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Everything feels odd, but the voice is so familiar as I look up across the classroom at the man staring me down. His face morphs between my cousin’s and my father’s. He’s holding a ruler and slapping it lightly against his palm.
“If you please,” he says again.
My legs feel like they’re made of weights, and I drag myself from the desk to the front of the room. It’s an auditorium classroom, the seats rising high and filled with bodies. There’s a collective murmur as I stand there, and I realize my clothes are gone. All that I’m left with is a pair of panties and a lacy bra.
“I don’t—”
“You’re not here to speak, Miss Romano. You’re here to do your duty to your family. You’re here to make up for everything your whore mother stole from me.” A hand grabs my hair and marches me in front of hungry, ugly eyes. “You’re here to fulfill the role I created for you. And if you speak out again, I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to those dogs you believe love you.”
I hear a noise—a chain rattle. I’m too afraid to look over because I know what I’ll see. I know what he’s done. I know, I know, I—
I sit up with a gasp,my heart feeling like it’s trying to beat straight out of my chest. I’ve had plenty of nightmares since the day I was drugged and locked up in this house, but this is a first. Guido Romano has been strangely absent from my subconscious.
I jump half a foot off the bed when a warm hand snakes over my thigh, and I look down to see Ari staring up at me. The room’s still dark, but there’s a sliver of pale grey light coming from the curtains. His eyes glitter in the hazy glow, and it takes me a second to realize he’s tapping out a message on my skin.
I’ve been studying relentlessly as the weeks have gone by, and I’ve mostly mastered the shorthand tactile alphabet, but my ASL is coming a little slower. It takes me a minute to catch up with him, though the message is just repeating itself.
‘What happened?’
I open my mouth, but all that comes out is a trembling breath, and I take a second to compose myself. “Nothing,” I finally say.
Another set of taps.L I A R.
I scoff as my lips curl around the letters, and then I pull away from him. “It was just a nightmare. It’s not important.”
Before I can pull away, Ari’s up. His movements are graceful and almost preternaturally quick, and he has me pinned to my pillow before I can even think about leaving the bed. His thighs clamp around the outside of mine, his half-hard dick nestling against my mound, but none of this is sexual.
His brow’s furrowed, and he looks softer and more concerned than he ever has.
‘Alice.’ He mouths my name, and I recognize it now without even trying.
Passing a hand down my face, I make a short noise of protest when he snatches it up and lays a hot kiss to my palm. “Seriously, it was just a nightmare.”
He stares more, his eyes saying perfectly clearly that if I don’t tell him the details, he’ll come up with a way to force it out of me.
And I’m not sure I can handle that right now.
I feel odd and hurt, almost like the humiliation in that dream was real. Because hell—it sort of was. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but everything my father asked me to do at every party or gathering was to show off my…myassets.
My eyes get hot, and Ari gentles his touch, tracing a line down my arm. Something in me settles, and I find it suddenly odd how grateful I am to wake up here with him. He might not feel the same way, but what he does feel is powerful, and it’s possessive. And something tells me he’d never mock me for the way my chest is heaving at some imaginary scenario.
“I was in a classroom. An old classroom on campus. I had to take this history lecture my freshman year.” I know I’m babbling, but it’s easy because his face is just so damn patient. “It was in the theater, and there were like six hundred students and half a dozen TAs to help grade everything.” The words are coming easier now. “In the dream, there was a man at the front. His face kept changing between my cousin and my…and Guido.”
‘Which cousin?’
It takes me a second to register what he’s asking, and then I frown because while logic says it should be Marco, it was Leo. “The younger one. Leo.”
He nods.
Clearing my throat, I shift under his body, but he makes no move to release me yet. “He pulled me to the front of the class, and I realized that I was…”
‘Naked?’
I shake my head. “In lingerie. A lacy bra and panties.” It sounds absurd because I don’t wear that kind of stuff ever, and for all the clothes the boys have brought me, they never bothered with that. James had once kissed me between my breasts and thanked me for not making it hard to unwrap me, so I have no regrets. “He stood me in front of the class and told me that I had to—” My voice cracks, and he rubs a thumb along the inside of my wrist. “I had to fulfill the role he created for me. And that if I spoke out, he’d cut out my tongue.”
Ari drops his elbows and lays his weight on me, kissing me just as I realize that I’ve started to hyperventilate. It calms me enough that I can fill my lungs again the moment he pulls back, but worry fills me when I see the look on his face.
It’s dark, and it’s a little terrifying.
