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But Denver and Wolfson are frequent visitors. As long as I stay in this bed, I can’t escape them.
As I wake from another dream, I don’t need to open my eyes to know the firm weight on my hip belongs to Denver’s hand.
The terror I can’t shake whenever he’s near is as heavy as always, rubbing against my senses.
“Tell me something.” I fight the urge to shove his touch away and keep my eyes closed. “When was the first time you saw me?”
“It was…” His voice scratches, dusty with sleep. “In the emergency room at your hospital.”
My head snaps up, my gaze drilling into his. “When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Did I treat you for an injury or something?”
His handsome face is unforgettable. How could I not remember?
“No.” He glides his hand to my waist and back to my hip, making me shudder. “I was fishing in the Sitka Sound and got a kidney stone. Someone else treated me, but I spotted you in the hall.”
“That was it?” My chest tightens. “You saw me and decided then and there to ruin my life?”
If only I hadn’t gone to work that day. Or walked down a different hallway. It’s hard to accept that I’m here, without my baby, simply because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I knew then and there that you belong to us.” His fingers clench, squeezing my hip.
“You and your sons?” I push his hand away, and the movement knifes agony through my chest. “Is that what you do? Steal women and pass them around? Or do you rape them together, like one happy family orgy?”
“You’re in pain.”
“Don’t change the subject.” Scooting against the headboard, I wheeze through the stitching across my ribs. “Why me?”
“Look at you.” He sits back in the chair and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re beautiful, Frankie. Wild and ferocious and irresistible. How can you not be ours?”
His words don’t match his actions. I’ve been unconscious, injured, weakened, and at my most vulnerable. During that time, he bathed me, dressed me, held me on the toilet, and all the while, he never sexually abused me. At least not that I’m aware.
He makes these aggressive claims of ownership, but his touches have been nothing short of gentle and chaste.
It doesn’t add up.
“You haven’t raped me. What are you waiting for?”
“We’ve been over this.” He rubs the vertical lines between his eyes. “I’m a patient man. When you’re ready, you’ll come to me.”
“You’re delusional.”
“I waited two years before I took you. What’s a few more weeks?”
I refuse to acknowledge the second timeline and focus on the first. “You saw me two years ago but didn’t take me until I was pregnant.”
“The pregnancy was a coincidence. I didn’t learn about the baby until the morning you and your husband did.”
“The camera.”
He nods. “Your argument and preparations to leave him worked to my advantage. But hear me, Frankie. I’m not him. I would’ve loved that child as if it were my own. And when you get pregnant again, I’ll be overjoyed.”
“No.” Horrified, I curl into myself, my insides shriveling. “I will never bear your children.” My stomach plummets. “Or your grandchildren.”
“We’ll see.”
There’s no reasoning with him. He’s not sane. Nothing he can say will make this make sense.
I just want to go home. I need Monty. I need to see that he misses me as much as I miss him.
Reaching for the bottle on the nightstand, I shake out a pain pill and swallow it.
“That won’t help.” Denver taps his fingers on his knee, watching me. “The pain you suffer comes from wanting the unobtainable. It’s that wanting that consumes and never stops hurting. An obsession without end.”
“Then give me a pill for that.”
“There’s no pill. Change the want. Focus on a different desire. An obtainable goal.”
“Like hurting you?”
“If that will strengthen you, then by all means, set your sights on that.”
Without thought, I swing, aiming to gouge out his eyes. But he anticipates it and captures my arm between us.
“Fight me, little girl.” With terrible strength, he shoves my forearm against my throat and uses it to pin me to the bed. “But remember—”
“You fight back.”
“Christ.” He grins, loosening his grip. “You’re perfect.”
“You should kill me.”
“Never.”
“I’ll find a way home, and when I do, I will kill you.”
“I look forward to watching you try.” He stands and passes me a glass tumbler from the nightstand. “Kentucky bourbon with a splash of Amarena cherry juice and two cherries. Not those cheap candy-apple red ones.”
Oh, God. The rich, juicy, decadent ones that are so deeply red they look black with syrup thicker than molasses on a cold day.
Mouth watering, I stare at the glass in his outstretched hand. “My favorite.”
“I know.”
“You had a camera in my kitchen.”
“In every room of that house.”
“How long?”
“Two years.” His mouth curves.
