At least she didn’t have to have the awkward and horrifying conversation regarding basic needs with Curtis more than once. An unnoticed pocket door led into a bathroom adjacent to her small room. It also had no windows, or anything else of real use. It did, however, contain plenty of mint toothpaste. Quinn would have gone without if she hadn’t had to scrub the taste of the Alpha from her mouth so often.
More blankets had been brought over the past however long. Some were fresh and new, others tainted by her long ago heat. At first, she justified it by telling herself it was cold, and that was why she arranged each new item into her first sad creation. She was, after all, denied any clothing. By the fourth duvet, she refused to take anything else. Huddling in her corner on the bare floor after destroying her construct, she tried to stay awake until exhaustion could pull her under right where she sat. It never worked. No matter how much she didn’t want to, she always found herself snuggled deep into a fresh nest when she woke.
Kahler always came to her in the room, visits sporadic. Just as Curtis and his trays appeared to be on some timetable she couldn’t quite grasp, she only knew that she could count on Kahler appearing when she grew edgy and agitated. She didn’t know what he wanted or expected of her. There was never any conversation. He’d mount her, sometimes until she was hoarse and limp. Others only until she cried out his name and the knot released him. He never remained in the room longer than he had to.
There was no rhyme or reason to any of it.
There was also nothing to do.
Never having been so quiet and still, she felt stagnant. The hours stretched for eternity, broken only by the brief appearances of Curtis and lost all together when Kahler came. There was no job to rush to, no rent to scrape for, not even a single battered paperback to entertain her.
Solitude was one thing, but this forced isolation was breaking her down, too.
Curled up on the mattress, she stared at the ceiling. There wasn’t a single crack in the plaster. She’d checked multiple times. In fact, she had inspected every inch of the room. A single shallow dip in the floorboards in the corner was the only imperfection. Maybe that was why she called it hers.
Wrapped up in a sheet that held Kahler’s scent the strongest, Quinn bolted upright as the door came open. The disappointment that racked her when she saw it was Curtis had her stomach doing uneasy somersaults.
Uncertainty soon replaced it, clogging her throat with panic. There was no tray in his hands.
“You’re to come with me.” Almost curt despite this sudden change, he stepped further into the room to reveal a length of slinky black fabric draped over his arm. He held out the thing, waving it at her with a hard jerk of his arm when Quinn hesitated.
Trepidation crawled down her back with scratching pincers as she pulled the material to her lap. It was a dress, sort of. Thin and slinky, it whispered over her skin with a hushed sigh as it settled around her. With an impatient flick of Curtis’ fingers directing her, Quinn stood in an awkward scramble to let the short gown skim over her hips to tickle her thighs. She clutched the sheet in her hand though she let it fall away from her body.
Looking down at herself, the dress was little better than lingerie. A slip of silken fabric that clung to every curve, the swell of her breasts defined. Her lips thinned when a shiver drew her nipples taut, poking at the soft material. Just… great.
“Leave that,” Curtis said with a hard snap of his fingers at the sheet she still held tightly to her chest.
“What’s going on,” Quinn asked, nose scrunching at the gravelly texture of her words. Had she spoken more than what Kahler forced out of her mouth in the form of moans and screams?
Curtis’ features fell into a bland mask, one she had begun to recognize. It was the face he donned when he didn’t want to let on how he was feeling about what was going on around him, she supposed. It seemed to serve him well, but she had been downright docile for far too long. If this was going to be her life, then so be it, but she was tired of being nothing but the master’s fuck toy to the single person who interacted with her.
He’d spoken to her before, treated her like an actual person. Not realizing how much it mattered that he do so again, her anxiety scented the air in a bitter wash as the silence stretched.
“You are to come downstairs at once.”
She waited a beat, but he didn’t explain any further. They stared at each other for another handful of seconds before Quinn tried to prompt him for more. “And…?”
“There are things for you, and you will eat.”
It was like pulling fucking teeth. Rolling her eyes, Quinn expelled a hard sigh that puffed her cheeks. Fidgeting, trying not to notice just how full and round those cheeks were now, Quinn directed her attention to the issue at hand. The click of her tongue seemed loud as she faced Curtis again, struggling for a serenity she didn’t feel. She didn’t think she’d ever feel it again. “What things?”
Looking pained for the briefest moment, Curtis seemed to come to some decision. His shoulders squared, his imposing form taking up too much space in her small room. That nervous itch to have whatever semblance of a friend she could transmuted into something much different.
There was a large male—threatening and growing angry—in her space. And he was far too close to her nest.
In normal circumstances, Quinn was downright lax in her need to have space and how protective she was of it. Whether it was a product of nature or nurture was anyone’s guess. In this small room, forever invaded by the Beta and Alpha whenever they pleased, she had cultivated that aggressive need to defend what she perceived as hers.
Invisible lines had been drawn, the few things she could control held close in the midst of all the uncertainty. She could not stop Kahler from violating her nest and her body, but Curtis never came too close to either.
He gave no warning before stepping forward, his hand out to grab at her arm. If he had done almost anything else, perhaps even asked once more in his stiff, polite manner, things would have been different. As it was, Quinn reacted in what could only be determined as badly.
Small and light, she wasn’t quite half the size of Curtis, but it was obvious that she would never beat him in a fair fight. It was a good thing that she didn’t fight fair.
Springing forward, she launched herself at him with fingers hooked into claws. The nubs of her nails that had only just started growing back raked down his high forehead, scraping over one eye.
Vivid and wet, blood welled in the deep scratches. The sound he made was one more of surprise than pain as she fell back.
That did not suit Quinn at all.
