Page 30 of House of Cards

Then I stop.

Room service is on the way. Someone’s going to be here in a few minutes with my breakfast. My stomach growls, but I clap my hands over my belly and will it to be silent.

This is the break I was looking for. Someone is going to open the door in a few minutes. I need to be ready.

I rush into the bathroom, stopping to stare at the beautiful black marble floor and gold fittings before I can force myself to move again. Last night I came in here to pee and change into one of Smith’s t-shirts, but I didn’t bother turning on the light to get a good look at the place.

By then I’d figured he’d either forgotten about me, or he was too busy doing other shady shit to rough me up some more. So I took a chance and went to sleep.

Figured since I couldn’t escape anyway, I might as well preserve my energy.

I step into the shower that takes up the entire back wall of the black and gold bathroom, and turn on the faucet. Then I back up and close the door to a crack.

Smith’s t-shirt barely covers my butt.

This doesn’t concern me as much as the fact that I have no weapon.

Steam slowly fills the bathroom as I go through the cabinets. Since I doubt a can of shaving cream could do more than irritate someone’s eye, I slip out of the bathroom and hunt through the room.

For a sex trafficking casino boss who caries knives around in his pocket, this room sure doesn’t have the wide selection of weapons I’d have expected.

Not even a fucking umbrella.

There’s a sound from the room door. I drop to my belly beside the bed, a panicked gasp caught in my throat. The velvet-lined base of the bed goes all the way to the thick carpet, so there’s no way I can hide under the base, but I hope I’m crowding close enough that the hotel clerk can’t see me from the door.

There’s asqueak-squeak-squeakas someone wheels a cart through the door. I try not to breathe, resisting the urge to peek over the top of the mattress. I’m not close enough to the door. There’s no way I can make it out before the porter sees me and tries to stop me.

“Hmm.”

Smith.

Suddenly, I’m angry again.

Anyone with half a brain should realize that I’m in the shower—courtesy of the steam billowing out through the partially open bathroom door—and would then obviously wait for me to come out.

Nope.

Not Smith, the sex-crazed psycho who whipped me with his fucking suspenders yesterday and then made me come all over his large, powerful hand.

Normal etiquette rules don’t apply to my owner. He pushes open the bathroom door and goes right inside. Shooting to my feet, I glare at the steam now billowing out of the bathroom.

Howdarehe waltz in here like he owns the place?

Well, I guess he does technically own the place. And according to him, he now owns me too, but that’s neither here nor there.

I glance over at the food cart, and my eyes light up when I spot a side plate stacked with cutlery. One of them is a knife. It’s nothing like the dangerously sharp, highly specialized torture utensil he used to cut off my underwear, but if wielded with enough force, I’m sure it could make someone bleed.

The door is closed, and I’m pretty sure it auto-locks. My only way out is to get his keycard, the one I assume he keeps in his pocket.

I pick up the knife and edge my way toward the bathroom. Smith left the door open wide when he went inside. But I guessthe hot water in this place is scorching, because there’s still enough steam piling out of the room to obscure the interior. Only hints of the basin and toilet appear sporadically through the milky, roiling fog.

My heart pounds inside my chest, and even though I’m the one wielding the knife, I feel like I’m the victim in a slasher movie.Psycho’s soundtrack hacks and slashes its way through my mind as I inch toward the shower.

Closer.

Closer…

“Kittens shouldn’t play with knives.” A hand clamps around my upraised wrist, twisting fiercely. I yell out in pain, dropping the knife. It barely clatters to the floor before he kicks it into the billowing steam.