I slept through one. Unless he skipped one on purpose. Unless he decided to mess with me because he woke up feeling whimsicaland cruel, like a Disney villain with a basement.
The second day I was here, he cuffed me to the metal frame of the bed so he could flip the door around—yeah, I don’t blame him for that. But he completely ignored me the entire time he was working, no matter how many inappropriate jokes I made about being tied to his bed. Not a single word or reaction. I guess I don’t blame him for that either.
I’ve tried to talk to him several times since then, to ask questions. Because I want answers, but also because silence makes me itchy.
“Why am I here?”
