No, I couldn’t have worked yesterday; I never work on Sundays. Brunch with Kyle’s parents . . . where did we go again?
I pressed my hands to my head, trying to force away the pounding and hoping in vain to clear my mind so I could sort through the confusing memories. Why can’t I remember? Why am I in so much pain? And why can’t I open my eyes?
My wrists ached. I rolled my right one a few times before grasping it with my left hand . . . and stilled. All the oxygen seemed to be sucked from the room when I felt shallow cuts that circled my wrist. Switching over to my left wrist only to feel the same, I sorted through a dizzying assault of memories as my heart raced.
“Jenna,” I gasped loudly and flew into a sitting position on the strange bed.
I forced my eyes open and had to blink a few times to get them to stay open, then looked wildly around a darkened bedroom I had never seen before. My body swayed as the room spun, and I grasped my head with the hand that wasn’t holding me up on the bed.
Everything came flooding back at once, and hard sobs tore from my chest as reality slammed into me. Being kidnapped, the darkness, being sold, being prepped for my buyer . . . “No, no, no, no. Help me. Someone help,” I screamed, and scrambled to get off the bed.
I staggered to the side and then back toward the bed before finally finding my balance. I ran to the first door I saw and fell into the next room when the door opened easily. I looked into the small bathroom for less than a second before crawling out of it and struggling to my feet again.
The next door didn’t give, and I slammed my hands against the thick wood. “Somebody. Anybody. Help me!” I cried out. “Please.”
My knees weakened, and I slid down to the floor, my palms slapping listlessly against the door. I bowed my head as I continued to plea with anyone who might be listening, and soon my pleas turned into songs.
Soon after, I heard a key in the lock and hurried to stand.
My body shook violently through the seconds that felt like agonizing minutes, and I hoped for strength and safety as the door swung toward me, and I ran for the opening.
I didn’t even get through the doorframe before strong arms caught me and walked me backward, never seeming to care as I kicked, scratched, and screamed for help.
My screams turned frantic when I realized he was taking to me to the bed, and my efforts to get away from him doubled. “No, no! Let me go.”
The man never released me, and instead of laying me down, as I had feared he would, he sat on the edge of the bed with me cradled in his arms like a small child. He kept his head bowed to his chest to protect it from my futile attack, and his arms wrapped tightly and possessively around me as seconds turned to countless minutes.
The screams and cries for help had long died out, and the struggles to get away from him had ended in a mess of shaky limbs not long after.
“Are you ready to eat, girl?”
My body tensed at his question. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. Was this the man who had bought me, or another one of the captors?
His voice was deep and hypnotic. And although I couldn’t tell his age from his voice, the way he said girl, as if I was so much younger than him, made my stomach roll. How old was he? What was he going to do with me? What did he expect me to do for him?
My jaw trembled when that thought crossed my mind. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked minutes later.
Even if I knew what day it was, I wouldn’t have responded to him.
Even if I were hungry, I wouldn’t have told him.
I knew I needed food—my stomach had long stopped growling—but I didn’t want to think of food right now. The nausea I had become so familiar with during my time in the pitch-black room was still present, and he wasn’t helping by keeping me in his arms.
“It’s early Wednesday morning; now tell me when you last ate.”
My mouth opened with a soundless cry. I didn’t know what was most shocking and upsetting: that I had lost two and a half days, that Kyle and both of our parents would know I was missing, or that my entire world had been ripped away from me in such a short time.
I knew they would be looking for me. I knew that, despite the frustrations Kyle’s mom had, knowing we were living together and with me continuing to work at Glow, the governor would be using her status to do everything to help find me.
But I didn’t even know where I was. And it left such an odd and uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. How is someone supposed to find me when I don’t even know where I am?
“No?” he murmured, and his chest vibrated with his hum. One hand released me, but then he was pulling the silk robe I was wearing off my shoulder.
I flinched at the first contact of his fingers on my skin, though the touch was so soft it felt as though he had trailed a feather over me. My heart beat wildly in my chest as I waited for what would come next. My mind raced with the sickening possibilities, and my body became still as stone when his hand trailed down, down, down.
“Did the men touch you during the transporting?” he asked in a dangerous tone.
Someone help me, someone help me, please save me.
I cracked.
I trembled uncontrollably when his strong hand fell to my ankle then traveled back up my leg. I jerked when he reached the top of my thigh, pushing the bottom of the robe up as he went, and a quiet sob rushed from my lungs in the same breath that near-silent words started pouring from me.
His touch stilled for a second, and that vibration in his chest happened again, and I knew he was enjoying this.
Enjoying my terror.
“There you are,” he said, and curled me closer against his chest. His nose pressed against my hair, but he didn’t seem to be breathing. It was as if he was only listening to me.
I wanted to stop—needed to—but didn’t know how.
“Fitting,” he said after a moment; his husky tone almost sounded amused. “Over time, you’ll see how perfectly that song fits you, my blackbird.” He stood then, and turned to deposit me on the bed. “I’ll be back with food soon.”
I didn’t look up at him as he walked away. I didn’t want to see his face. I didn’t want to know what he looked like. I didn’t want to know him. I just rolled to face the wall as my body continued to shake. My throat tightened, strangling the words as I continued singing.
“Blackbird fly, blackbird fly. Into the light of the dark black night.”
Chapter 6
Day 2 with Girl
Lucas
I bit back a frustrated groan and clenched my hands into fists when I saw the name on the screen of my cell phone. As much as I didn’t want to take my mentor’s call right then, I knew I had to. This, at least, was part of the rules. However, I was afraid of what he would say because I knew if I answered that call I would tell him what was happening.
The girl was driving me insane.
“William,” I answered through gritted teeth.
“How did the day go?” His tone said what I knew he wouldn’t. He was expecting the worst.
“She won’t eat,” I finally admitted and hissed a curse when he laughed. “Yes, laugh at me. That’s what I need instead of a way to figure out how to keep her alive. She hasn’t eaten for two days that I’m aware of, and however much longer from when she was taken and transported.”
I sat roughly on the couch in my home office and ran my free hand over my face. I’d only had her in my care for a day and a half. Even though I had taken her three meals today, she hadn’t once looked at me or touched a bite of food.
I’d tried to force her, I’d tried to coax her, I’d tried to be patient—but my patience had worn out quickly each time her body trembled and quiet songs fell from her lips. At least I had learned one thing today: she sang when scared. It seemed involuntary, but damn it, it was . . . it was endearing.
“It’s only been two days, Lucas. She’ll eat when she gets hungry enough.”
&nb
sp; I bit back my automatic response and blew out a calming breath. “Again, that I know. I don’t know how long her transport was.”
I refused to tell him that she’d been unconscious when I received her, and I had been worried she wouldn’t wake at all when she slept through the day and night. Or, when I’d checked her body once she woke, she’d been covered in bruises.
Covered.
Because I knew it wouldn’t matter to William. Knew what he would say.
“What difference do some bruises make? You’re bound to give her more. It cannot matter to you what condition the girl is in. Unless she is dying, let her stay that way.”
“If I recall, it was my fourth who did the very same thing.”
My brows lifted at his unexpected comment. “And what happened?”
“Ah, I almost lost her. I had to call in a doctor who hooked her up to an IV to rehydrate her. I didn’t leave her side for days even after she recovered . . .” His joking tone had disappeared, replaced by a voice I so rarely heard from him that I sat in shock for moments after.
It was full of affection and love, everything we could not feel when it came to the women—and everything he clearly showed for only one of his.
One no one knew, because he wouldn’t allow anyone to know his weakness—her. He never showed favor toward whoever she was, but it was there in his voice. You knew when he talked about her, and you knew he was in love with her, but the mystery remained because he’d never mentioned her name. Knowing she was his fourth didn’t help solve the mystery, since only the first women in a house could ever go by their number.
“You have two options, Lucas,” he continued sharply, and I knew the subject of that woman was over. “You either let her starve herself until you need to get her medical help or you force her.”
“I’ve tried forcing her.”
“No,” he argued, “you have not.”
I lifted my hand then let it fall back to my leg. “Since you haven’t been here to witness it, let me assure you—”
“You can say what you will, I will maintain that you have not. She is your property. She is to do exactly as you say when you say; eventually she will need to learn that. Some of the girls need to be taught immediately who is in control—yours might be one of them.”
I breathed in sharply through my nose when I finally understood what it was he wasn’t saying. “She isn’t ready,” I said gruffly.
“She isn’t, or you aren’t?”
My jaw clenched painfully at his blatant challenge.
“I was wrong thinking you could be brought into this life, Lucas. I thought I saw something—I was wrong.”
I gripped the phone tightly in my hand and threw it across the room when he hung up. Launching myself away from the couch, I paced like a caged animal in my office as adrenaline surged through me and my anger grew.
Anger at the little blackbird in the level above this one for driving me insane and making my mentor question my abilities. Anger at myself for wanting to go easy on her when I knew that was the worst thing I could do for the both of us.
The girl had to be taught. I knew that.
Despite how much the thought made me want to offer up my own name on a bullet, I had to break her. I knew I couldn’t let her turn into what William’s fourth was for him: a weakness.
I stalked toward the doors leading to the rest of the main level of my house, and at the last second, grabbed my tie from the day before that was draped over a chair.
Chapter 7
The Devil
Briar
I woke slowly when my door was thrown open. The sound of it slamming into the adjacent wall reverberated throughout the room, but I didn’t attempt to move from my curled-up position.
I didn’t have the strength to.
Other than the times the man had forced me to move that day in a vain attempt to eat, I had stayed right there, facing the wall.
I had wondered how long it would take my body to shut down from lack of nutrition, and I tried to figure out if it already was.
I hadn’t had anything Sunday morning before Kyle and I had been on our way out the door and had been abducted before I could take my lunch at work. I remembered being given one small cup of water while they’d prepped me for my buyer, but other than that, I hadn’t put anything in my stomach since Saturday night. I’d vaguely noticed that during all of my crying today, there hadn’t been any tears, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last used the restroom. I was just so tired.
Just as my eyes slid closed again, the man roughly forced me onto my back. It was easy to keep my eyes closed now—I wondered briefly if I could sleep through this attempt at giving me food.
A scratchy whimper of protest sounded in the back of my throat when he grabbed my sore wrists and yanked them high over my head. “Please let me go,” I whispered hoarsely as something smooth slid over one wrist . . . and then the other.
For a second, the material felt so nice that I wondered if he was doing something to heal my cuts, but then it tightened painfully and my hands were pulled higher until my shoulders were screaming in pain.
The tension eased momentarily, but when I tried to move my arms down again, I couldn’t.
I sluggishly leaned my head back on the bed and peeled my eyes open, but it took me a second to understand what I was seeing. My hands were tied to a wide section of the wooden headboard. I pulled harder with no give from the wood, and looked down, panic flooding me when the man opened my robe, exposing my body.
I pressed my legs together and tried to pull them up, to curl into as much of a ball as my position would allow, but the man gripped the tops of my thighs and slammed them back onto the bed, spreading them wide.
“No, no. No!” I screamed, and tried to thrash with what little energy I had left. “Please, no.”
“You are mine, do you understand that?” he seethed, and the muscles in his arms flexed as he held me down.
He was shirtless, and the jeans he’d been wearing throughout the day were unbuttoned and barely staying up. He was tall, with a broad chest and shoulders that tapered down to narrow hips. Every inch of him was tanned and muscled, but the scars and tattoos that littered his body didn’t seem to fit a man who bought kidnapped women.
They didn’t seem to belong to a man who spoke to me the way he did. They didn’t boast of his money or power.
They screamed he was dangerous. They screamed to run.
My head shook subtly as a sob burst from my chest. “No,” I whimpered.
His head snapped up then, and I froze as I got my first glimpse of this man.
He was younger than I’d thought. Maybe a few years older than me. His dark hair was cut short on the sides and longer on top, and looked as if he had been running his hand through it all day. His nose and jaw were strong, and the dark stubble that covered his face somehow highlighted his full lips that were in a sneer now. But his eyes—those dark eyes were as murderous as they were mesmerizing . . .
He was darkness.
He was my own personal demon sent from hell.
“No?” he asked. His voice held no emotion anymore. He released my legs and straightened his body as his strong hands moved to the zipper on his jeans. I shut my eyes and my jaw trembled when I felt the bed dip. “You can try to kill yourself, Blackbird; I will keep you alive. When I tell you to eat, you eat. Do you understand?”
“Please stop, please stop, please stop,” I begged as his hands grasped my thighs again so his denim-covered hips could settle between them, my voice growing louder with each word. “No, no. Stop!” I screamed when one of his hands trailed up to my hip, his grip tightening. “Stop!”
I squeezed my eyes harder, not wanting to see any part of this. This can’t be happening to me.
His other hand slowly moved to the inside of my thigh, my entire body now shaking with fear and hatred and disgust.
“I understand,” I yelled. “Just please stop. Don’t do this.”
His hand stilled,
and seconds that felt like lifetimes of torture passed by before he released me and slowly covered my trembling body with his own. I flinched when his lips met my ear, but otherwise I didn’t move.
“I own you, Blackbird,” he said in a deceptively soothing voice.
I let my head fall away from him, and opened my eyes to stare at the same wall I’d looked at all day as I responded, “Never.”
His fingers gripped my face and forced me to look at him, and like before, he looked murderous. Beautiful and destructive.
I had been wrong. He wasn’t a demon. A demon wasn’t nearly as evil or dark as this man. My jaw shook under his tight grip, but I still managed to whisper, “The devil will never own me.”
That beautiful mouth curved into a wicked grin, and I hated it as much as I hated the man. Just before he pushed away from me and rose from the bed, he breathed, “We’ll see.”
Chapter 8
Day 2 with Blackbird
Lucas
I paced the length of the living area on the upper level for nearly an hour after I left Blackbird and still couldn’t seem to find the strength to stop.
That had been her first lesson. I had shown her who was in control, as I knew I had to. I had taken the first step in breaking her.
William was under the impression I’d done more than I had, and he was satisfied.
I wanted to die.
I wanted to tear my heart out if it would get her screams out of my head, if it would get that look of hatred and brokenness out of her green eyes.
She had called me the devil, and I felt like it after tonight. But she would never hate me more than I hated myself.
I dropped down to a low squat and ran my hands roughly through my hair and over my face as I tried to do so many things: force myself to go downstairs, talk myself out of what I was so close to doing, and get her damn screams out of my head.