by P. J. Fox
This—bond—wasn’t something she wanted.
“Good morning,” he said.
She didn’t respond.
“We’re going out.”
“Why?” she blurted, before she could stop herself.
“Don’t you want to go out? Spend some time outdoors in the sunshine?”
“No,” she said. Although she did. Desperately. Just not with him.
The previous night had been confusing. More confusing than what he’d done had been her response to it. Her entirely unexpected response.
Worse than their physical intimacy was what felt, at times, like something dangerously close to emotional intimacy. She’d never admit this to him, and she had trouble admitting it to herself, but she’d wanted him. She’d come on to him at dinner. She’d known exactly what she was doing when she held that spoon to her lips, flicking just the tip of her tongue back and forth across its surface. And when he’d asked her to kiss him, she had. And when he’d told her that he was going to tie her up, she’d agreed. Even though her consent hadn’t been strictly necessary, she’d given it nonetheless.
And what had followed had been mind-blowing.
Afterward, they’d talked. Actually talked. Like two real people who had something to say to each other. He was right: she was a different person, when she forgot to be scared.
She just wasn’t sure that she wanted to be that person. She resented him for trying to make her become that person. This was his influence! Left to her own devices, back at school, she never would have let him or any man do these things to her. Let alone enjoyed them. But trapped here, separated from anything that would give her a sense of perspective, almost anything could grow to seem normal.
The part of her that didn’t resent him resented herself, and worried that she was losing herself completely. Six months from now, if she was even still alive, would she be a sex-crazed maniac? Sleeping with his friends? With total strangers? Performing in front of a web cam? None of it seemed possible but—last night hadn’t seemed possible, either.
Before it happened.
“Well,” he replied, unmoved, “we’re going out.”
She tensed. She couldn’t help herself. “Where?”
He affected not to notice her response. “To a café.” He turned, and then stopped at the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes,” he said, as though her doing as he’d asked was a foregone conclusion. And then he was gone, and she was alone in her room.
In her cell.
FORTY
“It’ll be fun,” he said.
He held open the door to the car, a sleek, rounded thing that looked like no car she’d ever seen before. It looked like a crouching predator, all bunching curves pregnant with the promise of a sudden explosion into action. A single fluid mass, rather than the static planes she’d come to associate with mechanical equipment. The cars she’d grown up with were inert, waiting for a human hand to guide them. This looked like it might spring to life on its own. It frightened her. She hesitated.
He waited. His expression was faintly bemused, almost as if he knew what she was thinking.
The moment held. Then, flustered, she looked down. The interior of the car was black, like the exterior. She put a foot inside and then sank down into the deeply canted bucket seat, feeling as she did so like she was being swallowed whole. Expensive, new-smelling leather encased her like the walls of a womb. This wasn’t a car, it was an alien environment. The central control panel looked both strangely retro, and like the control panel that one might see in some futuristic fighter jet. Or space ship.
The door slammed shut, making her jump.
Seconds later, the driver’s side door opened and Ash slung himself inside with a practiced ease. He wasn’t a short man, and she’d wondered briefly how he’d fit. But the car seemed made for him. He switched on the ignition and, all around her, the beast roared into life.
Vibrating with repressed energy.
Like Ash.
He turned, regarding her coolly with his intelligent eyes. “Yes?”
“What is it?”
He put the car in gear with a similarly practiced, graceful motion and she gasped as they shot forward. There was had been no sense of acceleration; they were simply moving. She gripped her knees in an unconscious expression of fear. She had her seatbelt on, but was somehow doubtful that the thin band offered much protection.
He drove like a demon. She realized, with something like shock, that she’d never seen him drive before. They shot down the straight drive like a bullet fired from a gun. Ash shifted again, his long, patrician fingers relaxed on the shift knob. They flew past the statues that lined the drive at intervals, many of which must be priceless and yet had been left out here to weather the elements. Each had been placed on a tall plinth. Grecian faces observed them as coolly as Ash had observed her. Their fine features were somehow disapproving. Of her, of Ash, she didn’t know.
They reached the end of the drive. Accelerating into the turn, he swooped right with a ferocity that made Belle’s stomach lurch. She felt like she was on a roller coaster. Growing up, she’d been terrified of them, but had ridden them all the same. To prove something to her friends, she thought. But most of all, to prove something to herself.
She hadn’t been on a roller coaster in years, at this point, but she could still remember that awful, sinking feeling of creeping toward the crest of that first rise. A feeling she’d had now for weeks. She folded her hands in her lap in a conscious effort at self control, and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t about to die.
Ash braked late, as the turn opened out onto the main road that ran through the mountains. And then they were away from the castle, out in the open and surrounded by breathtaking scenery. The same world out of time that had captivated her when she’d first come here. The riot of color around them was stunning, the mountains having settled into true fall. Green still competed, in places, but the sloping fields had begun to take on a burnt orange cast. Brooks cut them like quicksilver ribbons.
“You love it here,” she said without thinking.
“Yes.”
“It must be very different from your home.”
He laughed without mirth. “What home?” And then he changed the subject. “To answer your question, this is a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. It’s the fastest street legal production car in the world, with a top speed of 431 kilometers per hour.” He recited these facts with confidence, but without pride. As though they bored him. Or he bored himself.
“This particular car was designed for me.”
“How much did it cost?” she asked, genuinely curious.
He glanced over at her for a split second, before returning his eyes to the road. He was focusing on the road when he answered. “Three million euros,” he said.
“So this isn’t the sort of thing you can pick up at a showroom.”
A brief smile quirked at the corner of his lip. “No.”
“Why do you want it?”
“The engineer, Jens Schulenburg, claims that the engine consumes more oxygen in an hour than the average human being does in a month, and that at full throttle it consumes an entire tank of gas within eight minutes.”
Which didn’t seem very practical to Belle. Especially living in a place like this, where there didn’t appear to be gas stations. What would he do if he ran out? Call Alec? Somehow, Ash didn’t seem like the kind of man who could bring himself to ask anyone for help, no matter how dire the situation.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But why do you want it?”
He checked and brought the car down into a lower gear as they swept around the curve of a mountain. Exposed rock reared up on all sides. Far below, a cottager and his children moved around like ants. Their cottage, with its thatched roof, looked like something from the middle ages. There was some sort of sheep dog, too, Belle saw: just a white dot now, and gone. She’d known what it was, because it moved like a dog.
She missed pets.
Ash didn’t have pets, except for her.
She didn’t think he was going to answer her, and then he spoke. “Because it’s the best,” he said simply.
“And you need everything to be the best.”
“Don’t you?”
“What I need hardly matters,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. She couldn’t help herself. Why this pretense that she was even allowed to have needs? No one had questioned that she might, since the moment she arrived. No. Since the moment this man had bought her at auction. Like—like some sort of piece of furniture.
“If there are things you want, and you don’t ask for them, then you have no one to blame but yourself.”
He spoke as though this were the most reasonable—and obvious—point in the world. Belle felt her pulse begin to quicken, and her face flush. Anger and arousal mimicked each other, came the unwanted thought. She squeezed her hands into fists, fighting down the urge to scream. To launch herself at him, clawing and biting. She was afraid that they’d overshoot the road and soar out into space, to crash in a fiery apocalypse in the fields below.
“Your statement,” she grated, “presumes that asking would produce results.” She paused, gathering herself. “I remember reading, at school, about behavioral conditioning in rats. The rats were presented with a pedal that, every time it was depressed, dispensed cheese.
“Then, the rats were presented with a different pedal. One that, every time it was depressed, dispensed an electric shock. Eventually, the rats learned not to press the pedal. To depress any pedal, no matter what it promised to dispense.”
“What happened to the rats?”
“They all died of starvation.”
The silence stretched. For a long time, there was only the roar of the motor. And then, finally, “and you feel that this is what I’ve done.”
Belle didn’t respond.
“Is there anything you need?”
“Like what?” she asked, her tone caustic.
The leather-lined pod of an interior had begun to feel claustrophobic, the new car smell overwhelming. She was painfully conscious of the fact that the clothing she was wearing wasn’t her own. It wasn’t as bad as some of the things she’d been given, some of which were little more than bits of string. Ash was a fan of sheer lace, and although he’d let her choose her own costumes so far, he’d suggested the previous evening that there was no need for her to wear so much around the house. Evidently the thought of his own servants ogling her naked body didn’t bother him. What was she, after all, except one more servant?
She’d picked out the clothes that covered the most: a skirt cut from some luxuriant wool that emphasized her scant curves, a thin shirt, and a camel-colored cardigan with a black lace overlay around the collar. The skirt was charcoal gray. She was wearing high heeled peep-toe shoes that were, surprisingly, not as uncomfortable as she would have guessed.
She was covered up enough, but she still felt naked. Naked and exposed and dreadfully unhappy. She was painfully conscious, every time she moved, of just how tight the skirt was. Not too small; it was meant to cling like this. She had nothing in her closet that could be considered sexless although much of the choices, like this, were technically modest.
Going into her closet frightened her.
“Like shoes. Books. Colored pencils.”
“Colored pencils?”
“You’re an artist.” He glanced over at her again. “I’ve seen the sketches you’ve done, on the notepaper in the desk.” The desk—the desk in her room, he meant—was full of thick, expensive stationary. Monogrammed with his crest, although she hadn’t let that stop her from using it.
They were just doodles, really. Something to do to pass the time. She’d drawn the view from her window, a few of the objets d’art. Luna, when she wasn’t looking.
“Your sketch of Luna was spot on,” he said. “She has a certain…innocent quality about her, and you captured that.” He paused. “Your sketch of Diana, as well. I’d never noticed before, but you’re right: she does look quite a bit like Jabba the Hutt. It’s in the eyes.”
“Have you slept with her?”
“Diana? God, no.” He seemed amused by the idea.
“Luna.”
His amusement evaporated. Something flashed in his eyes and was gone. The line of his mouth firmed. Belle could have sworn that the temperature in the car dropped, and she felt a surge of unease. She didn’t want to make him angry. It was that, just—perversely—she couldn’t stop herself. From baiting him, from telling him what she thought of him, when all the while her rational mind was screaming stop! She was playing with fire. This man was dangerous, and she’d always known that. Since before she even knew who he was. She’d felt the weight of his gaze on her, and she’d known.
“No, Belle.” He spoke the words carefully. He sounded angry. And—resigned.
She studied the world out the window.
“Would it matter if I had?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, would you mind?”
“It’s not my place to mind, or to not mind. I’m just another one of your things.”
His dark gaze was fixed on the road. “Why do you do this to me?”
Belle’s laugh was a short, mirthless bark. “What?”
“Why do you torment me.” There. The thinnest line of rage beneath the calm veneer.
She was completely taken aback. “I torment you? Are you mad?”
His hand came down hard on the wheel, and she jumped. With a great effort, he recovered himself. The silence stretched between them once more. And then, “lest this be lost on you, I’m attempting to be a gentleman.” They rounded another curve. “I shower you with attention, as much as I’m able. I’d give you anything you wanted, if you only asked. You complained of feeling trapped, of never going outside, and so here we are. And yet you torment me.”
“How did you know?” she asked. “That I felt trapped?”
“Luna.”
Luna had been telling on her? God damn the bitch. Not that Belle should be surprised. Of course Luna was. Of course they all were. They were all his creatures. Belle looked determinedly out the window. She wouldn’t let him see her shock, and most of all her disappointment. In her own stupidity, if nothing else.
“I have to ask her. You’d hardly tell me the truth, yourself.” It wasn’t an excuse; it was an explanation. He wasn’t attempting to justify his conduct, nor asking for her forgiveness. Merely explaining why, again, he considered that everything in her life was her own fault.
“I run,” she said defensively. As though that admission could disprove what they both knew to be true.
“I know.”
“What?”
“I watch you, sometimes. I can see you from my office window.”
She found the thought obscurely upsetting. She’d known that she wasn’t alone, on her runs, not truly, but she cherished the illusion. To find out that he was invading even this…and yet what did that matter, when he’d already invaded her body? Her mind?
His claims that he gave her what attention he could, that he’d give her anything she asked…he sounded like someone’s boyfriend. Like her boyfriend. As though they were going on this little expedition to please her. When in actual fact, he’d never done a single thing to please her. Was too much of a narcissist to notice that she was a separate person. Or care, if he did notice.
“You can’t give me what I want,” she said.
“Which is what?”
“Freedom. A sense of purpose. Love.”
“Love?”
Why had she said that? She didn’t want love—from anyone, least of all him. She wanted to go home. Wherever home was, now. She couldn’t go back to school. At least not right away. And she couldn’t go back to Maine. She was too damaged. What would her mother think, if she saw her now? Donna would take one look at her getup and pass out. And if she found out that Belle had been…being used by some man, solely for his own pleasure, her
reaction would vacillate between a cloying, too-interested sympathy and disgust.
Donna would want to understand. To counsel Belle on how to handle her own problems, as always. Because her mother was the expert. Regardless of the fact that she’d made a right balls up of her own life.
And there she was, using one of Ash’s phrases.
She thought about his earlier comment. She supposed it must be strange, for a child, to leave for boarding school at age eleven. He’d lost his home and lost his mother in quick succession. She wondered if he ever went back to India, or saw his family, and then wondered why she’d wondered.
She resisted the impulse to apologize. An impulse brought on, no doubt, by having been raised in a world where good equaled compliant. At least for girls. Good girls were pleasant. Good girls didn’t sass back. Good girls got along, whatever the cost. Because no one liked a girl who stood up for herself. Maybe a little, once in awhile. That was cute. But too much, or at the wrong time, and she was a bitch. And nobody liked a bitch.
Besides, what had she done wrong? Nothing, that was what! Her only crime was that she didn’t like being the virtual slave of a man she hated. No, scratch that. The actual slave. Colored pencils? What would he offer her next, Clifford the Dog and a bottle before bedtime?
She owed this man nothing.
Part of her knew that she was being irrational: she did want colored pencils, wanted any amount of art supplies. A thought she hadn’t allowed herself to have until she was in this car. Art supplies, art in general, had ever been rejected in her house as a pointless waste of time. No one, her mother was fond of pointing out, made a living selling art.
And so Belle had poured her art into her dance, and now that was gone, too.
But she’d be damned if she’d tell him that.
FORTY-ONE
He tossed the keys to the valet as casually as if they’d driven here in a Ford Pinto. Belle wondered distractedly if Ash even knew what a Ford Pinto was. Her mother had had one of the old subcompacts, which ceased production well over two decades before Belle was born.
