“The windows are fake,” I tell him, as if this isn’t his house, as if he didn’t know. “Why are there no windows in this room?”
He stares at me for a long moment, as if he’s trying to figure out an explanation. But he simply shrugs. “There are no windows in this entire house.” I stare at him. “It’s just safer.”
“Safer?” I ask weakly. “Who do you need protection from?” My mind races with the idea that there are people out there willing to go up against a man like him. Are there worse people in the world than men who have abducted women and forced them to come?
“Everyone,” he answers. From the way his throat swallows, from the way he watches me, it makes me wonder if he’s talking about me as well.
Chapter 17
Liam
Part of me wants to give her a little freedom. That’s the disillusioned part of my mind. That’s the part of me that thinks a switch will flip in her head, making her want to be here, rather than being my captive. It’s a crazy thought. As long as she’s here, she’ll always be my prisoner.
Sane people don’t wake up over a week after being captured, and just decide that this is where they want to be. If I believed in talk therapy rather than killing people to solve my problems, I would have made an appointment right after sleeping in the bed with her for the first time. That’s when the real insanity started.
Even after a week, I don’t feel right. I’m not sleeping any better at night because I know it’s only a matter of time before all of this comes crashing down around me. I’m gonna have to leave here, eventually. Despite my need to keep her trapped in this house, it’s not something I could do myself.
My skin is itchy with the need to get out, to hurt people, to take my anger and frustration of this entire situation out on someone else, because I would never hurt her. As much as I want to prove a point, as much as I want to show her that discarding people is dangerous, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to do it.
As time slowly drags by, I realize it never would have happened in the first place. I’m surprised I’ve let it get this far. I don’t know if it’s an ingrained part of me or what, but I’ve never been the type of man that could hurt a woman. Maybe it was what I witnessed as a young child in foster care. Maybe it was the sad eyes of the foster mothers after their husbands yelled at them or hit them and called them worthless. Maybe it was the threats I heard whispered in the dark of night when she had the nerve to ask where he’d been. Maybe it was the screaming and the begging, the pleading to be let go.
When I was a prisoner in South America, maybe it was the pleas and cries for help or maybe it was the begging for death that made me not want to be that person. Maybe… maybe it’s just her. That would be an easier explanation. That would help explain why I lie beside her every single night and listen to her breathing as she sleeps. She has no problem getting rest despite the way she tortures me in the darkness with every breath she takes.
Each morning, I make breakfast for the two of us and then I watch her shower. I fight the urge to detach myself as the memories of the last five days force themselves to the front of my mind. Five days ago, I gave her a test. I followed her into the bathroom, commanded her to pleasure herself. I just watched, not once touching the straining erection jutting from my hips.
The next day, the second she climbed under the stream of water, my hand found my cock, stroking it, teasing it, touching it the way I wish she would. I was floored when she did the same. My mouth was literally hanging open, when unprompted she ran those slender fingers over her body to the apex of her thighs. I stroked faster. Her fingers worked harder. I slowed down. She looked annoyed but she slowed down too.
That’s what it’s been like the last four days. If I have to tell her to touch herself, I don’t reward her with the sight of watching me do it. She’s learned that if she initiates it, I’m going to follow through right along with her. I roll over in the bed with a groan, trying to shove those thoughts aside but I’m long past seeing reason or coming up with a way for all of this to end that’s beneficial to both of us.
My balls ache with need for her. It’s all I can focus on—that sting of pain in my nuts that demands its own form of relief. I know better than to try to fight it. It only leads to misery.
I climb out of the bed and slowly make my way to her side. She only stirs a little when I flip on the bedside lamp. “Raya,” I snap. Realizing a little too late that I didn’t say her name loud enough to wake her, I repeat it louder this time. She jolts in her sleep but doesn’t open her eyes. I pull the corner of the blanket down, exposing her shoulder. With more attitude than she’s ever given me, she jerks it back up and grumbles something about needing a day off.
But then she freezes as if she had the ability for a split second to forget where she was. She sits up, pulling the blanket up higher on her chin, and stares at me. She looks wiped out and frightened, realizing that she made a mistake. The lines on her cheek should make me want to run my thumb along it to smooth the creases away but I’m too far gone. I’m too caught up in the needs of my own body.
I don’t want to touch her softly like I do sometimes at night when she’s fast asleep. I don’t want to trail my finger down her arm or brush hair out of her face. I want to consume her. I want to crash my mouth against hers, slide my hand between her skin and the blanket and see just how hot she is. I want to touch those aches in her own body. Need building inside of me is the only thing that makes thoughts of physical reasoning for her ability to control me dissipate.
When I lie in bed listening to her sleep, I’m almost able to convince myself that it has to be a brain tumor. That has to be the only explanation I have for this connection I feel to her. I’m a man who actively avoids any connections with real people. It’s why I’ve been avoiding Hollis the last five times he’s called this week. I don’t want to talk with him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to meet him and Nash for another boring-ass day on the beach. Neither of them knows how long I have to travel to get there to make it look like I live even remotely close to South Padre. Neither of them has any idea that I’m hundreds of miles away from the beach.
I don’t tell her what I want as I walk toward the bathroom. She’s gotten really good at anticipating my needs. She no longer has a collar or chain around her neck and I have fought the urge to put it back there just so I can hear that softthank youshe told me two days ago when I removed it.
She pads slowly into the bathroom, as I put myself up against the bathroom counter. Her hair is a tangled mess, her eyes sleepy. Her yawn makes it even more evident that she was nowhere near ready to be woken up. There’s irritation flowing through her body with every single step she takes, but I can’t worry about that right now.
She’ll have plenty of time to sleep once I’m rid of the throbbing in my body. I can’t think of her while my cock is hard and my head can focus on nothing else than the endorphin rush I’m going to get watching her shower. She turns the shower on like she normally does, but instead of reaching for that sweet spot between her thighs or the bodywash, she glares at me.
This isn’t the first time she’s done this. I’ve caught her once or twice with that snarky look on her face—the one that says that she just wants to spew hateful things in my direction. This time she doesn’t back down. She doesn’t stop looking in my direction with anger in her eyes.
“You know what to do,” I tell her, bargaining with myself that if I don’t command her into action, it doesn’t count. Because God knows if I have to command it, then I have to follow through with this unspoken rule between us. If I have to tell her to do it, then I can’t do it to myself.
“Why do you want me to shower all the time?” she asks, sounding like a petulant child who was being told to eat their vegetables, instead of a naked woman standing underneath a steaming stream of water with perky breasts and a shadow of Heaven between her thighs.
“I like what happens in the shower,” I say.
“I could play with myself in the damn bed,” she grumbles but she doesn’t give in. She doesn’t reach for herself. She just stands there glaring at me.
Knowing she’s in full control of this entire fucking situation, it kills me. I keep my mouth shut. The only reason I woke her up was so I could come in if she’s going to play this game. “Raya.”
I win. Her eyes drop to my erection and I don’t have to look down to know that the tip is glistening with precum. I can feel the temperature difference as the cool air in the room washes over it. She doesn’t take heed of my warning. Instead, she cocks her hips to the side and crosses her arms over her chest. I clench my fists open and closed, biting the instinct in me that tells me to make her do it. Not only is she hiding her perfect tits, but she’s also being completely defiant.