Read Online Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) by Kimberly A. Bettes - Free Book Online Page B

him snap
his head back to face me, I quickly moved on. “If this is what she had to eat,
no wonder she wouldn’t eat it. What is it anyway?”
    “It’s dog
food.”
    “Are you
serious?” I looked into the bowl again. It didn’t look like dog food. Of
course, with the maggots and flies covering it, who could tell what it was?
    “It’s the
good kind. None of that cheap stuff. Besides, dog food
is required by the FDA to be fit for human consumption. People eat it during
recessions like this. It’s fine.”
    “It’s got
bugs all over it.”
    “Yes. It’s
been down here a while. Let’s see, she quit eating over a week ago, maybe close
to two weeks. Pick them off. Or eat them. They’re full of protein.”
    “You know
what else is full of protein? Steak and eggs. Why
don’t you run upstairs and make that happen for me?”
    He
laughed. “There’s the girl I love.”
    Love? What
happened to like? I didn’t dwell on the use of terms. What captured my
attention was that I was back in his good graces. One step
closer to getting back upstairs.
    He headed
up the stairs.
    “Are you
going to make me something to eat?”
    “Eat what’s
in the bowl, Nicole. When you’re down here, you don’t get the luxury of my
cooking. And if you need to pee, do it on the floor.” With that, he went
through the doorway and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the
basement with a full bladder, a battered corpse, and a bowl of rotten dog food.
    Chapter
12

 
    I waited
and waited for Ron to return, but he didn’t. My belly growled, but I ignored
it. If Stephanie could go nearly two weeks without food, surely I could go a
couple of days. That should be long enough for him to allow me back upstairs.
    Funny how
I had begged him to let me go home, and now I was begging him to let me go upstairs.
The worse my situation got, the better off I realized I’d had it before.
    Eventually,
I could hold my pee no longer. I looked for a bucket or a hole or anything, but
other than the bowl containing the dog food, there was nothing. So I squatted
on the mattress with my butt hung over the edge and let it go. I cried as I
peed, having been reduced to such animalistic ways, but there was no other way.
Beside the mattress was better than on it.
    After I’d
drained my bladder, I sat on the mattress and looked at the mess I’d made as it
slowly crept across the concrete floor. As it made its way to the drain in the
center of the room, it pooled around Stephanie’s heel. I felt horrible that she
had to lie in my piss. Damn Ron.
    At some
point, I fell asleep. I had no way of keeping track of time in the basement. If
there were any windows, they were tightly covered and let in no light. I never
knew what day it was or what time it was.
    I woke to
the feel of someone’s hand on my butt. Once again, I was curled in the fetal
position to stay as warm as I could. I opened my eyes but didn’t move. Focusing
on the feel of the touch, I ruled out the possibility of a bug or a rodent. It
was definitely a human. A disturbing image flashed through my mind of
Stephanie’s cold corpse crawling across the floor and touching me. I quickly
rolled onto my back to find that Ron was on his knees beside me.
    “Will you
have me now?” he asked.
    Immediately,
I answered no.
    In a huff,
he got up. In the dim light of the bare bulbs, I saw that he was naked. And excited. And now, angry.
    He paced
back and forth for a little bit, mumbling under his breath something I couldn’t
make out. I watched him closely, afraid this would be the time he raped me. And
if it was, I’d still consider myself lucky that I wasn’t Stephanie.
    I watched
in amazement that even in his anger and frustration, he kept his erection. It
bobbed around in front of him as he angrily stomped back and forth across the
room. Had this been a movie I was watching from the comfort of my own home, I
would’ve surely laughed. But here, in this moment, it was the farthest thing
from