And then... it happened. And my need to understand him became much more than mere curiosity.
After a few days, he had left a package of pills in my room and told me to take them. That was fine by me, of course I would. But the days were dreamlike, so I lost track of time and responsibilities, and he had left the island, posting his silent, morose guards all around the house. He hadn’t been there to check on me, to remind me, and I had missed a day.
And I had missed him. When he returned I had felt a sense of relief. I was still telling myself I hated him, that I would leave as soon as I could find a way to escape, that I was only playing a game to appease him long enough that he would take me off the island and I could escape.
But inside, I felt quite differently, and it wasn’t hard to play that game, and pretend that I wanted him.
I had run to meet him, and we had gotten no further than the living room before we were at it. That time had been different, more like lovemaking than just sex, and as soon as he closed his eyes and gripped my hair tightly, pumping my body full of his seed, I knew. I just knew. The mistake had made me pregnant. I could feel it.
I had toyed with the idea of taking extra pills. The girls at Kitty Bang Bang had pulled that one a dozen times at the club. It made you sick as hell, sure, but it was a solution.
And I couldn’t have this crazy man’s baby. Could I?
But days went by, and I let the pills pile up. At first, I decided I would save up ten or so, and make myself really ill by using them all at once, aborting the baby and getting a doctor to come.
But they piled up, and I didn’t take them. To myself I would say that I was afraid—afraid of being sick, out here so far away, where I depended on him to get me a doctor.
But the real reason was something else, and deep down inside I knew it: I didn’t want to. I wanted his child growing inside of me, because I also wanted him.
And he didn’t help. A change seemed to come over him. He was still prone to sudden withdrawals, deep inside himself, but he didn’t get as dark as he used to, tying me to hooks in the ceiling and whipping me until my whole bottom felt like it was on fire, before pushing me into one of his contraptions to immobilize me, ass in the air, hands between my legs, to take me over and over again however he wanted.
And after a while, even though I wasn’t showing, it was too late. I knew I couldn’t do it.
And that gave me a whole different set of problems.
More than once or twice, while we were enjoying dinner in the open, breezy dining room on the third floor, looking out over the water with candles and some delicious fish he had procured, I came close to telling him. It would be on the tip of my tongue, but the cold, choking feeling in my chest would not let me say it. I told myself that I wanted to keep the secret, but really, in the end, I think I was too afraid to hear him say that he didn’t want it. I wanted to drag out my fantasy that he cared for me, that the tender man inside of him was the real man, as long as I could.
He wasn’t, and I found that out soon enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Alaric
I knew the next day.
I had been consumed by thoughts of her the entire week that I was gone. This was not a good way to be. I am a mercenary, and I have loyalties—purchased loyalties, but loyalties nonetheless—to the men under my command, wherever that may be, and for whatever reason they served. It’s a code, and a man has to have a code.
Nothing bad happened on that mission, but I wasn’t my professional best. Natalia stole something from the thrill of the job and turned it empty and sour. She was eating into my thoughts, stirring up a conscience, making me second-guess the things I was doing.
And distracting me. Distracting me so much.
I was angry just before I saw her. The anger that gnawed at me whenever I felt that she was cracking through my exterior, making me weak, taking my single greatest source of strength—my independence—away.
I was going to make her suffer that night. I could already envision the devices I would use on her, forcing open her every hole and using her over and over again until she was nothing but a powerless, limp rag, filled with my cum, spanked into submission, unable to walk straight.
But then I saw her there, descending the steps, and my body was seized by a different feeling entirely.
I tried to take her to my special room, but I wanted her before I got there. Differently.
And she took away all the control I had, that night.
So when I saw her the next morning, and I saw the glow on her skin, read the strangeness in her eyes, I knew. I knew that she knew, and I knew for sure—the passionate lovemaking on the couch had left my seed inside of her, and she was pregnant.
I was gripped by fear, as deep as it could go. Fear like I had never felt before, because now, suddenly, the idea of losing Natalia had become fathoms more deeply unbearable. Even thinking of it drove me to a state of madness, where my thoughts became disorderly and I could only feel: where I might have died inside if anything had happened to Natalia before, I now felt like I would burn the whole world if anything happened to her now.
And I knew that I would do anything to protect her, and there was no more chance of that wearing off, someday, as I had been, I suppose, hoping I would eventually feel.
I decided to wait for her to tell me. Surely she would—surely she would have to.
And in the meantime, we continued to make love so much like what had gotten me into this mess. We had dinner together, and she would decline the wine, or take a mere sip and no more, and at times the wind would pick up in her hair and her eyes would be wide and moist, and I thought that she wanted to tell me her secret.
But she didn’t.
When I found her stockpile of pills I was unsure what to make of it. She had obviously stopped taking them—which gripped me with fear and elation, because it meant my suspicions were right.
But why stockpile them?
That’s why I brought Eric in. A doctor, a man who owed me favors as profound as the ones I had owed to Kyril. I had saved his life and saved his favor for when I needed a discreet surgeon.
One who could be trusted.
A man doesn’t get many favors like that in his lifetime; they’re not to be squandered.
But I was going to use them on her.
“If you don’t want her to abort the child, replace the pills,” Eric advised me, without asking questions. He sent me a stockpile of placebos. I knew what he meant: I couldn’t trust her.
I deliberated over it for a long time, while she lay in the shade on the beach.
In the end, I left the pills.
A woman who declines wine and stays in the shade when she loves the sun is not saving pills to kill her baby. Or at least, she is undecided.
And wasn’t this what I wanted all along? For her to come to me of her own volition? It meant nothing to me if I forced her. I could, it was within my power.
But something about that sort of victory was too hollow for me, and it did nothing to fill the void that seemed to be growing every day.
Chapter Eighteen
Natalia
I knew that he was growing suspicious of me. So when the brown-haired man with glasses and a straight, military posture arrived at the island, and Alaric took the time to introduce me to him, I knew something was up.
He even invited the man—Eric, no last name given, a faint accent in his voice as well—to dinner, and it surfaced that Eric had been a medic, in some mysterious time and some mysterious war that no one ever got around to explaining to me. I knew he was more than a medic; he was a doctor, and Alaric was introducing him to me so that when he examined me I would not be afraid.
At first I was pissed off.
But then it occurred to me that it was a roundabout way of getting what I wanted; I could find out what Alaric’s reaction would be without having to tell him myself. And then I would know what to do. I could save myself the potentially crushing experience of him loo
king at me across the table, disappointment falling over his face, and then telling me to get rid of it.
We had a nice time, even taking a sailboat out of the cove and into the blue waters, where there was nothing but ocean and us. Weeks before it would have been depressing to me, suffocating even, to be sailing out in the endless blue, with no way home and no land in sight, nothing but Alaric to keep me from disappearing into the water.
Instead, it was a beautiful day, and he was in one of those moods where he looked at me with tenderness. With the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, I could almost imagine that everything could work out, that I could have the baby of a man like Alaric, whatever he did, whoever he was. Watching him trim the sails, feeling his hand on my arm as he caught me when the boat tipped and I slipped, feeling his chest as he pulled me close... I was swept up. Did it matter what kind of man he was to anyone except me?
I started to feel like I could tell him, like I could divulge my secret.
We arrived late; the sun had long since set, and the two of them had caught several fish they were going to cut up into ceviche. I never got out much, and I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to eat raw fish when you’re pregnant, so I put on my best smile and shook my head. “I don’t think I’m brave enough for that,” I told him.
“No,” he said, almost too suddenly. “No, of course, we’ll grill it.”
I was tired. I had gotten too much sun, even though Alaric had thoughtfully brought sunscreen and helped me apply it, and I had been wearing a hat.
“The water makes you tired,” Eric said, as my eyes grew heavy. They were into the whiskey, and I had taken a sip of my white wine for show. “Oh, man,” I said, feeling too drowsy to stay up. “I think I have to go to bed...”
Alaric took me upstairs, carrying me the last flight of steps. I was going to make a sarcastic remark, but instead I just smiled at him. When he lay me down in bed, he kissed my forehead. His lips were warm and dry, and my eyes felt heavier as I thought of the satisfaction I felt at that moment. “Get some rest,” he said. “Maybe you need a break from the sun tomorrow.”
I fell asleep, feeling warm and hopeful, the idea that I could find a way to be happy with him—and he with me, maybe—lifting my dreams into feathery fantasies.
I woke up because I was cold. The window was open, and as happened often, the ocean breeze had gotten chilly. A storm was gathering in the distance.
Stories below, the glow of the torches that lit the patio where we had been preparing the fish were still flickering and I could hear the low voices of Eric and Alaric. I wondered what time it was; it seemed late.
I became thirsty, and it was overwhelming. Usually there was a pitcher of water in the room, brought by maids I almost never saw and who quite obviously wouldn’t have been able to talk to me even if they had wanted to. Curiously, none of them seemed to be from the same place, and they rotated out frequently, which was one of the many aspects of Alaric’s home that made me uneasy.
But there was no water here. I’d have to go downstairs.
I decided to creep down there. It might have been true that I was going down there for water, but it was also true that I relished the chance to eavesdrop. Alaric was obviously old friends with this guy; I had seen him interact only with people who were his employees, or with Andrej. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to see what he was like to someone who was a friend.
Their conversation seemed light enough as I approached. I even heard Eric laugh, and so I crept ever closer, from the living room side of the house. They were speaking in low voices, so I had to creep behind the low stucco wall to hear them.
My feet got tired from crouching after just a few minutes, and I couldn’t really understand what they were talking about, anyway. Names and places, none of them recognizable. The kind of banter between old friends—“Have you heard from Bryce, do you know whatever happened to Ryker?” I got bored, and I was getting ready to go to the kitchen for my water, when there was a pregnant silence, and then Eric took a deep breath.
“Tell me why I’m here, mate.”
I froze. I knew, somehow, that it had something to do with me. Eric’s tone didn’t sound good.
I heard the strike of a match, and on its heels the scent of a cigarette wafted over the wall.
“I told you.”
That was Alaric. His voice—cheery just moments before—had gone cold.
There was another silence.
“I need a favor.”
Eric let out a sigh. “I got that much, mate. What I don’t understand is what you’re spending your credit on, exactly.”
There was a silence.
“Tell me it isn’t her.”
“You know it is.”
“Mate, look. You know you’ve got whatever you want coming from me... but it’s... you can take care of this kind of thing...” His voice grew lower.
They spoke some more, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I thought I heard someone mention Lucy, and my heart skipped a beat.
The scuffle of two men fighting interrupted the ever-spiraling lowering of voices. I gripped the wall, wondering what I would do if this degenerated into a full-blown fight. But it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
A long conversation I couldn’t hear ensued, so low I couldn’t discern who was talking. When I finally understood a sentence, almost five minutes later, it was a hiss, and it turned me to stone with fear.
“Get rid of her. Get rid of Lucy. Get rid of her... at least get rid of the baby.”
The ground swirled beneath my feet.
The voices dropped off into unintelligible mumbles again, as I slumped to the floor.
I don’t know how long I was there, my hands on the stone.
I had been so wrong, all along.
A sob threatened to erupt from inside of me. I was so stupid.
And not only was I stupid, I was in danger.
I’d screwed up enough times in my life to know how this went. Even though this particular screw-up was cutting deeper than I had thought possible, I still had an instinct for survival.
Of course he was a bad man—he’d said so himself. Of course he was. He was rich, and like my friend Laura had said so many times: there’s nobody rich who ain’t stealin from somebody.
The richer men are, the meaner they are.
That’s another one that went around Kitty Bang Bang.
I was starting to think I should have listened better to those girls.
Think, I thought. My heart stopped for a moment, and for a few seconds I was sure the pain of realizing I was an idiot was going to consume me.
But I wasn’t going down like that.
All this time, even as I’d let myself slide into this life, I supposed I had never really believed in it. So I’d noticed a few things: the fishing village, off to the east of the island. Miles and miles away, but it was there.
I’d noticed that you could push a boat out of the cove while still standing in the shallow water.
I’d noticed that you could run a boat without sailing it, which is what we’d done all the way back that afternoon.
I wasn’t big on adventure, never had been.
Maybe there is something that kicks in when you’re pregnant, even if you’ve just been forced to consider that the man whose baby you have is going to try to kill you and you probably don’t want it anyway.
Who knows?
All I knew was, an hour later, I was as awake as I’d ever been in my life, waist deep in cool water in the pitch black, edging the sailboat toward the mouth of the cove. Slowly, because I knew that there were guards there, but I also knew that they watched the sky and the water far, far out, because those were the only ways anyone could get to the island.
The sailboat proved too heavy. And that’s when I remembered the raft at the back of it.
I was never particularly resourceful, but out there in the pitch black, I managed to wrestle the boat free from the deck and get it into the water, a
nd then I even thought to take water and a lifejacket with me. The raft had a motor, which I felt I would figure out how to use.
I even tied the sailboat to a rock—not very well—before leaving.
Last thing I needed was for him to get mad that I’d wrecked his boat.
And then, in the pitch-black night, as scared as I’ve ever been in my life, I paddled out to the open water.
Very promptly, I regretted what I had done.
The water outside the cove was choppy and tossed me around so that I lost my sense of direction almost immediately.
The lights of the house appeared first on the left, then the right, and I paddled, spinning, and lost my way completely.
Dark clouds had been enclosing all night, and now they swallowed the sea in every direction—including the dim lights of the fishing village.
The house was suddenly very far away.
I could go back, I thought.
But then I would be dead.
The thin line of the horizon began to turn navy blue, and my heart filled with hope. The storm would pass, in the daylight I would be able to see the ocean, and then I would know which way I had gone, and I would make it to the fishing village.
Only the sky grew light so slowly, and when I could finally see all around me, I spun and spun my gaze around, twisting to see in every direction, the boat swirling on the still water with my movement.
There was nothing in sight at all but ocean.
“Okay,” I said quietly to myself, the seriousness of my situation slowly washing over me. How stupid had I been? I didn’t know anything about the water, or boats, or where I was, or... anything. I had watched Deep Water, though, and right about now I was pretty sure that’s what I was in.
Deep, deep shit.
“Okay,” I repeated, as my eyes welled up with tears.
What were my choices? Row, and maybe row out to sea, further away than I wanted to go? Or just float, and hope I washed up somewhere?
Really, this had been so, so stupid. What had I been thinking? The lights had seemed so easy to follow.
I cried for a while, and then I ran out of tears. The sun started blaring down on me, and I felt terrible. I was thirsty but I didn’t dare drink any water until the last possible minute. I was probably getting a sunburn.
His for the Taking Page 11
