Title: The Last Midnight Hour
Author: brittybritbrit on LJ (HoleyHoot on Twitter... come follow me!)
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Morgan/OFC
Warnings: Original female character, un-beta'd, kidnapping, violence, torture, talk of rape (possible flashbacks), lemons later
Disclaimer: I don't own any of it. Sadness.
Summary: Riley Seeder was a cold case file. Taken when she was fourteen by a sadistic Master, she was forced into the life of a slave. Her master uses her to satisfy his sexual desires as he trains her - torturing, scarring, and ultimately breaking her. She was his pet for two and half years, only being found by chance - some hunters poaching wolves on private property. Case closed, she goes back to her parents, society, a changed girl, finishing her schooling at home and moving out quickly after to get away from the people who no longer know her. She starts to heal, physically and mentally with the help of her therapist, and finally fits in with common society again. Seven years after being taken, she meets a man. Giving him her number was the best idea she ever had. After two months of dating, she decides to tell, and show, him exactly why she stays covered... until she's taken again.
After a life of being a player, Agent Derek Morgan meets his match. The young girl in the coffee shop won't leave his mind, he's fallen hard and he hates himself for it, knowing his job will only bring her pain. She's different from the others; she won't let herself be alone with him, and he loves it. She's the only woman outside of his team that he's actually gotten to know. After a couple of months, she accepts a dinner invitation to his house. He makes sure everything perfect, knowing full well tonight will be the night he tells her how he feels... until she stands him up.
Author's Note: To those that added this story to their alerts/favorites, thank you for giving an OFC fic a chance, and special thanks to my two reviewers, csiluver99 and crime reader expert.
I went with crime reader expert's villain name, 'The Taunter.' Csiluver99's suggestion, 'Michael Jefferies' will be used for a different character within the next upcoming chapters.
I know this chapter's a bit shorter than the last one, but most of Riley's chapters will be around this word count (roughly 2000). I hope you enjoy it, and don't forget that this story is unbeta'd, so if you find any typos, please let me know!
Chapter 2:
Riley woke groggily early the next day. She was confused before the previous day's events came back, flooding her brainwaves with fleeting memories – hesitation at Derek's door, being grabbed from behind, bound, blindfolded, hauled into the back of what she assumed was a van, counting the time between turns, hoisted, tied, tortured. She looked around quickly, assessing her solitude, checking to make sure the camera wasn't recording. Riley knew what she had to do, knew from years of torment and abuse that if she didn't make it out of here soon, her chances of being found alive were slim. She remembered the only reason she'd been found alive the first time, her refusal to act on the only escape Master had given her. Every day after waking and every night before bed, he would drag her by the hair into a bloodstained room, blood from victims before. He would toss her into a corner, walk to the door and set down a gun equipped with one bullet. "If you truly wish to be free, you know what you have to do." With those words, he would leave her, locking the door behind him. He would not return for one hour, one hour he would leave her alone in that room with the wood floors and paneled walls painted in stale blood. For one hour she would sit, staring at the gun, wishing there was a way she could shoot herself, kill herself. She never would, not when she knew he would just find someone else – someone like her, someone to torture, mutilate, rape. She would never kill herself, would never be free. She would stay alive and take his beatings, whatever they may be, if only to save someone else from going through this. "Just remember, this is your consent. You have asked me to do this," Master's words upon his return to drag her to the 'play room' or back to the bedroom, depending on morning or night. "If you didn't want this, you would have killed yourself," as he chained or tied her up, only to burn, slice, mark her as his, take her any way he saw fit. Thinking of the next victims was always what helped her stay strong then, and now she thought of Derek. She had to make it out of here alive for him. She had seen how he reacted when he first told her about 'The Taunter,' had seen the unshed tears he had for all the victims lost because he 'couldn't nail the bastard down.' He had told her, though she knew it had been difficult for him, trusting someone like that, about the way he tortured them, taunting him with videos. His team had been searching for the killer for roughly a little over a year now, and he'd been killing women, playing with them, for even longer. Derek had outlined the reason he tortured was for the screams, which he would relive with the lifeless body later, multiple times as far as forensics could tell. He told her how even though he knew they had enough DNA evidence that would send him straight to death row once he was found, he was afraid they might never catch him, or worse, he would be released or escape. He told her how he thought the only way this man would stop killing completely was to be killed, and he would gladly do it – he would be all too willing to lose his badge, his gun, just for the reassurance that this man would never kill again. Riley knew she had to keep Derek from watching her die, as she knew he had watched all the others. She would continue to let herself be tortured, would continue to withhold the one thing she knew meant most to her captor, her screams. They would forever remain hidden within her, bound as she was, for Derek's sake.
She thought of the things she needed to do now. She knew she needed to assess her power, knew she needed to somehow tell Derek to find her old case file, though she wasn't sure how to go about the latter. Focusing on the former, she used the time her captor was away to check her strength, calculate the different ways she could get free. She thought first of dislocating her thumb, but quickly realized that would only work if she did both – not wise if she had to fight. She attempted to reach the chair with her foot, had stretched and arched, even swung slightly – knew if she could just reach it, she could use it as a stool to untie herself with her teeth; she had learned a lot about knots during her time with Master, learned a lot about everything. She looked down the length of her body; her feet and legs were free, but with the balls of her feet barely touching the soft dirt beneath her, she had no leverage. She'd have to wait for him to come close – close enough to use him as the leverage she'd need to take him down. She wasn't sure how she would manage that, but she knew she'd have to find a way in order to survive. In the meantime, she needed to make sure her strength was ready to call upon. She wrapped her hands around the length of rope holding her hands in place above her head. She inhaled deeply before pulling her knees to her chest slowly, grunting with the exertion. "One," she breathed, lowering her knees as slowly as she had raised them, stopping halfway to extend her legs fully in front of her, counting to ten, then lowering them fully. Repeat. Again. One more. Another. That's enough. She would need to save her strength, keep it up, stay physically prepared to take down her attacker any way she was able. She couldn't let her captor see her breathless like this, lest he know what she'd been doing, know that she'd be ready for the attack when the opportunity presented itself. She would keep practicing, keep her strength up. Her body had become used to going with no food or drink while with Master; she hoped her body would regress back to that time, would be able to keep its strength up despite lack of food and water. She knew even if he tried to feed her, she would refuse it, not wanting to possibly poison herself with some kind of toxin. She thought of ways she could tell Derek to search for her file, thought that knowing where her Master had stayed hidden for years might help Derek find places her current captor could be residing. He had to be semi-close to the city, but far enough out of the way that no one would hear suspicious screaming, even from echoes. If she could talk to Derek, if her captor would let her speak to him through the video, maybe she could give him some sort of tip, call herself 'Amanda,' knowing Derek knew she was really 'Riley.' She didn't think her captor knew her name, didn't think he'd cared enough to learn it. She tried to think of the exact information that was in her file – pictures, both of herself and the crime scene, Master's real name, a detailed report of her injuries, including evidence from the rape kit they'd run, her therapists' names throughout the years, her current therapist, her parents' names. He would essentially learn everything there was to know about her.
She hoped he would talk to her current therapist before contacting her parents. She knew he would contact them, but at least her therapist could inform him that she hadn't spoken to her parents since she was seventeen, could tell him the reasons why she didn't speak to them. She knew he would tell her parents about their relationship, however new it might be. She wasn't sure how her parents would react, if they would be devastated she was dating a black man, even though he was really mixed, or if they'd be elated by the fact that she was dating anyone at all. She wished she could warn him about her father's temper, how it had flared the only time she had kissed anyone other than Master, before she'd been taken. He had walked in on her kissing July Herring, her best friend. They had been twelve at the time, had just started being interested in boys their age, but didn't want their first kisses to be awful, sloppy, and meaningless, as July's older sister had warned them about. They hadn't been interested in each other that way, just interested in both having a first kiss that was with someone who meant something to them. Their lips had just met, had just molded together in the perfect way little pecking kisses did, when her father walked into the room. He'd been so angry, he'd thrown a lamp across the room, sent July home, informed her parents of what had happened, and forbid Riley to ever even speak to her again. They had kept up their friendship of course, but not outside of school, not where people – their parents – could see them. They never kissed each other again, let alone boys their age. They'd been too scared after their parents' blowups, had thought their blowups were based on them kissing, too naïve to see it wasn't the action, but whom they were with when the action occurred. She remembered after she had been found being worried how mad her father would be with her after finding out everything she'd let Master do to her. How many lamps would he throw, she wondered. Of course, he never blamed her to her face, probably more because he didn't say anything to her after she returned than because he didn't blame her. She remembered waking in the middle of the night a year after being returned, walking slowly, quietly around the unlit house, toward a noise coming from her father's study. She had looked through the crack in the door, had seen her father slumped in his desk chair, hunched over papers, a bottle of scotch held tight in his grip, head resting in his other hand, sobbing, crying. She had frozen momentarily, unsure what to do. Deciding to take a chance, she'd reached for the door, pushed it open far enough for her to slip through, far enough for a tiny creak to make its way to her father's ears, alerting him that someone was in the room with him. He had jolted upright, looked at her with crazed, wide eyes. "Get out," he'd ordered, his voice making her stop dead. He had sounded like Master, voice low, menacing, ordering. She had frozen, reverted back to what she knew – feet shoulder-width apart, palms flat against sides of thighs, back straight, shoulders back, lower head, eyes downcast, slave. "Get out!" The crashing of the bottle of scotch hitting the wall to her right broke her of her trance, caused her to make eye contact once more. She knew he'd seen it, knew by the sobering in his eyes, she was scared – more scared of him than she'd ever been, even after he'd found her kissing July. Then she saw it, in his eyes, the hatred. He hated her for what she had allowed to happen, and she couldn't blame him. She'd turned then, and ran – ran down the stairs and right out the front door, barefoot in pajamas. She hadn't been back since. She was sure her father would hate her more once he was called in to answer some questions about her past. She was sure her mother would cry, denying anything bad could ever happen to her little Amanda, as she always did. She was sure her therapist would be the most helpful of sources, hoped again that Derek would start with her. She just had to get her captor to let her speak to him. She could make herself sound weak, make herself sound as though just listening to her speak would be torture enough for Derek. Then maybe her captor would use it to his advantage, the way she would use it to hers.
A/N: As always, let me know what you're thinking! Also, come visit me on the forums for status updates, teasers, and excerpts for The Last Midnight Hour. direct link: forum (dot) fanfiction (dot) net/forum/The_Last_Midnight_Hour_by_BRizzleDizzle/81814/