“What do you care?” There’s a sassy, sullen bite to her tone. It makes my dick twitch. God, I wish we were together back in my house in upstate Maine. I’d spank her bare ass until it was red and hot underneath my hand, then I’d bend her over and make her come so hard she cried.
“I care very much. And you care about me too, despite everything.”
“I don’t care about you. I don’t love you.” Tears start pouring from her eyes, a sudden fountain of grief. I lean forward and gather her in my arms, and the feeling of her warm, fragile body in mine almost undoes me. I hug her very gently to avoid her hurting her bruised flesh, her shattered arm. “I don’t. I don’t!”
Her hospital gown slides off her shoulder, and I bend down and kiss her exposed flesh. She whimpers—that soft, helpless little sound she used to make for me. And blood rushes to my cock, stiffening it with desire.
“I’m not arguing with you, baby. Even though you’re lying to me.” I nip her shoulder sharply, and she whimpers again, louder. “You know I punish you for lying.” I lick the spot that I just nibbled. “But then I make you feel so good afterward. Just the way you like it. Pleasure mixed up with pain.”
“Ah,” she gasps, her breath coming out in little pants of arousal. “Don’t do that to me. Please don’t.”
In response, I stroke her arm, my fingers trailing featherlight over her skin. “I missed you every second of every day, Tamara. I was out of my fucking mind without you.”
She slumps into my arms, all the fight gone out of her. Her head rests on my shoulder, and she sobs until my shirt is damp. “Oh God, what have you done to me? I can’t stop thinking about you. I hate it. I never used to dream, and now I dream of you. I can’t even escape you in my sleep. You’ve invaded my mind, and I can’t get rid of you.”
A warm glow spreads through me. I knew it, but hearing her say the words is more delicious than the sweetest dessert.
“You’ll come home with me. We’ll make this work.”
She sits up again and moves away from me, but I keep my arms wrapped around her, my fingers locked tight behind her back. My little caged bird.
“After what you did to me? No.” Her voice is hoarse.
“I won’t accept that, I’m afraid,” I say sternly, in my “I mean business” tone. “I will never put you in a cell again. I will never try to make you into Toy again, but you are mine.” I’m growing impatient.
I own her.
She shouldn’t argue with me about that. She won’t win. Doesn’t she know that by now?
“No, I’m not! I’m going to leave this hospital by myself, and I’m going to live my own life.” Her voice trembles. She places her hand against my chest and pushes hard, so I release her and move back a little. But then I reach out and stroke her cheek, trailing my fingers over her lips. She draws in a shaky breath, and I force my finger into her mouth. She closes her eyes, fresh crystalline tears glittering on her cheeks, but she sucks my finger.
This is our dance. She needs it as much as I do. She needs me to dominate her, to claim her. She needs to feel the force of my passion. It brings her to life in ways she’s never felt before. I know that, because we two are one, and I can read her like a book that’s been written just for me.
She starts to pull away from me. I grab her by the throat and hold her still, squeezing just a little. That makes her eyes fly open, and she glares at me.
“I’ll scream.”
“No you won’t. Because then they’d arrest me, and you can’t bear for that to happen.” I look down at her, my eyes gentle. “And even jail wouldn’t stop me. I’d make my way back to you, always. We’ll be together again, and I’ll punish you for refusing me. But afterward, I’ll make you come so hard you cry and beg for more.”
“I hate you so much.” She wipes at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand, her face twisted in frustration.
And I smile.
I could just sit there in the hospital room, and she’d never call for security. I could stay with her until she was ready to check out.
But it’s better if I don’t.
I’ve got her right where I want her. She needs me as much as I need her. But I’m a lot stronger. Even with all these dark feelings bubbling up inside me, clawing at my self-control, screaming through my nightmares, I still maintain an iron control over my feelings and behavior. But she doesn’t have that same self-control. Every second she’s without me, she’ll be craving me.
This will work to my advantage. She’ll be aching and lonely without me. And when the time is right, I’ll claim what’s mine again, and by then, one simple caress will make her melt for me.
“What you hate is how much you want me. I think you need to miss me for a while. Goodbye, Tamara. I’ll see you soon.” I press a gentle kiss to her mouth, and her lips part for me. She moans into my mouth. I kiss her hard, swirling my tongue around hers, tasting her sweetness, and I am the one to break off the kiss, not her.
She looks up at me, eyes glazed with desire. “Go away.”
I nod. “For now. I’ll transfer money to your bank account as soon as I leave.”
“I’ll never take a cent from you!” She spits the words out defiantly.
“You’re homeless.” There’s a snap of impatience to my voice. I’m keeping a mental tally of her attempts to defy me, and refusing my money goes on the list. When she’s ready, when she can handle it, I’ll make her pay for every act of disobedience, in delightfully painful ways. “You don’t have a job. You’ve got seven hundred and fifty dollars in your checking account.”
She doesn’t bother asking me how I know that.
“I’ll figure something out. I always have.”
I stand up. “If you need anything—”
“Freedom, Joshua. How about that? The right to go where I want and do what I want, whenever the hell I want. That’s worth more than millions of dollars.” She looks away and is crying again, and her shoulders are shaking. She looks small and tired. “Please leave, Joshua.” Her voice is trembling. “Please.”
It hurts me to see her like this, it’s a physical ache inside me. All I want to do is gather her into my arms again, lend her my strength, let her know that she is safe and loved. But I don’t. It’s not the right time for it, so I leave.
I walk away from my love, my heart, my sanity. But I do it with a smile on my face, because I know it won’t be long before she’s chained to my bed and screaming my name.
Chapter Ten
Five days later…
Tamara
This can’t be right.
As I climb out of the taxi, I stare at the huge brick house looming in front of me.
“Are you sure that this is the right address?” I ask the Uber driver as he sets down my two suitcases next to me. A chill wind makes me shiver, and I hug my second-hand wool coat around me and wish I had a hat.
“327 Fairview Drive?” He points at the numbers to the side of the big stained-glass door. Before I can argue, he gets in the driver’s seat and peels away, leaving me standing there hugging my coat around me in the chill, late October afternoon.
This can’t possibly be where Sarah lives.
My high school counselor had a little one-bedroom apartment in downtown Flat Plains, Nebraska, back when I went to school here. This house has got to be one of the largest houses, not just in the gated subdivision, but in the entire town. Flat Plains has one nice neighborhood, and this is it. And this house is easily several thousand square feet.
But when the door opens, it’s Sarah standing there between the two-story high fluted white columns, waving wildly, with a huge smile on her face.
I grab my suitcases and hurry toward her, wincing only a little. The bruises are fading, and the cuts and burns are healing. Inside, I’m shaky and frightened and lonely. I miss Joshua fiercely, and I hate myself for it.
“Tamara!” Sarah hurries toward me and grabs the suitcases from me. They’re stuffed with all the clothing I had in my apartment before Josh
ua kidnapped me. I woke up in my hospital room a few days ago and they were just sitting there. The nurse had no idea how someone had snuck them in my room.
“Let’s get inside before we freeze into corpsicles.” She grins as she says it. Our breaths make puffs of white vapor as I follow her up the steps.
“This house is amazing,” I tell her. “Gorgeous. Did you win the lottery or something?” I pause in the foyer, closing the door behind me. She throws back her head and laughs. “Almost! You’ll never believe what happened.” She’s walking ahead of me, leading me through the big octagonal foyer and into a lovely living room with views onto a snow-capped mountain.
“I’m dying of suspense.”
She shakes her head, a smile beaming from her round, freckled face. “Two months ago, I got an anonymous gift of five million dollars, from someone who said they were a former student of mine. They said that I saved their life.”
Shock ripples through me.
Joshua.
It could only be him.
He did that while he was holding me prisoner, and he never even told me. I told him about Sarah, about what she did for me, about how I was sinking into depression and my grades were slipping until she made me believe in myself. Did he send her the money as a thank you?
If so, I don’t know Joshua as well as I thought I did. Then again, I don’t think he knows himself as well as he thinks he does.
“What?” She laughs at my expression of shock. “What’s that look? It’s a good thing.”
I force a smile. “I’m just surprised. And tired, so please forgive my resting bitch face. That’s great! I’m really happy for you!” And I am. Nobody deserves it more.
She beams with happiness, her hazel eyes alight. “I’m doing some amazing things with it. I’ve created a charitable foundation. We have a daycare program for teenage mothers so they can stay in school, and scholarships for college or tech school for low-income students.”
I smile at her, blinking my watering eyes. After being force-fed various flavors of evil for half a year now, seeing there’s still good in the world makes me want to cry. “Of course you did,” I say.
“Enough about me. Come on, come on, let’s get you settled in.” She leads me to a huge bedroom, with a cherrywood sleigh bed topped with a puffy white comforter. There’s a matching cherrywood desk, and a bookshelf filled with paperbacks. Colorful abstract paintings adorn the walls. “You can stay here as long as you want to. Months. Years. Until you get sick of me.” She winks at me as she sets down the suitcases.
Then she puts her hands on my shoulders. “How are you holding up?”
I meet her gaze and manage a rueful smile. “Surprisingly well. I mean, I can even pass for sane most of the time.”
She knows what was reported on TV, and what little I’ve told her. I was one of the victims of the mysterious twin brother of the equally mysterious billionaire Joshua Smith. I was kidnapped and tortured for a week, and spent ten days in the hospital recuperating.
I’ve refused to talk to the press and I didn’t tell the police much. When they asked me why I disappeared for six months and where I was staying, all I would say is that I had a breakdown and realized that I couldn’t handle college. When the police asked me, again and again, where I’d been staying, who I’d been staying with…I refused to tell them.
The truth sounded absolutely mad.
I was the prisoner of an incredibly sexy serial killer who broke my mind to the point where I don’t know who I am or what I want any more.
And more than that…it would have sent Joshua to prison, and I couldn’t bear to do that.
“You know you can talk to me any time.” There’s worry in her kind eyes as she drops her hands and shoves them in her pockets.
“I know. Right now, I’d just love to eat dinner and pretend everything’s normal.”
“Fake normal! I can do that,” she says cheerfully. “And I’ll have dinner ready in an hour. You settle in and get comfortable.”
I do my best, but over the next week, I find myself moving in a daze. I wake up and eat. My body heals a little more every day. I put some weight back on. I watch TV and read books and I spend some time on Sarah’s treadmill every day, trying to build my strength back up.
Sarah insists on buying me a cell phone. I use it to call Astrid a few times. She’s got her whole family back together, and they’re staying at a hotel. They can’t stand to be in their house anymore.
Her daughters want to talk to me too, to make sure I’m okay. They’re such good people. I despise Micah for what he put them through.
Like me, Astrid sounds muted when she talks. Stunned. We’re slowly feeling our way through a world that’s forever changed for us.
Sarah is at work during the day, managing her various charities. Time drags on, and I spend days and days just idly surfing the internet and watching TV, trying to figure out what to do with myself.
My body is healing. My mind is shattered, and I am trying to remember how to live in a world without bars.
And without Joshua.
Every day, I expect him to call me on my cell phone. Or Sarah’s home phone. I’m angry he doesn’t, even though that’s irrational. I told him to leave me alone, and he is.
I accept that I’m going to miss him for a long, long time. He was my entire life for five long months. My time with him was frequently terrible, but it was also intense and sometimes it was ecstatic and amazing. It’s even harder since I’m not working or in school. I’ve got nothing to think about but him.
No. I’m lying to myself. I’d think about him all day even if I were in school.
It doesn’t matter. I could call him any time, but every day, I dredge up my willpower and choose not to contact my torturer.
Sarah insists on taking me shopping. She buys me new clothes and takes me to a hair salon and a nail salon. I wear clothing that covers me from the neck down so I can conceal the scars on my chest. I can’t stand to leave the house without carrying a Taser and pepper spray.
I join a yoga studio and go with Sarah, and we do meditation, which helps a little when I’m attacked by flashbacks of Micah’s abuse.
My nipple and clit piercings closed up very quickly. They were removed in the hospital. One less reminder of my ordeal.
At Sarah’s suggestion, I put bandages over the scars where Micah cut and branded his initials into me and go to a massage therapist a few times a week – a woman – to force myself to get past my instinctive tendency to flinch when anybody touches me. Anybody but Joshua. Why did his touch in the hospital room arouse me so much? He’s the one I should be running from, and yet he’s the only person I can imagine touching me intimately ever again.
In my room, I practice my self-defense moves. I have Sarah order me a punching bag, and I beat the hell out of it. I do sit-ups and push-ups and planks and squats until my muscles scream.
I won’t be a victim again.
When I climb in the shower every morning, I feel cold and lonely. I close my eyes and turn up the water until it’s so hot that it’s almost scalding, and I try to summon up the feeling of Joshua’s hands on my warm, wet flesh. I remember the slow, sensual torture of his tongue lapping between my legs, dragging me to the edge of ecstasy and making me scream and beg for release. I dream of the explosive orgasms that racked my body again and again when he finally let me come.
I touch myself, but it’s not the same.
After a few days, I get a message from Mark, the homeless alcoholic I used to give sandwiches to. After Joshua kidnapped me, Mark kept bugging the police department about my disappearance.
He managed to track me down here in Nebraska, and he wants me to know that things are better for him now. He’s finished with rehab. An anonymous sponsor is paying for an apartment for him in New York City, and he has been offered a job at a large non-profit doing computer security.
I also talk to Jessica Brown, the director of the battered women’s shelter where I volunteered. She wants to
know I’m all right. She tells me that they miss me there, and she’s so grateful I was found safe.
And while she’s catching me up on the latest news at the shelter, she mentions they received an anonymous two-million-dollar donation a few weeks ago.
This is all Joshua.
I’m happy people are benefitting from his generosity, but I’m also skeptical about his motives.
Does he think that charitable donations will erase what he did to me? Does he believe it will make up for chaining me in a dark, lonely cellar for weeks until I went mad with sorrow? Does he think it will make up for breaking my heart and mind by telling me nobody was looking for me, when he knew how my mother’s abandonment had haunted me? Does he believe it’s going to buy his way back into my favor after he heaped abuse and scorn on the broken Toy that he made me into, for months, until I was a lost, hurting creature with no will to live?
Nothing will make up for it.
But nothing will let me banish him from my mind, either. He’s branded himself onto my soul. His cruelty made those rare moments of tenderness so much sweeter. When he wasn’t destroying me, he was fighting for me—side by side with me, battling the demons of my past.
I keep dreaming about him at night. In my dreams, I surrender to my desire. I crawl to him, I beg him to fuck me, and he makes me cry before he’ll touch me.
He’s woken up something dark and needy in me.
During the day, I find myself clutching the new cell phone that Sarah bought for me, fingers playing across the blank screen. I’m typing out the number for Smith Acquisitions. I’d never actually call, but my fingers don’t seem to know that.
I want to call him up at work. I actually want to call up the man who made me dance on an electrified plate with clamps hanging from my burning, tortured nipples.
There’s a treacherous little voice in the back of my head, arguing for him like a lawyer. Pointing out how different he was once I managed to claw my way back from the edge of madness, once I started fighting for myself. Reminding me of those days when we’d sit there at the dining room table and he’d treat me like an equal, like a lover, talking to me about his work and his childhood and the music he liked.
The Trials of Tamara Page 9
