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“Just take a few more bites.” I’d meant for it to sound authoritative, but my voice cracked, and Birdie didn’t miss it. “There are people in this world who don’t have the luxury of eating. Be happy that you do.”
Guilt settled into her face, and she took a couple more bites to appease me before she stopped again. I’d let her have that one for now. She didn’t need to know I was keeping score. Besides, she’d already punished herself enough for the both of us. Her body looked like she’d been to hell and back, and it triggered urges I hadn’t felt in years. Her wounds weighed heavy on my mind, but I didn’t let on how much it bothered me to see her this way.
This was why I didn’t allow myself to get wrapped up in other people. With the exception of Lucian, everyone else in my life was expendable. It usually wasn’t difficult for me to maintain the status quo, but Birdie was testing my limits. I needed to distance myself from her, but I couldn’t leave her here alone. Not yet.
“So what happens now?” she asked, her voice tinged with frustration. “You just keep me locked up here all day and tell me what to do? Is that the plan?”
“Pretty much.” I shrugged.
Razor blue eyes cut right through me, and she looked even prettier when she was on fire like that. My dick throbbed, adding to the discomfort I’d felt all day. Our confrontation in the truck left her scent all over me. It was difficult to refuse the drug that was right in front of me. My palms remembered the feeling of her flawless, satiny skin and the way I’d marked her with my handprints. I wanted to bury my fingers into those honeyed locks of hair and tilt her head back, demanding that she open her lips and her legs for me. That poison spread through my veins every time I saw her in a new light. There was no such thing as modesty when it came to Birdie. Every square inch of her felt obscene.
“You can’t just keep me here,” she barked after me as I stood and began to clear the table.
“What other choice do you have?” I asked. “You can’t be trusted to look after yourself and stay out of trouble. Not when Detective Taylor is looking for you.”
Her face blanched, and all the bravado she’d shown only moments before evaporated. “You know about that?”
“He’s asked me about you twice,” I informed her.
She fell uncharacteristically quiet as I loaded the dishwasher and wiped off the counter. The wheels were turning in her mind, and if I had to venture a guess, she was probably wondering what I knew about her past. Part of me hoped she would verbalize the question. I wanted to challenge her, but mostly, I wanted to hear confirmation of what I already knew in her own words. But she never said anything else about it, and neither did I. Instead, she hobbled back over to the sofa and reached for the remote, only to find that it no longer worked.
“What’s wrong with this thing?”
“Nothing.” I nodded to the bookcase in the living room. “Television is off-limits before bed. There are plenty of books you can read.”
“It’s eight o’clock,” she huffed. “I’m not tired, and I don’t want to read.”
“We have an early day tomorrow.” I grabbed the earmarked copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau from the coffee table. In prison, I’d read to occupy my time, and I still maintained the habit as part of my nightly routine. Birdie wasn’t going to disrupt it.
She didn’t cave. Instead, she opted to sit on the couch, glaring at me while I read. What she couldn’t realize was that it didn’t faze me one way or the other. I’d seen worse things from men far more vicious than she could ever dream of being.
Twenty whole minutes of blissful silence passed before she jumped from the couch and started pacing the floor. “This is bullshit. You can’t keep me here.”
“I can, and I will,” I said without glancing up from my book.
“What would you do if I just walked out the door right now?” she challenged. “Are you going to chase me down the road too?”
“You wouldn’t get very far.” I turned the page. “But you can try if you want to.”
I felt her eyes on me, but I didn’t look up until she started for the door. Amused, I slid my hand between the pages and watched as she tried to turn the knob. It took about three seconds for her to realize there was a pin code on the lock panel. Her shoulders stiffened, and she turned around. Birdie was in for a lot of surprises as far as I was concerned. We took our security on the compound seriously, considering we had a lot of valuable merchandise on the property.
