Tabula Rasa by Kitty Thomas Page A

But if Shannon was really bad, he
could have done whatever he’d wanted anyway. As if he would have
called for real help if he were evil. Who was I kidding? This guy had
clearly done evil things. Me not being a target of it... yet...
didn’t change that basic truth.
    “Elodie, I’m tired. I want to get on the road early tomorrow. My
house is much nicer than this. You’ll have your own room there.”
    Room or basement? Or garden shed?
    He started to look impatient. I didn’t want to escalate things, so
I lay down. For better or worse, this was where I was now, and there
was no real way out of it that didn’t escalate into violence. I had
a very strong feeling that if I fought him too hard, that thing in
his brain would click on again and he’d decide I was too much
trouble.
    Shannon undid the nylon holding my borrowed pants in place and ripped
it out of the belt loops. Before I could process what he was doing,
he had my hands over my head and tied to the headboard. He could have
used the rope in his bag, but I got the feeling he wanted to move
into and own my space.
    The headboard was older and solidly well-made with slats to run rope
through. Maybe Shannon was just super lucky. Or maybe he’d done
this before. Though I was sure, even without such a convenient way to
tie me down, he would have easily figured something else out with
whatever the room had offered him instead.
    “Please, don’t do this.” I was crying and blubbering, and right
on the cusp of a panic attack. And despite my best efforts not to
become too much trouble for him to keep dealing with, I struggled,
however vainly. But it was nothing to him and didn’t slow him down
more than a few seconds in his goal.
    Once I was secured, Shannon shut off the lights, kicked off his
boots, and lay down on the other side of the bed, turning his back to
me.
    “Go to sleep. Things won’t seem as bad in the morning.”
    Shannon was a man who obviously knew how to create trauma but didn’t
know the first thing about undoing it. Nearly everything he’d said
or done from the moment we’d met had triggered one fear or another.
He’d kept me on a razor’s edge of anxiety, but somehow I didn’t
think it had been intentional.
    Even so, it was well past the point when Shannon’s breath deepened
in sleep before I could find my own fitful peace for the night.

    ***

    The next morning, I had that experience where you wake up in a new
place and forget how you got there. Except for me, this was a bit
more upsetting, seeing as the last time it happened, no memories came
back to fill in the spaces.
    I felt my hands tied, panicked, and screamed.
    Shannon rolled over faster than I thought a human could move. His
hand clamped over my mouth so hard I was sure there would be a red
hand mark when he removed it.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
    I whimpered behind his hand.
    “If you scream again, so help me...”
    I shook my head frantically. What good would that do me? It wasn’t
as if I’d planned to scream in the first place.
    He pulled his hand away slowly.
    “I forgot where I was, and my arms are asleep, and I freaked out.
I-I’m sorry.”
    The sun streamed into the room around the edges of the curtains.
Shannon untied the nylon around my wrists and rubbed them until the
pins and needles sensation faded. It was the first time I’d gotten
a really good look at him.
    The castle had been dark except for the fireplace the previous night,
and it had of course been dark outside. It wasn’t as if he’d been
a total visual mystery to me. But there were details you could only
fully catch in the light of day—like the fact that he had the
longest, most beautiful dark eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. But
somehow they didn’t make him seem less scary or any less masculine.
    “What?” he said.
    “N-nothing.”
    He got up and left the nylon belt or rope or whatever the hell it was
meant to be used for—it was fucking versatile—lying on