“Now.”
If she disobeyed him, he would destroy her music player. She set the device aside and rose from the floor, an effort that sent her molars crashing together. The hours spent hanging from the ceiling the prior night had torn something in her shoulder. Just thinking about it sprung tears in her eyes. She swiped them away, kicked the chain from her path, and trudged to the bed.
The pencil was plucked from her hand and flung outside the reach of the tether. Didn’t matter. A few practices on her wrist confirmed it wasn’t strong enough to pierce his trachea.
He gripped her hips and pulled her over to straddle him. Then he opened the book to the last drawing. His customary callousness blanked his expression as he studied the page. “Always fire. Why?”
“A couple months without clothes.” She shrugged. “I’m drawn to warmth, Sir.”
He set the book aside, stared at it, then swung his hand and struck her face. The force of it whipped her head back. “That was your only warning.”
Perfect obedience hadn’t warded off daily beatings. His strikes still hurt like hell, but her body had grown pliable. When the hand reared, she didn’t stiffen. She bent with it. “It was the last tattoo I did when I was free.” Truth, yet it meant so much more.
“Whose?” His voice was calm, eyelids half-mast.
Lying wasn’t an option. Perhaps because it took a liar to know a liar. “A walk-in. Some musician.” With a beautiful voice, a steel determination, and a body rendered for art.
“What do you know of your mother?”
Her shoulders drooped even as her brain scrambled to keep up. Her mother? All she knew was the woman died of health-related issues a few months after giving birth to her. “I don’t have a mother.” Had Roy tried to find her?
He watched her in his calculating, unblinking style that made her want to look away. “I searched for her when I lost you four years ago. I thought maybe you’d seek her help.”
She’d had no one until Noah. If she had a mother, Roy would’ve killed her, too. A lonely ache swelled in her chest, and more damn tears burned down her cheeks. Would she ever run dry?
“You had no money. No family. No skills. And no education beyond tenth grade.”
She didn’t like the direction the conversation was headed, and she wanted to flail on him for the last part. Not worth another strike to the face.
“Rather than succumbing to drugs or prostitution, you leveraged an impractical talent in the most efficient way.” He wrapped his hands around her waist and ground her groin against his. “I made you who you are. I gave you the strength to survive.”
Even as he boasted his perverse pride, he was trying to unbalance her, weaken her emotionally. He could try all he wanted. Her tears were involuntary, but she was not broken and her strength was her own. She gave him her weight and her eyes.
There was a self-interested air about the way he regarded her. “You tattooed to earn money. Yet you have none yourself.” He smirked. “Money, nor tattoos.”
Another one of his games. Whenever his dick wouldn’t harden from his physical lashings, he turned to humiliation and verbal fighting. Fuck him for being such a cruel, sadistic bastard. “No, Sir. I was the payment for a gambling debt, remember? Not the heir of a billion-dollar monopoly.”
His fingers dug into her waist, and his eyes narrowed. “Tell me why you aren’t covered in skulls and flames.” He smacked the sketchbook, sent it flying off the bed. “I want to hear you say it.”
His dick swelled beneath her, and the need to draw into herself strained her voice. Fuck that. “A girl on the run needs plain looks to go unnoticed. No identifiable marks.” Someday, she would have a tattoo.
The room held still and his eyes didn’t stray from hers.
“Tell me, girl-on-the-run, what are you planning now?”
She could lie and get the truth beat out of her. Or she could tell the truth and maybe learn something from his reaction.
“You should remove the chain.” She rotated her ankle. “Because I intend to strangle you with it while you sleep.” She kept her muscles relaxed, prepared to absorb the next strike.
If he were another man, the stiff prod of his groin would’ve been at odds with his words. “I would kill you if you tried.”
Knowing he fed on her rebellion, her question rolled out anyway. “Would you survive my death?” He would either hit her or fuck her, but maybe, just maybe, he’d give her an answer.
The torso between her thighs rose and fell with his breathing. A cyclone of emotions stormed over his expression. Eventually, his cheeks smoothed and his eyes cleared. “You belong to me, beautiful girl. I retain what is mine, even if I have to retrieve it from hell myself.”