s*x Chained

Prisoner of Love

Chapter 11

Now all she had to do was wait as she returned to work. After putting the finishing touches on the report, Nat turned off her computer and straightened her desk area.

"You working late, mees?" Anna Slovak, the cleaning woman from Lithuania, gave Nat a folksy smile from the depths of her plump, rosy face, then started to wipe the counter with her cleaning cloth.

"Yes. Business doesn't shut down even for a holiday."

"Well, you try to take some time off. Us..." The older woman flicked her gray eyes to the young Latino who had just entered the office area with a push broom. "Me and Mr. Cha-Cha there. We get rest of weekend off for holiday after we finish thees offices."

"Good for you!" The office assistant laughed. Diego Santano always cleaned in step to the salsa music plugged into his ears and emanating from his portable CD player. Retrieving the bunch of long-stem red, white and blue mums from her vase, Nat handed them to the housekeeper. "Here. These are still good. You take them and enjoy."

Mrs. Slovak's happy grin revealed her uneven, stained teeth. "Thank you, mees. You go enjoy holiday, too. Me? I love thees country. I love to celebrate the Fourth."

Nat returned the smile. The older woman just told her what she needed to know. She and her lover would be alone for the next three days. "Yes, let freedom ring."

###

Christian Michael O'Connell slowly opened his eyes, even though his lids felt like cement. He found himself in darkness, but caught the pinpoint glow of light from some distant source. Struggling to sit up, he realized he could not move his arms. Something kept them secured to his sides, and when he tried to open his parched mouth, he found he couldn't move his lips as well. What happened? Where was he? Obviously he laid prone on what felt like a thin mattress, probably a cot... but where?

The last thing he remembered, Chris had been walking side-by-side with his assistant, through the offices and then down a dark corridor. That's it! He and Natalie had been in pursuit of some files in the vault. Chris sniffed the air. This place smelled like the storage room. Yet why was he still here?

The last sequence of events before he passed out slowly emerged and managed to fit together like pieces of a crazy quilt. The long Fourth of July weekend, and he and Merrill had planned to take a plane to Chicago. Merrill... where did she go? Chris recalled working through the afternoon with Nat at her work station. Then his office assistant asked him to help her with some files... that was it! The last thing he remembered had been reaching down to extract some kind of ledger. Nat... what had she done to him?

Chris began to slide his legs off the bed, though one leg felt heavier than the other. He tried to jerk it forward and noticed his ankle seemed attached to some kind of weight. When he finally managed to right himself and place his stocking feet on the floor, the metallic clink of a chain followed. Again, his muddled mind asked itself what Nat—his normally bright, industrious assistant--had done to him... and why? Struggling against his restraints, he let out a muffled groan of frustration.

"Oh, hello there, you're awake."

Nat's voice drifted to him in the darkness. Chris squinted to try and find her in the shadows, but couldn't place which way her voice carried. Sniffing again, Chris inhaled something delicious and realized he was hungry. Suddenly, the bright beam of a flashlight blinded him for a moment until Nat focused the beam above his head.

"Poor dear. I know you're uncomfortable, but it couldn't be helped. I'll undo the rope and tape so you can eat. I'm sure you're starving by now."

The small dark form of his office assistant moved towards him, and he felt her slender but adept hands cut away the rope biting into his arms. Without warning, Nat ripped off the tape, and Chris tried to recover from the shock of the sting before he ran his tongue over chapped lips.

"I brought you a bottle of water. The kind you like, the expensive brand."

From the corner of his eye, Chris watched Nat pull up what looked like a TV tray. "I reheated a lasagna for you," she continued. "I made it myself. And there's an oyster appetizer to start with."

"What are you doing, Nat?" The first words out of his mouth and he had to ask such an inane question. Why are you holding me here? Are you out of your mind? What do you think you're doing?

She disappeared for a moment but returned with a desk light and plugged it into a nearby socket. When she turned on the lamp, a soft glow illuminated the area and gave Chris a chance to study his assistant.

Nat looked as she always did -- efficient, dependable, capable. In the last month or so she had cut and lightened her dull hair to a more suitable style and started wearing more fashionable clothes. Her new look only served to heighten her professional appearance in the office; but perhaps, this new persona also effected her mindset somehow. Without a word, Chris watched as she brought the tray to him and neatly arranged the plates of food, the cloth napkin and plastic fork. She poured him some of the water from the bottle into a clear plastic cup then set it precisely in line with the fork.

"There now. You eat first and then we'll talk," she told him in her practical voice. With that, she drifted back into the shadows.

"Wait, Nat!" Chris tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness compelled him to return to the cot. "Where are you going?"

"I'll be back in just a moment, darling. You eat now."

Darling? Just exactly what did his assistant have in mind here? Whatever it was, he wasn't about to let her go through with some crazy plan to keep him prisoner here. The manager waited, but heard nothing and saw nothing except what the arc of lamp light allowed. Chris looked at the tray and the delicious food; but before he began to eat, he groped for the chain on the floor and followed it to the iron clamp affixed in the cement block wall. Hoping by now the dizziness had passed, he stood and took slow baby steps, first one way, then the other. Chris discovered he could move only a few feet either way before the chain stretched taut and the metal ring tightened around his ankle. Then he noticed the porta-potty, the stack of magazines nearby, and the soft comforter on the cot. Knowing Nat, she would make sure he had everything he wanted to make himself comfortable here. Here... as far as Chris understood, he was now prisoner in the fifth-floor storage room.