Page 14 of His To Claim

“Tell me, Vinnie.”

“Elmo’s escaped,” he says.

I stand up, my jaw going so tight my teeth ache, grinding together.

“I have to go,” I growl at Aida. “Eat breakfast without me. Feed Jackal. His food is in the second kitchen.”

I stride toward the balcony door.

“Arturo,” she calls out.

I pause, waiting, thinking of Elmo, the word escape bouncing around my mind.

Motherfucker, I put you in that detox cell for your own good.

“Did you mean it when you said I could use the phone?”

“Yes,” I say. “There’s nothing you can tell your father he doesn’t already know.”

I make to walk away, but then something occurs to me.

I nod to Vinnie to wait beyond the balcony doors and then return to my woman, leaning down to look her firmly in the eyes.

“I’m going to have some more clothes delivered to your room,” I tell her. “Change into something less sexy. That’s an order. If I check my security footage later and see that you’re strutting around the house in that dress, I won’t be fucking pleased. Those legs, those tits, that creamy cunt, it’s just for me. Do you understand?”

She flinches back as though in fear, as though she can sense the change in me, the Don replacing the man I was minutes before.

Fucking Elmo.

“Yes, Arturo, I’ll change.”

“Good girl,” I growl, and then stalk back into the house, mentally readying myself for what’s to come.

Chapter Seven

Aida

I stand in my bedroom – somehow, thinking of it as my bedroom doesn’t feel strange – with Jackal patiently sitting at my side. I’m at the bedside table, where somebody left me a burner cellphone. I’ve already changed into the sweatpants and hoodie that Arturo had delivered for me, somehow being able to tell what size I am by sight alone. He didn’t get it exactly right, though, because they’re a little baggy.

Or maybe he wants it like that, that voice deep inside of me sings, the voice that doesn’t want me to be self-conscious or self-loathing anymore. He wants you all to himself. He doesn’t want to share your body.

I wish I could sink freely into that belief, but there’s still a paranoid part of me that’s waiting for the hammer to fall, for the punchline that will bring this all crashing down.

Jackal lets out a soft rumbling noise.

It’s not that he’s hungry. I found the second kitchen after getting lost twice and ending up back where I started, but eventually, I found my way there, found his dog bowl and a giant bag of food that was difficult to lift. Somebody had written his serving portions on a piece of paper next to the food, so it was easy enough.

Maybe the noise is because he senses the uncertainty boiling through me.

The uncertainty makes no sense.

I should want to call my parents.

And yet anxiety twists in my gut when I think about how Arturo and Dad could possibly know each other. If I’m starting to develop completely unrealistic and unhinged feelings for Arturo – and let’s face it, I am – then what the heck am I supposed to do if I discover that Arturo is evil, somehow?

What if Dad tells me he’s a monster?

I sit on the bed with a sigh.

Jackal leaps up easily, causing the mattress to judder under his impressive weight. The dog whines softly and lays his head in my lap, looking up at me with his dark eyes, eyes that remind me of the near black of Arturo’s.

I stroke my hand over his head, tickling him behind the ears.

“I have to call them, don’t I?” I murmur. “They need to know that I’m safe.”

As I pick up the phone, I’m stunned that no part of me wants to call 911, which would be the logical, normal response. It’s the first thing I should want to do, call the police and tell them I’m being held captive against my will, but even thinking about that sends harsh firm feelings of rejection surging through me.

It’s like that place deep inside of me, my center, my womb, whatever the heck it is, it’s screaming at me that I can never leave this man.

I’m destined to be with him.

I’m destined to have his babies.

We’re destined to be a family.

It doesn’t matter that if I told Arturo these crazy thoughts, he’d laugh at me in that growling way he has, turning from Nice Arturo to the snarling beast who threatened to take me from behind on the balcony.

I grit my teeth at the thought, my sex giving a shiver.

He knew about my secret sexual fantasies.

I’ve never had an object for these fantasies before, just a vague general sense that one day I wanted to unleash all these inner desires, that one day I didn’t want to be the shy girl anymore.

But now it’s Arturo, only him, and an endless repeating cycle in my mind.

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