Precariously, I tried to keep up and not fall. We passed the same chair I’d thrown over the balcony. Evidence of what I was capable of. We continued onward, along a west hallway and through a door.
Down a spiraling stone staircase.
“We never use this part of the house because it’s prone to flooding.” He led me on. “It’s beneath sea level. Which is never a good thing.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I realized we were passing jail cells.
A chill ran down my spine.
“This house was built on an old Spanish fort,” he said. “This is all that’s left of it.”
“Why are you showing it to me?”
He ignored me. “The things they did back then.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I believe that’s the point.”
Nearing one of the cells, he gave it a yank and opened the door. “In.”
“No.”
“You threw a chair at my friend. This is a preferential punishment than the other one I have in mind.”
I folded my arms across my chest, trying to hide the fact my heart was trying to beat itself out of my chest wall. “Well, you’ve got me intrigued.”
He made a gesture for me to go on in. “I’m not sure how you’ve survived this far. Clearly, all grit and stupidity.”
Head down, I took the few short steps into the dank room. Pivoting to face Cassius, I saw the shadows dance over his face.
I looked around and was revolted by where he was leaving me.
Rough blankets were strewn across a stained mattress.
A toilet without a seat.
A tipped-over rusty cup.
“I won’t stay in here,” I said. “I can’t. . I would rather die.
“A fate worse than death?” He slammed the cell door shut and then started to lock it. “Guaranteed.”
Once he secured me in, he held the keys up in his hand, and did the worst thing imaginable, he threw them across the hallway out of my reach. They landed with a loud clank.
Ass.
I ran toward the bars and gripped them, knuckles white. “You can’t leave me in here.”
He tucked his hands casually into his pockets. “Bet that bedroom we just left looks like a palace now?”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I called after him.
Cassius was already walking away.
Anya
A door slammed down the corridor, throwing me into pitch darkness.
My hands wrapped around the metal bars, and my neck strained to see if he was seriously leaving. Seconds felt like hours. Time moving too slowly.
I could feel my chest tightening with a heavy feeling of panic as I waited.
That brief moment of connection had dissolved into dust.
Even after I’d coaxed him on.
Even after I’d yearned for more.
The way he’d touched me had left me reeling. Like a magnet I had struggled to pull away from.
Unable to understand these twisting feelings, I stepped back as though trying to put distance between us, despite him already being gone.
Cassius could never have known the truth. That not only had I never been intimate with a man, but it was also even rarer to feel the brush of affection by my parents. I’d grown accustomed to it. Numb, but now a part of me was stirring from Cassius’s touch.
I’d go mad if he made me stay in here.
Slumping onto the thin mattress, I felt like my flesh was crawling with confusion. Why was I intrigued by the man who’d removed all control? The man dishing out one punishment after another.
His presence. . . I both hate and crave it at the same time.
Eventually resigned to the realization that he wasn’t coming back anytime soon, and that he’d refused to talk more, I lay on my side. Not wanting to take a closer look at what it was I was lying on, I drew my legs up and rolled into the fetal position.
Cassius, the man with the deep brown eyes that contradicted the depth I’d seen in him. A glimpse of kindness when he’d looked down at me that first time when I’d hidden in my closet.
Back home, in the Garden District, felt miles away, and yet it wasn’t that far.
I wouldn’t survive this place if I couldn’t contain my impulses.
Still, rebelling against my captor felt so damn sweet. Like it riled him up but also stirred something in him. Maybe because he was clearly rebellious and saw that in me. Or maybe he just liked to fight in all its sordid forms.
There came an inexplicable familiarity with this stranger.
“Your father showed me what kind of man he is.”
What did he mean by that? For a man to kidnap a woman, something terrible must have triggered it. The kind of hostility that would leave a deep scar. Enough to have him come after us like this.
Curling into a tight ball, I refused to believe a man could make my body feel alive yet tortured. The way it felt when he pressed his body to mine. Like it was right and wrong all at the same time.