Blackbird

  A roar of frustration filled the room, and I was storming away within seconds. Only this time it wasn’t to continue pacing—I needed to try to get her to eat one more time even though it was nearly midnight. She had looked so fragile and pale. Her lips had been so chapped and dry. I couldn’t get the image out of my head, and I was fucking terrified to think how much worse she might be if I left her until morning like I was supposed to.

  “They must stay isolated for at least eight hours after a lesson,” William always said. “It’s a lesson for them, and you will look weak if you go to them before they would come crawling to you.”

  As soon as I had some water, fruit, and a sandwich made, I went back to her room and unlocked the door. Unlike last time, I opened the door and stepped in slowly to give her time to prepare for me.

  The lamps were still on even though she looked like she was asleep. She was curled up on the bed with her back facing me, as she had been most of the times I’d come in today, and again she didn’t turn around.

  I set the plate and water on the nightstand, and reached for her shoulder, but withdrew my hand before I could touch her. “Blackbird,” I said gently. My hands fisted when I noticed her rapid breathing, but I knew we had a long road ahead of us before she wasn’t afraid of me.

  Her fear . . . it was something I had been prepared for. Something I’d been trained for. I just hadn’t been prepared for how much it would bother me.

  “Blackbird,” I called again, and finally touched her shoulder to turn her toward me when she didn’t respond in any way.

  Her eyes were shut and jaw trembling, but for once, I had a feeling she wasn’t avoiding looking at me.

  “Blackbird,” I said sharply and shook her shoulder. “Girl!” I rolled her fully onto her back and pressed my fingers to her neck.

  Her pulse was weak, but felt like it was going as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

  “No, no, no, no, shit,” I roared, and brushed my hand over her face then paused. Placing my hand on her cheek again, I moved it up to her forehead and swore.

  I grabbed at my pockets, biting out another curse when I remembered throwing my cell phone against a wall, and took off out of the room to grab one of the landlines.

  William answered on the second ring. “Lucas, wha—”

  “Get a doctor here now!”

  There was a pause, then, “Did you already go back to check on her? How long has it be—”

  “Did you hear me?” I yelled as I ran back to the girl’s room. She hadn’t moved. “Get a doctor here. Have him bring the IV drip and anything else he can think of.” I hung up and dropped the phone on the bed and ran my hands over the girl’s face again. Her skin was on fire. “Shit,” I whispered, and moved one hand to her throat and the other to her wrist.

  I hurried into the small bathroom attached to the room and ran two washcloths under cold water, then wrung them out and folded them as I rushed back to her. I placed one on her forehead and held the other to the back of her neck as my free hand gripped her wrist until I found her rapid pulse again.

  I felt helpless waiting for a doctor to show up, but I knew I had no other option. Taking her to a hospital right now wasn’t possible. Not when she had just been taken from her home days before. Not when she would scream for help as soon as she regained consciousness. No . . . I couldn’t risk everything for this girl, but in the ten minutes it took for the doctor to arrive, I considered it more and more.

  “Leave the room, Lucas,” William called out as he entered the girl’s room behind the doctor.

  I looked up in surprise, and growled as my eyes went back to the girl. “No. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Lucas—”

  My head whipped back up, my eyes already narrowed. “Don’t tell me to leave.” My tone was a mix of warning and plea, and it shocked my mentor.

  His eyes traveled over to my blackbird. There was hesitation in the way he looked at her, as if he were suddenly afraid to. His gaze lingered on where I was now gripping her hand, and one eyebrow rose in disapproval. “I see.”

  The doctor didn’t ask questions. He just checked her vitals, hurried to find a vein in Blackbird’s dehydrated body and started pumping her with fluids, then checked her vitals for a second time. The entire time murmuring things to himself that he needed to remember before he finally stopped to write it all down.

  “When did she last eat or drink?” he asked suddenly.

  “I have no idea. I’ve been trying to get her to do both for two days.”

  He nodded to himself as he wrote. “Has she been sick?”

  I ground my jaw. “No.”

  The doctor continued nodding, then pointed to her with his pen. “New one?”

  “Yes,” William responded for me.

  “Then we wait,” the doctor said as he turned to check the speed of the IV. “Her body is in shock. A few more hours, she would have slipped into a coma.”

  I rubbed my hand over my face, then rested my elbow on my knee and my mouth on my fist. My eyes shut and my stomach churned when I thought about how close I had been to leaving her for the night.

  “Lucas.”

  I opened my eyes and slowly slid my gaze over to William.

  He shook his head subtly. I didn’t need his words to know what he meant.

  I shouldn’t be reacting this way. Even though only William was present—doctors like this one were the best around, and were paid to keep quiet . . . be invisible—I shouldn’t show this kind of emotion over a girl. It showed weakness.

  The women could become attached, but the men never did. The men never showed that they cared at all, not outside private times in the bedroom at least.

  William was one to talk.

  “Leave,” I demanded quietly.

  He didn’t, and I went back to ignoring him as the doctor set up a machine to track Blackbird’s vitals.

  The doctor stayed until the girl had shown enough improvement for him to feel optimistic. I let William walk him out since he’d brought him in, and I still wasn’t ready to leave Blackbird’s side even with the improvements.

  She had woken briefly before falling back asleep, but her heart rate was slower and stronger, her blood pressure was higher, and she was on her third bag of fluids—this one dripping much slower than the first two had—so at least my worry had eased. Slightly.

  “We must talk.”

  “I don’t see a reason to,” I said when William came back into the room. “You can leave. I needed the doctor, not you. Now I have his number for future reference.”

  William sat with a huff in the chair he had dragged into the room earlier. “You came back to her before you should have. Eight hours, Lucas, and you didn’t even last two.”

  I gave him a dark look as I reminded him, “And she would have been in a coma if I’d listened to you.”

  He waved off my words. “That’s beside the point. Clearly she’s going to be fine.” He slapped his hand onto his leg when I huffed. “You were not ready for this.”

  A muscle in my jaw popped from the force I was putting on it, but this time I wondered if he was right. Instead of threats or dark warnings, I admitted, “She was the first.”

  “What?” he asked, having not heard my soft words.

  “She was the first,” I said louder, then clarified, “at the auction.”

  He scoffed. “Child. You are a child, and you think this is a game. This is my life. This is their lives,” he said, gesturing to the wall, as if dozens of men would suddenly be standing there. “This is how we—”

  “This is my life, too,” I argued. “The moment I saw her face I knew I needed her.” William’s expression fell, but I continued talking. “I turned my back on her, I ignored her. But then she—” I broke off quickly, not wanting to tell him about her singing. I shrugged helplessly. “I hated the thought of someone touching what was mine. I owned her before I ever bought her, and there was no way I wasn’t buying her—first or not.”

  “Lucas, wh
o owns who?” I’d never seen my mentor as disappointed as I did then.

  “I do,” I growled. “As I proved tonight.”

  William shook his head. “You have to let her go.”

  Shock and anger tore through me, freezing me in place.

  “This isn’t acceptable this early in. You are going against everything I have taught you. Buying a first, showing that you care, not being able to follow through with the entire lesson . . .” He searched for something to say, and finally settled on, “You can’t keep her.”

  “Take her from me,” I challenged darkly, knowing full well he wouldn’t if he valued his life. “You wanted me to finally begin, and I have. I have my first girl. Yes, I didn’t leave her alone after a lesson, but there was reason for that. I was already worried about her lack of eating and drinking, and then I put her through a lesson. She fought me—”

  “As you should expect them to in the beginning.”

  My right hand fisted, and I forced myself not to punch the smirk off my mentor’s face. “She used energy she didn’t have to fight me. She exerted herself. All of this might not be happening if I wouldn’t have tried to teach her a lesson tonight, do you understand that? Can you understand why I feel guilty and don’t want to leave her side?”

  “Whether you feel that or not—which you should not—you do not let it show as you have tonight. If she saw you, she would know she had you in the palm of her hand.”

  Although I felt drawn to, I refused to look down at my blackbird. I kept my gaze on William’s, and asked, “Did she?” When confusion covered his face, I said, “Your fourth . . .” I let the word hang in the air. “Did she ever see you show the emotion that you fail to hide in front of the rest of us?”

  Rage quickly replaced the confusion on William’s face, and I knew I had him. But just as fast as the rage had come, it was gone and his expression was calm and indifferent. “If this is how you repay me for finally allowing you to play this game, I clearly trusted you with too much and let you move through your training far too quickly.”

  “Allowed me?” I asked darkly, and hurried to turn it around on him. I hadn’t done all I had in the last few years for him to doubt me now. “You chose me. You trained me. You urged me to buy into your company and then you pushed me to buy my way into this life. And when I came home six months ago without a girl, you nearly lost your mind. But now I have an equal claim in our company, and I’m finally in the world you so desperately wanted me to be in. I think the real issue here isn’t how I’m handling the girl I now have, it’s that you’re panicking because you’ve realized your mistake.”

  The calm on William’s face slipped just a fraction, but it was all I needed.

  “The man you trained is smarter in this world and in our business than you’ve ever been . . . and will one day replace you,” I growled, the threat in my words clear. I nodded toward the door. “Leave, and don’t come back. We’ll come to you when she’s ready—and she will be ready.”

  Chapter 9

  Unanswered Questions

  Briar

  The door to my room opened and shut, but I didn’t move to look at him from where I sat cross-legged on my bed. I continued to run my hands through my wet hair, staring at the wall as though there were a window there.

  I wondered what it looked like outside here . . . wherever here was.

  “Blackbird.”

  I froze for a second then started finger-combing my hair again. In the four days since I’d woken up to a doctor taking an IV out of my hand, the devil hadn’t attempted to speak to me. He had brought me meals regularly—the first day staying to make sure I ate—but had otherwise left me alone.

  When he spoke again, frustration laced his name for me. “Blackbird.”

  “I have a name,” I said numbly and looked over my shoulder in time to see him fight back a smile. “I have a name, and I have a fiancé and parents and people who are looking for me.”

  His smile abruptly fell, his face now void of all emotion. “You don’t have anyone looking for you.”

  My fingers stopped running through my hair. Ice-cold dread filled me. “W-what? What did you do— What did you do to them?” I yelled, and turned to fully face him. “They didn’t do anything—I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I don’t understand why I am here,” I yelled as a mixture of sad and angry tears fell to my cheeks.

  “Stop,” he commanded gently, coldly.

  I gripped at my chest as different scenarios flashed through my mind. “Please tell me what happened to them.”

  “You want me to play this game with you? Fine. What happened to who, Blackbird?” he snapped. “There is no one looking for you, because you had no one. Why do you think you were taken?”

  It took immeasurable seconds to understand what he was saying.

  “. . . you had no one. Why do you think you were taken?” Whoever they’d meant to take . . . it wasn’t me.

  Which meant Kyle and his parents—my parents—were safe.

  Relief filled me so fast and so profound that it made me dizzy.

  “Then it was a mistake,” I choked out. “I had them, I had Kyl—” A sob forced its way from my chest. “You took everything from me,” I whispered. My right thumb and forefinger automatically went to where my ring had been on my left hand before I’d been taken, and my chest ached as I thought about Kyle.

  “There’s no point in lying, you can’t leave,” the man said.

  “Ly—” I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I’m not lying! I was taken by mistake. I’m supposed to be getting married in a week.”

  The devil’s dark eyes narrowed in frustration, and he turned to leave as I continued shouting.

  “My name is Briar Chapman,” I called out as he reached the door. “My fiancé’s name is Kyle Armstrong. His mother is the governor of Georgia. I was taken by mistake.” Then to myself, “This is a mistake.”

  Hours dragged by before the door opened again. Not that it was uncommon for so long to pass between each time he visited, but I had been hoping for something different after I had given him my name and something to think about.

  Then again, I doubted he cared.

  “Are you ready to talk calmly now?” he asked with one dark eyebrow raised when I turned to face him.

  I didn’t respond.

  He walked closer until he was standing at the corner of my bed, and my hatred for him grew when I realized some distant part of my mind appreciated the way he looked.

  The tie he had been wearing earlier was gone, and his shirtsleeves were now rolled up. His hands were crossed over his chest, revealing corded muscles and the scars and dark tattoos that contradicted the man he was.

  Then again, it fit for a devil.

  He is darkness, I reminded myself.

  I flicked my gaze up to where he was staring down at me, waiting for my reply, and instead asked, “Do you have my ring?”

  “What ring?”

  I lifted my left hand for a second before dropping it back into my lap. “My enga—”

  “Enough,” he hissed, and slowly relaxed his arms to slip his hands into his suit pants pockets. “You do not have a family, and you do not have a fiancé—I was told about your life when I bought you. Your lying will only frustrate me and force me to teach you another lesson.”

  It took far too long to understand what the first lesson had been, and my lunch soured in my stomach. “T-the . . . the other night was a lesson?”

  His nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond otherwise.

  “You—I thought you were going to rape me,” I cried out, “and that was a lesson?”

  “Keep pushing me and see if I don’t,” he threatened in a dark tone.

  A shuddering breath tumbled from my lips before the room fell into a heavy silence. “I mean nothing to you,” I whispered, mostly to myself, then slowly looked up at him. My voice shook as I spoke. “Why do you want to . . . to keep someone locked in a room whose life and body mean nothing to you?” I pre
ssed a hand to my chest. “Because they mean something to me.” When he didn’t respond, I begged, “Tell me why I’m here.”

  “Because I own you.”

  I shook my head quickly. No. Never. “What does that mean for me?”

  “It means you’re mine.” He didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t giving me the answers I needed—and was afraid to have—he just continued to stand there with a look of eternal patience on his face.

  My body trembled when I thought about that night—about the lesson—and my question came out weak and breathy. “Am I here for sex?”

  He huffed through his nose. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?” I mouthed, my body shaking harder at his response. “Then what exactly?”

  “Next question.”

  I was so horrified about the thought of having been taken and sold into some sex trafficking ring that it took almost an entire minute to ask, “Can I please have clothes other than the robes?”

  His sinful eyes roamed over my body, making me feel as though I wasn’t covered. “Not yet.”

  “Yet? When can I?” I asked, but he didn’t respond, and my shoulders fell as I searched for another question. “Will I always be in this room?”

  “Do you want to be?”

  “No,” I said immediately. The room wasn’t small, but it felt like a dungeon. “There aren’t any windows, I haven’t seen outside in . . . in . . . in nearly a week,” I realized bleakly. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  “Are you done asking questions?” he asked after a short pause. Again, he looked like he had all the patience in the world, and it was infuriating.

  “You’ve barely been answering the ones I’ve asked.”

  “Answer that one,” he demanded.

  I stared at him as my frustration and fear swirled through me. By the time I spoke, the fear had won out and my voice was nothing more than a breath leaving my lips. “Yes.”

  He moved to cross his arms back over his chest, and thought for a second. “This is a starter room, Blackbird. When I think you’re ready, you’ll be allowed to move out and have free rein of the entire upstairs of my home. There is a kitchen up here, other bedrooms that you can choose from since no one else is here, and plenty of windows. Once I completely trust you, you will be allowed anywhere in this house, and out of it as long as I’ve approved where you’re going.”