“It’s been over forty-eight hours since she was last seen, Candy. Trouble isn’t the word.”
The photograph slips from my fingers and floats to the floor. “Stop it. She’s not dead.”
“Do you want me to lie to you?”
“Yes. No! I want you to stop being this cold, emotionless…” I trail off, not sure what I was going to say.
“Monster?” he asks softly, and I flinch. It’s the first reference either of us has made to what happened last night. “What I am can’t be changed. Not even for you. But it has its uses. I can consider all the possible suspects without emotion. Whereas you…”
“What about me?”
“You’re just a little girl,” he says softly.
I lift my chin. “I’m not innocent and I’m not stupid. I know exactly how the world works. I’m a stripper, for crying out loud. A slut. A whore. A demon, just like my mother—”
“Quiet,” he says, so soft I almost don’t hear him. I fall silent immediately, but the tears that stream down my face, they tell the whole story.
The fact that my mother sent me away…I can’t help but feel grateful. I know I couldn’t have escaped any other way. I can’t help but feel angry either, for not coming with me.
For choosing him over me.
“Kneel,” Ivan says, and I know then I wasn’t wrong. I am like my mother, because Leader Allen told her to kneel and she did. I’m the same, obedient until the end.
At least for one man.
I can feel the wooden slats against my shins. I lower my head, ashamed and somehow aroused. God, was this why my mother did it? Some kind of sick lust? Maybe we do have demons inside us.
The toe of his Italian leather shoe nudges my knee. “Wider,” he says.
I spread my knees wider and he leans down to cup my pussy through the jeans. “You’re my little girl,” he says, more seriously than I’ve seen him say anything. His eyes are piercing, sending some message I can’t decipher. It eases something inside me, sloughing off some of the shame, leaving me more naked than before.
“Why?” I whisper.
“Why what?” he asks, his tone patient as he opens the button of my jeans with one hand. His other hand is on my shoulder, brushing his thumb against the pulse in my neck.
“Why do you like me to call you Daddy?”
“Because it makes my cock hard.”
That’s not the real answer. It might be true, but there’s more. “And?”
His hand is warm against my sex, but his gaze—it burns. “Is it so wrong to want to take care of you?”
“No,” I say, dropping my gaze. His hand looks large between my legs, claiming ownership, protective and possessive. “But that doesn’t mean I have to call you Daddy.”
“What should you call me instead? Your boyfriend?”
The word sounds silly when I’m still sore from the way he treated me, my sex throbbing against his palm. It would be far too tame a word to describe him no matter where he touched me. I shake my head.
“Because I want you to trust me,” he says softly. “Trust me to take care of you.”
“The way I never trusted… him.” Leader Allen. I was once a devoted follower. I would have done anything he asked. But I was always afraid of him.
I’m not afraid of Ivan—not as much as I should be. He’s dangerous. Lethal.
“Daddy,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says softly. “I like to hear you say it. That’s enough reason for me to make you.” He pauses before slipping his hand inside my panties.