My jaw ached from the pressure I was exerting as I walked out of the room with her right behind me. Today could push us forward or send us spiraling backward. With Briar, I was worried it would be the latter, but I knew I couldn’t keep her from this any longer.
I waited for it—for any sign of her shock when she realized she wasn’t as far from home as she’d originally thought. A gasp, singing, something . . . but it didn’t come.
We were halfway through the main room of the upper level before I turned to look at her, and found her staring intently at her feet instead of the wall of windows as she followed.
I slowed until she caught up with me and placed a hand gently on her back to lead her to the far corner. She would be able to see everything from there. A lake stretched out to our left, the city to our right. A multimillion-dollar view to most, but it would probably be nothing more than a view from a cage for the girl next to me.
Folding my arms over my chest, I steeled myself and failed at forcing my calm façade into place. “Briar,” I began, my voice was soft but with an edge from my nervousness as she lifted her head, “open your eyes.”
At first, there was nothing. Then her eyes slowly widened and her face filled with something close to hope as she started taking it all in. Recognizing it, even if she’d never seen it. One sheet-covered hand came up to cover her trembling mouth, but there was no response otherwise. After an eternity made up of seconds passed, her other hand pressed against the window, followed soon by her forehead as she stared out at the familiar.
“We’re in the United States, aren’t we?” she asked, her voice cracking on the last words.
I dipped my head in confirmation even though she wasn’t looking at me. “Yes.”
Houston, Texas.
Only eight hundred miles from her home when she’d thought oceans stood between her and the life she wanted back.
I didn’t ask to hear her thoughts even though I was aching to know what was going through that mind of hers. I just watched and waited, slowly going mad.
When a lone tear fell down her cheek, I broke.
My shoulders dropped and I automatically reached out for her, but stopped myself before I could touch her. I recoiled from her instead and clenched the hand that had been so close to her as I fought to move away. My chest was moving roughly and my arms were shaking from exertion by the time I was able to turn my back on her.
I don’t care. She doesn’t affect me. I can’t care. Briar . . .
I hadn’t even made it halfway to where my driver had left the lunch before I turned and stalked back to where she was still standing. This time there was no hesitation. I pulled her from the window and into my arms, and like it was the most natural thing in the world, she fell against me, her body fitting against mine perfectly.
She buried her head on my chest when her shoulders started shaking with muted cries. Her hands showed the same indecision that had been playing in her eyes recently. Still covered in the sheet, one hand pressed against my chest and began pushing while the other gripped at my shirt and pulled me closer.
Oh, Blackbird.
I pressed my mouth to the top of her head in a moment of stupidity and weakness that was emphasized by her cracked plea. “Let me go . . . please. I just want to go home.”
The hand that had been rubbing her back soothingly abruptly stopped moving, and for long seconds I stood like a statue holding my mistake.
I let my training fill my mind as that mask of indifference settled over my face again and internally berated myself for letting this girl have any type of control over me.
Caring she was hurt and comforting her wasn’t allowed, and I worried about what would happen if William found out. If anyone found out . . .
“You are home.” Gripping the girl’s hands, I pushed her a step away from me and nodded toward the kitchen when she looked up at me with her tear-streaked face. “Eat lunch, then choose a room. Do whatever you want, just don’t leave this floor. The shopper will be back tonight with your clothes.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Briar asked anxiously when I turned to leave.
I paused mid-step and looked over my shoulder. Narrowing my eyes at her, I cocked my head to the side and asked in a deceptively soft tone, “What makes you think you can question what I do? Eat.”
Chapter 17
Fight me
Briar
“Everything has been laundered, you can wear it immediately.”
I nodded slowly, unable to close my mouth as I stared at the newly filled walk-in closet, which was about the size of my starter room. “Why do I need so many clothes?”
The shopper laughed mockingly. “What a stupid thing to ask from a stupid girl. More clothes have been ordered for you. I will deliver them when they’re ready later this week. Are you the first?”
I tore my eyes from one side of the closet to look at her questioningly. She had a stern voice and words, but every now and then I caught her sending me kind looks. I didn’t understand her, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to since she refused to give me her name. Still . . . those looks had the crumpled paper in my hand burning hotter and hotter. “The first?”
“In this house.”
“Oh.” Heat filled my cheeks and I looked away. “Yes,” I whispered, as if admitting to a sin.
“Then this won’t be all that you get. Consider yourself lucky. In all the houses I shop for, the firsts are always treated the best. They don’t have to share rooms with the other women, and they receive the most gifts, clothes, everything . . .” she trailed off, then pointed at me and gave me a stern look. “You are lucky, little girl, don’t you forget it.”
My mouth opened, but no sound left for a few seconds. The other day the devil had said I was free in this life, and now this odd woman was telling me I was lucky? “How can you say that? I was two weeks away from my wedding when I was taken.”
She tsked. “Stupid girl. No, you were not.” She lifted her hands as if to gesture to more than just this closet as she spoke. “There is no before anymore. There is only this. Only him for you.”
“No, that’s not—that’s not true.” The paper in my hand felt like it could burn this house down and take the devil with it, and I knew I had to try.
I’d found a blank journal in my new room earlier, and knowing the shopper would be coming back tonight, had taken what I’d worried would be my only chance.
I stepped toward her and held my hand out between the edges of the sheet clutched tightly in front of my body. “Please, this is my fiancé’s name and number. Just, if nothing else, call him and tell him that I’m alive. Please,” I said through the tightening of my throat.
The shopper stared at me as if I’d just attempted to take her life, and for a moment I wondered if maybe I had. I wondered what would happen to someone like her, or the women who had dyed my hair that weekend, if they were caught helping any of the stolen women.
“Please,” I echoed, my voice nothing more than a breath. “Please tell him.”
She dipped her head in the slightest of nods. “I’ll tell him, girl.” After a moment’s hesitation, she snatched the paper from my hand then began walking out of the closet.
“Thank you for my clothes,” I murmured to her back.
Her response was a scoff followed by a quick, warm smile thrown over her shoulder.
Such a strange woman. But even as she walked away, something inside me ached at losing the only person who had spoken to me since I’d been taken that didn’t radiate evil.
My head dropped, and I rubbed at my chest as I began turning to look in the closet, but her voice stopped me.
“Girl,” she said in a hushed tone, and I looked up in surprise at seeing her in the doorway of the closet again. “It gets easier. You will get through this sad time, and you will be happy. I have never met a girl in all my years of doing this who wasn’t happy.”
I didn’t believe her, but she didn’t give me a chance to say anything else.
r /> Once she was gone, I looked back at the closet and blew out a deep breath. A whispered plea left my lips that my message would make it to Kyle, and that plea effortlessly turned into a song in a subconscious attempt at relaxing my mind and my heart and my body.
I wanted to go through every piece of clothing for the sake of being able to touch fabric that I could cover myself with, but I refused to do it. I didn’t want Lucas to think he could make me happy with an absurd amount of clothes when all I had wanted was something other than the robes.
It felt like my parents all over again—trying to buy my love when they’d really only wanted my voice. The devil’s money and unwanted gifts would never change anything . . . would never make me forget who I was or where I’d come from.
I went to the large dresser that sat in the middle of the closet and searched through drawer after drawer until I realized I had already passed what I was looking for, and my voice suddenly disappeared.
If this was what the shopper thought would make me feel comfortable, I worried what she would have picked otherwise.
My entire underwear drawer was lace.
But after weeks of nothing, I was thankful for it, and hurried to put on the first pair my hands touched.
Shock filled me when I found three entire drawers of sexy teddies, see-through nighties, and nighties that were only slightly less revealing, and I wondered if the women in these situations ever actually wore these for the men who bought them, because I had no intentions of ever touching mine.
I looked through one entire side of the dresser for a pair of shorts or stretchy pants to put on without luck, and was on a second drawer full of different colored camisoles—this drawer cotton, the previous satin—on the opposite side when I heard heavy footsteps on the tile of my new bathroom.
I shoved the sheet I had been wrapped up in all day away from me and hurried to shrug into one of the shirts. I barely had it pulled over my chest before Lucas appeared between the double doors of my closet.
He stood strong and still with his hands in his pockets, and my heart pounded as the first trickle of fear spread through me. I was beginning to notice he only stood that way when he was the devil—when he was about to remind me of every reason why I hated him.
My gaze darted back and forth from his sinful eyes to his hidden hands as I waited for what he wanted, and though I tried to stop it, my mouth opened as a breath of a song left me, too low for him to hear.
“Do you like your clothes?” he finally asked with a tilt of his head.
My shoulders lifted in the slightest of shrugs. “They’re just clothes.”
One dark brow ticked up at the indifference in my tone. “Just clothes, or not, you’ll still thank me.”
“Thank you,” I said quickly. “Thank you for all of them.”
I was thankful. Any clothing after only having tiny robes and then nothing was nearly as satisfying as finally seeing the sun this afternoon after all that time away from it.
When nearly a minute had passed in silence, I bent to pick up the sheet off the floor, but stilled when he spoke again.
His voice was deep and rhythmic, but it was impossible to miss the underlying bite in his tone. “Four seven zero, five . . .”
My knees were weak as I straightened my back, and I had to grab the top of the dresser to keep myself standing while he read the rest of Kyle’s phone number and name out loud from the piece of paper he held in front of him. “No,” I breathed.
His dark eyes burned with rage as he slowly tore my paper in two, and then tore those pieces in half again. “Out.” His lip curled when I didn’t make an attempt to move. “Don’t make me drag you out of there, Briar.”
“Please,” I said weakly. My stomach churned, and I swallowed back bile. “Lucas, plea—” I broke off quickly when I saw the shock covering his face at the sound of his own name.
But just as fast as the shock had appeared, it was gone, and his anger was back and worse than before. “Out.”
I was screaming at myself to move, to walk out of the closet, but my legs weren’t working. It was as though they were no longer a part of my body, and I continued to stand frozen in fear. My body trembled, but no tears came this time.
His first step into the closet finally forced my own—only it was the wrong way. I stumbled backward with each of his long, quick steps in my direction.
“No, no, no!” I screamed when he reached me.
He grabbed my wrist and yanked me away from where I was trying to disappear into a wall of clothes, then pulled me roughly behind him.
“Let go of me,” I continued to scream, and fought against his tight hold. “I hate you. Let me go.” My feet got caught in the bunched-up sheet on the floor and I started falling, but before I could hit the floor, the devil grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder.
He continued his trek through the closet and equally large bathroom to the bed without seeming to care as I punched his back as hard as I could, over and over. “You should have walked out on your own when you had a chance.”
“I hate you!”
“So you’ve told me.”
The next punch aimed at his back ended up clipping his shoulder when he shoved me onto the bed. I was swinging for his face before I finished settling onto the bed, but he caught my hands in his own and used my fists as leverage to pull me up toward him.
Once our faces were no more than a breath apart, his lip curled and his dark eyes pierced mine. “You want to fight me, Blackbird? Then fight me,” he goaded. “Fight this. I want you to.”
In moves too fast for me to try to stop, he slammed me back down onto the bed and flipped me onto my stomach, all while keeping a tight grip on my fists. My hands were now pinned between our bodies, and my already sore shoulders screamed in protest when he pulled my wrists closer together, stretching them far down my body.
“No!” I said with a gasp when I felt the satiny material slide over and wrap around my wrists. “N-no, stop. Please stop.”
“I’ve gone easy on you since you arrived. No more.” His last words were a growl, and then his weight was gone before he roughly forced me onto my knees. “You’ll learn your place here, Briar. You will learn that you’re mine.”
“Never. I will never be yours,” I spat against the comforter. My next words died in my throat when I saw him standing at the side of the bed in nothing but his jeans . . . and they were falling to the floor.
He was there suddenly, his hands flat on the edge of the bed, straining as they held his weight up, and his face so close to mine I knew I should’ve recoiled, but I didn’t move—couldn’t move. His breath was mixing with mine, and that traitorous part of me was craving more from him, and I hated myself for it.
His dark eyes pierced mine, mocking me as a wicked smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Never?” he asked, and a low laugh sounded in his chest when a shiver tore through me.
But then the humor and the taunting and the seduction . . . all of it was gone and was replaced by the cold indifference, and I found myself a breath away from pure darkness.
He leaned closer—his voice rumbled deep in his chest and his lips brushed along my ear when he growled, “Your denial stopped meaning anything the moment you begged me for more.”
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded one last time as he pushed away and stepped toward the foot of the bed in nothing but boxer briefs, but all the power had been sucked from my voice.
His voice was detached, lifeless when he repeated, “Fight me, Briar.”
Disgust rolled through me, and I forced my eyes closed and clenched my jaw so neither a song or plea for him to stop would leave my lips as he crawled between my legs. I didn’t move, and I stopped trying to free myself from the too-tight binds behind my back. If he wanted a fight, I refused to give him one.
But there was nothing.
No touch. No sound except for my breaths that slowly got heavier and shakier as I waited for what would come next. Because I had a sickening feeling I
would prefer the previous lessons over what I had coming for me.
Still, I knew he was there. Even if it wasn’t for the weight of him at the end of the bed, I would have known. I could feel his presence in the room.
Heavy and dark. Sadistic and taunting.
As the seconds turned into minutes, my original fear of this lesson felt like nothing compared to what was paralyzing me now. It felt like something had taken my heart in its grasp and was slowly crushing it. It felt like I was gasping for air. My entire body was trembling, and there was no way to control it.
I wondered if he was enjoying my suffering.
I cried out when his hands suddenly gripped my hips and pulled me back, so I was pressed against him. Once I was settled there, he released me, but just as quickly his fingers trailed down my waist and over my hips. The tips of his fingers barely curled around the top of my underwear, moving them down a fraction of an inch.
Do not move.
Do not react.
He is darkness.
He is the devil.
I hate him.
The touch was soft and soothing, yet somehow strong and possessive, and soon he reversed his path. And I hated him for everything he was and for that touch . . . and for making me crave it more than I had anything in my life, when just seconds before, I’d waited in fear for when it would come.
My shirt was pushed up, each inch taking a lifetime, each inch sending my heart rate into chaos. He left the bunched material just below my breasts then began the agonizing process all over again. A small tremor began in my stomach when his fingers curled around the edge of my underwear again, but I fought to keep it contained and was disgusted with myself that it had been more out of anticipation than hate.
Do not move. Do not react. He is darkness. He is the devil, I chanted again.
Nothing. He would get nothing from me.
I hate—
My mouth opened with a nearly inaudible moan, and my pulse sped up when his large hands cupped my breasts as he exposed them.
Do not move. Do not—
“Don’t ever forget who this is for,” he said darkly as his hands slowly tightened. “Don’t ever forget that no matter how much you deny it, you are mine.”