by Kitty Thomas
“I thought you'd sleep the whole day away.” Angel was in the kitchen in clear view of the front door. So much for stealth.
Light grey pajama pants rode low on his hips as he stood in front of the stove flipping pancakes.
Astrid's gaze flitted to the table where he already had two plates out with sausage and two glasses of milk. Butter and maple syrup sat in the middle of the table. The syrup was in a small metal container which rested on a warmer plate that she imagined must have come with it in a set from some fancy boutique kitchen gadget store.
He brought the food over and put a couple of crisp, almost-burnt pancakes on each of their plates. He took the pan and spatula back to the stove then joined her at the table.
Astrid studiously avoided his gaze. She couldn't bring herself to meet those startling blue eyes in the light of day. Everything that had happened since the moment she'd walked in on her husband's murder until she'd woken this morning had felt like some sort of surreal dreamworld. It couldn't be real.
But with the sunlight pouring in through all the windows, it became increasingly difficult to pretend.
“You should fix your pancakes before they get cold,” Angel said. He was either unconcerned or oblivious to her discomfort.
“You kidnapped me,” she said. She felt she must continue to say things like this, if for no other reason, to hear them out loud. Because otherwise she might lose her mind. He was acting too cozy and domestic—like this was normal. She couldn't let any of this become normal.
“I'm not sure what that has to do with pancakes,” he said.
She stared at her plate of food, still unable to look at him. After another strained stretch of silence, Angel spread butter over her pancakes for her and poured some warm maple syrup on top.
“I can cut it up into little triangles if you'd like, but I can't eat it for you.”
“I'm not a child,” she said. But her voice sounded so strange in his kitchen in the daylight.
“Then eat.”
Astrid took a bite of the pancakes. “You aren't ever letting me go, are you?”
“Probably not.”
She knew she needed to have a reaction to this. A big reaction. She should scream or cry or beg. She could imagine herself throwing the plate. In her head she could hear the china shattering against the refrigerator, could see the sticky sweet syrup trail slowly down its stainless steel door face.
Instead she kept eating. The pancakes were good, but it was hard to fully enjoy them knowing this was the first day of an eternal prison sentence. It didn't matter how attractive her jailer was—or the way he'd made her feel the previous night. That was the main reason she couldn't look at him.
She'd never felt this way after a sexual encounter with a man before. She'd never become this agonizingly shy. He'd kept his word about only touching her, but he'd opened something very raw and vulnerable. Even with all that Joey had done, Angel had made her feel like some strange innocence had wrapped itself around her again.
And now he seemed intent to strip it away layer by layer.
Wasn't she safer here? It seemed insane to even think such a thing. But with Joey gone, his successor was likely to kill her, keep her for himself, or do what Joey had once threatened. The next guy in line was Little Tony. He was repulsive in every way imaginable, the kind of man that even the thought of touching him would have made her want to die instead.
Angel's bed was far preferable. Still. It seemed wrong that she should capitulate to his crazy whim to just keep her. As if she were some stray cat he'd picked up at the animal shelter. Like this was a totally normal thing to do. He acted like it was.
Any mild hesitance he might have almost seemed to show the previous night was absent now. Now that he had it all figured out.
“How are they? I like them a little burnt and crispy around the edges,” he said.
“They're good.” She was surprised she could even taste the pancakes let alone form an opinion about them.
“Angel?”
“Hmmm?”
“You know you can't just keep me, right?”
He laughed. “You're adorable.”
“People will be looking for me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
He studied her as if he could suck the thoughts out of her mind and then reassemble them into an easily readable format.
“No. The only people who will be looking for you are people you wouldn't want to find you. You know you're safer here.”
Which was exactly what she'd just been thinking.
“Is that how you're justifying this to yourself? Like you're rescuing me and keeping me hidden from Joey's goons?”
“Well? Isn't that the state of things?”
“Fuck you.” She said it quietly, but loud enough for him to hear.
He smirked. “I didn't think you'd be ready so soon.”
She looked up, startled by the innuendo. Even though she knew she shouldn't be after last night. Seeing him in full sun like this was overwhelming. He was even more beautiful than she'd remembered in all the glimpses in much dimmer lighting.
“You know you want me,” he said, a smug self-satisfied smirk on his face.
She looked back down at her plate, trying not to think about how he'd made her scream the night before, the way his hands had felt on her, the intense urge she'd had to just beg him to fuck her. How long would she be able to hold out before making that humiliating little request?
She did want him. It was so sick she didn't know how to even categorize the wanton lust that surged through her in his presence. He shouldn't have this effect on her. And yet he did. The worst part was that he knew he did.
He finished eating before her and rose to put his plate and glass in the sink. She watched him slink like a jungle cat to the other side of the kitchen. Of course he would look like a predator. He was a predator. And she was practically panting to be his prey. What a fucking idiot she was.
When things turned bad, she would remember this moment and the stupidity and shame of not fighting him every step of the way. The night before she'd had the excuse that she didn't want to sleep alone with the storm, even as stupid as that sounded now over breakfast. But from now on, she had to resist. Every single step. Everything he tried to do. If she just gave in to him, what did that say about her?
It would have been different if they'd met a different way—if she didn't know what he was. But she did know.
She quickly looked back at her plate as he returned to the table.
“Are you finished with the syrup and butter?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, taking another bite of pancakes.
He took them off the table and put them in the fridge, and again she watched him.
“I've got a bit of work to do in my office, so feel free to explore the house when you're done eating.”
When he'd finally left her alone, she let out a long shuddering breath. Suddenly her hands were shaking from the adrenalin. She got up and paced back and forth next to the table. He scared her on a level no one had ever scared her. And it was as much what he was as it was how attractive she found him. He made her nervous in ways she didn't have names for.
She put her plate and glass in the sink and went to explore the house to try to settle her nerves. As she peered in room after room, she tried to convince herself things were okay. After all, she was away from Joey and safe from Little Tony. She had a very nice place to stay with an absurdly beautiful man who she knew could protect her and provide anything she needed.
And that would be fine, except for the inconvenient other facts. Murder. Kidnapping. Ambiguous molestation. Maybe? She had begged him to let her come, after all.
There was a large fitness room on the first floor that led out to the pool. Without thinking, she opened the sliding glass door to the outside patio. A shrieking siren started to wail. Astrid fell to her knees and covered her ears as if she could burrow through the floor to get underground and make that horrib
le noise stop.
A few minutes later, the sound stopped and Angel found her still balled up on the ground.
“I'm sorry. I didn't think. I was just exploring.” She cringed, waiting for some retribution to fall.
“I'll redo the security and figure out something in the next day or two so you can go outside when I'm home, but not off the property.”
“Okay.” Like there was anything else she could say.
He went back down the hallway, leaving her alone in the fitness room. She'd been afraid he'd be angry when she forgot and opened the door, but he'd been completely stoic.
Astrid took a few moments to collect herself and continued exploring. There was a study/library combo on the other end of the house. The décor was a bit more traditional than previous rooms. Next to that was a very elegant formal room that looked a bit like a ball room and contained a black Steinway piano. A few feet from the piano was a pole that went from the ceiling to the floor. Along the far wall was a fully-stocked bar.
At the end of the bar was a door. As she moved toward the door, Astrid's pulse started to race. There was no reason this should happen except that the pole next to the piano seemed like some sort of warning buzzer. She'd seen enough of Joey's life. She wasn't the naïve girl she'd been when she'd met him. She couldn't pretend the pole was just some random support for the room. It was exactly what it looked like it was. A stripper pole.
Even knowing she should just leave that door alone, she crossed the room to it and turned the knob. It was locked. Astrid was almost relieved. But as she turned away, she saw a small glass bowl on the bar with a key sitting inside it.
That couldn't be the key to that door. If he wanted to keep a door locked in his house, why would he keep the key right next to it? That begged the question of why he even needed an interior door locked at all when he lived alone. He certainly hadn't been expecting company so maybe he hadn't thought about the key. Maybe the key wasn't even to that door but for something else entirely.
She should just leave the room.
But she couldn't. Not with that key gleaming from the bottom of the glass bowl. She felt like Alice in Wonderland faced with a cookie with a message saying “eat me”. It was foolish to do it but impossible not to. If that key went to that door, now she had to know what was behind it.
Astrid took the key from the bowl and unlocked the door.
***
Angel sat in his office watching the security monitor. He'd been watching the monitor feeds from the various security cameras hidden throughout the house since Astrid had left the kitchen. He'd watched with fascination as she'd opened the pool door and then reacted. Such a strange reaction.
He hadn't expected her to trigger the alarm, but once she had it would have seemed more normal to go outside away from the sound. Now here she was in the piano room.
When he'd woken that morning, before starting breakfast, he'd put the key in the glass bowl on the bar. He wanted to see what she'd do. He wasn't sure exactly what he thought he was doing. After all, if Joey had been hurting her, and with the sorts of things he'd been into, it would be so easy for Astrid to take this the wrong way.
Still, he needed her to know, and the sooner she knew the sooner she could start processing it and make peace with the new layer of reality in her world. Besides, he needed her to react. He wanted to chase and hunt and subdue her. He needed to feel her panicked little body writhing in a feverish panic beneath him. He wouldn't hurt her, but he was hungry for something more than the desperate pleasure he'd pulled from her the previous night. He'd gotten that small taste, and now he wanted infinitely more. Of everything.
After what felt like a small eternity, she took the key from the bowl and unlocked the door. The lights had motion detectors and came on as she descended the stairs to his dungeon. He'd brought a lot of women down there, women he'd paid for from expensive escort services that allowed him to keep his location a secret. He'd brought women here blindfolded, but he'd never let anyone discover the dungeon alone.
Angel watched the shocked expression spread over her face, her hand coming to her mouth to silence a scream before it could find voice on the air. A few moments later she had turned and ran up the stairs.
He heard her tear down the hall, and then the sirens came on again as she flung open the front door.
Angel rose slowly from his chair and went to turn the alarm off. They were pretty far out, and it was simply too much ground for her to cover on foot. Let her run. The brief conscience he'd felt the night before over taking an innocent, had been swallowed up by the desire to possess her completely. To own her. He needed her to beg him and cower and call him master—needed it like he needed oxygen.
If she hadn't come so undone under his hands the night before... maybe he could have maintained some self-control. Perhaps he could have been more patient. But her hot little body writhing under him, begging him to take her... By the morning, he'd moved past all hesitation and shallow noble intention.
No matter how he'd tried to rationalize it and lie to himself and make up excuses, the second she'd walked in on his kill, the moment he'd seen her, some part of his lizard brain had lit up. Something deep inside his subconscious in that moment had already decided she would be his slave.
He was done paying escorts to play a game. He wanted something permanent. And real.
Angel stepped outside just as she reached the tree line. He took his time going after her. As much as he wanted to chase her, it was better to let her wear herself out a little. When he stepped into the wooded area, he heard nothing. No branches snapping or crushing or crackling of dry leaves. She was hiding somewhere within the dense woods—probably not far from where he stood. After all, she would need to catch her breath from bolting up the stairs and across that large expanse of open land.
“Astrid, come back to the house with me and let's talk. We're too far out. I don't want to have to chase you down.” Yes he did. He wanted it very badly.
Let her run. Let her try to defy him. He could picture her running and flushed, him tackling her to the ground and holding her there with her fiery red hair spread out like a blanket on the grass, looking up at him... begging him.
No one had ever had such a disturbing effect on him. He'd always felt so in control. Whether it was a kill or a sex game with a prostitute, he'd always been so... steady.
Nothing inside him felt steady now. Even though he was sure she couldn't escape, he thrilled at the possibility—the threat that she might somehow slip beyond his grasp forever.
“Astrid... come back with me. Let's play a game.” As he spoke to her, he walked through the woods, stopping every few steps to listen... for a snapped twig, breathing, tears.
What he heard instead was an unexpected sneeze.
He turned to find her several yards away, bolting back into the open field. Angel ran after her, quickly eating the distance between them. Finally he reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her flush against him. He was sure she could feel his erection pressed against her.
It took her a moment to catch her breath so she could speak. “P-please. You said you wouldn't hurt me.”
She seemed hurt by this as if he were in the act of betraying her. And that bit of conscience sprung free to scold him again.
“And have I hurt you? Last night you didn't seem to think so.” If anything her response to him had been far more than he could have hoped for. It was obvious she wanted him on a level so primal that it scared her. Angel was sure she was fighting with herself and her own desires because of how wrong it was.
Intellectually he could understand this. Objectively it was wrong to fall into bed with the man who'd just murdered your husband, no matter how awful the husband had been. But Angel couldn't feel these things in the way she could. Whatever moral reasoning tormented her, didn't trouble him at all. For him, it was an intellectual exercise, nothing more. But she was far more sensitive and emotionally fragile.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I
can't. Please, I can't. You're just like him. Please... please.”
“What did he do to you?”
She stopped struggling and looked at him for a long moment as if trying to decide something. “L-let go of me and I'll show you.”
Angel released her and took a step back to give her some space. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.
She turned away and pulled the light blue Nirvana T-shirt off. “Please don't do this. I-I can't go through it again.”
Angel stared in shock at the scars on her back. He shouldn't have been surprised, after all, he knew what Callazaro was into. And her timid behavior and lack of fight when he'd first taken her suggested the same. Yet, seeing it was different. No wonder she was having internal conflicts and fighting her desires. The evidence was painted quite starkly across her back, why she shouldn't give in to men like him.
Long angry whip lashes. It made him want to kill Callazaro all over again. Except more slowly this time. He felt an irrational sense of possession toward her. It offended him that piece of shit had done this to what he increasingly considered his.
She flinched when he ran his fingertips over the marks. “Shhh,” he said. “When he did this to you, was he angry?”
“Y-yes.”
“I don't use that room when I'm angry. It's for pleasure. Not pain. Any pain is mild compared to the pleasure—and it's meant to take you to pleasure. I don't hurt women like that.” He doubted she could understand how pain could become an instrument of pleasure, particularly when it obviously hadn't been used that way with her.
She pulled her shirt back down and turned to face him. “B-but you have whips like Joey.”
“A lot of people have whips. That doesn't mean they are all abusive monsters.”
“But you kill people. How can I trust that?”
He couldn't deny that part. But his work and what he did with women were two completely separate compartments in his life. He didn't even take contracts for women.
Something almost tender overcame him. Suddenly instead of chasing her and making her afraid, he wanted to make her trust him. He wanted her to learn she would be safe if she did. He needed her to see he wasn't Joey and could never be such an out-of-control psychopath.
