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From the way he looked at me and the way his gaze shifted to the sex furniture, it was clear whateverythingmeant. Whatever had allowed him to treat me like his roommate or kid sister had vacated the building. In its place was something wild and hungry that might devour us both if given half a chance.
“Why can’t we just go back to how things were? I’m sorry I left my room. I’ll pretend I never saw any of this.”
His hand started in my hair, then trailed down my face and along all my contours. A tremor ran through me, chasing his hand down the length of me as if each cell in my body stood in line, waiting its turn to show appropriate fear of him.
“Elodie, what was it like living in that theme park?”
I didn’t like to think about any of that. It was a testament to how awful it had been that this set-up with Shannon occasionally made me forget I was technically still somebody’s prisoner. On a visceral level, I still thought I’d been saved instead of just captured again.
“Hopeless. Awful. Boring. Dead.”
“Did he light you up?”
“No.” Trevor had been mostly nice enough once I’d figured out which buttons tripped what, but I’d only ever gotten to the point where I could cope with it. I’d thought of fucking him as mywifely duty—some comfort I owed him. A transaction to pay for the food and shelter he provided me. I’d felt too guilty to take away the last shred of his wife from him. And the whole time he’d been taking from me. Everything. But somehow Shannon’s everything and Trevor’s were solar systems apart.
“Do I light you up?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this again.”I can’t fuck another monster who holds my life in his hands.
Shannon’s mouth found the pulse point of my throat. He sucked gently on the skin—enough to make me gasp, not enough to mark me.
“What if I made you? Would you cry? Would you fight me?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He pulled back and stared at me for a full minute before he answered. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about your pain yet.”
Yet.
He was so bizarrely honest. But that didn’t help anything. It didn’t make Shannon more feasible. Given my limited experiences with men on this side of the wasteland that was my lost memory, it was easy to assume all men were monsters. I’d yet to have an experience to contradict that notion—even though I felt like I knew in the vague way I knew about ATMs and pirates that not every man was this way. Somewhere out there was someone who was kind and considerate and smart. Someone who would let me be a part of a world where I wasn’t the freak show or...that poor girl. Someone who would love me in a way that was safe and in a way I didn’t have to work myself up to wanting.
If only I didn’t want Shannon so much.
“You’re going to play all my games, Elodie. And you’re going to love every minute of it. I’m tired of you being a toy I can’t play with. I’m ready to take you out of the box.”
“What if I’m not ready?” I desperately sought to turn this into another veiled threat like Trevor’s. As if the idea of being in Shannon’s bed could distress me half as much.
His hand dipped between my legs. He smirked as he raised a finger to his mouth and licked off my juices. “Oh, you’re ready.”
I thought he was going to throw me down and fuck me in the basement—now filthy from other people’s trysts—but instead, he scooped me up and carried me up the stairs. On the main level, he set me on my feet.
“Go to my room and wait for me. You have a punishment coming for your earlier disobedience.”
I’m sure my mouth hung open like a fish, as if I couldn’t believe he’d really just said that to me. Despite everything I knew of Shannon, despite the orgy I’d witnessed and almost been recruited into, somehow this one utterance almost unhinged me.
I wanted to run for the door, despite my lack of clothing. But not only was the security system armed, I knew now from observing him, that it wasn’t a one-way system. The door wouldn’t open for anyone going in or out without the code. And I didn’t know it.
But I didn’t try to run. I went upstairs just like I’d gone upstairs earlier. I passed my room and went to his at the end of the hall. His room was another forbidden room. He’d never stated it outright. It wasn’t always locked, but I felt like lightning would come out of the ceiling and strike me down if I were to go snooping around in there.
His room was the same exercise in restrained minimalism as the rest of the house. Utilitarian was the best word I had for it. There was an attached master bathroom and a balcony—which were the only big differences from my room. And then there was the normal bedroom furniture one would expect. Nothing freaky or kinky or serial-killer like. No hooks hanging from the ceiling. No blood splattered on walls.
His bed was a standard king-sized four-poster. The frame and posts were a sleek, shiny steel. Given what I’d seen in the basement, I imagined that could be of some use to Shannon’s proclivities, but someone who didn’t know anything about them wouldn’t think it odd. It fit into the clean, simple lines of the room.
He didn’t have a bunch of knickknacks lying around, or framed art on the walls. It was just a crisp bare emptiness. Utterly peaceful. Much like my own room. But I’d expected that much from the guest room. I wasn’t sure I’d expected it fully from Shannon’s.
The balcony door was oddly unarmed at the moment. So I went outside. It was the first bit of fresh air I’d gotten in weeks. From here I could yell and possibly have some hope of someone hearing me. I could see other houses. They were a bit of a distance off, but technically in the same neighborhood. Within screaming distance. Surely this option for escape hadn’t been available to me all this time. Had it?
As fucked up as it was, I think I’d wanted to stay cocooned in Shannon’s house. As long as I felt safe, I didn’t want to escape. And up until this point, despite logic, I’d felt safe. Whatever he did out in the larger world, I just thought I was in a separate category somehow. He didn’t skin and cut up his cat, so I thought he might not do it to me, either.
