Captive, Mine (17 page)

But now was not that time, unfortunately.

He knew the paint wouldn’t block out all the light, but that would be to his advantage. It would let in just enough so that Lily could see what her behavior was depriving her of, the wages of disobedience to him.

As Lake completed the last stroke over the glass, the window fully blacked out, he set down the paint can, laying the brush across the top. For a moment, he closed his eyes, searching his mind, taking stock about what was okay, and what was, well, evil. This wasn’t evil,
quite
. Did this need to be done? Yes, she had to learn. Especially when it came time to flee — and that time was coming, the only question was when. He knew it, deep down, no matter how much he wished it weren’t so.

Lily had to learn to obey him instantly, instinctively. It was going to be hard for her, but for now, anyway, he had the time to be both patient and relentless. He’d teach her, mold her, make her what he needed her to be — what
she
needed to be, though she’d never admit it.

And, someday, it might just save their lives.

Rationalizer.

He wasn’t though, not really. Yes, he enjoyed this, took pleasure in bending her strong will to his. There was no denying that fact, and it was something they both knew now. The only question was how far she could be bent before she broke. He’d take her right up to that point, but not past it. Breaking Lily wasn’t what he wanted. That
would
truly be evil.

But they had a lot farther to go before they reached that point. And it made no sense not to acknowledge that he looked forward to it with a dark anticipation that fired his imagination, his possessiveness, and his lust.

He snapped the lid onto the paint can and walked back toward the shed, breathing deeply of the fragrant, clean scent of a forest afternoon. Then he stopped in his tracks, remembering. When he’d last been inside to see her, there’d been that box next to her, the one she’d climbed onto to look out the window. That box hadn’t been there before.

She’d moved it.

Lake sighed in resignation, even as his cock hardened at what lay ahead. It was time for the next step with Lily.

Chapter 12

M
y first proper meal in what felt like days consisted of tuna from a can and some saltine crackers — and I’d never tasted anything more delicious. Lake simply watched me while I devoured everything he put in front of me and I didn’t care for a second what I looked like as I shoved crackers and chunks of tuna into my mouth.

“How many days have we been here?” I asked after downing a glass of water.

“A few,” he answered, always a wealth of information.

I looked at him looking at me as if he were waiting for me to challenge him. Well, I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t want to go back to the bad girl’s room. I never wanted to go back there again.

“Can I call my dad? Tell him I’m okay?”

Lake shook his head, rubbing his chin with his hand. “Not yet. We can’t take a chance on anyone tracing the call.”

“If he thinks Randall has me, he won’t testify.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. The quicker he testifies, the quicker this mess is over.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, knowing that when he had taken me from DeSalvo, no matter how I wanted to fault him for what he’d done to me since, he had saved my life.

“Finish up,” he said, standing.

I forced the last bite, no longer hungry. “I’m cold.” I hugged my arms around myself. I wore a T-shirt he had given me, one of his. It was entirely too big, but at least I wasn’t naked anymore.

Lake got up and picked up a discarded blanket from the couch. He brought it over and instead of handing it to me, he tucked it in behind my back. I met his gaze as I took the corners of it, suspicious of this little act of kindness.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve got some work to do so you’ll go back to your room until I’m done.”

“I’d really like to have a shower, Lake. I’ll be quick. Please…Sir?”

“Now, that is sweet,” he began, tucking my hair behind my ear before pushing my chair back and motioning for me to stand. “But I’ve got a little work to do. I’ve got to get some things ready in case we need to get out of here in a hurry. Once I’m done, you can have that shower and you can take as long as you like.”

“I won’t do anything, I promise.”

“Don’t whine, Lily,” he said, opening my bedroom door. “In you go. When I’m back, you can have that shower first thing. I promise.”

“Are you going away?”

“Not far. To the room you recently vacated.”

I stepped into my bedroom and turned, puzzled. “What do you have to do there?” If he looked closely at anything I’d touched, he’d know I’d been snooping. But really, did he think I wouldn’t? I was his captive, I hadn’t forgotten that, and I wouldn’t, no matter what happened between us. At that thought, I felt my face heat up and dropped my gaze from his. When I looked up a moment later, I found his gaze still on mine, studying me.

“Why don’t you get some sleep while I’m gone? You look tired.”

A few days ago, I’d have had a comeback for that, but today, I simply nodded and went to the bed. He closed the door and I heard to the deadbolt slide into place as I climbed beneath the sheets and tucked the blanket he’d given me up to my neck, falling asleep as soon as I closed my eyes.

* * *

L
ake stood up from the opened boxes, running a hand through his now sweaty hair.

“Goddammit.”

He knew he should’ve moved those boxes. But every time he’d seen Lily in that room, waiting, fearing, wanting — removing those boxes had taken a backseat to the needs of his cock, his need to conquer the bewitching, maddening captive in his care.

“Care,” he grunted. “I’m sure that’s
exactly
what she’d call it, Lake.”

She’d definitely rifled through the boxes. He’d always packed precisely, and his memory never failed him. She’d been through all of it. Probably frantically shoved it all back in as he turned the key in the lock. He was surprised she’d left the boxes out in the open under that window. Maybe she’d hoped he wouldn’t notice — or maybe she’d hoped he would.

Either way, it was a problem. But he had a solution for it. He glanced at the length of leather hanging on the wall. She feared it, which was exactly how he wanted it. She still didn’t fear him — at least not completely — but she feared that strap.

Lily’s bottom was about to become reacquainted with—

He froze.

Where is it?

It was the last picture of Sara he’d let himself keep. Even though every time he looked at it, the memory still burned, still ached as if he’d found her only yesterday, the needle still in her arm, as incriminating as a murder weapon.

He’d burned all of her pictures, knowing he didn’t need them, didn’t need the agony of seeing her beautiful form before the drugs had wrought their horrors upon her, before she’d become something he no longer recognized.

She had no fucking
right
.

He opened the drawer again, carefully sorting through the contents, and finally found it. The picture, still in the frame that had always been its home — but with the wrapping gone and a new crack in the glass. He’d remembered precisely how he’d laid it inside. Out of sight, but never out of mind. Someday he’d hoped he could burn that one too, when the memory of his wife no longer filled him with hurt, and rage, and loss. But that day had not yet come.

Red tinged his vision as he went through everything, sorting the contents of each box, the rage and helplessness filling him as each second ticked by. He flung open the closet, spotting the fresh paths left by slender fingers through the dust that coated the suitcase. He didn’t need to unzip the suitcase — he knew she’d been in there too.

He closed the closet, leaning a head against the door a moment then backing away. When the backs of his thighs hit the bed, he dropped to the mattress, holding his head in his hands.

Why
had he kept it all? He remembered the sweater he’d bought for Sara just… before. He’d stubbornly bought it in the size she’d been before the wasting, before she’d become the wan, sunken-cheeked wreck the heroin had reduced her to.

“No,” he whispered.

He hadn’t known. Yet he’d kept all of it. Why? Was it some sort of totem he hoped would lead her spirit back to him? Was it denial? Was it premonition? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sara was gone, that the scum who trafficked in the shit had taken her from him, deprived him of his one chance at a life. It was done. All of it.

And yet, less than a hundred feet away, was a woman who’d wormed her way into parts of him he thought he’d walled off forever. A woman who was also a part of the grotesque machinery that had chewed Sara up and spit her out. The same woman who’d invaded this last vestige of happy memory, of the life torn away.

The woman who
dared
make him think about… what might be.

Oh, Lily girl, you’re in trouble.

* * *

“G
et up.”

My mind was foggy, the dream slowly fading as someone shook me.

“I said, get up, bad girl.”

At those last two words, my eyelids flew open. Lake’s big hand shook me again, pulling the blanket from me, and the moment I saw his face, his eyes, I knew he knew. I knew he’d seen what I’d done.

“I could have kept you bound,” he began, hauling me to my feet.

“Lake, stop…”

“But I was being nice.”

“Nice? Nice by keeping me locked up? What are you doing?” Panic rose in my voice as he dragged me by the arm to the door. “No!” I grabbed hold of the doorframe. “No! I’m not going back to that room.”

I knew what he intended; there was only one thing.

“Oh hell, yes, you are,” he said, and, without hesitating, he shifted his grip and, in the next moment, I was slung over his shoulder and his big hand came down hard on my too recently punished ass.

“Owww! Let me go. You’re fucking crazy, Lake. Let me go!”

“What did you think you’d find, anyway?” he asked, walking through the living room and opening the front door all while I pounded on his back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go!”

It was dusk as he walked me across to the bad girl’s room. He’d left the door unlocked and pulled it open. As soon as he stepped inside, I gripped the frame with both hands, refusing to let go.

“Please stop this, Lake. I haven’t done anything. I swear. I haven’t done anything.”

“No?” he asked, turning, prying my fingers from where I held on for dear life. “No?”

Once inside, he carried me directly to the bed and set me down on it, the contact making me flinch. I glimpsed the strap hanging nearby.

“Please, Lake, I swear. I haven’t done anything,” I said, tears already beginning to fall as I took in the room, the open drawers, the suitcase.

“Give me your hands, Lily.”

I felt the hope drain out of me when I saw the photograph with its cracked glass on the dresser. I looked up at him. He wasn’t even looking at me, not at my eyes, at least. He was too far away.

“Please, Lake. I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

“Your fucking hands, Lily!” he snapped, making me jump.

I held them out to him.

“Who was she, Lake?” I asked as he re-bound me. “Your wife? You’re wearing a wedding ring in the photo. Where is she now?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Did she leave you? Did you scare her away? Is that it?” He lifted me up to hook my wrists high enough over the bed that I was forced to kneel with my arms stretched overhead. He then tore the T-shirt I’d been wearing from me, stripping me so I was naked once again.

Why I didn’t stop there, I don’t know, because he still wouldn’t meet my gaze. Fury came off him in waves, a hot rage too raw, too fresh, burned like an inferno in his eyes.

He wouldn’t speak to me; he wouldn’t even look at me.

“Did you hurt her, too?” I finally blurted out when he had reached the door.

He stopped then. For a moment, all I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat, the whirlwind of my thoughts until he finally looked at me. The glare with which I was met turned my blood to ice. He picked up the duct tape and tore off a piece, stalking toward me, filling me with terror. He gripped the hair at the back of my head and yanked it back, hurting me.

“Are you going to shut the fuck up or am I making you shut up?”

I only stared at him without speaking, without even opening my mouth, hoping it was enough of a message that I’d be quiet. After a few moments like this, he balled up the piece of tape.

“She’s dead. She died because of people like you. Like your father. She’s fucking dead, Lily,” he said, his eyes now as red as mine, shiny with unspent tears. “Satisfied?”