Page 16

Every action supervised. Every. Single. Breath.

She glared at the ceiling. “Turn on the television.”

Seconds later, the TV powered on. The screen showed a skinny woman huddled in a large bed, her spiky hair the color of L’Oreal Platinum #105. She’d worn the color for over a year, but she didn’t recognize the woman beneath the disguise. Bit by bit, she was losing herself.

She tugged the duvet tighter around her nudity and raised a palm to the side of the room. On screen, her face disappeared behind the hand. “A news station. Please?”

She dropped her hand, steadied her breath, and waited.

Nothing.

“Turn it off.”

The screen went black. The damned remote was another privilege to earn. Until then, she would let a fragment of her brain hold onto a still breathing, smiling, waiting Noah.

Over a selection of blackberries and miniature rolls, she rewrote the prior night. She replaced it with a dance, bodies entwined, a sway in their steps. The fantasy tormented her, burning her eyes and twisting things inside her.

Dread slithered over her and she shook it off, steeled her backbone. She wouldnotlet Roy break her. She needed to keep a measure of herself locked away from his keen eyes so when she did escape, she would have something left to help her mend.

But what did she have that he hadn’t already taken?

She had a memory of a man with back full of scars. Beneath the superficial damage was a devotion to survival, an instinct to dominate his future. Most probably didn’t see that when they looked at him, but she hadn’t just recognized it, she’d felt it and wanted it.

She would lock his strength deep inside her, would mimic his steel undercarriage and make it her own. She recalled the unrefined charm in his retorts, the raw beauty of his expressions, and the way he looked at her when she turned to leave. As she replayed their hour together over and over, the pain dimmed, the bedroom bled away, and her eyelids sagged.

8

Charlee woke to the Craig’s voice.

“Get up.” He ripped off the covers. “Mr. Oxford is back, and you are requested in his office.”

She wrapped her arms around her nudity. “Now?”

“Shower first.” He wrenched the chain attached to her leg, and she tumbled to the floor.

“Dick.”

The air hissed and a strike hit her back, ricocheting from her tailbone to her knees. She gasped. Fuck, her body would never hold up at this rate. She twisted her head and found him flexing over her and swinging a section of the chain folded in half.

He could go to hell. She pulled in her legs as if to stand, then reared back and shot a foot into his groin.

A grunt pushed past his lips, but rather than dropping the chain, he raised it for another strike.

“Hurt me again and I will beg Mr. Oxford to remove the rest of your ear.” She matched his death glare with one of her own.

He worked his jaw and flared his nostrils as if sniffing for a bluff. Begging Roy would come with a high price, one she wasn’t sure she’d be willing to pay.

The chain lowered. Sure, he was afraid of Roy, but he was more fearful of losing his grand salary, his swanky penthouse living, and the power that came with being the right-hand to one of the world’s wealthiest men.

She hobbled to the bathroom, the twinge in her back adding to her frustration. In the brightly lit room, she found everything she needed to prepare for his summoning. Towels, shampoo, soap, lotion, toothpaste…a tactical folding knife to conceal in her ass? Well, almost everything.

The Craig leaned outside the door-less shower stall with the end of the chain handcuffed to his wrist. She turned her back to him under the spray of water and rubbed in shampoo. Even the follicles of her hair hurt.

Footfalls approached behind her. The steady, confident pace sent a shiver down her spine.

“Drop your hands.”

Dread surged in her chest and ruptured into a struggle for breath. She lowered her hands, and her neck sank into her shoulders, unable to force her legs to turn. She didn’t want to look in his eyes and see what was coming.