Peterman - Beauty Loves the Beast

A cage? A freaking cage? How had my life ended up in a cage?

Only four short months ago, I was a twenty-eight-year-old woman in my prime with an excitingalbeit dangerouscareer ahead of me and a company car.

Now I was trapped in a four-by-four-foot cage in a highly classified lab.

Rattling the bars and realizing they were made out of some kind of electrified metalI sat back and let the stinging in my hands abate. Taking stock of my life seemed pretty damned fruitless, but what else could I do, given the horrifying situation I was in?

Fine. Id use my mind so I didnt lose what was left of it.

Closing my eyes and searching for a serene place to escape to was an epic fail. Meditation had never been my friend. The sandy beach I pictured had sharks in the water. The pond I envisioned was full of alligators. And the peaceful meadow was full of emaciated and starving grizzly bears.

All I could summon up to focus on where I wouldnt die a violent imaginary death was Scott. Scott, aka Hair Pants, the last guy Id datedor some loose definition of the wordbefore Id ended up in hell. Whatever. Anything to take my mind off the torture Id been through and the torture that was yet to come. Digging into my mortifying dating past was far less painful than trying to break out of my cramped prisonagain.

So Hair Pants it is. Scott was a nice personstill is, I assumed. It was mean to focus on his flaws since God only knew I had quite a few of my own. But Scotts flaw had been expertly concealed by his pants.

Of course, I didnt discover his alarming, furry secret until hed disrobed in full light in my tiny government-issued apartment after a booze-filled night on the town. He was a civilian. I should have known better.

Now to be fairto meI had no clue that Scott was a man-scaper. I mean, his back was as smooth as a babys butt though he clearly trimmed his chest hair. A little weird, but acceptable. Admittedly, I plucked my eyebrows and got my bikini line waxed regularly. I wasnt the girliest of girls, but I had some semblance of female vanity.

However, when Scott removed his jeans and tighty whities to reveal what Id have to describe as full-on hair pantscovering every inch of the landscape all the way to his toesI laughed so hard I almost choked. Guilt still plagued me on that one.

Occasionally, I played back the scene when I wanted to punish myself for something, but right now I was being punished enough as it was.

I had no clue why Hair Pants had popped into my thoughts. Scott couldnt help being hairy, but Id think a dude who clearly waxed his back and trimmed the chest rug might have had the foresight to de-hair his ass.

Suffice it to say that evening was the end of our very short relationship. My shocked laughter followed by an absurd amount of apologies mixed with choked-back hysterics killed the possibility of a happily ever after with Scott. However, the hairy irony didnt escape me. Id thought Scott was working an animal look, and here I sat in a freakin cage.

Actually, if I was being honest with myselfand why notsince I was probably going to die soon anyway,, Id have to admit Id never had a real relationship. I was too weird, and now I was completely broken.

Noticing the plate of what the guards thought passed as food in the corner of my cage, I swallowed hard and pushed back the ravenous hunger that had consumed me for a week. Id only eaten the disgusting rations once, and the next thing I knew, I was in a cage sporting more hideous scars all over my body.

My dear friends clearly had some fun implanting God only knew what inside me. Sabrina Wenbo and Don Jarred were scientistsmad government scientistsand I was their pet at the moment. I was also stupid and shortsighted, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.

There had been six of usbright-eyed and bushy-tailed brand new CIA recruits. We were clearly interchangeable. I was the only one left alive as far as I knew. The others were gone and I assumed dead. Lucky them.