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I ate breakfast alone and felt too fearful to leave my room. Ellis arrived an hour after my meal, when I was sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and a book in my lap, my finger holding the pages open.
“What are you reading?”
My heart beat steadily as I raised my eyes to his. He was leaning on the bookshelf, handsome and rugged as always. I wanted to hate him, but the uncertainty in my body wouldn’t let me commit to the feeling fully. I wondered if he’d felt the same thing I had when he fucked me. I’d had no doubt about it before, but now that he was standing before me, he didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. What had changed? It made me feel inadequate about my own feelings, the need for that rush of lust threatening to swallow me whole.
“Cat got your tongue?”
He smirked, walking closer and sitting down on the floor next to me. He took the book out of my hands and snapped it shut so he could look at the cover.
“You’re going to lose my page,” I muttered, but he ignored me completely and rolled his eyes at the cover of the book, making me blush.
It was a romance novel. So what? Was I not allowed some escapism in this fucked-up prison he’d put me in? He was a fool if he thought I’d never hope for something more than these four walls.
“Did you enjoy last night?” he asked suddenly, and every single hair on my body stood up.
“You know I did,” I whispered, looking into his eyes.
I wanted to find something, anything there. A sign that he had felt it too, some kind of feeling of affection for me. I wanted it for selfish reasons, not because I wanted to use him to escape, but because I was desperate for him to acknowledge the connection between us from the previous night. I’d never felt it between us before, and from the first taste, I was addicted.
Yet Ellis didn’t show a hint of it. Instead, his vision became clouded and he smacked the book down on the floor.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “I have something to show you, but I want to talk first.”
“Okay,” I said, doubt creeping into my voice. I hoped he hadn’t noticed it. “What about?”
“I want to know more about you,” he said. “You, the girl you used to be. Tell me about it.”
It was tempting, his offer. I was desperate to talk to someone about the girl I used to be, and when he offered to listen, I couldn’t resist. I started talking, about London, my London, Madame, Amber and Carina and all the other girls I had danced with. He listened to me with an expression of intense interest, and I realized I’d gone all the way back to my childhood, and I was talking about Mummy and Dad, all the memories flooding back.
“When I was a little girl,” I said softly. “I loved horses. We never had a lot of money. We couldn’t afford riding lessons… But Mummy went to one of the places that offered them. I don’t know how she did it. I was so young back then I never even asked… but she convinced them to let me come in every few days to pet the horses. It was my favorite pasttime. I went there so often. Even after Mummy got cancer… even though it was hard. When I moved out, when I left Dad, I went a couple of times. The horses weren’t the same ones, but it always made me feel so calm.”
I smiled fondly at the memory, and Ellis got up abruptly.
“Come with me,” he growled, holding out a hand for me.
I got up and took it. There were no sparks, no butterflies when I held his hand. Just a rush of fear through my veins as he forcibly pulled me out of the room, still only wearing the nightie and the stained panties. I felt self-conscious and shy as he dragged me down the hallway, his hand pulling on mine in a rough way that didn’t reveal any other feeling than anger aimed at me.
I heard the chatter of the other girls, this time soft and conspiratorial. The tension in the hall was palpable. My raven-haired friend wasn’t sitting in the bay window, in fact, she was nowhere to be seen. Ellis dragged me to the hall and pushed me to the center of the room. I stumbled, clumsily pulling down the scrap of fabric covering my naked body.
And then the door of the mansion opened wide.
I stared outside as if it was a mythical place, like I was standing on the verge of two worlds colliding – one step forward and I would be free.
