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His voice is low and soft when he speaks again. “Do you want us to come get you and bring you back home, Kitten?”
I try to keep my tears quiet, but I'm sure he can hear them. “Yes, Master,” I whisper. And it's true.
I'm in so much trouble.
* * *
The wordsSeven and Declanlight up my phone screen when it rings.
“Master?” I say when I answer.
“Good girl,” Seven says. “I'm here. Come to the parking garage. Bring nothing but your keys.” He disconnects the call before I can respond.
Suddenly I’m nothing but doubt and anxiety. What am I doing? Why would I hand myself back over to them? Yet even as I silently ask the question, I know why. At the sound of his voice in my ear, with only those few words, my body is alive, awake in a way it hasn't been awake since they released me.
I shove the keys into the pocket of my jeans.
When I enter the parking garage, he's leaning against an understated gold Maserati, his arms crossed casually over his chest, his gaze locked on mine. Some fucked-up broken part of me wants to kneel at his feet and wait for the praise as he pets my hair and calls me his good girl, but I resist. This is a public place, and even in the middle of the night, anyone could stumble upon us.
I want to run back inside and lock myself inside the penthouse. The fact that he has this effect on me even after everything has me scared of him in an entirely new way.
“I missed you, Kitten.”
He pushes off the car then unlocks and opens the passenger side for me. I get in and jump when the door shuts. Before I can do something sane, like open my door and run, he's in the driver's seat, the car is starting, and we’re moving.
The drive backhomeis silent except for the sound of classical music coming in through the sound system. I wonder if Seven is the classical music lover or if both of them are. The drive is longer than I remember, and it becomes obvious the longer we drive that it truly is out in the middle of nowhere.
We're driving now on an old road without any street lights, with endless old and thick gnarled trees lined up, their branches and leaves canopying over us, inviting us ominously into the deep, dark wood. I feel like red riding hood, and my driver is the wolf.
After what feels like an endless drive in this densely wooded area, we finally come upon a huge iron gate. He presses a button on a remote control, and it slides open without complaint. Now there are lights every few yards, and the landscape is what I remember, the endless gently rolling hills free of trees. I look back to see a high wall winding around the perimeter of the property.
Nowthisroad feels like it goes on forever. The anticipation is killing me. Finally we reach... well, house isn't exactly the word I'd use. Since I wasn't allowed to roam freely, I never knew just how big it was. But house is far too mild a description. Estate? Mansion? Palace? Resort? Nothing really seems expansive enough to explain where they live.
It looks a bit like a fairy tale castle. Huge, imposing, and regal. But it's not the kind of fairy tale most of us dream about. There are all sorts of spotlights around the place, aimed up, illuminating it in the darkness, making it seem even more impressive than it might be in the day. There is an enormous fountain in the front with similar lighting, making already spooky gargoyles look all the more imposing. In any other circumstance, I might think the gargoyles were over-the-top, but there are several guarding the rooftops as well, and honestly? It works in a villain fortress sort of way.
“I forgot you haven't actually seen the house from the outside,” Seven says. Apparently he thinks the wordhouseis just fine. “What do you think? Better than your penthouse?” he says with gentle teasing. It's that charming facade that falls so easily into place with him that it lets me forget for a moment what lies beneath.
He pulls the car into a circular driveway, then he takes me in the front door as though I'm a normal guest coming here for a normal reason. I don't know why, but for some reason, I thought he'd sneak me in through a back servant entrance as though there were people to hide me from. I know for sure there’s a cleaning service, even though I've yet to encounter them directly.
Declan is waiting on a sofa against the wall when we walk in.
He winks at me when I catch that gray gaze which seems the smallest degree warmer than I've ever seen it. Maybe I'm seeing what I want to see—something to convince me that this isn't crazy, putting myself back in the hands of these two psychos.
“Welcome home, Pretty Toy.”
My stomach does a little flip at this, and a longing I'd almost made myself forget comes rushing back to the surface, igniting the place between my legs with warm liquid heat.
“I'm going to get her settled,” Seven says. “Come, Kitten.”
I tear my gaze from Declan and follow Seven wordlessly up a grand staircase and down a long wide hallway. “This is your room,” he says, stopping in front of a large room halfway down the hall.
Gauzy transparent white curtains hang in front of the windows, and even from the doorway, I can see there are French doors that go out onto a balcony. It's a beautiful room. Blond hardwood floors, a king-sized canopy bed with that same gauzy fabric. With a canopy bed, it should look like a little girl's room, but it's the grown-up sophisticated version. The furniture is all natural light-colored wood, with a few gold accents like the full-length leaner mirror on one side wall. Somehow it doesn't look gauche. The walls are a pale cream.
On a table beside the balcony doors is a large vase of fragrant white roses. The room has an attached bathroom, but I can't see inside it from my vantage point.
“What? But I thought...” I stop myself before the sentence is out fully in the open air for us all to stare at it and ponder how idiotic it is.
“You thought you were going back to the cell?”
