Chapter Thirty-Two

Havermouth, Present Time

A frog creaked its call from somewhere nearby, joining in the chorus of crickets that buzzed into the night. Aislen could hear the whispered rush of the river, smell the wet earth of its banks. Her head ached and her mouth was parched, the sound of the water tormenting her. Not at her father’s house, she thought, groggily. The river was too far from there to be heard like this. She had a bad feeling that she knew precisely where she was.

She pried her eyes open, wincing at the glare of the red-toned bedside lights. Her hands cuffed together, threaded through the bars of the bedhead.

She was in the River House, though not as it had been, she thought, as she looked around. The River House of her teen years had been dusty, riddled with spiderwebs, long abandoned, with no power. The wallpaper had been peeling from the walls, and there had been the strong smell of mildew from carpets mouldering from a leaking roof.

She lay on a wrought iron bed with black satin bedcovers. The roof had been repaired and vaulted in tidy squares. A black chandelier twisted from the ceiling rose. The walls were covered in something black and velvety, an invitation to touch them. There was a bookcase against a wall, the shelves heavy with books. An artist’s desk was positioned under the window, a sketchbook open, showing snarling gargoyles. She recognized the workmanship.

The bathroom door opened, and Rhett stepped out, dressed in unrelieved from black head to toe, the sleeves of his shirt folded back to reveal the brightly coloured tattoos on his forearms. He brought with him a glass of water.

“Lift your head,” he said, cupping her skull with one long-fingered hand as he held the glass to her lips. She drank, relieving the dryness in her mouth, whilst scenes of a bright light and him, bent over, holding a tattoo gun in his hand and wearing gloves, flashed through her mind. “I’ll undo you. You can use the toilet. If you cause trouble, Aislen, I’ll put an adult diaper on you.”

“What the fuck is this?” She demanded.

“Are you going to behave?” He held her eyes with his. His inky black hair fell over his face, the ends brushing over the fingerprint-sized twisted triangle on his cheek. “Believe me, you’re going to want to have an empty bladder.”

“Fuck,” she grimaced. “I’ll behave.”

He took the key out of his jeans pocket and released one of the cuffs.

She lowered her arms, rolling her shoulders to release tense muscles, kneading her fingers into the joint as she slid her legs off the bed. He caught her elbow to steady her as she stood and swayed.

“Easy,” he advised and aided her over to the small bathroom. “Door stays open.”

“Fuck,” she glowered, but unbuttoned her jeans and used the toilet, watching as he moved around the room. He moved a floor lamp over to the bed, positioned it carefully and turned it on so that its bright light lit the bed, catching in the wrinkles and pulls of the satin cover. As she washed her hands, she saw him lay a towel down and set out a black bag, before standing next to the bed.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” she said, warily, as she returned, “I don’t think I’m going to like it.”

“You’re not meant to,” he replied, his tone cool. “Undress and get on the bed.”

He was terrifying, she admitted to herself, as she slowly began to remove the singlet top and jeans she had been wearing after the funeral. “Rhett,” she said slowly. “Even the Triquetra can’t just kidnap a person.”

“Get on the bed, Aislen,” he replied. “Naked.”

She shivered as she removed her underwear. He stood over top of her, watching with an air of patience as she lay back onto the bed, and then he looped the cuffs through the wrought iron bedhead.

“This is a bit kinky,” she tried again to connect to him, to make him see that he couldn’t do whatever it was that the Triquetra had planned for her.

He wound a rope around her ankles and tied them to the bedhead. She felt less exposed, she thought, with her legs together, but it also meant that whatever he was planning to do, it didn’t involve sex, which, considering the lights, the towel, and the stool, she had suspected anyway.

The door opened and Heath and Cameron entered, coming to stand at the foot of the bed as Rhett drew the stool over. He opened his kit on the mattress and she looked down before drawing in a deep breath.

“Are you going to tattoo me?” She asked, her voice quavering. Her eyes flicked up to where Cameron and Heath stood, but both their faces were stern. They weren’t going to help her. She jumped when Rhett applied a clamp to her nipple. “Rhett,” she protested, immediately tugging against the bindings holding her as she saw him take a needle from the kit, tearing open the sterile packaging. “I don’t give you permission to… Don’t you do this!”

“I may need you to hold her down,” Rhett said softly, as Aislen’s struggles bucked and twisted her torso.

Heath crossed and sat on the bed next to Aislen, placing his weight on her rib cage. "Ready."

Aislen screamed as Rhett used the needle and saw Cameron flinch in sympathy. She stared down at her chest, panting in shock, and Rhett deftly inserted a piercing through the hollow tube of the needle shaft and then removed the needle. “Done,” he said and grinned at Heath. “Other side now.”

“Don’t you dare!” Aislen cried out as he applied the clamp to the other side. “Rhett! This is…”

“We have tried to be reasonable,” Heath said softly. “We have tried to reason with you, Aislen. Now we do it our way.”

She shrieked as Rhett pierced her other nipple. “This is your way?” She ground out through her teeth at Heath. “By torturing me?”

Rhett untied her legs, and she felt a moment of relief, except that Heath kept his weight on her chest which meant that they were not done...

She kicked as Rhett re-tied her ankle to the pole, and Cameron stepped in to help restrain and retie the other ankle, spreading her legs.

“Oh, god,” she watched past Heath in horror as Rhett re-positioned the stool and light. “Don’t you fucking dare, Rhett!”

“Sit on her and put pressure on the inside of her knees,” Rhett said to Heath. “The angle isn’t great, but I’ve worked in worse conditions.”

Heath straddled her torso.

Aislen moaned in fear, feeling Rhett’s gloved fingers between her legs. She could not see what he did past Heath and wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “Cameron,” she pleaded with the third member of the Triquetra. “Don’t let him do this to me. Please. Heath. You’re studying the law. When I get out of this and report it, all your studies will have been… Oh god,” she sucked in a breath and then screamed it out. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

She was weeping from fear, from pain, and from outrage. Bad enough that they had abducted her from her home, stealing from her the last night with Talen, but to mutilate her body against her wishes… “When I am through with you,” she said through her teeth. “When I am through with the three of you, you will be ruined. I will destroy you.”

“She’s mad,” Cameron chuckled.

“Yeah,” Rhett’s grin was wide. “But isn’t that fucking sexy?” Heath lifted off her and all three rounded the bed to stand between her spread legs and admire the three piercings. “Beautiful,” Rhett sighed out happily.

“Yeah,” Cameron adjusted his cock in his trousers. “It’s fucking sexy.”

“Have to glove up and be careful during sex,” Rhett said to them with the tone of someone issuing a reminder. “Can take four weeks to heal properly. So be careful with her. Alright, this will take a while,” he moved around the bed and collected the light bringing it up until she had no choice but to close her eyes against its brightness. “I’ll catch you later, eh?”

“Yeah.”

Aislen could hear plastic and movement as Rhett began to arrange equipment onto the bedside table. “Rhett,” she said to him. “You had better not be fucking thinking of tattooing me.”

He turned on the stereo, the rock beat pulsating dangerously behind the breathy voice of its lead singer. She squinted against the light. He pulled on his latex gloves and straddled the stool. “This will sting a little.”