AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I look up to find his eyes widen as he stumbles to the ground.
“Get the key,” Seven says. As if he needed to say that.
When I'm sure our captor is completely out, I slide my hand down inside his front pocket where I saw him deposit the key. It takes actual willpower not to ogle his bare chest. I'm trying to escape this psycho and somehow still feel the need to stop and admire the scenery. The animal part of me that only cares about rutting with a strong alpha male doesn't care about the reality of the situation or why I need to flee, not mount him. But he left me wanting, and the ache between my legs hasn't died down just because an opportunity to get away presented itself.
Finally I turn back toward Seven. “You'll have to drag him over to the door and stretch his arm up to the panel so we can use his thumbprint to get out,” I say, which truthfully is probably as obvious as his Get the key comment. But too much adrenaline is flowing to think through all the things which must be obvious to both of us in this critical moment.
I know our captor will probably be out for a while, but I'm still shaking so hard, rushing to try to unlock the metal cuff around Seven's wrist. I still can barely comprehend our luck.
“You're doing great,” Seven says.
It takes several attempts before I'm able to successfully insert the key into the lock and turn it, freeing one of his arms. I hand him the key because I don't think I can manage the next one on my own. He takes it from my shaking hand to unlock his other wrist.
I hear movement and turn, horrified, to find our captor standing over me. “Oh, Pretty Toy, that was an unfortunate choice.”
I turn quickly back to Seven to find he's gotten his other wrist free. He pulls himself to stand, but before he can prepare to fight off our captor, a needle is going into his neck, and he slumps to the floor. Does it just last a few minutes?
Our captor has the shackles around Seven's wrists and the key back in his pocket faster than I can process.
I scramble back as he advances. He tips the syringe he just injected into Seven toward me to reveal a red round label on top of the plunger.
“This is the one with the drugs. What you gave me? Was a saline solution. It was a test, and I'm sorry to say you failed it, Kate.”
I look over to Seven's unconscious body then back to our captor. I don't think people can really die from fear. Because if they could, I would be dead right now—a shadowy misty soul floating high in the air above my expired corpse. But no, fate is not so kind to give me such a quick death, and the look in his eyes says whatever is coming will be slow.
He just shakes his head at me, looking disappointed. The sickest part of this moment is the fact that there’s a part of me that feels... contrite. As though I did something wrong. As though I broke his trust. His trust. Maybe it's better if he just kills me because I'm already too aberrant to live. I don't want to see the woman I will become if he keeps letting me breathe.
Broken sobs slip out of me even as I try to keep them locked down.
“Not going to beg me? Or was that just for when you were pretending to be a good girl?”
“Would it do any good?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“No.” Gone is his sarcastic word play and his amused expressions as he reveals each new twist in his game.
He sighs, “Come with me, Pretty Toy.”
I don't move. What difference does it make if I try to obey him now or if I resist? “Are you going to kill me?”
“No, Kate.” He stretches out his hand. He's far calmer than I would expect. I did jab a needle with what I thought were drugs in his leg after all. “Now,” he says.
I want him to rush at me, all anger and venom. I want him to grab me and forcibly remove me from the room, drag me kicking and screaming to the dungeon because I cannot just voluntarily walk toward him. But he doesn't. He just waits.
He can apparently wait forever for me to go to him. What else can I do? Run? Where? Around the cell? Into the bathroom? There's nowhere to hide, no way to escape. He can just let me wear myself out.
“It will be worse for you if you don't come with me now.”
These words are all I need to start moving, this small permission to obey him without self-recrimination. After all, it will be worse if I don't. So I'm not the stupid girl walking willingly to her doom. I'm the smart girl, stopping this from escalating and becoming worse.
I take the offered hand and he leads me over to the door. There’s a brief pause while he presses his thumb against the thumbprint scanner, and the door slides open, taking us back out into that impossibly ornate hallway.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
I hadn't noticed it with everything that has transpired. “Yes, Master.”
I expect he will lead me to the end of the hallway and that other steel door that leads into the underground dungeon, but he doesn't. Instead, we stop a couple of doors before that where he takes me into a large modern kitchen.
“Sit,” he says, indicating a bar near the kitchen island.
