Now what?
Just as I am drumming up the courage to ask, Apollo turns and leaves the room. It isn’t until his bedroom door shuts, it hits me I am truly inside an animal cage. I can move around a little. I also can completely lie down and stretch my legs out between the bars if I need to. Putting my hands on the bars, I shake as hard as I can, but nothing happens other than the cage moving slightly. I also shake the door to see if it’s possible to open, which it isn’t with the lock in place.
I am kidnapped.
Trapped.
At his mercy.
Inside a gilded cage.
But I refuse to cry.
I will not break.
I will not allow this beast to tear me down.
He is the animal. Not me.
He belongs where I am.
He should be in this cage.
He is the damn creature who needs to be confined.
I gasp for air as my heart beats so hard against my chest, I feel actual pain.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe!
Closing my eyes, hoping this nightmare will somehow end, I do everything to steady my breathing. In and out, I chant internally. I need to remain calm. If Apollo wanted me dead…
No, he doesn’t want me dead. He wants me in a cage.
ChapterFifteen
Daphne
I must have fallen asleep, because as I wake, sunlight is shining through the skylight window above my prison bars. Cocooned in the fur blanket, I surprisingly slept well considering I was locked in a cage inside a madman’s bedroom. Even though I had been on a metal cage floor, the blanket provided enough cushion that I don’t wake up feeling achy or stiff. My sore ass from yesterday has also dissipated, and it’s almost as if the entire nightmare of being kidnapped by my husband hasn’t happened, except when I turn my head and see Apollo sleeping soundly in his bed, the Band-Aid the good night’s sleep provided rips off in a flesh-tearing way.
He doesn’t snore.
He always used to snore.
All dragons in their lair snored.
I sit up and run my fingers through my hair. Not that it matters what I look like now, but it gives me a small piece of humanity. Especially since I’m covered in fur, huddled in a cage like a scared animal.
I watch Apollo sleep. He doesn’t look like a kidnapper, a killer, a creature of the night who steals innocent people from the safety of the life they know. He doesn’t look evil or vile. In fact, the man is handsome. He always has been from the moment I first laid eyes on him. Gorgeous. The man could make me weak-kneed with just one glance in my direction. A part of me had forgotten just how handsome my husband is, but seeing his face laying peacefully against his pillow, and glancing at his newly wounded and still bandaged arm that peeks out from the blanket and hangs over the side of the bed, he has a sexy appearance I have never seen before. This is what the man would look like waking up to him after a night of him fucking my brains out. And it hasn’t been so long that I don’t remember that Apollo knows exactly how to fuck a woman’s brains out. The other night, he took it to a new level, and just the memory of us laying on the floor in front of the fire leaves me…
Apollo must sense me staring at him. He always slept on edge and was ready to pounce at any moment. Insomnia was his best friend, and I remember how he never stayed in bed with me. Never. He paced the house like a lion in a too-small cage.
“Good morning, wife,” he says with a husky voice and a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. He sits up and stretches, revealing his bare chest as he does so.
I try not to look but justify my gawking by saying it’s merely out of habit.
A bad habit.