I stood from the chair and walked to the edge of the bed. Pressing my knuckles to her chin, I waited until she was looking at me, then slowly dropped my hands to where she was grasping the satin material against her breasts.
“You want to leave this room, and I can’t let you leave it until we’ve passed this point,” I said in a low, soothing tone as I removed the tight grip she had on the robe and bent to whisper in her ear, “Close your eyes and clear your mind. You can do this.”
But I wasn’t sure that I could.
Because my calm was crumbling, and I couldn’t hold on to that nothing that I so desperately needed to cling to in order to get through this.
This girl and those eyes were crippling me in a way I’d never known—and couldn’t afford now.
I knew what I needed to do, and yet . . . I wanted to protect her from this, even though I was the one pushing her. I wanted to pull her closer so I could feel her body pressed to mine. I wanted to brush my lips across hers—
Nothing. Feel nothing, I maintained as I fought between covering her up, and continuing with what I knew we had to do.
I forced that calm and that nothingness, and the tips of my thumbs brushed against her breasts as I bunched the material in my hands. Just as I was about to release the robe and let the material pool around her hips, a song fell from her lips, hushed and broken, and the sound made me pause.
I looked at her face to see it tight with fear, and again, I lost my weak hold on my calm. Only that time, I didn’t try to snap it back in place. I let everything I felt consume me as I pulled her robe back over her shoulders and stepped away.
“Another day, Blackbird,” I mumbled and let her voice follow me out of the room.
Chapter 11
Push
Briar
Days dragged on, yet blurred together. I wasn’t sure how long I had been here and wished I had a way of knowing. I had started counting the breakfasts, but eventually I couldn’t remember which day had been the day before. I’d spent days crying before my body stopped producing tears and a numbness settled over my heart and mind. As the numbness receded a few days later, the boredom settled in.
I spent whole days singing, others staring at the wall just wishing for a window so I could see the outdoors, and still others waiting in fear, wondering what the day would hold.
There hadn’t been another lesson, but there had been two more failed attempts of trying to push me into being comfortable with a man I hated with every fiber of my being.
He seemed frustrated by my lack of progress, but I didn’t know what more he could have expected. He was evil incarnate; he had paid for me after I’d been stolen from my life and the man I loved. He’d tried to teach me a lesson by making me think he was going to use my body . . . all because I’d refused to eat when I’d first arrived.
I knew I needed to gain his trust, and part of that was doing what needed to be done to get out of this room, but it wasn’t as easy as he thought it should be.
This wasn’t letting a man undress me as anticipation pounded through my veins and made me ache for him. This wasn’t letting the man I loved look at me, bare and vulnerable and ready for him. This was dancing with the devil and attempting to come out of it unscathed.
The door opened, but I didn’t look toward it as my throat closed up, effectively ending the song.
It took a few seconds, but I noticed there was a charge in the room that hadn’t been there yesterday or the day before, and it sent a chill through my spine.
He was staying . . .
I blew a steadying breath out before I found the courage to turn my head to look at him from where I was lying on the bed.
His power, darkness, and masculine beauty stunned me, as it had every time I looked at him, but I didn’t react to it. I watched him as he watched me, and I looked up at the ceiling when his eyes fell from my face to my body.
Sin. He was pure sin. I hated him.
“Blackbird,” he whispered in that voice of his. That invigorating, throaty mixture of warmth and softness that hinted at regret was just another part of his attraction . . . another part of his deceit . . . another part of him I hated.
“Devil.”
His face came into view then, his lips twitching into a brief, amused grin before falling, and then he was saying the words I didn’t want to hear . . .
“Show me that—”
“Is it the weekend?” I asked quickly, cutting him off.
His dark brows pulled low over his eyes as he studied me, and instead of repeating what I knew he’d been about to say, he asked, “Why?”
“Your shirt,” I responded automatically and hated that embarrassed heat filled my cheeks. “Um, you’re just normally in a button-down.”
He glanced at himself. “Do you prefer those?”
I looked at the black shirt that stretched over his tanned, muscled body and shook my head as I pushed myself up so I was sitting on the bed. “I don’t have a preference. I’ve just been trying to figure out how long it’s been since I was taken from home.”
He looked away, but not before I saw the way his face fell. He swallowed thickly and seemed to think about what to say for a while before he spoke. “Don’t think of it that way.” His voice was laced with some emotion I couldn’t place, but it shocked me all the same.
I had only ever seen him angry, annoyed, or menacing. To see any other kind of emotion that suggested this devil might have some humanity made him intriguing—no. He wasn’t. This is all a trick, all part of his darkness, I reminded myself, and forced the sound of his voice from my mind.
“How am I supposed to think of it?” I asked softly. My throat tightened and my eyes burned, but no tears came. I wasn’t sure I had any tears left in me. “I missed my wedding. I missed marrying the man I—”
“Enough,” he bit out, cutting me off. Dark, dark eyes met mine as his chest rose and fell with each rough breath that left him. After an eternity had passed in our agonizing silence, he spoke. Every word was automatic, detached. “You’re finally free here with me. You don’t need to count days.”
“Free? I was kidnapped. You bought me. I’ve been locked in this room for weeks. In what world could any of those things ever be considered free?” What had started out as whispers had turned into tortured yells, but he didn’t react to them.
He just watched me until I was finished, then calmly said, “In my world, Blackbird.”
“Your—” I began, somewhat taken aback. I hadn’t thought he would respond to those questions, and I certainly hadn’t expected that response. “What world is this? Where did they take me? Where are—what country are we in?” I demanded, my voice rising with each question.
The devil looked at me with forced amusement. “Where do you think you are?”