I sat roughly on the couch in my home office and ran my free hand over my face. I’d only had her in my care for a day and a half. Even though I had taken her three meals today, she hadn’t once looked at me or touched a bite of food.
I’d tried to force her, I’d tried to coax her, I’d tried to be patient—but my patience had worn out quickly each time her body trembled and quiet songs fell from her lips. At least I had learned one thing today: she sang when scared. It seemed involuntary, but damn it, it was . . . it was endearing.
“It’s only been two days, Lucas. She’ll eat when she gets hungry enough.”
I bit back my automatic response and blew out a calming breath. “Again, that I know. I don’t know how long her transport was.”
I refused to tell him that she’d been unconscious when I received her, and I had been worried she wouldn’t wake at all when she slept through the day and night. Or, when I’d checked her body once she woke, she’d been covered in bruises.
Covered.
Because I knew it wouldn’t matter to William. Knew what he would say.
“What difference do some bruises make? You’re bound to give her more. It cannot matter to you what condition the girl is in. Unless she is dying, let her stay that way.”
“If I recall, it was my fourth who did the very same thing.”
My brows lifted at his unexpected comment. “And what happened?”
“Ah, I almost lost her. I had to call in a doctor who hooked her up to an IV to rehydrate her. I didn’t leave her side for days even after she recovered . . .” His joking tone had disappeared, replaced by a voice I so rarely heard from him that I sat in shock for moments after.
It was full of affection and love, everything we could not feel when it came to the women—and everything he clearly showed for only one of his.
One no one knew, because he wouldn’t allow anyone to know his weakness—her. He never showed favor toward whoever she was, but it was there in his voice. You knew when he talked about her, and you knew he was in love with her, but the mystery remained because he’d never mentioned her name. Knowing she was his fourth didn’t help solve the mystery, since only the first women in a house could ever go by their number.
“You have two options, Lucas,” he continued sharply, and I knew the subject of that woman was over. “You either let her starve herself until you need to get her medical help or you force her.”
“I’ve tried forcing her.”
“No,” he argued, “you have not.”
I lifted my hand then let it fall back to my leg. “Since you haven’t been here to witness it, let me assure you—”
“You can say what you will, I will maintain that you have not. She is your property. She is to do exactly as you say when you say; eventually she will need to learn that. Some of the girls need to be taught immediately who is in control—yours might be one of them.”
I breathed in sharply through my nose when I finally understood what it was he wasn’t saying. “She isn’t ready,” I said gruffly.
“She isn’t, or you aren’t?”
My jaw clenched painfully at his blatant challenge.
“I was wrong thinking you could be brought into this life, Lucas. I thought I saw something—I was wrong.”
I gripped the phone tightly in my hand and threw it across the room when he hung up. Launching myself away from the couch, I paced like a caged animal in my office as adrenaline surged through me and my anger grew.
Anger at the little blackbird in the level above this one for driving me insane and making my mentor question my abilities. Anger at myself for wanting to go easy on her when I knew that was the worst thing I could do for the both of us.
The girl had to be taught. I knew that.
Despite how much the thought made me want to offer up my own name on a bullet, I had to break her. I knew I couldn’t let her turn into what William’s fourth was for him: a weakness.
I stalked toward the doors leading to the rest of the main level of my house, and at the last second, grabbed my tie from the day before that was draped over a chair.
Chapter 7
The Devil
Briar
I woke slowly when my door was thrown open. The sound of it slamming into the adjacent wall reverberated throughout the room, but I didn’t attempt to move from my curled-up position.
I didn’t have the strength to.
Other than the times the man had forced me to move that day in a vain attempt to eat, I had stayed right there, facing the wall.
I had wondered how long it would take my body to shut down from lack of nutrition, and I tried to figure out if it already was.
I hadn’t had anything Sunday morning before Kyle and I had been on our way out the door and had been abducted before I could take my lunch at work. I remembered being given one small cup of water while they’d prepped me for my buyer, but other than that, I hadn’t put anything in my stomach since Saturday night. I’d vaguely noticed that during all of my crying today, there hadn’t been any tears, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last used the restroom. I was just so tired.
Just as my eyes slid closed again, the man roughly forced me onto my back. It was easy to keep my eyes closed now—I wondered briefly if I could sleep through this attempt at giving me food.
A scratchy whimper of protest sounded in the back of my throat when he grabbed my sore wrists and yanked them high over my head. “Please let me go,” I whispered hoarsely as something smooth slid over one wrist . . . and then the other.
For a second, the material felt so nice that I wondered if he was doing something to heal my cuts, but then it tightened painfully and my hands were pulled higher until my shoulders were screaming in pain.
The tension eased momentarily, but when I tried to move my arms down again, I couldn’t.
I sluggishly leaned my head back on the bed and peeled my eyes open, but it took me a second to understand what I was seeing. My hands were tied to a wide section of the wooden headboard. I pulled harder with no give from the wood, and looked down, panic flooding me when the man opened my robe, exposing my body.
I pressed my legs together and tried to pull them up, to curl into as much of a ball as my position would allow, but the man gripped the tops of my thighs and slammed them back onto the bed, spreading them wide.
“No, no. No!” I screamed, and tried to thrash with what little energy I had left. “Please, no.”
“You are mine, do you understand that?” he seethed, and the muscles in his arms flexed as he held me down.
He was shirtless, and the jeans he’d been wearing throughout the day were unbuttoned and barely staying up. He was tall, with a broad chest and shoulders that tapered down to narrow hips. Every inch of him was tanned and muscled, but the scars and tattoos that littered his body didn’t seem to fit a man who bought kidnapped women.
They didn’t seem to belong to a man who spoke to me the way he did. They didn’t boast of his money or power.
They screamed he was dangerous. They screamed to run.
My head shook subtly as a sob burst from my chest. “No,” I whimpered.