Page 149 of Carnal Urges

I shout, “Shut the front door!You’re in love with your kidnapper?”

She makes a face. “I mean… maybe? How do you know if it’s really love?”

Kage folds his arms over his chest. “It’s only love if you’re willing to die for him.”

Her moan is faint, miserable, and even more alarming than the almost-but-not tears.

“Oh, no. Sloane, youdon’thave feelings for him. This is a thing that happens to kidnapped people sometimes. They developsympathy for their captors. It’s called Stockholm syndrome, and it’s… Why are you laughing?”

“Long story. Can someone please get me a drink? I think I’d like to spend the next several days in a coma.”

She walks past me into the living room and throws herself face-down onto the sofa. I look helplessly at Kage, who somehow doesn’t seem surprised by this turn of events.

“Better look after that,” he says with a chin jerk in her direction. “I’ll get you girls some whiskeys. Look like you could use it.”

He kisses me on the forehead, then ambles off toward the kitchen. I hurry over to Sloane, kneel beside her on the floor next to the sofa, and pet her hair.

She turns her head and looks at me. She sniffles. “You know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“Ilikehim. He’s smart. And funny. Oh my god, that dry sense of humor. It’s exactly like mine! And he’s as stubborn as me, too. More. You wouldn’t believe how stubborn the man is. He’s practically a mule.”

Her face screws up again. She whimpers. “Like one of those mules they take tourists to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on.”

I’m not sure what’s happening, but there’s no way she’s in love with her kidnapper. She doesn’t fall in love. It’s simply not something she does. And not withhim.

I wonder if this is some kind of decompression thing that happens after a traumatic event? I have no idea what to say, so I just make a soothing noise and continue petting her hair.

She rolls onto her back and flings an arm over her eyes. “And he smells good. When he’s not smoking, that is. And he’s generous. God, you should’ve seen the jewelry! Here, look at this.”

She thrusts her arm at me, displaying a fat diamond tennis bracelet I wouldn’t wear outside for fear of being mugged.

“He bought you that?”

“Yes. And clothes. So many clothes. La Perla lingerie. Cashmere sweaters in every color. Thirteen-hundred-dollar jeans, for fuck’s sake. Who does that for their captive? And he protected me from MS-13! He saved my life!” She groans. “And when I was in the hospital—”

“Hospital?” I repeat, alarmed. She ignores me.

“—he stayed with me and told me a bedtime story, and even though he said I looked like a camel, he didn’t really mean it. And when the nurse said I was pregnant—”

“Pregnant?”

“—he called Stavros to come get me. He didn’t want to, but he did, because he thought Stavros was the baby daddy and it was the right thing to do, but when he found out Stavros wasn’t the baby daddy, he kidnapped meagain!”

I shout,“Who’s the baby daddy?”

She bypasses that and continues nonstop with the litany of Declan’s positive attributes until she exhausts herself—it takes a while—and falls silent.

I sit there stunned.

A lot has happened since she’s been gone.

And, quite clearly, she’s been having sex with Declan.Emotionalsex.

The kind she never has.

“Holy shit,” I say quietly. “Youarein love with him.”