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But Master only chuckles and pulls a chair out for me. “Relax,umnitsa. We’re just going to have supper. I’m sure you’re very hungry.”
I gingerly sit down in the chair as he takes his own seat. The table is already set with platters of food and bowls of what looks like corn chowder sit in front of us.
“Go on,” he encourages with a flick of his hand. “Eat.”
I take a very tentative sip of the soup.My fucking God, that’s delicious.
“Whoa, slow down there!” Master laughs and pulls me out of my reverie. I didn’t even notice how fast I’ve been scarfing it down. “I’ll be sure to give my chef your compliments. Just don’t make yourself sick. This table is Amazonian teak.”
My face heats. I take slower sips and grab a dinner roll to dip into the creamy broth, mindful to be slow with that, too.
Master sits back in his chair as he watches me. “So tell me, pretty one: what did you do before you came here?”
You mean, before you bought me to be your slave?I dab my mouth with a cloth napkin. “I was a housekeeper.”
“Hotel?”
I shake my head. “Private residence.”
He grunts his acknowledgement. “I have a hard time imagining you working as someone’s maid. But I do have a much easier time imagining you in one of those sexy French maid outfits.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I say as a test of a joke. “My uniform was pretty boring.”
Master laughs.Thank God.“There’s nothing about you that is boring, believe me.” He rips a bite from his dinner roll and chews before asking, “Any children?”
I can’t freeze, because that would give away my answer before I even say it. So I force myself to keep taking small bites of food so he won’t notice the way my limbs suddenly feel heavy with deep panic.
“No.” I clear my throat and sip some water. “No kids.”
Something in the way he looks at me gives me the sense that he doesn’t believe me. Not quite.
“You’re what, twenty? Twenty-one?”
“Twenty-three.”
He nods. A knowing smile slowly spreads across his face. “A pretty thing like you would never go unnoticed. And you’re not a virgin, or they would have told me at the auction.”
What is he getting at? Why does it matter? I’m here, he owns me, and that’s all that matters.
Unless… it’s not enough.
Unless he’s one of those especially sick bastards who are never fully satisfied.
I return to my soup just for an excuse to not look at him. Dad was a terrible father and husband, a dirty cop, and a backstabbing asshole… but shit, there were things he confronted as a cop that sickened even him. Things that made him sit up on the couch at night, blankly staring at the static on the screen as he tried to drink away whatever horrors he witnessed that day.
Is that who Master is? The kind of monster to go after children as well as adults?
Even if he is, I won’t let him get Willow. I can’t. I’ll kill both of us before he ever reaches her.
“Looks aren’t everything,” I counter, keeping my voice placatingly soft.
Master chuckles. “Looks are enough to get the job done. You can’t look me in the eyes and tell me no man has plowed between your legs and planted a baby in that belly of yours.”
I can and I will, you sick fuck.“Modern medicine is a marvel.”
He exhales through his nostrils. He takes a long sip of what looks like beer as he studies me, then tilts his head to one side with curiosity. “Why are you lying to me?”
My heartbeat feels like it’s screaming in my ears.Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God—over and over again.
