He settles back beside me, his tone softening. “Not if you were unconscious.”
My gaze pans to him in slow motion.Everythingis in slow motion. My head turns and visions follow. He moves his mouth but the sounds don’t reach my ears until a few seconds after.And there’s a vignette around my view. It’s all deeply disorienting.
“I was never unconscious.”
“Pfeiffer.”
My gaze narrows on him. “Yes?”
“I have the photographs. It’s definitely you in them. And you were not aware of what you were doing.”
I blink. “Can I see them?”
He pauses, his gaze roaming my face like he’s assessing me for stability.
“Iwantto see them.”
He huffs out a breath and reaches into his jacket pocket, then hands me a small selection of photographs.
The images swim before me and I stop breathing. It’s me. I am in the photographs. And I’m naked.
I don’t remember posing, or lying on that carpet, or that sofa, or the kitchen floor. I never did any of those things for my uncle.
How did he get me into those places and in those positions? My legs are spread, my fingers resting pointlessly between my thighs. It’s obvious I wasn’t sound of mind—there’s no life in me.
I catch a glimpse of my hair strewn across one shoulder and that’s when I realize this isn’t a mistake, or a sick joke. He did this to me. He intoxicated me with God knows what and contorted me into sexual positions, for kicks.
A rush of vomit surges up my throat and before I can even ask where the bathroom might be, my stomach expels everything I ate in the last twenty-four hours onto the floor of Fiero’s penthouse apartment.
I retch again, bringing up another load, barely conscious of my hair being held out of my face as I throw up everything but my vital organs.
He waits until I’m done then slides his arms beneath me. As he lifts me into the air, he murmurs in my ear. “I’m not touching you with my hands, don’t worry.”
The room spins as I’m carried, and when he lowers me, my legs give way and I crumble into a pile of limbs on the floor of the shower cubicle.
“I need to get you out of these things, Pfeiffer. You’re covered in vomit. I need to use my fingers, okay?”
I nod vaguely and his hands work to relieve me of rancid-smelling clothes, tossing them to the other side of the room. He lets me remain seated on the floor as he gently sprays the warm water over me and uses a cloth to soap me down. Moving me this way and that, he cleans my whole body. Then he towels me dry and carries me out of the shower to a huge master overlooking lower Manhattan. He pulls back the comforter, strips to his shorts and slides in beside me. A tissue is pressed to my cheeks and I realize I have tears streaming down my face and my body is shaking from all the unprocessed trauma.
“Let it out, Pfeiffer,” he says, soothingly. “Let it all out.”
I’m numb. Completely, entirely and horrifyingly numb.
So, when he curls an arm around me and pulls me into his chest, holding me as I tremble violently, I don’t fight it.
The soundof a camera shuttering vibrates through my brain, deafening me in sleep. I sit up fast, sweating, tears brimming my eyes.
Then a heat wraps around my back, careful not to touch but reassuringly close.
“You had a nightmare,” he says softly.
My breaths come out short as I remember where I am, who I’m with and what he knows. Then a thought occurs to me. Fiero never said he knew it was my uncle.
I turn to face him, suddenly struck by the shadows across hisface making him seem darker and more dangerous than he looks in the light.
“Who took the photographs?” I whisper.
“Your uncle,” he replies. “Callum.”
