The Light Between the Trees Ch. 12

Author's note: Traumatised by being held hostage in the cafe siege, Chloe has chosen a new direction in her life. She gives up her steady boyfriend and stable job to seek out new thrills in risky encounters. Covalent has laid out his plans to make her disappear and Chloe finds herself spiraling deeper and deeper into his fantasy of total control.

The story contains themes of female submission, edge play and autassassinophilia. Discretion is advised: please check the story tags to see whether this a series you'll enjoy.]

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GRAVE IMPLICATIONS

It's another four days before he calls a halt to my daily grind of pumping the water and announces that we should take the day off. I'm kneeling on the decking as the sun comes up, as usual, in my display pose. I've been like this for half an hour, waiting signs of life from inside the house. The mattress is completely flat by now, so I've taken to folding it over on itself a few times to give me some padding to kneel on. Covalent either hasn't noticed my innovation, or he's ignoring it; it's the last bit of comfort I have.

My body isn't as stiff this morning, even after lying on the deflated mattress on the hard decking. I've been able to lie on my back and get to sleep that way, rolling up the woollen blanket and using it as a pillow. I suspect that the endless hours of walking round in circles has played its part too. When I lie down, my body is just thankful of the rest.

I'm dimly aware that this might be all part of his plan: the constant exercise, the sleep deprivation, the same, consistent rations, the abject humiliation of being taken out into the middle of the field to do my business. Oh, yeah, that last one came to a head last night. After going days without, uh, going, I finally had to do a number two in front of him.

It was mortifying, shitting into a little hole that he'd made me dig, then wiping up afterwards with a clump of the dry, brown grass. It felt like sandpaper between my cheeks, but when I complained, he made me stand up and bend over, touching my toes. He then made a thorough inspection of my rear, which just deepened my humiliation, before announcing that no damage had been done. It was such a relief to be on my way back to the house with that business behind me.

This morning, Covalent comes out with the usual: fresh water for my bowl and a plate bearing two slices of toast, again cut up into four.

"Good morning," he announces brightly.

"Morning," I reply, half-heartedly.

"Sleep well?"

"What the hell do you think?" I shoot back.

He nods, setting my breakfast down on the deck, as if forcing me to sleep outside, bare, on the deck was nothing out of the ordinary. My protests have been dismissed.

"Do you need the toilet?"

I shake my head.

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

He isn't convinced. "You need to tell me, otherwise you might not get a chance later and you'll get uncomfortable."

"Oh, so sleeping on the floor isn't an issue but getting, uh, blocked up is, right?"

"Yes. I need to know if you're having medical issues."

"I'm stiff as a board and I got barely a wink of sleep, again. That's gonna give me issues."

"No, it's not," he replies, dismissing the suffering he's causing me, "Your body will learn and adapt. You'll see. Soon, you'll feel like it's the same as being on a bed."

"That's bullshit."

"You don't have to take my word for it. Wait another couple of days. Eventually you'll get to the point where you can't sleep in a bed anymore because it's too soft. You'll be tossing and turning all night."

"Why would you want that?"

"Want what?"

"Why do you want me not able to sleep in a bed anymore?"

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

"Because it interests me. I want to see how much I can alter you. I want you to want to go to bed on the floor because it's the only way you can get to sleep."

"There's no way you can make me do that."

"Really? Are you sure?"

He isn't being cocky; I can tell he's genuinely interested in finding out what I think.

"Tell me something," he continues, "I've trained you to go to the toilet in a field and we're only five days in. You know your body's already changing. Isn't it really just a matter of time now?"

I want to argue the point, but I stop myself. I look down at my body, looking for the signs that I'm changing, and I begin to see them. My days in the sun have begun to colour my skin from the white shade of someone who spent all her time in the office. My limbs are changing too, just a little: there's more definition to my legs, my stomach is tighter. I run a hand over my head, feeling how perfectly smooth I am after Covalent shaved me yesterday. I'm being worked upon, I realise. He's sculpting me into something else and I have been given no say in the process.

"What do you want to do to me?" I ask him, sullenly.

I expect him to launch into a monologue, exposing his grand plan, like a movie villain. His actual answer is much more succinct.

"I'm not sure. You're a work in progress. I'll tell you when you're done."

He gets up, but he doesn't go back inside. Instead, he points down at the plate.

"Eat."

Begrudgingly, I hunker down on all fours and pick up a slice of toast in my teeth. Covalent walks around behind me.

"We can do better than that. Up."

He taps my thigh, until I raise my bottom into the air. He taps my thigh again.

"Apart."

I spread my knees, but he taps again until I'm spread wide, my shoulders down and my back entrance pointing up at the sky. I'm blushing with the embarrassment of knowing my pussy is on full display to him, as is my rear opening.

"We'll call that display pose two. A modified downward dog, I believe."

I'm just conscious of the air moving over my slit. I have a secret that I'm desperate to hide from him. I feel two fingers press on my labia, parting them, and it's too late as I feel the chill of my inner moisture exposed to the morning air.

"You seem to like this."

Fuck. He's seen. I don't answer, concentrating on my toast. My body has betrayed me though, showing him how much being forced like this has turned me on. I know Covalent well enough by now to expect no mercy as he exploits this new aspect of me. His fingers keep me parted and without him even moving I feel myself getting slicker just from feeling his eyes on my gleaming opening.

It isn't helping that I'm still going without any sexual relief at all. Each night, he ensures that he's worked me up to the point that I'll agree anything to get him to fuck me, and each time I satisfy him without getting anything in return. It's gotten to the point where I no longer expect it, so that I spend the entire day with his damned device sending a pleasant tingle through me, fantasising about his cock, and then I spend the night trying to get to sleep, left aching for satisfaction as I lie on my mat with the taste of him on my tongue.

"How're you feeling today?"

"Horny," I grunt, figuring there's no point in sugar-coating it.

"You think you've earned some relief?"

Yes, I fucking have. After what I've endured, I deserve a five-day orgy in the penthouse suite, surfacing only for toilet breaks and to swap out the room service trays. I won't tell him that though; he doesn't deserve the satisfaction of knowing how much I'm suffering. I take another tack, instead.

"You think I have? You're the one making the decisions."

He laughs quietly, but his fingers are still holding me open. My clit begins to throb, as if it's trying to draw his attention.

"I think we both are."

"In which weird alternate universe am I making any decisions anymore?" I growl at him.

"When I go to bed, and you're lying here, and you're alone, why don't you do anything about this?"

His fingertip strokes my nub and my thighs quiver involuntarily, making him laugh again.

"Oh, you're so ready for attention, aren't you? I didn't realise just how much agony you're in."

"You know now," I snap back at him.

Ah, shit. The thrill of his touch on my clit threw me. I've let him see just how much he's getting to me. I really wanted to keep that to myself.

"But you haven't touched yourself."

"No," I concede.

"Why is that, since it's probably the only thing on your mind right now?"

"Because I'll be punished if I do. I'm not stupid."

The fingers are withdrawn, and I feel my lips close up. The memory of his touch lingers.

"I never forbade you."

"Yeah, you did. That's bullshit."

"When?"

My mind goes blank. I replay the last few days, and I can't recall....

"The sack. When I was in the back, right then," I blurt triumphantly.

"I told you to touch yourself as much as you wanted."

His finger traces its path up from my slit, over my perineum to my puckered rear. He tickles it gently and I squirm.

"The truth is, you just assumed, because you know that's what good girls do. They don't touch themselves. They don't steal orgasms. They stay chaste until they're ordered to cum."

He strokes my bottom gently.

"You really want to be a good girl, don't you? You want to show that you're a good girl for me."

He pats me once and then he's heading back into the house. I remain in the position he left me, still exposing myself, my face hovering over an empty plate, because he hasn't told me I can move.

The next day, I don't go back to drawing water. Instead, after the usual breakfast in my bowl on the floor and a trip out into the field to go to the toilet, Covalent asks me to follow him. He opens up the back of the car and pulls out the shovel, locking the car again. Without another word, he begins to walk out into the paddock, beckoning me to follow.

"What's the spade for?" I ask, but he doesn't reply.

"Really, tell me."

He stops abruptly and I nearly walk into him. He turns to face me and places a finger on my lips.

"No more talking," he tells me, and I curse myself for having earned a speaking ban.

We walk across the parched brown grass to a large tree standing on the edge of the paddock. Stopping just within the shade afforded by its canopy, he hands me the spade.

"Start."

I don't question him; I begin to dig. Covalent leans against the trunk to watch me.

Over the next hour, he gives me a few instructions, the rough dimensions of the hole he wants. It's a metre square, and I have to hack at the dry grass sods until I'm through to the soft brown earth beneath. The soil is fine and sandy, and I make progress until I'm knee deep in the hole. Eventually I stop and look up at him, meaningfully.

"Keep going. It needs to be deep. I'll go get a bucket and some rope to make this easier."

Colvalent strides towards the house, leaving me standing in the hole, gaping at him. He hasn't told me what I'm doing. He hasn't told me anything.

---

The next morning, I'm up with the sun. My body is aching, every muscle protesting as I sit up. The dirt is ground into my skin after spending all day in the hole, filling the little bucket for Covalent to empty as I dig deeper and deeper. He kept me going until we were well into the twilight and I was looking up at a square of light, surrounded on all sides by brown earth. There had been something chilling about seeing him peering down into the hole at me.

This morning, the door opens and Covalent is empty-handed. It takes me a few moments to get up the nerve to ask the question.

"Don't I get breakfast?" I ask.

"I'm not sure there's much point."

He rummages around in his pocket for a moment, then pulls something out and lays it down on the chair. I recognise it immediately: it's a condom.

"What do you mean?" I ask, warily, my eyes fixed on the little foil square.

"You know what I mean."

"I don't."

Covalent sighs. "Now, come on."

"How about you tell me what's going on?"

"That's obvious. You already know. You said yourself how horny you've been getting."

"Is that all this is, though?"

Covalent pauses, and I want him to smile at me. I want him to laugh, more than anything. Instead, his expression becomes solemn.

"Why would I need the condom? Why would I be worrying about leaving a trace?"

"But you are, right?"

"Yes."

"That's...."

My words trail off. I can't tear my eyes from the little packet.

"You thought you were just digging a hole yesterday? I really doubt that. You're smart enough to work it out."

I stare up at him in silence.

"You did such a good job. You worked so diligently."

Just like that, my brain is going at a hundred miles an hour. There's a strange taste in the back of my throat. Oh fuck.

"I'm, uh, I'm not ready," I stammer, stalling.

Covalent shakes his head, asking, "What do you mean? It's deep enough. You don't have to dig any further."

"I don't mean that."

"You said it would be perfect," I mumble.

It's staggering to me that those words are the only ones that spring to mind.

"It will be, trust me, just perfect. Now, shall we get started?"

I still don't answer.

Covalent nods, picking the condom up. "Come on, let's go."

He actually holds out his hand. Mesmerised, I see my hand slide into his. His warm, strong fingers close around mine as I allow him to draw me to my feet. He opens the screen door.

"Bring the bag."

He indicates a little bag by the door. I pick it up, moving slowly, like I'm underwater, everything taking forever. My heart is hammering in my chest. I can't see what's in the bag and I don't open it to find out. Covalent's standing by the screen door, holding it open, looking at me expectantly. I go through, down the stairs and onto the dry dirt. He follows me, placing a hand in the small of my back, pushing me forwards gently, towards the tall tree and the little mound of fresh earth in the shade beneath it. I find myself putting one foot in front of the other in the brown grass, my body on autopilot, like I'm just his puppet and he's pulling my strings.

"Good girl. You see, you are ready."

I want to protest that I'm not ready. I want to fucking scream, but I don't.

"I know you are," he continues, his voice low and reasonable, not betraying anything, and somehow it's keeping me calm.

"You spent night after night on the decking. Every morning, I expected to come out and find you gone. You would have had an eight-hour head start, you'd have been home free."

His words penetrate the white noise inside my head, as if explaining something simple and important to me, and I realise how obvious is all is. He left me every opportunity to flee and I never took them.

"What if I run now?" I ask.

"You're not going to run, though, are you?"

We're nearly there now, and all I can see is the dark square hole in the brown grass. It's as if there's a gravity well, pulling me towards its edge, ready to suck me inside, over the event horizon. I know what happens over that horizon, I know that nothing ever escapes, I know that once you cross it, you're lost for all time.

I remember myself on my knees in the café. I remember the blinding white. Is this what I've been looking for all along?

His hand is on my hip, suddenly, holding me in position. I realise with confusion that he's stopped me. I was going to just keep on going, down into the darkness. His fingertips caress my skin, exploring until they dip between my legs, fingers pressing against my labia. Covalent opens me and I feel a hot trickle of fluid dribble down my inner thigh: I'm unbearably aroused, my body aching with need. I don't resist, I don't even move, letting him explore me with his fingers.

"Kneel down."

I do it, without hesitating, going down on my knees in the soft dirt at the edge of the grave. I take my position without him asking, stretching forwards, pressing my bare breasts into the soil, feeling the coolness of the earth against my nipples, looking over the edge into the abyss. I raise my hips, spreading my legs, putting my crotch on display for him. From somewhere high above me, I hear a tearing sound and then the rustle of the foil packet.

There is a moment of complete silence. The air is still, there's not even a rustle of wind in the tree tops, just the heat building up again like it did yesterday. Like it will again tomorrow, I think to myself, like it will in many of the days to come, beating down on this forlorn, neglected little patch of earth in the corner of a forgotten paddock at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

My bright future, my endless struggle, my friends, my work, my family, the fucking beast in the café with his gun, all of it comes down to this. I think of Toby, how in another world we would probably be at brunch now in a spot near our apartment, sitting drinking coffees in the sunshine. Another world.

When Covalent enters me, my thoughts simply evaporate.

I'm a passenger, detached from it all, feeling my body react to his urgent manhood inside me. I'm clenching against him, letting the waves of ecstasy surge up from between my legs to wash over my grateful, exhausted, tormented body. I don't need to think about cumming, about holding back, about how he's going to feel if I... it's all irrelevant now, fading into the background as he takes control of my body, like I'm just an extension of him, two parts of the same whole joining together in bliss.

He picks up the tempo, burying himself all the way, until his balls slap against my perineum with each savage, fulfilling stroke. I feel myself quivering around him, pushed instantly to the edge the moment he penetrated me, driven by all the days of denial, of longing, and now of the inevitability of the conclusion. I open my mouth and it's as if to accept the gun barrel between my lips, to welcome it this time and the release it brings.

Covalent pulses, surging thickly, deep inside me, and I can feel the immensity of his release as he fills the sheath that's keeping the traces of him from me. I grip him, holding him inside, but he's still going, pounding into me, pulsing again and again, emptying himself. I let me body go and tip into an orgasm so bright, so savage, that the world explodes into a singular white fury. I lose track of time, everything from the outside world, the pure brightness overwhelming my senses, blinding and deafening me to anything other than the sheer electric thrill burning through every nerve and muscle in my body.

He's right. It's perfect.

---

When I open my eyes, he's looking down at me, standing over me naked, his cock softening. There's something in his hand.

"Remember you told me about the woman? She wanted to be used and thrown away, wrapped up in a garbage bag, just a discarded thing. "

I watch dumbly as he unfolds the thing in his hand. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my memory, I identify it as the plastic sack he put me into when he drove me here. He bends down at my feet, holding the end of it open, and without questioning, I begin to slide myself backwards into its tight confines. He wriggles it up over my hips, to my waist, then pulls my hands down to my thighs, sitting me up on my haunches as he stands in front of me.

Covalent tugs the tight black plastic up, enveloping my breasts, my shoulders, my neck, until just my head is sticking out. He kneels down in front of me, taking my cheek in his hand, and kisses me. I open my mouth gratefully, engaging his lips with a fierce passion, not wanting the contact to end, knowing that it has to. When eventually he breaks away, pulling back from me, it feels like I've lost everything. I look up into his wide, honest eyes.

"I love you," he says.

I don't answer him. I can't. The revelation is blinding, simple, brilliant. I love him too. All I can do is smile wordlessly back at him as the tears prick in my eyes. He holds my gaze for a moment more, then rolls the sack up over my head, trapping me entirely within its tight, cloying darkness.

I feel a tug above me as he secures the opening, then hands on my body turning me. I'm conscious of the plastic stretched tightly over my naked, sated body, the soft earth beneath me, the silence. His hands are on me again and I feel myself move; there is no earth beneath my heels and I know my feet are sticking out into thin air.