“I thought…” he shuddered out a breath. “I thought you were gone. Oh my god…” he sobbed, a wet shaky inhale, his hands sliding into my curls and gripping them, pulling me closer.

I dug my hands into his hair and pulled him toward me, our lips meeting and knew in that moment that nothing between us - not with the time, or the separation, or my servitude - had changed. He didn’t see me as ruined or used, he gripped me like I was priceless, kissed me like he’d never let go. He was still mine. We were still us.

Whatever he had injected me with, I had my senses about me when he lifted my arm. Threw it over his shoulder and propped me up on my feet. Walked us both past the bathrooms, through the dim hall and back into the club, the floor more crowded, a colorful swirl before me. I tried to reach out a hand, to grab a person, tried to open my mouth and scream for help. Tried to do something other than close my eyes and slump against him.

I heard his laugh, heard words I couldn’t understand, saw the door open, the night dark, my taxi, where was my taxi? I twisted a floppy ankle on the cobblestone streets, pulled against him and felt his hand tighten, to a point of pain.

This was bad. I tried to yell for Brett, tried to lift my head and look up, to the VIP... private party ... and I wondered, for a minute, through the haze, if he was like Brett - a drug trafficker. Maybe I would be a mule, maybe I would...

He threw me in the back seat of a car and shut the door, the hard motion slamming at the bottom of my heel, my knee popping up, my face against a cold vinyl seat. I tried to finish my thought, tried to move my mouth to ask a question tried to... couldn’t ....

BLACK.

“Oh my god, I thought you were gone.” Brett pulled his lips off of mine long enough to whisper the words, the press of his lips against my forehead warm and soft and him. I would never again have to be in that cell. I would never again have to look into that man’s eyes or feel his fists or answer his questions. I was no longer a slave, I was free. My mind choked on that final concept and I pulled away, his eyes widening, his pursuit of me halted as he held himself back. I pulled at the neck of the cheap dress, it choking me, the scratch of its polyester against my bare skin hot and lingering and maddening.

“I have to get this off,” I blurted out, craning my body, trying to reach for a zipper, the act ripping a hole through my awareness, the pain in my side flaring for one searing moment. “Ow!” Sudden tears, they gave me no warning, just came, a drip of them down my cheek as my hands grew frantic, trying to unzip something that some sadist designed just out of reach.

“Here.” His hands soft but efficient, the relieving sound of the zipper, the loosening of the dress and I yanked at it, freeing my upper half, Brett’s quick move off the seat shedding his jacket, the smooth feel of his suit’s lining sliding around me, my arms wiggling into his sleeves. I kicked off the dress with the cheap heels and watched it settle onto the floorboard. Toed off the shoes and watched black soles and silk straps join the dress. Curled into Brett’s chest and let his arms come around me, his head dropping to mine. I was dirty, he would need to burn this jacket. This truck. Everything associated with this event.

“I love you.” I whispered the words that I had said a thousand times into my empty cell, imagining this moment, imagining his smell, his kiss, the desperate relief that I just saw in his eyes. I got all of those things and it took five minutes for me to remember to say I love you.

“Oh my God, Riley.” His hands cupped underneath my bare legs, pulled me onto his lap as he inhaled my scent and placed a long kiss against my lips. “I love you too. I love you so much.”

Riley. I had thought, for long nights in the cell, that I would never hear that name again. Had coveted thoughts of it, like a fantasy I was scared to indulge. I pulled at him, needed more of his kiss, more of his contact, more of the sound of my name on his lips.

Riley. Never again would I be subservient, lost, dead.

I was alive. Free. With Brett, his mouth warm and gentle against my own. My head spun as I tried to process it all. The hope I had held onto for so long… it had happened. I pulled off his mouth and gulped in air. Shook against the strength of his hands. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

Never again would I be Kitten.

When Elyse disappeared, I was asleep. In my home in Fort Lauderdale, I slept right through the moment when, in a nightclub, she collapsed. Most of her bachelorette party was on the upper floor of the club, drinking martinis around a private table. Elyse and her best friend left the group to go downstairs to dance. Those nearby said that Elyse collapsed on the dance floor and was taken away by a doctor and a helpful bystander, Brittany glued to her unconscious side. Everyone assumed they were taken to a hospital; only Elyse and Brittany never made it to one. They never made it anywhere. My phone rang right before dawn, a bridesmaid’s voice nervously coming through the receiver. She let me know what had happened. I was on a plane within the hour. In a Mexican police station by 7 AM. Six hours too late.

That day cracked the foundation of my life, my soul. The day her body was found destroyed me, a piece of my being forever gone, lost into the cruelty that was this world. I thought, on that day, that I had experienced the worst loss of my life. That, if I ever crawled out of my hole of despair, I’d be a stronger man for it. That I’d be tougher, smarter.

Elyse’s death had destroyed me. Riley’s disappearance … I almost took my life in those days. Had her body turned up in the Mexican desert, I would have. The only thing that kept me alive, kept me breathing, was my mission to find and save her. I wasn’t the same man who had searched for Elyse. I was smarter, more connected, savvier. I was also more ruthless.