Connor squints as he reads. When he’s done, he chuckles again.
“Oh, no, Haven, my heart. You misunderstood. I’m not going to wear these.” His eyes brighten. “I’m gonna wrap these around my fist tonight when I go upstairs. Then I’ll use them to stroke my cock as I think of you, wife, and come in your panties until the time you trust me enough to let me come in you.”
What?
My lips part. Even if I could speak, I don’t know how to respond to that other than the way my cheeks heat up so quickly, I feel like I’m on fire.
His smile widens. “What shocks you more, Haven? Being called my wife or knowing that you’re the only one I ever think about when I touch myself?”
Both. It’s both.
More than that, though, it’s the shocking idea that he wants to sleep with me—and that he seems to think that I’m going to allow it. How can I? I’m not his Offering. Until Adrian lets me go, choosing another bride, I’m stuck with the King’s nephew, and that’s assuming he doesn’t find out about me hiding in Connor’s basement and move me to the King’s Court.
I mean… he has to know that, right? Just in case, I make it perfectly clear in writing.
I’m never going to fuck you, Connor
“Funny that you say that, but you don’t deny that you’re my wife.”
I’m not!
“No. Not yet. But you will.” He jerks his head at the page. “That one, too. I’m not going to force you. I never will. I’ll wait until you’re ready, but you have to understand… it’s you and me, Haven. It’s always been you and me.”
The sad thing is, if I wasn’t broken, if I hadn’t been so brutalized… if he’d talked to me like this when I was lonely, when I was horny, when I wanted to throw away what it means to be an Offering in the world of the Owed… he’s right. I would’ve been easy pickings for the man I’ve always been drawn to and knew I couldn’t have.
Now he’s telling me that I can. More than that, he’s telling me that he fantasizes aboutme.
He wants to marry me. Like he promised me all those years ago, he wants to Claim me.
And I can’t let him do that, just like I can’t let myself believe that any of this is real.
I have to get out of here. No matter what, I can’t stay.
I just have no clue how I’m going to go…
I don’t thinkI understand just how dangerously unhinged Connor really is until about a week and a half into my ‘stay’ at his house.
The whole ‘panties’ exchange should’ve been a big honking red flag. The fact that he keeps drugging me while telling me that it’s for my own good, too. The panic room that’s now mybedroom. The basement that’s my prison. How he seems to know everything about me, while I… I have no fucking idea who this Connor Heyward is.
The longer I’m here, the more I’m convinced it really is my new cell. A nicer one, yes, but I can’t shake the feeling that he has eyes on me all the time. I still haven’t figured out what it is he does when he isn’t watching me as though expecting me to shatter and break all over again, but he says things and he does things that make me suspect he has eyes on me always.
Eyes—or a camera.
I’ve looked everywhere for them. If thereisa camera, it’s well hidden, but I don’t do anything that I’m not prepared to let Connor see me do. If anything, I believe the only place I have any privacy is in the bathroom and the small room that’s quickly become my sanctuary. Maybe there are no cameras there. Maybe he really means it when he says that he doesn’t plan on taking anything from me that I’m not willing to give. Either way, I only feel safe when I’m locked in one of those two spaces.
At first, that’s what I did. To piss him off or because—at the very least—I’ve come to consider the panic room my sanctuary, I stay inside the locked room until I start to wonder how much oxygen is inside a room without a window or any access to the outside.
Connor… he spends most of his time in the basement. He cooks three meals a day for me, plus snacks, and he gets pretty fucking testy when I refuse to eat. So far, I don’t think he’s drugged me again, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wary every time my belly tells me to stop being spiteful and eat some damn food.
If I’m locked in my sanctuary, he stays on the other side of the door. Most of the time, he’s content to just talk, letting me know he’s out there. Sometimes he pleads with me to come sit with him, to tell him what I’m thinking even if I have to fill up anentire notebook to do so. He’s bought me more than enough, I tell you that. Notebooks and notepads, pages and pages where I can write down my feelings—only I don’t really have anything to say to the man who refuses to let me go.
It’s only when I sense that he’s gone upstairs that I tiptoe out of the locked room. I prefer feeding myself. I take multiple showers a day in a bid to feel clean. Despite my stubborn ass almost refusing to wear any of the panties Connor picked out, I eventually do. I pull on my clothes—myclothes—and if I notice that they disappear only to be returned fresh and clean the next morning, I’d rather believe in laundry fairies than accept that Connor fucking Heyward is getting my laundry done for me.
It’s the least he can do as my captor, but still…
It’s been hours since he’s been downstairs to talk at me; nottome,atme. I'm curled into one corner of the couch in the basement, reading a paperback that I found in a stack left on the kitchenette. It caught my attention and, rather than watch any more television, I decided to enjoy the peace and quiet and read.
Without Connor to watch me in that heated way he’s been these last few days, I shucked my sweatshirt, wearing one of the looser tees that Bas packed for me. It’s still a short sleeve shirt, and as I read, my fingers drift absently toward the underside of my arm.
