Payback Read Online Free Page B

constricted by heavy stone or concrete. I could feel the hardness of it as it lay unyielding against my hip.
    A cast. My hand and arm were in a cast. That must be what I felt.
    But why was my arm in a cast? Was there a car accident? What had happened?
    I struggled to open my eyes, but with the first glare of light, I squeezed them shut again. My thoughts were vague, slipping from one to another inside my head like autumn leaves skittering across a lawn, stirred by the wind, never lighting in one place. Never resting. Never making sense.
    I tried to calm myself. I wondered absently where the pain had gone, and the moment I did, the pain returned. Everywhere. It screamed through me like a locomotive bursting from a tunnel. Roaring. Angry. Relentless.
    I heard a voice cry out. Was that me? Did I make that sound?
    Again gentle fingers stroked my cheek.
    “Give him something,” a voice pleaded, and I wondered if it was me speaking.
    “The IV drip will do the trick,” another voice intoned.
    And once again, the blessed darkness swept me away.
     
     
    S PENCE , NAKED and beautiful, bucked beneath me. His lean fingers pulled at my hair, pleading with me to take him all the way. I smiled when his juices erupted from his cock, but then I realized something was terribly wrong. Instead of spilling his sweet come into me, he sprayed my throat with fire. Liquid fire. I tried to jerk away but he held me in place as the flames of his orgasm tore into me over and over again. Burning. Burning.
    I tried to scream but no sound came out.
    My eyes flew open, and the first thing I saw was a red flashing light staring down at me. It stood by… my bed. I was in bed. But it wasn’t my bed. It was a bed I had never seen before. This bed had white plastic rails and white sheets, and my legs were tucked under some sort of table down by the foot of it.
    Daylight stabbed into my eyes, but I enjoyed the pain. It seemed forever since I had seen the light of day. I teared up against the glare but still enjoyed the sight of thin blinds splayed across a window to my left. It was daylight outside. The sun was shining brightly.
    When that old familiar beeping came back to torment my thoughts, I cast my eyes around to learn what it was. It was then I realized the red flashing light and the beeping noise were working in conjunction with each other. And they seemed to be in sync with my own heartbeat. But how was that possible?
    I felt pressure on my fingertip, and with concentration, I managed to lift my hand to my eyes. There was a blood-pressure clamp on my index finger. That was what I felt. That was how my heartbeat could be connected to the machine standing by the bed.
    When I tried to lift my other hand, I met with resistance. Then I remembered. That was the arm with the cast, and apparently, I was too weak to lift it.
    A groan escaped my lips as I twisted my head to look around the room I was in. There was no one else present. No other bed, no other human. No one. Just cabinets, machines, panels.
    Where was Spence?
    An anguished wail bellowed from me when a storm of memories, one after the other, came screaming in. A metal bar chipping concrete. A dog whimpering in the dark. Mocking laughter and a curse in Spanish. A rat scurrying past my face in the shadows. The reek of piss.
    Where was Spence?
    I wailed again—an anguished sound that shocked me. It tore at my raw throat like a ragged blade. Only then did I realize I had a trach tube inserted. It felt alien and wrong clamped into me. I tried to grasp it, to pull it out, but I was too weak.
    The echo of running footsteps filled the hallway outside my room. My door burst open. The squeak of a trolley. Gentle, insistent hands worked at the tubes that tied me down. Shushing sounds tried to soothe me as the hands did their work.
    A drugged dullness slowly settled through me. The room faded. It was the IV drip again. I was beginning to recognize it. I was beginning to welcome it.
    My eyelids slowly closed,