My next breath was soft and broken, and felt like it shook the whole room. I’d known . . . I’d known it was coming, and I’d been stupid to forget. I’d been stupid to let him make me want his touch when he was just waiting to remind me who he really was and why we were here. What I’d been taken from.
I felt dizzy when those thoughts came flooding to my mind, and I realized I’d been right. This lesson was worse than anything I’d endured with the devil so far. Because now I no longer simply hated him . . .
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, but I held back the choked sob when he forced my underwear down my legs.
“Are you going to say it?” he asked as he gripped my thighs and forced them farther apart. “Are you going to tell me that you hate me?”
My breathing was hoarse. My heart numb. I shook my head against the bed, and whispered, “I hate myself.”
I felt the shock that rippled through his body as if it were my own. “Briar . . .”
A few seconds passed in silence before my underwear was quickly pulled back up, and then his fingers went to the tie at my wrists, all the while I wondered if this was a trick.
“What are you . . .” he began softly. “What are you doing to—goddamn it, Briar!”
I jerked from the sudden roar of his voice and whimpered when my hands were released. Pain pounded up my arms, but I was unable to move them as they lay like dead weights at my sides when he helped me to my back again.
Lucas murmured something incoherent as he pulled my shirt back over my chest, then climbed off the bed to put on his jeans. Not bothering to button them, he took two steps away from the bed but paused and ran a hand through this hair, gripping it tightly. Seconds passed as he faced away from me, indecision rolling off his body. He then let out what sounded like a growl and stormed out of the room.
And I ached, but I wasn’t completely sure from what.
Chapter 18
Day 21 with Blackbird
Lucas
What is this girl doing to me?
She was going to be my ruin. And I couldn’t let that happen—couldn’t let her destroy everything even though destroying her was something I knew I had to do.
Had to . . . and couldn’t.
William had boldly and stupidly shown up at the house not long after the shopper had disappeared into the upstairs of the house with Briar, gloating about what he’d done to my blackbird earlier that morning and asking how the rest of the day had gone.
Not noticing how I’d been seconds away from tearing into him.
Ignoring that he’d broken the rules by teaching and touching what was mine.
Baiting me to see if I’d lash out again . . . but I’d already retaliated when I’d hit him. I’d already done all I was allowed to.
Between the men of this world? Lives were threatened to show power, but like for like was how the game was played.
All threats were taken seriously because the man joking with you today could be the man who decided you were a risk tomorrow . . . and then all bets were off.
Between William and me? Like for like would always be how it was played. Two of the most dominant and untrusting men were unlikely as partners. But keep your enemies closer was the only way of life we knew.
Despite the anger simmering in my veins and the need to turn my earlier threats into actions, I’d forced that calm to cover it the entire time he was there, and I answered his questions in the same bland tone he delivered them. Because I knew why he’d been so reckless to show up again, and I knew it was necessary.
He was testing me.
He wanted to see how I would react to him after most of the day had passed, and I needed to tread carefully.
I knew he was checking to see if there were signs I wasn’t doing what I should be—that I wasn’t teaching Briar the way I needed to. I knew he was watching every movement I made and any shift of my eyes to see if I was becoming attached to her in a way that wasn’t allowed.
For a second, I’d even started to believe my detached words . . .
And then it had all gone to hell when the shopper came downstairs and handed me that crumpled piece of paper, announcing in front of William whose number it contained.
Kyle. Her fiancé.
William’s eyes had snapped to mine. “What is the meaning of this?” he’d demanded.
I’d tried to control my panic and my anger, but I knew it had leaked out as I’d jerked my head once in denial. “She’s been lying about having a fiancé ever since I got her.”
William had stood then and taken a calculating step toward me. “Get control of that girl, Lucas, or I will do it for you.” His eyes had drifted to the ceiling, then back to me. “I’ll expect an update on what follows me leaving this house.”
Another test. Another warning that made me want to hit him over and over again. Another reason for me to remember why I had to teach the girl on the floor above me a lesson for what she’d done—why I had to break her.
And I’d failed again.
I’d spent a lifetime doing things I despised. I’d had to in order to survive. I knew how to shut off what I was thinking and feeling in order to do what needed to be done. But this girl . . . this damn girl shook my very existence and made it impossible to block it all out.
“I hate myself.”
Her broken voice played through my mind on repeat, haunting me with images of the shattered expression in her eyes and what I would have done to her . . .
I sagged against my bedroom door when a distinctive ringtone started playing, and reached into my pocket to pull out my phone. One glance at the screen had rage burning so deep inside me I nearly smashed the phone into the nearest wall in the few seconds it took for me to answer.
“What?” I growled.
Silence.
“If you’re going to call me, then speak.”
“What’s happened?” It was a demand, not a question.
“Nothing.”
There was only a beat of silence before: “I can’t help you if I—”
“I said nothing,” I hissed.
But the curse that filled the other end of the phone let me know he didn’t believe my bullshit. “I can’t afford to have you losing your mind now. Not after everything we’ve gone through to get you to this point.”
A loud, mocking laugh tore from my chest and then died into nothing. “Don’t take so much credit for my life. And there’s nothing to worry about. He was here about fifteen minutes ago; it’s done.”
“We need to go over—”
“I said it’s done.” I hung up without allowing the man to respond then let my phone fall to the floor as I stumbled to my bed and sank onto the mattress.
Memories I’d kept locked away for years struck like a tidal wave, breaking me open and tormenting me. Every mistake I’d ever made—each day with Briar—was laid out before me, pulling me further and further down until all I knew was suffocating darkness. Drowning me.
I knew I deserved it—this destructive darkness. It was all I’d ever been and all I could ever be. And if I could’ve then, I would’ve laughed for even imagining I could have something as good as Briar Rose.
Not in this world or any other.
Chapter 19
Stupid Girl
Briar
I hadn’t seen Lucas for three full days.
In all the time I’d been here, whether we’d spoken or I’d avoided looking at him, he’d still been there at least three times a day. And now he wasn’t.
It was unsettling, and more often than not I’d retreated back to my room as panic had consumed me and a song had poured from me—terrified that this would be the new normal. That I would go days or weeks without seeing him.
That whatever had happened the other night had pushed him to avoid me altogether.
I didn’t know what it was, what had forced him to suddenly stop and leave. I was thankful for it, but I was confused and alone and terrified. I wanted answers, I wanted the sweet side of Lucas I’d
caught a glimpse of, and I just wanted to go home . . .
I flew to a sitting position on the bed when someone knocked on the wall outside my room, but my racing heart abruptly sank when the man I’d been waiting days for wasn’t the person to step through my open doorway.
The shopper.
“Hello, stupid girl,” she said in that dry tone of hers and snapped her fingers behind her.
Two young women followed her, weighed down by clothes covered in zippered bags.
The shopper’s cold gaze darted over the two girls before she snapped, “I don’t think I need to tell you where those go. Get to it, then go get the rest of the shoes.” Once the girls had disappeared through the bathroom and into the closet, she set her confusing stare on me. “I told you I would tell him.”
And there it was. Blunt, unapologetic.
Despite the fear of the lesson that had turned into a confusing mass of emotions that night, I didn’t hate this woman for her betrayal, and I wasn’t sure I blamed her.
My voice was steady even though my chest ached with the need to see Kyle. “You and I both know that when I begged you to tell him, the man who owns this house and hired you and bought those clothes was not the him I was referring to.”
She shrugged, once again unapologetically. “I did what was best for you because you were too stupid to know what that was, and I did not lie to you.”
“Best for me?” I asked with a laugh. “You don’t know me; how can you determine what’s best for me?”
The shopper pursed her lips as the young women hurried through my room to get what I assumed would be the shoes and waited a few more seconds before saying, “I saved your life, that is how I know it was best for you.”
“My—saved my life?” I asked incredulously, and shook my head quickly. “I knew in asking you to help that it could have meant horrible things for you, and I’m sorry that I put you in that position, but I had to try. But saving my life? No. If it was anyone’s life you were worried about saving, it was your own.”
She tsked in that way she liked to and murmured, “Stupid girl. One day you will realize that I saved your life by not doing what you asked.”
I stared at her blankly for long moments when I realized she truly believed what she was saying. “I don’t know what kind of women in my position you’ve encountered, or what lives they had before they were taken, but I’m not like those women. I was taken by mistake.”
“Were you?” she asked with a challenging grin, but she didn’t say anything else when her helpers came scurrying back in.
And I was getting too frustrated with this strange woman to try to respond.
Once they were finished in my closet and leaving my room, the shopper walked up to me and cradled my face in her hands. “Hundreds. I have encountered hundreds of women in your position, just as I have had the displeasure of working with dozens of men in his position. When you have seen all that I’ve seen, you cannot tell me that you were taken by mistake.”
“But—”
“Stupid girl,” she said softly then placed a motherly kiss on my forehead. “You, above all, I will look forward to seeing again.” Without another word, she turned to go.
And though I didn’t know her, and though I didn’t understand her or her confusing nature or why she always called me stupid, I wanted to cry as I watched her walk away.
Once she was out of the room, I took a hesitant step in the direction she’d gone, and then another and another, intent on begging her not to leave, but came to an abrupt halt when I rounded the doorway into the hall and found Lucas standing in the living room with his arms folded across his chest, a solemn look on his devastatingly handsome face as he watched the women leave.
My heart faltered before taking off in a too-fast sprint I wasn’t sure I could survive. And I hated him—I hated him for being there after being gone for so many days. I hated him for the way my body betrayed me and ached to go to him. I hated the intense relief I felt just knowing he hadn’t abandoned me. Hadn’t left me. And I hated that, after craving his presence, he only entered this level of the house because of the shopper’s presence.
His head slowly lifted, and those dark eyes burned and begged and screamed a thousand silent things.
And despite the way my body rebelled against it, I let my anger and hatred for him show and forced myself into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
I’d barely gotten settled on the bed when the door opened and his dark presence filled my room.
“I didn’t give her a number or ask her for any kind of help,” I said through gritted teeth, keeping my focus on the comforter beneath me.
“I know,” he said, and I listened to his slow footfalls that brought him deeper into my room.
Once he was standing at the foot of my bed, I glanced up at him and silently cursed myself for the way my voice shook when I asked, “Is this how it’s going to be now?” When he lifted a brow, I clarified, “You’ve been gone.”
“No.” He blew out a slow, resigned breath before continuing, “I thought time away from you would help remind me who I need to be.”
I took in his expression and hesitantly assumed, “And it didn’t?”
“I remembered,” he said in a chilling tone. “But that doesn’t mean I can be that person with you.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand.”
A huff of a laugh left him, soft and mocking. “You don’t?”
I didn’t know why everyone in this world, as Lucas had called it, expected me to understand their confusing personalities and vague words—most of all, the man before me.
From his reaction when he found me with William, to his sudden coldness before lunch, to the lesson that had ended as abruptly as it had begun, to days of pure silence afterward, to the number of things I felt . . .
Having the ability to have me terrified to needing his touch, to hating his darkness, to wanting that avenging angel side of him all within the span of a few minutes was dizzying and something I hadn’t anticipated—and just another piece of him I despised.
I didn’t like that he could affect every one of my emotions so deeply, so thoroughly.
Especially when I didn’t want him to be able to affect me at all.
When I didn’t respond, his head shook absentmindedly. “I can’t . . . none of this is allowed. I can’t let this . . .” he trailed off, seeming to search for the right words. “It goes against our way of living, Briar,” he explained. “But not only that, it’s dangerous for us. For you. William obviously knows, if any of the other men—or our enemies—were to find out . . . Christ.”
“What goes against your way of living, and what would be dangerous?” My voice rose with frustration as I continued. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to keep up with anything that is happening when I can’t even keep up with your moods or your confusing, cryptic words? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to try to progress”—I sneered the word—“when in the matter of hours, you went from saving me and caring about me, to again making me think you were going to rape me?” I scoffed, but the sound and my voice when I spoke again didn’t hold any of my frustration, only lingering pain and humiliation from that night. “And you wondered why I was still afraid of you, and why it was taking me so long to get comfortable around you.”
Lucas’s face fell and his eyes shut with a slow exhale.
I tensed as I waited to see how he would look when those eyes opened again, but he only looked defeated.
“That’s the problem. I don’t—” He stopped, then corrected himself, “I can’t care about you, Briar. None of the men in this world care about any of their women past the bond of owning them.”
My heart ached at his words.
I blinked quickly and hated that my eyes burned with unshed tears. “But that morning. You looked—when William was here . . .” I couldn’t figure out how to explain the look on Lucas’s face that morning without embarrassing myself, because now I was sure I had imagined it. A
nd, again, I didn’t want this devil or anything he did to affect me. “You . . . when you came in, you—”
“I can’t care, Briar. That’s my problem. That is our problem. I was never supposed to care about you, and you’ve had me breaking rule after rule because you’ve gotten so far under my skin. William saw it the night I had the doctor here for you, and saw more than enough the morning he tried to teach you.” Lucas ran his hands over his face, covering the agony for only a second.
I still didn’t understand why he would look this tortured. “What is so wrong with caring about someone?” I asked quietly.
“Because they can get to me through you,” he answered darkly. “If anyone ever wanted to hurt me—to send me a message—they would do it by going through you.” His eyes met mine. “Don’t tell me I’m wrong, because I can promise you I would do the same. But then there’s our way of life. We have rules we have to live by. If one of us starts breaking the rules, it risks everything. We can’t let risks live, Briar, you have to understand that.”
My mouth popped open when his words clicked. “So because a man cares about someone, that’s reason to . . . to . . . to kill him?”
“No, there would need to be more rules broken. But, trust me, with how many rules I have thrown out the window in these weeks with you, they have grounds to get rid of me. William won’t say anything about how he thinks I’m starting to care about you because he broke one by coming here the other morning and an even bigger one by touching you. But if he knew about any of the other rules I’ve broken . . .”
“He’s your mentor!”
Lucas laughed. “And?”
That brought me up short, and I remembered Lucas’s threat to William on the morning everything had changed . . . “Doesn’t your relationship mean enough that he would try to stop them from killing you?”
“No, Blackbird. He would just kill me himself.”
My shock was apparent in my sharp intake of breath, because I knew from the look in his eyes that he was telling the truth. What kind of life was Lucas talking about where men would do this to each other? “That’s heartbreaking.”