Eve opened her eyes.
Or she tried to.
Before she could properly focus, it felt as if a bolt of lightning had split her head apart. She groaned in pain, her hand flying up to clutch her forehead as her body instinctively curled in on itself.
"What the fuck," she croaked. Her voice came out rough and broken, painfully dry. The sound irritated her already parched throat and immediately sent her into a violent coughing fit.
Her chest burned as she struggled to breathe.
She felt like she was about to die, or maybe she already had and this was what hell felt like. If this was the afterlife, it was a cruel one.
Whatever was happening to her right now, she was sure of one thing. She had never felt this horrible in her entire life.
She tried to orient herself between short intervals of relief she could spare as she coughed her lungs out, endured the sharp bolts of pain that kept splitting her head, and fought the overwhelming irritation caused by her dry mouth and throat.
Those were only a few of the more urgent problems her body seemed determined to remind her of.
Then she suddenly felt something cold against her shoulder.
Her entire body went rigid.
She realized she was sitting upright now. Trying to control her coughing, she reached out and touched the cold object resting against her skin. The moment she realized it was a glass of water, she grabbed it and brought it to her lips, drinking it in one desperate gulp.
The sensation of cold water flooding her dry mouth and throat was nothing short of a second calling at life. Relief washed through her as her coughing subsided, her chest loosening, her insides finally relaxing after what felt like an eternity.
She placed the empty glass on the bed beside her and tried to open her eyes again.
Feeling somewhat better, she attempted to remember what had happened the night before.
She recalled coming to the club with Lena. Drinking a little. Going to the restroom. Coming back out.
After that, everything blurred into nothing.
She could remember the emotions. Fear. Anger. Relief. But the images that should have accompanied those feelings were completely missing. Her mind felt like a blank slate where important scenes should have been, and the absence of them made her stomach twist uncomfortably.
She was missing something. Something important.
As she slowly opened her eyes, she felt grateful for the dim lighting of the room she was in.
Her head still throbbed, but the pain was no longer sharp or sudden. It lingered, heavy and persistent. As her vision adjusted, she looked ahead.
Where was she?
She could see that she was in a luxurious room. Every inch of the black walls, the crystal vases, and the abstract art pieces mounted across the space screamed of obscene prices.
What caught her attention even more was the strange, deliberate array of items hanging at mid-length along one of the black walls.
Black strips of silk fabric hung neatly beside three different types of handcuffs. One looked soft and lined with fur, while the others appeared harsh, metallic, and straight out of a prison transport van. There was a wooden paddle, a riding crop, neatly bundled ropes in different colors, and strange metal bars with cuffs at each end. Steel chains gleamed faintly in the dim light among many other objects whose names and purposes she could not immediately identify.
But she was not a child.
She had read her fair share of Fifty Shades of Grey. She had watched enough secretary-type movies to know exactly what this room implied.
She knew what she was looking at.
What she could not understand was how in the hell she had ended up here.
Before she could ponder that thought any further, a voice cut through the silence.
"Woken up now?"
Her eyes went wide as she whipped her head toward the source of the calm, monotone voice.
What greeted her was a lean, angular face with light brown skin, a well-kept trimmed beard, and a buzz cut.
What caught her attention even more were his eyes. Calm. Cold. Emotionless as they stared directly at her.
Adrian Voss.
What the fuck was this guy doing here?
No. What the hell was she doing here? The room around her made that question even more disturbing.
Nothing made sense as she looked at the man standing there.
"You took your sweet time, huh," he said.
"Where am I?" she managed to ask, her voice still weak.
"You don't remember?" he replied.
She thought she heard a hint of warning beneath that velvety tone, though she told herself it had to be her imagination.
She shook her head and straightened her posture on the bed.
That was when she felt it.
A cold sensation beneath her thighs, against her ass cheeks.
Her sudden movement must have caused the glass she had knocked over earlier to roll across the surface, but what made her eyes widen in pure horror was how vivid the sensation felt.
She could tell herself that she had just woken up and her senses were overly sensitive.
Or.
She looked down.
And immediately realized the second option, the one she had been dreading, was the correct one.
She was sitting there on the bed completely naked.
BUTT-NAKED....
Her eyes darted over her body in disbelief. Her pert breast, which were a handful were completely bare, her brownish, puffy nipples had hardened into stiff peaks. Her horrified gaze traveled lower, to the curly brown hair between her legs. Her last remaining thread of dignity. Her pink pussy lips were just barely out of sight, hidden by the curly hair and her sitting position.
Her heart pounded violently in her chest.
She hurriedly crossed her arms over her chest, as if that small gesture could somehow salvage what little dignity she had left.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it.
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of the man's mouth as he watched her reaction.