by Jesse Joren
"Okay, question number two," I said with sarcastic emphasis. "What have you done with the stuff in my apartment?"
"Except for the clothes I burned, everything is still there. Rent is all the owner cares about, and he's still getting that. You never should have lived there. Shitty security, way too easy to breach."
Yeah. Tell me about it.
"I love that apartment," I protested, and it was true.
Sure it was old and shabby, but I loved my place on the quiet street, the huge old oak outside my bedroom window. It was large, close to MARTA, and most importantly, cheap. Atlanta wasn't easy for girls living on receptionist salaries.
So Hex was holding the apartment for me. That meant he was planning to let me go at some point, right?
Or maybe it's window dressing to keep anyone from looking for you. That's exactly how devious he is.
Now I had an answer, but I didn't know what it meant. That was how everything went with Hex. At least my apartment wasn't gone, shabby or not.
"Go ahead," he said, smiling at me over the rim of his glass. "Ask. Get it over with."
A third question. I didn't really have one formed yet, but while I was thinking, my mouth decided to hijack my brain.
"Is anyone looking for me?"
As soon as the words left my lips, I regretted it.
You think he's going to answer that? You just wasted your third question, honey.
"Not exactly," he said, and my heart sank. It didn't feel like a lie.
"But," he went on, "don't confuse that with not being missed. You are, by your co-workers, your boss, your family. Your best friend in particular."
Natalie.
Her pretty face flashed in my mind, framed by long dark hair and punctuated by her trademark sardonic grin. A punch of almost physical pain seemed to land right in my gut.
"You're blowing smoke up my ass," I said with a poor attempt at a laugh. "There's no possible way you can know that."
"You're not the only person I've monitored, Eva," he said, as casual as if discussing the weather. "Conversations, emails, actions. They all tell me something. Instinct fills in the rest."
So I wasn't the only one who'd been compromised. That guess had been lurking in a dark corner of my mind, but it was no comfort to have it confirmed.
"And for the record," he said in a softer tone, "I know exactly how she feels. I'd miss you if you went away from me."
That should have made some part of me shrivel up in fear. It was a psycho thing for him to say – but that hot-and-cold scene at the sink came back to me in all its wet glory.
I swallowed hard enough to hear the dry click in my throat.
"There will be another surprise tomorrow," Hex went on, saving me from an answer.
A groan escaped me before I could stop it. "I'm not up for any more surprises," I said.
His wicked grin returned, making his face even more irresistible.
"I guarantee you'll like this surprise," he said, "but odds are that you'll hate me tomorrow anyway."
"I hate you now," I muttered, stabbing the last piece of chicken harder than was really necessary.
"Look me in the face and tell me that," he challenged.
"I'm eating," I said, keeping my eyes on my plate. Even so, I saw a glimpse of that grin, his eyes lit up and glowing.
God damn it. It wasn't fair.
CHAPTER FOUR
By late the following morning, I realized that Hex might be a fortune-teller as well as a stalker. I did hate him, no matter how great he'd fed me the night before.
I was wearing the clothes he brought last night, and once again they were as wet as if I'd bathed in them. My hair was stuck to my head in a moist helmet.
Sweat was my sworn enemy, but here I was again on the despised bike. My muscles were yelling their disapproval, not that it was doing them any good.
The bike had ambushed me as soon as I came downstairs, blinking away and promising trouble.
50 MILES
SAME REWARDS AS BEFORE
PLUS SURPRISE
Okay, I felt like crap, but I probably could do this even though I was moving like a crippled crab this morning.
While I slept, Hex had left a large glass bowl of mixed berries on the table, along with a smaller bowl of still-warm fresh granola. There were also two Advil that I immediately swallowed.
Downstairs it only took a few minutes to wash my face and brush my hair. The bathroom situation still pissed me off. There was nothing I could do about it.
Every bite I took was juicy and crunchy and totally delicious. My pleasure was overshadowed by the bike sitting there smirking at me. I glared at it over my coffee, wishing for a way to destroy it.
Did you think he was going to let you off easy? You better just get ready for a sore ass today.
The Advil would kick in, and the food would give me strength. How hard could it be when I had all day?
Two hours later I had an answer, and it wasn't pretty.
I had been cruising along pretty good. The bike seat was motionless today, which helped a lot. No dictates on speed. Good enough.
The digital display had hovered briefly at 14.9 MILES. A large chunk done, and I still had good energy in the tank. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, though the "surprise" still worried me.
Then the screen went blank, even though my legs were still pedaling. A new message appeared.
OOPS
START OVER
The miles I'd so painfully accumulated were wiped out. The hateful readout showed zero again.
I scrambled off the bike, ready to scream. Or cry. Or commit murder. Oops? I was going to give him some oops when he showed up.
Round two could wait. It was early for lunch, but screw it. With no finesse I ripped into the box left on the table. A chicken salad sandwich with grapes and pecans, a huge mixed salad with oil and vinegar, a few precious crackers.
I scarfed every crumb and washed things down with two glasses of water. Then I sat at the table, brooding.
Once again, I'd been had. What could I do but perform? It's not like I had anywhere else I was going.
"Asshole," I muttered. It seemed to be my new mantra.
I climbed back on the bike and began to peddle. My body promised deeper revenge tomorrow, and I could hardly blame it. I wanted revenge myself.
My eyes closed for just a moment. I was too tired now to fight off the thoughts that suddenly swooped to attack me.
That shocking, intimate bath rose up again to haunt me again. The independent side of me was more than a little disgusted. How willingly I'd given in, with nothing even close to a struggle.
You should be ashamed.
Greater than shame was the rush of sensuality that swept over me again. Before I had surrendered to Hex, the impressive hardness hidden by his jeans was better than any lie detector test.
He wanted me.
Me. Eva Bright. The girl who wasn't a business mogul, a model, or an athlete. The girl with kinky fantasies that would stun all of her friends, but who was almost still a virgin.
Of course he was turned on. You didn’t have to be a mogul or a model. You were exactly what he wanted. A victim.
How I wanted that voice to be wrong. To believe it was something more. That what I saw in Hex's eyes wasn't just driven by power, but by some tiny sliver of real passion for me.
You're heading straight for Stockholm Syndrome.
My legs were flagging. Those trick fifteen miles were going to turn this into a sixty-five-mile ride that would probably take until early evening.
Until Hex showed up and gave me whatever surprise he'd promised. There was no use denying it. Some part of me wondered if it would be another bath at his hands.
My inner voice made a retching noise and retreated, leaving me with miles to go before I could rest.
Hours later,
I screamed in primal triumph. Not for one second longer would I stay on the torture bike. I was starved, but the box was empty. I got some water and went downstairs to see if there was anything left in the little stone springhouse that served as a crude refrigerator.
One cup of apricot yogurt was left, along with some string cheese. Other than the bags of whey in the pantry, there was no other food in the house.
For the first time that really sank in. What if those bags disappeared? Hex had told me early on that the cabin would open in three days without a code…but what if he chose to deliberately-on-purpose forget me?
Maybe it would be wise to start saving part of whatever food was brought. I didn't want to become a hoarder, and I didn't want to think that of Hex, no matter how strange all of this was.
Like Scarlett O'Hara, I vowed to think about that tomorrow.
The yogurt and cheese quieted the lion in my stomach. But all at once, in the aftermath of the grueling session on the bike, my eyes refused to stay open.
A vague plan to take a sponge bath had crossed my mind, but now that seemed like too much trouble. I limped upstairs to the second floor to my bare bedroom, flopping across the wide bed. A power nap sounded good. I would hear Hex when he opened the door.
But I underestimated my level of exhaustion. Sleep claimed me at once, until a warm tongue touched my face.
CHAPTER FIVE
Doesn't the weird ever stop in this place?
Being licked awake seemed too far out there, even for Hex, plus the rough texture wasn't human. A cautious meow sounded near my ear.
I opened my eyes to find a familiar feline face close to mine. Wide green eyes, calico markings.
"Roxy?" I whispered, wondering if this was some wisp of a dream. "Is that you?"
That little meow sounded again as she recognized her name.
With great care I sat up to find Roxy on my chest, claws dug into my shirt and refusing to let herself be dislodged. I put my arms around her, feeling the stiffness in her body.
She was pitifully thin, every rib easy to feel under her fur. One ear looked half-healed, as though something had tried to chew it off.
Battered or not, she was still Roxy. Somehow after all of these months, she was here. She blinked up at me, closed her eyes, and purred.
How many times had I seen her sprawled on Michael's chest, at his feet, in his lap? He used to complain that she was like an overly attached girlfriend, but he loved all that adoration.
Tears flooded my eyes.
"How did you get here, you little furball?" I nuzzled against her neck, noticing a faint antiseptic smell.
"Maybe you better ask me instead. Her English seems pretty limited."
Hex was coming up the stairs, looking quite pleased with himself. Roxy meowed in greeting, but she didn't leave me.
"What do you think of the surprise?" he asked, sprawling on the floor beside the bed.
"Free questions, right?"
"About her, yes. Ask away."
"How did you even know about her? Much less find her?" I asked.
Hex glanced at me sideways.
"You started talking once on the way here," he said. "I thought you were awake, then I realized you were still half under. You told me about Roxy, about your mother giving her away. You don't remember?"
I didn't, but the facts didn't change. Neither did the anger that rushed over me as I remembered why Roxy was gone in the first place.
Two years before, my brother Michael was killed in a freak accident while rock climbing in North Carolina. How quickly he was gone. Just one phone call, and my life was shattered.
The funeral still haunted me. Stormy Alabama August afternoon. A closed casket. A couple hundred people. Everyone crying except our mother, cold as a stone.
That was a Sunday. I left for Atlanta with a promise to be back on Wednesday to help sort Michael's things.
But when I returned, every trace of him gone. His little studio apartment behind the house had become just one more unit in my mom's bed and breakfast.
Nothing was left of him. His clothes were gone. All his sports gear. Books, pictures, everything, swept away like he'd never been. Annette's face held no expression when she told me it all went to Goodwill.
Worst of all, Roxy had vanished without a trace. She had been sent packing via a Craiglists ad. There was no information about the people who took her.
Annette and I had never really seen eye-to-eye, even if she was my mother. It was nothing like the cold fury I felt on seeing that stripped apartment.
I'd roared out of Alabama in a high state of piss-off and hadn't talked to her since.
All I had left of Michael was the lynx-claw pendant he always wore on a fine silver chain around his neck. I had refused to let it be buried with him, taking it with me to Atlanta. Thank god, or it would have been gone too.
It was my only physical reminder of the brother I had loved so dearly. Sometimes it felt like the best part of me left with him.
"Are you sure this isn't more of your spying?" I said. "I don't remember waking up."
"You said he named her Roxymusic after the band in the seventies," Hex said. "I'm a good guesser, but not that good."
"Okay, I guess I told you that," I admitted. "But how did you find her? Annette didn't even remember the name of the people who took her."
"They used email to answer her Craigslist ad," Hex said, reaching to scratch behind Roxy's ears.
"Those emails would only be on her computer. Even then they'd be anonymous," I persisted.
Hex shrugged.
"If someone has the means and the desire, nothing is anonymous," he said. "I was already in the area for other reasons, anyway."
Like stealing a worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, maybe?
What else had he done while he was there? Annette and I were on the outs, but that didn't mean I wanted her stalked too. There was a brief, charged silence.
"So you showed up and they just gave her to you?" I asked at last.
"No, I just took her. Saving her from being shut indoors with three slobbering boxers was doing her a favor."
He touched her injured ear.
"She needed a little patching up," he said. "At least here she won't be a chew toy."
That explained the smell of antiseptic. Once again my blood boiled. Couldn't Annette have given Roxy to me, or at least checked out the people taking her?
"Was she worth the little trick I played on you?" Hex asked.
Roxy's sudden reappearance had distracted me. Now I remembered what was on my mind before I slept.
"Why didn't you just say sixty-five miles to start with?" I asked. "Are you just underhanded and devious by nature?"
"Ouch," he said, not looking injured in the least. "Let me ask you a question. What if you'd read that screen and it said sixty-five miles?"
"I would still have done it. You didn't have to trick me."
The words felt like a lie, even to me.
"Nope. You wouldn't even have tried, no matter what clothes or food or punishments were on the table. You had to be pushed too far in to quit."
Part of me squirmed at how well he'd read me. That was exactly why I kept going.
"I don't understand," I said, "what's the point of any of this."
Hex leaned back on his elbows. "No point in what?"
"Why I'm here at all. This doesn't make any sense to me. This cabin, the exercise, the French, Roxy. None of it."
"It may never make sense to you," he said. "You don't have to understand it, but I have my plan, and we're going to follow it."
Roxy began to knead her claws into my leg. Her purr still sounded like a rusty motor.
"So if you won't tell me why I'm here, then tell me why she is," I said.
"Do you want to know badly enough to use one of your questions for tonight? She already cost you a lot of miles. Is she worth it?"
I thought about t
hat for a moment. "Yeah, I think she is."
"Because both of you needed saving," he said. "You from yourself. Roxy from that family of asshats."
He concentrated his scratches under her chin, and his next words were very casual.
"Half-awake or not, your pain when you talked about her was very real. Nothing is going to hurt you while you're with me."
"Except maybe you," I said.
"Maybe," he said, glancing at me with a smile. "And sometimes that's going to be exactly what you want."
There was no denying the truth of that.
"I have two more questions tonight," I said. "No games, no waiting all through supper. Just plain answers."
He didn't move where he sprawled, so casual and sexy there in the floor.
"You've said that you're holding me until I'm safe," I said. "How will I know when that's happened?"
"I have no idea."
"Safe from what?" I pressed, not caring that I was burning my last hard-won question. "Anyone looking at this would say that you're the thing that's dangerous."
His gray eyes took on that gleam that I had come know meant that he was trying not to laugh.
"Do you feel in danger from me?" he asked.
"I don't exactly feel safe," I mumbled, looking down at Roxy.
"That's not the same thing," he said.
He had a point. Even though he pissed me off, even though I was a prisoner here, I felt safe with him.
Physically, at least.
JUNE 30
CHAPTER SIX
My breakfast of egg white frittata and strawberry muffins had tasted great going down. Now they were twisting into a sticky glob in my belly.
I stared at the terse message on the bike screen.
100 MILES
QUIT ANY TIME
NATALIE PAYS
My time at the cabin had started to feel like an eccentric health spa, led by the hottest, most mysteriously motivated coach on the planet. My fear of punishment had faded. The workouts were hard, the mental challenges growing by the day.
In spite of the insanity of this situation, Hex had made no move to harm me. Each day convinced me that he wouldn't. In spite of the grueling demands, he kept me mostly comfortable.
