I didn’t even know where to begin with my thoughts on where they could have taken me. I’d been unconscious for the better part of two days while they’d brought me here. And I’d been so na?ve to think that sex trafficking would never touch my world, that I didn’t know much about it. I thought it only happened in foreign countries, and I still had a feeling I was in one. “Not the United States,” I finally whispered.
He glanced down at himself for a split second, and when he looked up again, his eyes were cold. “I’m American, Blackbird. What would give you the impression that we aren’t in the U.S.?”
“Are we?”
“Why would I want you close to where they took you from?” he responded vaguely, trying to confuse me even more.
I shook my head slowly and pleaded, “Just tell me where we are.”
“In a room you should’ve been out of a while ago,” he said in a dark voice. “Show me you can handle this.”
“I can’t do this,” I whispered back immediately, and some distant part of me noted that I didn’t begin trembling as I had the other times.
“You can,” he argued gently, and he placed a hand to my chest to gently push me back so I was lying down again.
He put one knee and hand on the bed, and leaned over me as the hand on my chest ran up along the edge of the robe I was wearing. Our positions, his touch, and the way his eyes burned and betrayed his emotionless mask . . . it made this feel too real, too intimate. Made my mind confuse this for something it wasn’t.
Because he wasn’t a lover and his touch shouldn’t steal my breath.
But it did.
He was darkness, and I couldn’t allow myself to forget. No matter how he’d tried to backtrack with me ever since that first night. No matter how he’d stopped and covered me every time it had gotten to be too much and I’d started singing out of fear . . .
He was still pushing me for something that wasn’t natural. He was still keeping me here against my will and claiming to own me when all I wanted was to get back to Kyle.
Kyle . . .
A sob caught in my throat as Kyle’s face entered my mind while the devil above me pushed the satiny material off one shoulder in the beginnings of our slow, seductive dance—I began trembling as grief ate at me and fear consumed me.
His head shook subtly as he leaned down, and his lips brushed against my ear as he whispered in a tone that was at once pleading and soothing and longing. “Show me, Blackbird.”
But for the first time, my fear had nothing to do with what the man above me could do to me. And instead, was solely based on the devastating realization that I would never get out of here, would never go back home. Because I knew . . . I knew I couldn’t do what the devil was asking of me.
And like it was as natural as breathing, my mouth opened and the first words of a song tumbled from it.
The devil stilled above me just as he finished pushing the robe off my other shoulder, and I desperately tried to choke back the song and tame my shaking. Knowing if I could just get through this, I would be one step closer to seeing the man my heart was aching for.
When I felt the devil push away from me and start sliding my robe back into place, I panicked. “N-no, I ca—” But my words died when I looked at him to find his face twisted, as if he was being tortured . . .
But just as quickly it was gone, and that look of irritation and disappointment I’d come to know so well was all that lingered in his expression, and I knew I had to have imagined his pain, imagined that a devil could feel what I was enduring.
“Do you want to leave this room?” he asked as he sat back, his voice weighed down.
“Yes. Yes, you know I do.”
His head shook with a slowness that made me feel his disappointment in the pit of my stomach, made me want to apologize for not being able to do this, and I hated him for that too. “You know what you need to do to leave, and you aren’t trying.”
There was no point in arguing how wrong he was. A man like him would never understand. “I thought when I left this room I would get clothes,” I said quietly instead.
“You will.”
“Then why do I need to be comfortable naked? Will I have to be that way often?”
A grin pulled at the corner of his mouth that didn’t match the somber mood of the room or the coldness of his eyes. “Only if you want to be.”
“Then I don’t . . . I don’t understand why it matters if I—”
“What are you doing right now?” he asked in a rough voice as he reached out to touch the edge of the robe again, but he didn’t try to move it away. “You’re hiding from me by covering yourself. Why would I trust you to leave this room when you’re so afraid of me that you still feel like you need to hide?”
My mouth slowly opened as I wondered how he still didn’t get it. “I don’t understand how you can expect anything different from me.”
“I expect you to try for yourself so I won’t have to push you.” Even though his tone remained calm and even, it was dripping with venom and promised so many nights like that first one that my blood ran cold. “This room and the robes—this whole process—it isn’t for the sake of having sex or being naked. It’s about getting to the point where you trust me and feel comfortable being near me. When you get to that point, I’ll know you’re ready to leave the room. Completely covering yourself, flinching before I can even touch you, and trembling when I do, shows me that you aren’t.”
I nodded absentmindedly then shook my head. “But I won’t.” When there was no response, I risked looking at him again. His brow was furrowed, and he was staring at me intently. My voice shook through my next admission. “I don’t—I mean, I’m not that girl. I didn’t think any other man would ever see me without my clothes on. I’ll never leave this room because I’ll never be okay with some man looking at me or touching me.”
“Some man,” he said, and his dark eyes flashed with frustration. “I own you.”
“No, you don’t,” I reminded him.
His lip curled, but without saying a word, he got off the bed and began walking away from it.
“Another day, Blackbird?” I asked as I sat up on the bed, mocking his normal parting words, and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to do.
Even if it hadn’t been for the deadly calm that washed over him when he turned to face me, I would have known from the way his hands slid into the pockets of his jeans as he did.
For a man that exuded such evil—and could easily destroy my heart and my soul during a few minutes with my body—he had been patient with me during these progress days . . . all things considered.
As much as I hated him and hated what he was trying to make me do, I knew it could be so, so much worse . . . as he’d just reminded me.
I needed to be glad it wasn’t.
I needed to not provoke him.
“Watch yourself,” he growled in warning. He glanced at his expensive-looking watch, then said in a low tone, “There are people who should be here any minute for you.”
I froze as a dozen different thoughts, horrors and dreams alike, flew through my mind. “F-for me? Why? What’s happening?”
“They’re coming to change your hair color.”
I glanced down at where my hair was falling to my waist in waves. “It’s only ever been blonde.”