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In a lightning-fast move, he snatched my wrist below my cuff and trapped it behind my back, arching my spine and pressing my bare breasts against his white shirt. Flashing a look at the cameras, he angled me a little more, contorting me until I cried out.
“If you know I’m sick and evil and barely holding on, why the hell are you still standing up to me? Why tempt me with your sadness? Why drive me fucking insane by fighting back when you know what it does to me?”
“Know?” I scoffed, my eyes popping wide in pain. “How could I possibly know? I don’t know you. You stole my life, ow—”
He twisted my wrist, making me squirm against the shelves. His attention seemed half on me and half on the cameras, almost as if he manipulated my discomfort for whoever was watching rather than his own enjoyment. “I’ve been more honest with you than anyone in my entire life.”
Gasping, hating, I bared my teeth. “Am I supposed to be impressed? Do you expect me to swoon at your feet all while thanking you for electrocuting me?”
His fingers loosened around my wrist just enough to let blood pour back into my fingertips. “The first time I did it, I didn’t know what the device would do. The second…I apologise for.” He chewed on a growl. “But you were screeching at powerful, sadistic men. It was the only way I could prevent them from retaliating.”
“Oh please.” I shook my head. “The age-old…‘I only hurt you to protect you’ bullshit. Save it.” I pushed his chest with my free hand, needing to get out of the cage of his arms.
He didn’t move.
Tingles sparked in my fingers the longer I rested my palm on his shirt. His chest rose and fell, his heart thundering beneath my touch.
I shoved again.
Nothing.
I dropped my hand and balled it against the stinging current left behind. I hated that he still held me prone. That his fingers flexed around my wrist wedged against my spine—a threat and a caress all in one.
Neither of us spoke for far too long.
Tension and awareness thickened.
Fight and fear, hate and hellfire.
I didn’t like it.
“Let me go,” I breathed. “Just…please. If you’re truly sorry for bringing me here. For gifting me to a dangerous creep who entertains rapists, then please…help me get out of here.”
Henri’s grey gaze bounced around the shelves—eyes narrowed as he searched the corners of the room, the bronze figurines of hunting dogs and stags, the quaint framed embroidery of hedgehogs and badgers. All the knickknacks were from another era, falsified and replicated in this mockery of a citadel.
Finally, he looked down at me and lowered his voice. “I see four cameras clearly. Who the hell knows how many are hidden elsewhere. I don’t know if they have audio, but I can guarantee we’re being watched right now, and we’ve already spent far too long whispering against the bookcase.”
“Then let me go.” I went to push him again but hesitated.
I didn’t like touching him.
I didn’t like the strange sensations that sparked between us.
I didn’t like that even now—even after everything he’d done and would do—my body was still aware of his. Still tempted by the forbidden. Still deluded by danger.
He exhaled hard as his gaze locked on my mouth. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but…you have no choice. I will tell you one last time…I’m the only chance you have in here. Thanks to me, you’ve been trafficked into a society that will never let you go. You were the key to me getting inside, and I’m…” He swallowed, his throat working. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“More than you’ll ever know.”
The way he said it. The aching truth behind it.
It made me pause.
Made me study him.
Slowly, things began to shift into nonsensical sense.
