Addicted to Her Pain

Chapter Seven

I sat on the floor of the library, piles of books stacked around me. Xavier sat at his desk a couple feet away, his hands clicking over the keyboard of his computer. The sound annoyed me as it broke through my concentration.

"Can you be quiet please?" I sighed and looked at him "I can't think with all the noise." He paused, raising an eyebrow at me "you're being awfully distracting yourself Nem."

His eyes moved over my body, and I shrugged "I wanted to wear a dress."

I hadn't felt as hopeless this morning as I have the past couple days. It was true this wasn't how I wanted to live my life but I could have been abducted by someone much worse. My mom had always played those true crime podcasts in the car on the way to school. Hearing about multiple woman kidnapped, raped and murdered was not how I liked to start my morings.

I had combed through the closet, looking through all the clothes Xavier had gotten for me. I'd pulled out a white dress, cinched at the waist with a short skirt that ended halfway down my thighs. I had also opted for comfort and put on a pair of white fluffy socks and decided that was enough effort into my looks for the day. I had run a hand through my long hair, untangling the worst of it, letting it loosely fall over my shoulders.

Xavier looked too professional at the moment in comparison, in his white button up shirt with the top two bottoms undone and black slacks. His hair was ruffled slightly from when I'd tried to mess it up earlier, which hadn't worked too well.

"You look beautiful Nem"

I felt my cheeks heat up and I looked down, moving on to another stack of books, hoping to find one I hadn't read before. "Thank you" I muttered, still not making eye contact.

"I think I need new books Xavier"

He didn't even raise his eyes from his screen "There are hundreds in here Nem, you can't have gone through them all."

I stood and reached up for the top shelf, my dress riding up my thigh. "I've just been wanting to read more like these, I don't have much interest in the others right now."

I managed to grab the book and smiled in satisfaction, I hadn't read this in a long time.

"You read that when you first got here."

I nodded, my smile fading. I didn't like to remember that time. I flipped through the pages, some had spots of water damage, the edges ripping slightly as I held the page tentatively.

He had kept me locked in a different room when I first arrived. I had been screaming and crying, lashing out at him whenever he got near me. I had even given him a scar on his cheek from when I'd hit him with my ring, although the mark was nearly invisible now. For the first three days he tried over and over to come in and see me. Each time I would hit and bite him, thrashing around so he was unable to hold me still. Eventually he'd cut off my food, leaving me with only a bottle of water. I had gone three days before I broke down crying, begging him to give me something edible.

He'd stared at me for the longest time, watching as the tears fell down my face. I had cried so much that I nearly passed out, my ears had begun to ring and my vision danced with black spots. He had grabbed me and put me on the bed. "Here's what I'm going to do" he'd whispered. "You're going to take a shower and put on the clothes I've left out for you, when you are done you can come back here and sit on the bed. Then I will feed you."

I'm pretty sure my response to that had been "Even if you don't feed me it doesn't matter, I look really skinny right now for once."

That had been the first time he'd slapped me across the face, and since then he'd never restricted my food again, forcing me to eat when I refused.