chapter 16
Liv led the boy into the outer chamber and inhaled the intangible fume of rage seeping from Van’s fists-on-hips stance by the door. She steered the boy around him, her defensive hackles shooting her shoulders to her ears.
Anything could’ve set him off. She’d sneaked from his bed the previous night. She’d made him wait too long for her to emerge from her room, and she’d come out without clothes on. Or it could’ve simply been one of his cruel-for-the-hell-of-it days.
She could handle Van’s venom when it was directed at her, but the way he glared at the boy made her stomach knot. Granted, he was as uncertain as she was on how to convert a straight boy into a woman-hating sex slave, but she still expected him to be better than this. She needed to defuse him before they began the planned training session.
Across the room, the girl knelt on the cot naked, chin tucked to her chest and hands secured to the wall behind her. She seemed invisible to Van at the moment, and in two weeks, she would be out of his reach completely. Thinking of the man waiting to buy her wrung an entirely different wrack of tension in Liv’s shoulders.
She was a fool to dwell on it. After the delivery, the girl would be dead to her. Just like the others.
Angling her back to Van, she shackled the boy’s wrists to the chains hanging from the apex of the room. He must’ve sensed Van’s volatility, because his muscles contracted against his skin, and his eyes bore a fiery path over her shoulder. Dammit, there was only one place his eyes should’ve been.
The simplest commands seemed to be the hardest for him to remember. Van would expect her to whip the boy for it, and of course, the sadistic buyer anticipated a battered body. But there would be enough of that after lunch.
A dull pound ignited in her skull. Her logic didn’t even make sense in her own head. If she were honest, she was putting off whipping him. She dreaded it down to the marrow of her icy core. This boy was f*cking with her detachment.
Using her body as a barrier between him and Van, she tapped the boy’s steel jaw and whispered,
“Eyes and knees down.”
With slack in the chain, he descended to the floor, his exhales a hot caress on her chest. She knew he was in self-preservation mode, but the way he leaned toward her, as if trying to enfold her in the limited cage of his restraints, breathed an irrational warmth through the hole inside her.
All of the slaves had become protective of her at some point during their captivity. The captor-captive bond was just one of the many ways the mind dealt with trauma. But this boy hadn’t been under duress long enough to develop that kind of psychological response.
His calm focus and rugged linebacker build was so unlike the mold of previous slaves. He looked at her like he thought he could save her. Maybe he could.
Except he was supposed to despise her. The hammering in her head increased. What a hopeful, romantic idiot she was.
When she shifted to meet the eyes burning into her back, Van flung a sleeveless sheath dress at her face, the most demure outfit from her costume closet. She kept her casual wear in a trunk in her room, but her frayed jeans and printed t-shirts endowed her with human qualities and expressions she couldn’t possess in that house.
She stepped into the black nylon sheath and rolled it over her hips and ribs, tucking her breasts in the top. It wrapped her from nipples to upper-thighs and clung to every dip and bend of her body, revealing more than it covered.
Van crossed his arms over his chest, his lips in a flat line. His unusual reticence meant he was holding in something particularly unsavory. The sharpness of his eyes matched his razored tone.
“Let’s get started.”
The knot in her belly intensified with the pressure in her head. To soothe it, she hummed the woeful melody of “Pretender” by Sarah Jeffe, the lyrics reinforcing the roles they were playing. Van was supposed to be a passive bystander, but his foul mood tainted the already unbreathable air. So she left the boy on his knees with his wrists padlocked to the chains in the ceiling and paced to the outer door. “I’m hungry.”
Van’s footfalls chased her down the stairs. She did her best to outrun them, which was stupid.
She’d left the room to confront him, but she wasn’t ready. Was she ever ready for him?
He caught her in the kitchen, an arm around her waist, a hand around her throat, and lips pressed against her ear. “Why are you running?”
The beat of her heart drummed against the collar of his hand. He wasn’t choking her, but the promise was there. Thankfully, years of practice had taught her how to manage him, and keeping her cool was a vital response. She relaxed her stance and leaned her back against the granite surface of his chest. “Why are you chasing me?”
“Because you’re mine.”
His hand cinched tighter with that heated oath. She coaxed her pulse to match a gentle tune in her head and waited. Finally, he released her and strode to the kitchen sink.
The turbulence rolling off him clotted the small room as he stared out the window. She rushed through sandwich preparations and blamed the lump in her throat on Van’s pending tantrum, not on the fact that she’d returned the fourth plate to the cabinet because the boy wouldn’t be eating with them.
Unable to meet Van’s eyes, she kept her back to him under the guise of arranging potato chips on three plates. She cleared her throat. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t like him.”
Her hand flexed, crinkling the foil bag in her grip. Apparently, his jealousy had reached a new degree of crazy. He never liked the male slaves, but this was the first time he’d vocalized it.
“I want him gone.” His sharp tone punched her in the back.
Objections amassed in her throat. They wouldn’t find a replacement slave in time. And they couldn’t just send the boy back. He knew where they lived, had seen their faces. Van’s gone meant one thing, an unthinkable alternative he’d never suggested before. Somehow, she mustered an exasperated sigh and a bored tone. “Why?”
“His parents are all over the f*cking news.” His voice grew louder, more guttural. “Their whole goddamned town is searching for him.”
This wasn’t about jealousy? She shivered as he paced behind her, the air frosting with each pass, sending ice through her lungs. “He’s not like the others, Van. We knew he’d be missed.” She didn’t have to turn on the news to know what love and desperation looked like. Haunting images stabbed the backs of her eyes. She squeezed them shut to trap the remembered videos of Mom grieving alone and the god-awful need to reach through the screen and hug her.
His fingers bit into her bicep, spinning her so violently her hip slammed into the counter’s edge.
“Why did you choose him?” He shook her shoulder, his grip punishing. “Answer me,” he shouted, his fury a hot mist in her face.
She blinked rapidly, grasping at the most logical answer. “He fit what the buyer wanted.” She dragged her gaze to his and flinched at the feral expression twisting his features.
“Bullshit.” He captured her jaw in a steel grip, lifting her chin until she stretched on tiptoes. “A hundred other f*ckers would’ve met the requirements. This one fit what you wanted.” The truth of his words paralyzed her, shriveling all of her justifications for choosing Joshua Carter. The real reason made her throat tighten. He represented purity, beauty, family, all of the things that had been taken from her. He was a glimmer of goodness in her dark f*cking world, a warm spark she could hold, if only for a fleeting span of time.
Her fingernails stabbed her palms. She was such a selfish, vile bitch.
Van shoved her away, turned her over the counter, and pressed her face against the laminate.
“And the way he was looking at you really pisses me the f*ck off.” When his hand tunneled between her thighs, her heart sputtered. “No.” She jerked beneath the prison of his immovable body. “No, Van. I have a job to do. I need to be in the right frame of mind.” The intrusion of his fingers speared between her labia, pinching dry flesh. “What frame of mind is that?” His tone, as cold and penetrating as his touch, froze her to her bones.
“I am a Mistress, not your sex slave.” She tried to match his iciness, but it came out desperate and high-pitched.
He yanked her from the counter and slammed his knuckles into her face. She managed to stay on her feet as jolts of pain fired through her skull. A warm trickle wet her lashes and smudged her vision. The ache in her heart was worse, but she would not give him the perception he’d hurt her beyond the cut of his fist. She kept her hands to her sides and met his biting silver gaze head-on.
Angry red splotches stained his neck and cheek, and she imagined his blood simmering beneath the skin. He clutched the counter’s edge on either side of her hips, his face level with hers. “When I dispose of your body, no one will ever find it.” His voice dropped to a chilling rasp. “You know why?”
Her heart sped up, increasing the throb above her eye. She held her muscles as motionless as her glare.
“Because no one will care enough to search for it.” He angled over the plates and hocked a foaming bubble of spit on one of the sandwiches. “Clean up your face.” His smirk flared the bruise around her heart. “You look more like a slave than your little cunt boy.” He grabbed an unsoiled sandwich, sat at the table, and dug into the roast beef.
What they were, what they’d become together, wasn’t sane or healthy. It was in his blood to spew nasty things in a fit of rage, including threats on her life, and she’d conditioned herself over the years to bury it. His temper would eventually ebb, and the hurt from his words would, too. Because she didn’t love him, he didn’t have the power to leave a permanent scar on her heart. But that reminder didn’t help the rawness of the moment as she moved to the sink and turned the tap to warm.
Ducking her head, the spray showered her face, renewing the pain around her eye. The water ran red, but no amount of cleaning would remove the evidence that she was just as much a prisoner as the ones in chains. And somehow, she would have to stand before the boy with a black eye as his Mistress.
Van finished his meal and reclined in the chair, studying her. No hint of civility, but the tension in his jaw loosened. “If you spent your allowance on makeup instead of your skydiving bullshit, you’d be able to cover that before you went upstairs.”
She dried her face, blotting the hurt over her eye. Her fingers recoiled from the bubbled scar on her cheek, the cut that makeup could never cover. Not that she would waste a dime on meaningless luxuries. Their monthly funds from Mr. E paid for basic expenses, groceries, gas, and tools for training. She and Van split whatever was leftover, and she used her allotment on freefalling. Her only freedom.
As she replaced the ruined sandwich top with a new slice of bread, Van tossed a bag of frozen peas on the counter beside her. It wasn’t an apology, but an offer to move on.
She held the icy bag to her eye. Too bad it couldn’t numb the emotions swelling her throat.