And my ass along with it.
I grimaced and stilled, grunting into the pillow as I fought for composure. Not that it mattered. I was well and truly alone in this space, nothing but silence to my ears as my eyes adjusted to the shadows.
I felt the isolation. Disconnected from the magnetism somehow. Small and strangely fragile without him, even though it was him who’d inflicted the damage.
I steadied my breathing and prepared for the onslaught of tenderness as I dared to move some more. I was thirsty. Really thirsty. My mouth was as dry as parchment and my tongue felt furry to match. The bathroom was calling like a beacon from the other side of the room and I made it to my feet and across slowly, with careful steps .
I drank from the basin tap with eager hands and it was a pleasure. It was a pleasure still further when I dared to splash my face and caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I looked ok. Sleepy, with slightly puffy cheeks and messy hair around my shoulders, but ok. Much more ok than I was expecting.
My belly did a horrible flip at the thought I was likely so much more ok than Phoebe, running from her druggie loan sharks and her druggie boyfriend to match, out on her own in the big, bad world.
Here the manor was big. It was certainly bad too. Most of the populous would challenge my sanity at feeling safe in this place. But I did.
Despite Brandon Grant’s deeply-veined sadistic urges, I felt safe in this place.
Safe with him.
It hurt to use the toilet. It hurt to wipe myself dry when I’d finished. It hurt afresh when I took the return trip to the waiting bed, but it didn’t stop me detouring far enough to take a quick glance at the landing outside the bedroom doorway. Only I couldn’t. The handle turned silently but gave me no access. Locked. It was locked.
I was trapped in here.
At least I should hear anyone coming before they were on top of me.
I used the opportunity to have a fresh look around the room. The curtains were open enough that I could see the very beginnings of dawn outside. I ventured close enough to scope out the landscape in the hint of daylight, and it was beautiful. A skyline of trees with open gardens into the distance. We were well and truly in the heart of the countryside here. Even if I did feel the need to escape from the clutches of my sixty-day master and managed somehow to find a way out of his clutches, I wouldn’t get very far.
I wouldn’t have the slightest clue where I was, or how best to make my way to civilisation. I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to find my way back to my dorm room on the university campus and cry for help.
Not that there would be anyone waiting for me if I did. No friends bar Carolyn Lane. No family but a sister who was most likely on the run in her own world of retreat without me there to protect her. No college associates who’d have even a scrap of familiarity with me bar the assignment marking they’d been gracing me with these past few months.
I took a breath and opted to turn my attention back to my current world. Back to Brandon Grant and his personal existence in this place. This room, specifically. His things, specifically.
Only I didn’t make it that far, not when movement caught my eye from the gardens just to the rear of the building. I leaned into the window to get a closer view, and my heart jumped as I recognised his stance down there. His walk. The strong posture of his shoulders as he paced away from the building, across the grass with a phone pressed to his ear. He paused and took a drag of his cigarette, and once more there was that weird connection from his body to mine.
I could feel the familiar bristle of anger from him. I could feel the grit of his jaw without being close enough to witness it.
My fingers moved on their own, hitching up the catch on the window and easing the pane open a tiny inch. It was enough. Enough that when I pressed my ear to the gap I could hear the venom in his tone, lashing out to whoever was listening on the other end of the line, even if I couldn’t make out the words.
It surprised me to discover how much I wanted to. How much I wanted to hear every word he spoke. How much I wanted to know everything. Everything about him.
I stepped back from the window when he turned in my direction, petrified he’d experience the same weird connection flowing the other way through the ether and know I was there. Know I was watching.