“Go to sleep.”
“Are you planning on killing me?”
“No.”
“Then breeding me instead?” He hadn’t finished doing it earlier in the night, which still left her confused. “You want a baby. A blonde, blue-eyed baby. Maybe I can give you that, but this baby will be nothing but black eyes and black hair, all drowning in a black heart. Black. A baby of goodness will never come from this. You are breeding death! You are breeding hate!”
“Would you rather I kill you?” He took a calming breath. “Did my discipline earlier not teach you anything? You should be afraid of me, not poking the bear.”
The craziest thing of all is that she wasn’t afraid of him at all. She didn’t hate him…although she should. No, rather she had this pull, this need to know him more. Yes, she had lost her ever-fucking mind. She had always been one to fall for the bad boy, but this was going too far.
Was it possible to love all that was bad? If there was only bad that coursed through a man’s blood, was it possible to love him? Could she forgive the taking? Could she forgive the devil? Could she? No…no. She couldn’t. She couldn’t!
So why? Why did she want him? Why did she want to be held? If he gave her one ounce of affection, it would be all over. She would be his, and only his. One touch, one kind word, one soft look. That is all it would take, and she would be his. Did he know how simple it would be to win this war? He would be the victor if only he used one weapon…kindness. That is all it would take, and she would forever be his slave. Her body already wanted him, as much as she hated to admit it, it was the truth.
“I know you aren’t like the rest of those men,” she declared, voicing her deep-rooted belief.
“No, I am not,” he agreed with a sigh.
“Then why? Why?”
He took a deep breath and then positioned himself on his side, propping his head up with his arm. They were so close, but Jessa didn’t move in the slightest. She didn’t feel she needed to.
“You aren’t going to go to sleep are you?”
“How can I? I don’t know where I am. I have no idea what will happen to me when I wake up. I’m in bed with a man who is supposed to become the father of my child or even children. And apparently I am now owned by you.”
“What if I told you that everything would soon work itself out? That if you trust me and do exactly as I tell you, you will be able to walk away from this alive and a free woman. Can you do that for just another couple of days top?”
Jessa shook her head, more confused than ever. “What are you talking about? What do I have to do to be free again?”
“Trust me.”
“Right! Coming from a man who just beat me.”
“I didn’t beat you, I spanked you. And trust me, if I were any other man in the room, it would have been an actual beating you received—one that you would barely survive. I did what I had to do to make it seem I was putting you in your place, but still not harming you. I was giving you warnings to listen to me, but you were too stubborn and stupid to listen.”
Jessa absorbed his words. “So you were intentionally not trying to hurt me?” She studied his face. “Why? And why didn’t you finish coming in me. Kind of hard to have a baby if you don’t come in me. Takes away the whole breeding thing.”
Decker smiled for the first time since she had met him. “Yes, well breeding with you wasn’t my intent. Again, I had to do just enough to satisfy Rune and his men. I had to give the illusion that I was claiming you as mine to them, so they wouldn’t take you for themselves.”
“Rune and his men? You make it sound like you aren’t part of the group. From the looks of it, they seem to really respect you as one of the leaders. I was saved for you, after all.”
Decker sighed again. “You ask too many questions.”
“Do you blame me?”
He shook his head looking exasperated. The way he casually spoke and laid only inches from her face was as if they were two long time lovers having a midnight chat deeply in love. This wasn’t the way a captor and his captive should be conversing, and yet it was how they were.
“I’m lying in a bed in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by crazy men who are trying to turn this place into an Aryan baby factory. I’m wearing the shirt of the man who is supposed to be my master, or owner, or whatever. But of course, that is after I was stripped completely naked, spanked like a little girl, and then fucked for all to watch. Oh, and don’t get me started on being chained by the neck and put in a room with other sex slaves. If I were to somehow escape and actually tell the cops this story, they would have me committed. My life has become one insane incident after the other the minute I decided to drive to West Virginia.”