The thought of being trapped in the rising water on a boat that couldn’t sail out of the boathouse sent a chill through her, and it was purely an irrational fear of the water, but she couldn’t help the fear just the same. She didn’t have to be a genius to know where it came from, and she backed away carefully as irrational fear took hold of her, and she was suddenly convinced the ocean would come in much stronger than it currently was and sweep her out with it.
She eased back toward the steps, taking three of them before she looked down again. As she surveyed the area, she realized the boathouse was built on an incline, and not near the water’s edge as she had thought. She wasn’t certain if water always remained in there, and perhaps she would feel braver about checking it out if she could get up early enough tomorrow.
The whole structure seemed like an ingenious design when observed from a distance. One could enter the boathouse through the double doors, walk on the platforms she had observed from outside that also went around the boat in the interior, and get on the boat, which was fairly large, but not what she would call it a yacht—though she was certainly no expert.
Once in the boat, there had to be another mechanism or lock on the inside that opened the other set of double doors in front of the boat, allowing the driver to follow the sluice of water downhill and into the ocean beyond. She wondered briefly how one got the boat back up, especially if the water wasn’t approaching at high tide, but as she examined from her perch, she saw a pulley system on the outside of the boathouse and assumed there was a hook below, probably anchored to something so it didn’t wash away. It most likely hooked onto the boat and allowed one person to bring it back up the hill and easily store the vessel in the boathouse again and out of the elements.
If it really was his only mode of transportation off the island, aside from helicopter, he would clearly want to take good care of it. That could work to her advantage, if only she could find a way to hijack the boat, though that brought its own set of fears and worries.
The idea of traveling on open water in the small boat, even for just twenty-six nautical miles, was enough to make sweat bead her brow. The water would be so close, and if the boat failed, or if she fell in, there would be no one to save her there, because he wasn’t likely to join her for her ride to freedom.
Feeling weak and shaky, and hoping it was simply lack of food since the apple had done little to take the edge off her hunger, she made her way up the steps and in the direction of the center of the island, plowing toward the large house with determination. She would endure dinner, because she was starving, and then she’d lock herself in the room she had commandeered and try to devise a firm plan for escape.
When she entered the house, she heard a pan rattle from the kitchen, and the smell of something that seemed divine filled the air. She hesitated before entering the kitchen, since she was still wearing only her sandals. She nibbled her lip as she looked up the stairs and decided to go that way instead.
A few moments later, she entered the room she had taken over as hers and found a stack of boxes and bags on the bed that hadn’t been there before. A quick glance revealed several names with which she was unfamiliar, and a few that even she had heard of, including La Perla. She grimaced at the pile, assuming they were all the lingerie he had mentioned buying for her, and all that she was allowed to wear besides nothing, if she followed his rules.
She wanted to be defiant and pick another one of her own outfits, but she didn’t want it to be cut or torn off her and ruined beyond all repair as the last dress had been. Having him cut off yet another outfit would also leave her naked to him again. Even one of the flimsy pieces of lingerie he’d picked had to be better than that, right?
She sat down on the bed and began sorting through the underwear, nightgowns, and skimpy teddies, some with matching peignoirs and others without even so much as a pair of panties underneath. She hated the circumstances, and she was humiliated at the idea that he had ordered all of these with her in mind, but that didn’t stop the pieces from being beautiful and exquisitely made.
She’d never held anything so pricey in her life, and when she saw a price tag still attached to a sheer pair of underwear that had nothing to them besides mesh and lace, her eyes widened at the amount. She could buy about a hundred pairs of her usual brand of panties for that price. They were gorgeous, but seemed to be ridiculously extravagant for something so insubstantial.
With a shrug, she set them in the Absolutely Not mound, having established three piles. The first were things she would never wear under any circumstances, because they revealed far too much. The second pile were Maybes; things she would wear if she had no other options available; and the last were the ones she was mentally classifying as Acceptable. They were a little more modest than the others and at least gave the pretense of trying to cover her intimate places.
After everything was sorted, she shoved the Absolutely Not pile into a bottom drawer of the empty dresser before filling the second drawer with the Maybe pile, and finally tossing everything into the top drawer that were Acceptable possibilities for wearing—at least until she could find a way to keep her own clothes without getting them cut off of her.
For dinner, she picked a demure white gown and matching peignoir, deciding when she had it on that it wasn’t quite as modest as she had hoped, since the peignoir tied under her breasts, and the nightgown dipped lower than she would like. If she bent over too far, her nipples would pop out, but it was better than nothing at all. With a sigh, she decided it would have to do, since all the other Acceptables were equally immodest.
Anger and anxiety warred for supremacy inside her as she stomped from the room and down the hall, clattering down the stairs with all the stealth of a marching band. It was deliberate, because she wanted him to know how angry she was.
When she strode into the kitchen, Kat froze at the sight before her, so stunned that she didn’t know whether to laugh, ignore it, or make a scathing remark. Declan stood with his back facing her, including his bare ass, with the ties of an apron showing at his lower back and around his neck. When he turned to her a moment later, the comical sight of him wearing a black apron and nothing else made her giddy enough that she felt lightheaded for a moment as she held in a laugh.
Her mirth fled when her gaze settled on the large knife he held in his hand, and she remembered just exactly who was standing in front of her. Even in just an apron and nothing else, she should still be terrified of him, not amused.
He waved the knife in her direction with a casual swish. “Have a seat and pour yourself some wine. Food will be ready in a moment.”
She’d not grown up in a household where manners were important, but Claire Blake had taught her a few over the years she’d lived with them. Her first instinct was to offer to help, but that fled when she reminded herself she wasn’t a guest by her choice, and he could wait on her hand and foot, because she wouldn’t offer to help him with anything.
Taking the suggestion, which was probably more like an order, she went to the table and sat down, grimacing at the small, intimate setting in the kitchen. It was definitely a table built for two, and their knees would likely touch under the table when he joined her. “You don’t have a dining room in a mausoleum like this?”
He didn’t look at her as he continued with whatever he was doing at the stove, but he did nod his head. “No. I mean, of course we have one, but I don’t usually use it. The formal dining room is far too…well, formal, especially for just the two of us. We might redo it when we start having children, to make it a warmer and more inviting place, but that will be a year or two in the future, considering you’ll be breast-feeding for the first few months.”
She glared at him, though he couldn’t see her. “You’re certainly presuming a lot. First of all, I have no intention of giving you any children, and secondly, if I somehow spawned your offspring, I wouldn’t nurture it at my breast.”
His spine stiffened, and his shoulders straightened. �
��You’ll take good care of our children, Kat, and you know it.” With a flourish, he turned toward her, carrying a tray that he placed on the table precisely in the middle. “You’re too kind to do otherwise.”
She rolled her eyes even as her stomach grumbled. “How do you know how kind I am? You don’t know me at all.”
“I know a lot about you. Almost everything. I know you were reaching out to offer me comfort the day the judge dismissed the charges against your father, and that indicates a soft heart.”
“You weren’t holding me captive then, and you certainly didn’t expect me to fall in line with some crazy-ass plan of yours to marry you and give you kids.”
Declan arched a brow as he pulled the lids off the dishes on the tray to reveal some kind of fish, covered with a creamy sauce dotted with capers, and a heaping serving of steamed baby vegetables. “I think you misunderstood me a bit.”
She hesitated as she reached for the plate nearest to her, waiting until he had taken his before doing the same. “How did I misunderstand? Are you not holding me captive on this island because you think I somehow owe you for what my father did to your wife and daughter?”
He lifted his shoulder. “That’s mostly true, but I never said anything about marrying you. I don’t expect you to say ‘I do.’”
For some reason, that offended her. “So now you expect me to be an unwed mother and your slut. I’m so glad we cleared that up.”
He laughed softly. “I can’t marry you, because I can’t trust you to leave the island yet. Someday, when you’ve completely accepted you’re mine, we’ll consider it. In the meantime, there’s no reason to delay starting a family just for an old-fashioned concept. You won’t belong to me anymore with a piece of paper saying you’re mine than you do right now, sitting across from me in your virginal little nightgown.”
His eyes darkened to a steel-gray. “That pleases me, by the way, because that’s the one I’d hoped you would wear on our wedding night.”
She frowned, pausing in the process of bringing a forkful of fish to her mouth. “You just said there wasn’t going to be a wedding night.”
Declan’s eyes smoldered. “No, I said there wasn’t going to be a marriage for a while. We’re definitely having a wedding night.”
“Over my dead body.”
He laughed, looking entirely too confident. “Just wait and see. You’ll come to me.”
“You’re out of your mind, Mulgrew.” She finished bringing the fork to her mouth and briefly closed her eyes at the explosion of flavor on her tongue. For a psycho man with a fetish for abduction, and apparently for performing sex acts in the outdoors on dirty ground, he could certainly cook very well.
“Tell me about your life, Kat.”
“I thought you knew everything about me,” she said sullenly before scooping up another bite of fish.
“I know the general details, but fill me in on the day-to-day. What do you do?”
Feeling ridiculous, but deciding it was a safer topic of conversation than the others they had tackled, she dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin before replying. “Until last week, I attended college and lived in a dorm room, which my foster parents paid for.”
He shook his head. “No, Claire and Clay didn’t pay for all that, sweet Kat.”
She stiffened when he said her foster parents’ names. “They had to have. I was only in their care through the state for a couple of years, and they took on the expenses after that.”
He laughed, and it was a dark sound that sent chills down her spine. “No, they’ve done exactly what I instructed them to do for the last four years. When I realized you were the key, the only link left to Joseph Evans, and that I could get what I wanted from you, I focused all my attention on you. When your term in foster care was almost up, I approached the Blakes about keeping you financially in their care.”
She drew in a ragged breath as pain rippled through her. “You mean Claire and Clay didn’t want me? They were just going to let me leave when I turned eighteen? They only kept me for money?”
Kat wanted to refuse to believe it, remembering how insistent they had been that she stay with them after she’d graduated and turned eighteen, and then helped her get settled in her dorm room right before college started. They had visited her every week, or she had gone to their home to do laundry and all the other “family” things that she had started to take for granted over the past six years. And he was telling her none of it had been real?
He shook his head. “No, I doubt that. I think they were determined to keep you either way, but I simply made it possible for them to do so more comfortably.”
She was still wounded, Raw pain flared inside her as though someone had abraded her nerves with an emery board. “I don’t understand. They didn’t want me until you paid them to keep me?”
He sighed, sounding exasperated. “No, as I said, I simply made it easier for them to do so.”
She shook her head, her mind whirling with confusion. “But why would you do that, and why would they allow it?”
He wore a strange expression, one that was a mix of amusement and perhaps a touch of bitterness. “Let me answer your second question first. They accepted the help because they thought I was an altruistic man, and they were moved by the fact that I cared enough about your fate to want to help you anonymously despite what your father had done to my family.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “They know who you are, and what my father did, and they never questioned your kindness?”
He shook his head. “No, especially not when I told them how kind you had been after the trial, and how upset you were that your father had gotten off. I told them I was concerned about you, so I had kept tabs on you over the last couple of years, and with you coming out of foster care, I wanted to help provide you with a good start in life.”
She shook her head, struggling to take it all in. “Why didn’t you just tell me this?”
His lips tightened. “I’m certain you already know the answer to that. You were too young at eighteen for me to just take you then. You needed time to grow up a little bit. I didn’t want a baby having my babies. Now that you’re a mature woman, the investment has paid off. And I think we both know you would have turned down any offers of assistance from me,” he added with a sly tilt to his mouth. “Too many strings.”
“You’re damn right I would have, and as soon as I get a job, I’m going to start repaying you for your kindness.” The last word practically oozed with bitterness. “You still haven’t explained why you did all that?”
“That’s simple enough. The Blakes are conservative people, and you seemed eager to please them. I knew they would exert a good influence on you, and it would be easier to control your actions. It was also easier to keep tabs on you when I knew exactly where you were…and exactly who you were with.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He winked at her. “You dear friend and roommate Michelle was in my employment for the last four years, and she reported everything back to me. She also did her best to ensure you didn’t get too serious about any boys, because I made that a stipulation. I didn’t want you falling in love with some young fool when you belonged to me.”
A fierce sense of betrayal swept through her as the nights she had talked and giggled with her dorm mate, the times they gone out together, and the friendship she thought they’d had crumbled to dust under the truth. No wonder Michelle had always wanted to do girls’ night out, or even better, girls’ night in. She’d never liked any of the few boyfriends Kat had introduced to her, and she had always encouraged her to focus on studying instead of dating.
At the time, Kat had just assumed Michelle was simply a conscientious academic who cared about her as a friend and wanted to see her succeed too. Now, realizing she’d lived with a spy for the last four years, one who had used her influence to further Declan’s agenda, made her stomach churn with nausea. She pushed away her plate without eating anything else. “H
ow else did you control my life for the last four years?”
He shrugged. “That’s pretty much it, though I have intimidated or paid off a couple of little fuckers to get out of your life when things started to get too serious.”
Through the flash of irritation at the boys being such cowards, and the pain still clinging to her like a shroud, she gave him a simpering smile. “If your goal was to keep me untouched, you failed. I’m certainly not a virgin.”
He didn’t even blink. “I didn’t think you would be. I’m not a virgin either, and the last thing I want to do is break you in physically before I start breaking you. I wanted you to have some experience, and to know what it felt like to have a cock in you before mine entered. I just didn’t want you to get serious about any of those little fuckers and do something impulsive, like elope before you finished college.”
“How I wish I had. I would have married any of them if I’d known it would save me from you.”
He observed her coolly as he finished the vegetables on his plate, not speaking until he had swallowed the last bite. “Sweet, deluded Kat, do you really think I would have let something like that stop me? You could have been married and had little brats of your own, and I still would’ve taken you at the right time. You belong to me, and now, you always will. You wasted the opportunity to have a short-lived average life with any other man, and now you’ll never have the chance again.”
His words shocked her. “You would have torn me away from my own children just to be part of your mad plan, if I’d had any?”
He shrugged. “I might have allowed you to bring them. It’s a moot point, since they don’t exist.”
She couldn’t let it go. “What kind of monster takes a mother away from her children?”
He got to his feet abruptly, the chair screeching against the hardwood floor as he shoved it back quickly enough for it to fall with a crash. “What kind of monster takes a wife and unborn baby away from their family? Your father.” He slammed his hand onto the small table, making the silverware and plates on it clatter together. “We’re arguing over something that didn’t happen. If it had, I would have been no worse than your father.”
Sweet: A Dark Love Story Page 4
