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A couple of weeks passed.Holly hadn't returned. But Claire felt a tension now with Ari. She'd been right. Somethinghadcome along to break everything and destroy the fantasy. Had it been Holly? Or the nightmare that night? Had he finally realized how irrevocably damaged she was? He'd moved her to sleep in his bed and had kept her there.
She should be happy sleeping with him every night. But he didn't touch her as much as he had before. But maybe it was the brand. Logic said he was just taking care of her so she healed properly. For the first few days he'd changed the bandages twice a day. He'd put a salve on them. He'd gently cleaned the healing injury.
She felt a growing distance from him. A kind of anger. And she didn't know what she'd done wrong. All the while she berated herself for wanting this man to want her.
Claire watched warily as he prepared their breakfast. There was something different about him this morning. A scary sort of menace seemed to roll off him. Before, he'd had such a steadying energy. It was only now in its absence that she could appreciate just how calm she usually felt just being near him.
“Master, are you mad at me?”
He looked up from the frying sausage in the skillet. “Why would I be mad at you?”
She shrugged. “You seem different.”
He laughed, but it wasn't the laugh you heard after a joke.
He put the sausages and eggs on two plates with forks and carried them to the table, then he poured two glasses of milk and brought them over as well.
“Sit and eat,” he said.
Claire sat. Usually he fed her. Sure she could feed herself, but there was an intimacy in that shared act between them. Hewasmad at her. She felt the tears start to slip down her cheeks.
Ari sighed. “I'm not mad at you. This isn't about you. It's about him. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've decided to kill him.” The deadly look in Ari's eyes left no doubt that he was serious. He intended to take a life. This wasn't a bluff.
“Him?” she asked. But she knew. She felt both elated and terrified by this idea. What if Ari wasn't the one who walked away from the confrontation? What if that man did? What if...?
“Do you remember where he kept you?”
She considered lying. It had been nearly four years, after all. It would be reasonable to forget the way.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Master. I remember.”
“Good. You will write down the directions.”
“I-I don't know it that way. I know it if I go. I have to see things to remember how to get places I've only been to once or twice.” She'd never been good at mentally retracing her steps to find things. She had to physically retrace them.
“You're not fucking going,” he growled.
She jumped at his tone, but pressed on. “Anyway, he's long gone by now.”
“I know that. But he probably didn't put the house up for sale, being a killer and all. He may have left behind evidence or some identifying information that might help me hunt the motherfucker down.”
“If you're going, I'm going,” Claire said. Her breath stuck in her throat. She hadn't openly defied him in... well not ever. And she definitely didn't want to start acting like Holly. But she couldn't stand the idea of being locked in this house and him out there hunting that man. What if Ari never came back? She might die in this house. Or what if he took Ari's wallet, found the house, and somehow got in? She chanced a glance up to find Ari staring at her. She couldn't read his expression.
“Fine,” he said.
They were silent the rest of the way through breakfast. After breakfast, while Ari cleaned the kitchen, Claire went to their now-shared walk-in closet and put on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a lightweight jacket, and boots. Her brand was still sore, but the jeans weren't painful.
As soon as the brand had healed enough she'd spent half an hour staring at it in the full-length mirror of the walk-in closet, trying to decide how she felt about this thing that marked her as belonging to Ari forever. She wasn't supposed to want that mark on her flesh. It wasn't as though he'd asked her if she wanted it. He'd merely explained—as gently as possible—what he'd planned to do. He'd never even pretended she had a choice. And yet, shedidwant it.
“Are you ready?” Ari asked, standing in the doorway, the agitated energy still rolling off him. She glanced down to find a gun holstered at his hip. Her gaze rose quickly to his.
“Just in case,” he said.
She followed him out to the garage. They passed her silver Lexus on the way to one of his cars. He unlocked the door on a nondescript black sedan which somehow looked more conspicuous than if they'd just taken the red sports car. She got in and they pulled out of the driveway.
The drive was long. Neither of them spoke except for her giving him directions as each turn and stretch of road jogged her memory. The journey took them through the city, then out to the other side, through suburban neighborhoods, and out into a somewhat more rural area where the houses were farther apart and many were abandoned, as if people had just forgotten this area existed—or no longer cared that it did.
