AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I pull shit out of the shed until I find the chain I want to use. I whistle, toss it over my shoulder, and walk back into the clubhouse.
“What’s that for?” Ridge asks as soon as he sees me.
“Givin’ her a little more room to move around.”
“Why? She givin’ you what you want?” I shake my head.
“Nope. But I figured I’d be the better person here,” I tell him. He chuckles and shakes his head as I turn and continue walking to my room. I push the door open and walk inside, seeing her lying there with her eyes closed. Those pretty eyes pop open and lock with mine when she hears me enter.
“What the hell is that?” she asks, trying to scoot up the bed.
“You’ve been a good girl, LaLa. I figured I could return the favor,” I explain.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m givin’ you a little more space,” I tell her as I drop the chain on the bed. LaLa’s back is against the headboard, and her knees are pulled to her chest as I watch her. I move to the side table, pull the other cuffs out, and set them on the bed beside the chain.
“Why do you have so many cuffs?”
“Some people like them,” I reply casually.
“To be cuffed?”
“Are you kink shamin’?” I ask, cutting my eyes at her. She almost smiles. Almost. Enough that I’ll take it. I set about readying the cuffs and chain before reaching for her wrist. I hook the end of the chain to the cuffs on the bed and then secure the other set to the end. I reach for her wrist, but she tugs it away from me.
“Don’t do that. Don’t make it harder,” I tell her. I don’t want to fight her, but I will if I have to. LaLa seems to think about it for a long second before holding her arm out to me. I secure the cuff around her wrist as she lifts her arm to examine the chain. It’s nothing big. It was big enough that she couldn’t break it but could still get up and move around the room.
“I took everything out of the room you could hurt yourself with while you were asleep,” I tell her.
“You think I’d hurt myself?”
“You did try to kill yourself. I don’t trust you not to try again,” I admit.
“Why do you care so much?”
“That’s none of your business.” I turn my head and look away from her, unwilling to give her any information or insight into why I do what I do. She hasn’t given me a reason to trust her yet.
“Can I use the bathroom?”
“The chain should be long enough for you to make in there,” I tell her. I walk over and sit in the chair, watching as she stands from the bed. She immediately stretches and walks toward the bathroom with her chain hanging beside her. I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. Is this really what I want to be doing? Dealing with this girl? I could have left her. I could have made Nick deal with it, but no. I had to take her, bring her home with me. This is a mess. A mess I created, but there’s something about her I can’t get past. She reminds me too much of her. The memory of a ghost.
I shake my head and scrub my hand over my face ignoring the memories that want to surface. I shove them back into the box and into the back of my mind where they belong. I can’t think about her, or I will lose it. I’ve worked too hard for too long to have that shit take me down now.
Instead of rehashing the past, I stand and pull my cut down my arms. I toss it onto the chair before pulling my shirt off and moving to my jeans. When I’m in only my boxers, I walk over and pull the blanket back and climb into bed. A few minutes later, LaLa comes out and looks at me for a long second before making her way back to the bed. She climbs in and pulls the blanket over her, staying as close to the edge as possible.
“Scared of me?” I ask her.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I haven’t hurt you, LaLa.”
“Oh, because keeping me hostage is normal.”
“I never said it was normal. But it is what it is for now,” I tell her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means maybe one day you will get to walk out those doors and be free again.”
