Page 147 of Pink

Until she woke up again.

“Breakfast is about to be served,” came the voice of her captor from the bedroom doorway.

She hadn’t heard his approach; she hadn’t bothered to open her eyes after clamping them shut to block out the bright light from windows that had no covers. Like most of the windows in the estate. Had he been watching her sleep again? That bothered her more than even his assaults for reasons she couldn’t explain.

It was only the slap of loafers against the marble floor that had Gigi opening her eyes to watch Jensen loom over her. Keys in hand for the shackles that kept her stuck in the corner of the room, chained to a wall by the links connected between her wrists and ankles, he leaned down with a smile that seemed friendly but chilled her to the bone.

His kindness was a lie.

She trusted nothing.

“Your guard has your robe ready. After breakfast, you’ll be taken to the bathing house and then later, if you behave,” Jensen continued, his tone cheerful despite the horror he had caused her for days, “then perhaps we’ll take a walk around the property. Together, of course. I think you might appreciate the place a bit more if you get the chance to properly see it. I bought it a couple of years back after a good season.”

She would have guessed that.

If only because it wasn’t as much the shackles he bound her with regularly to keep her confined in the room without a route for escape, but the marks on the wall that bothered her to her very core. The scratches in the same corner where she was chained. The gouges in the yellow plaster where someone else—or maybe more than one—had clawed until ruddy stains were left behind in the scored lines.

Bloodstains.

She wasn’t the first to be here.

Would she be the last?

Gigi didn’t care to ask.

She was only trying to survive.

“Well, get up,” Jensen snarled when Gigi didn’t immediately jump to stand from the floor once he had unlocked the shackles. With the metal in one hand, he used his other to drag her by the hair of her head to her feet. Naked, cold, and still bruised from the night before, every inch of her body protested in pain when she stumbled upright. He nodded, pleased, saying, “That’s better. We’ll take breakfast in my office. Don’t fight the guard, or you’ll get the whip again.”

At the mere mention of the bullwhip he’d used on her the first night they arrived at the estate, pain flared through Gigi all over again. The welts hadn’t faded on her back and ass at all. The one had actually split her skin on the back of her shoulders, but he’d left her to bleed on the floor until a guard hauled her away.

Reaching out to push back the strands of hair in her face, his fingers grazed her skin. Every touch made her want to puke, but the only thing she allowed him to see was the rage burning in her gaze that refused to look away from his. If he was going to hurt her as he did, then he could stand to see what it did to her, too.

“Smile,” he murmured. “It’s much better when you smile.”

Gigi did, but then she spat in his face, too. He didn’t even wipe her saliva from his cheek before his fist connected with the side of her head and stars bloomed behind her eyes.

Just another day in hell.

• • •

By the time Gigi was deemed suitable to join Jensen in the large office with an open veranda that overlooked the bay, her jaw was swollen, and she wasn’t even sure how she would eat. And yet, at the sight of her standing in the doorway in a sheer robe that did nothing to hide her nakedness underneath, Jensen grinned with twisted pleasure.

He liked seeing her beaten.

Bruised.

But bloody was better.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Gigi fought the urge to fold her arms over her chest to stop his gaze from lingering on her breasts under the robe, but knew better than to do so. She refused to engage his need to discuss his abuse because he liked that. Instead, she opted to say, “I hadn’t realized how large this place is.”

Pushing away from the edge of an ostentatious desk that looked more suited to be in a museum of sorts, Jensen gestured at the food waiting on a cart filled with silver dishes. “Fill a plate and mine. We’ll eat on the veranda. And yes, about thirty acres in total. The team has used the place for a few parties. They’ve done a couple of movie shoots here as well. Devlin King borrowed the place for his wedding last year. I’m sure you know him—took home three Grammys last year for his recent album.”

She watched his back retreat toward the stone doorway that led out to the veranda and wondered … was he trying to impress her by name dropping someone famous? If anything it only opened Gigi’s eyes even more to the darkness of the world around her. There was no way all those people around this man didn’t know what he was.

It wasn’t possible.