Page 31 of Savage Captor (Deadly Devotion #1)

For the next year, I was half-mad. Mood swings.

Sudden bouts of anger out of nowhere. My dad ceased interacting with me altogether because I was so volatile.

One moment, I’d be fine, and the next moment, I’d be breaking anything in the near vicinity.

I see those signs on Monster. He’s volatile.

He’s angry. I had the excuse of young adult hormones to drive my grief-stricken madness, and Monster’s excuse is that he’s already crazy.

Losing his twin just sent him over the edge.

“Wait—”

“No,” he cuts me off. “Go ahead, Sharpe. Find a way to kill me.” I flinch at his use of my last name. Yesterday, there was a moment where he purposely tried to dissociate me from my father’s last name; today, I’m receiving no such consideration. Not after the way I wound him up.

“I don’t want to play—”

“Then you forfeit, and you take your punishment,” Monster says.

His eyes glint with challenge. “Unless you’re ready to pay the consequences, you’ll learn to hold your tongue.

Now, you get your first consequence. So either get your pathetic ass out of my bed and make good on your word, or say, “I forfeit, Greyson. I’m sorry for my stupidity. ””

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the spirit.” A malicious grin steals over his features. “Go on, Sharpe. Show me what you can do.”

I don’t want to find out what his punishment is, but I know this is a trap.

I’m going to get punished either way. If Monster is even slightly smart, he’ll have put away any weapons before bringing me here, so I won’t find anything.

And even if there was a gun or knife out in the open, in my current state, there’s no way I’d kill him.

He’s a trained assassin. I’m a girl with only one functioning leg and lungs that are going at a quarter capacity.

I’m going to get punished either way, and while I have a strong urge to grovel and try to avoid it, I know I won’t be able to.

I’ve made my bed; now it’s time to lie in it.

If I manage a hobble around this apartment, though, maybe I’ll be able to maintain a little bit of dignity.

Show that I’m not a complete invalid, even without crutches.

“I hope you know I despise you.”

“That should serve as plenty of fuel for your cute little assassination attempt. You have thirty seconds to get started before I assume you forfeit, and then ten minutes to find a weapon and try to kill me. Begin.”

I don’t waste time. Usually, ten minutes and thirty seconds would be plenty of time for me to case a room. Despite doing my best to resist my brother’s insistence to give me tactical training, he still lectured me on how to case a new space to determine the safety of it.

It takes the whole thirty seconds for me to get to the edge of the bed and fight my way to my feet.

Then, I test the weight on my bad leg. It’s painful, really painful, but if I only touch my toe to the ground, I can still limp.

It’s bad enough that I nearly tip over multiple times on my way to the door.

Unlike earlier, Monster doesn’t stand to try to help me.

I think he’d laugh if I crash to the ground.

I manage to make my way into the living room.

The first thing I do is sweep the floor.

There are some oddly-placed metal hooks sticking out of the floor; notably in front of the couch.

More, there are chains wrapping around the arms of the couch.

Jesus, this guy is a BDSM freak. I have to find a way out of here…

Maybe I could find a weapon and threaten him into letting me go.

There’s a slim chance that that’ll work.

I half-limp, half-hop around the living room.

My lungs burn from the exertion and my chest aches, but I ignore it.

Adrenaline, the slim hope of figuring a way out of this mess, fuels me to keep going.

The living room’s clean, including under the coffee table, so I move to the kitchen. “Five minutes,” Monster calls from the bedroom.

Fuck , I need to speed up. Similarly to the living room, there are metal loops drilled to the floor around the kitchen.

Next to the chairs pushed into the kitchen island, and in the center of the floor between the island and the stove.

I open drawers and cupboards, looking for a knife or even a glass that I could shatter and turn into a knife, but there’s nothing. Not even a goddamn fork.

There’s one more place I haven’t looked.

A door in the back of the living room, presumably leading somewhere else--an office?

My adrenaline is flagging, causing deeper, more poignant pain to wash over me in ever-increasing waves, but I persevere.

I have to be able to find something. If Eric were in my position, he’d already have gotten out.

He’d turn the most innocuous object into a weapon.

God, I should’ve listened to him when he insisted that training was for the best .

I get to the mysterious door, only to feel my heart fall. There’s a keypad next to the doorknob. I try the code from the annex, but it fails. I try 1234, which is also a fail.

“Time’s up.” Monster’s voice comes from right behind me.

I startle, spinning around. The adrenaline comes back.

I know what my failure means, even if it was preordained.

He’s going to hurt me again. He said he wouldn’t, but we both know he’s a liar.

He might not even take me back to the cell.

He might torture me right in his bed, then fall asleep to the sound of my pained sobs and screams.

My eyes start to prickle, but I hold the tears back. I’ll accept the pain with dignity. I’ll—

“Take off your clothes.”

What?

I stare at Monster. Jesus fuck, he’s going to rape me.

Right now. That’s his punishment. He’s going to take my virginity as part of this crazy game of his, which all started because I taunted him and swore to kill him.

My eyes widen and I almost gasp, but it only causes me to choke on my breath.

I let out two excruciating coughs before managing to gain control of myself.

Coughing hurts much more than trying to breathe deeply.

“You have thirty seconds,” Monster says. “Take off your clothes.”

“Please.” I can’t stop myself. “N-not… not that.”

“If you don’t do it, I will,” Monster says impassively. “I don’t think you want that, Scarlett.”

My hands tremble. I lean my back against the mystery door and turn my eyes to the ceiling. If I believed in the kindness of God, I’d be praying right now. But if he exists, he’s never listened to me before. There’s no reason he would start now.

“Fifteen seconds,” Monster says flatly .

I squeeze my eyes shut, spend a beat mourning my pride, and reach for the hem of my shirt— his shirt.

I slowly start lifting it up. I’m not wearing a bra underneath it, and I’m effectively exposing myself to his gaze.

To Monster’s gaze. Against my own volition, my eyes open by a crack, and what I see in his stare at once frightens me and does something… else.

Desire. Stark desire brightens his grey orbs. Eager anticipation gives his features an almost childlike excitement. His eyebrows are raised. His hands are clenched in fists by his side. He’s gazing at every bit of midriff I’m exposing with enthusiastic anticipation.

He wants me. It’s a terrible, frightening thought, but beneath the fear, there’s something else.

Some unnamed emotion flows through me. It’s not desire, but I think it might be a hint of warmth.

I’ve never been stared at with such stark desire, and while it’s mostly humiliating, it’s also a little…

nice. My life has left me with a pretty ingrained belief that I’m undesirable, yet the monster who hates me also wants me.

Bad Scarlett . Being looked at like that by him is a threat , not a compliment. He’s going to rape me soon enough—he said so himself yesterday. Whenever he wants, however he wants. I’ll be his sex slave.

My lips thin. The humiliation doubles in size and I squeeze my eyes shut again. I don’t want to look at him—I can’t. I thought he’d get right to torturing me, but he wants to expose me first. He wants me to show parts of myself to him that no man has ever seen.

Best rip it off like a Band-Aid . The sweats are much more complicated to get off with the problem of my thigh.

I undo the drawstring and let them fall down my hips, but I can’t put enough pressure on my bad leg to get them off my feet.

I can feel Monster’s gaze on my most intimate area, but I don’t have the strength to look at him. I won’t look at him .

“You are so goddamn beautiful.” His voice is soft, filled with a note that might be wonder.

I’m tempted to look at his face, see if he means it.

I’ve never received a compliment like that before because I’ve never been intimate with anyone before.

A lifetime of not being wanted has left me dangerously vulnerable and susceptible to praise.

Praise that’s all the more potent because it comes from a man who seems to hate me.

He does hate me , I remind myself. He sent me on a wild goose chase for a weapon that didn’t exist. He called me Sharpe. Before that, he tortured me. He called my father and told him that I’m alive, endangering my life. He took me away from school and my plants.

He also fed me chicken soup. Blew on it so it wouldn’t burn my tongue. Told me about his brother, showing vulnerability. Slept with his hand covering my heart so that he’d know if something was wrong.

But he only did all of that because he wants you alive so he can keep tormenting you, the voice of reason says. He’s playing games with you, and like the stupid little girl you are, you’re giving in to them .