Not until it was too late—when he’d already gone—did I realize what happened. I should’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. He knows I regret that, but now he’s using it against me.
Fuck him.
Footsteps are audible behind me, and before I know it, someone’s grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. “Where are you going?” Easton snaps.
“I’m leaving,” I hiss.
“Impossible,” he says, chuckling as if it’s funny.
“Fuck you!” I shout.
He raises a brow at me. “Is that all you can come up with?”
My lips part, but out of annoyance, I don’t know what to say, and it only pisses me off further. “Gah, why do you have to be such an asshole?” I reply, shaking him off. “Do you enjoy torturing me? Pushing me to the brink of insanity? Is that what you want? A wife who’s lost her mind?”
“No.” He steps closer, his hands in his pockets. “I want a wife who obeys my every wish, and I want that to be you.”
“Then you want something that doesn’t exist,” I reply, shaking my head.
“You underestimate yourself, princess.” He keeps stalking me when I walk off.
“I’m not a princess,” I say, and I gaze down at my bathrobe. “It doesn’t matter what clothes you put on me, what bed you make me sleep in, or how many times you make me dress up. I’m not a doll, and I never will be. You should’ve invested your money somewhere else.” I turn around again and walk around the rooms, jerking on every window I can find. There must be some way to get them to open, right? They have to air out this place.
“You’re wasting your time,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. “They’re all locked. We have vents for air.”
“I don’t care.” I won’t stop searching until I find a way out. I’ll never stop. Not even if he puts locks on all the doors and windows or chains me to my goddamn bed. I’ll never fucking stop. Because if I don’t, he’ll have been right all along about my inability to resist him.
He’s still following me around even as I go into his private study where he keeps all his books and memorabilia. “Why are you so obsessed with escaping?”
I spin on my heels, and yell, “Because I need to be free!”
Saying the word free causes tears to well up in my eyes. It’s the one word that defines all the things I lost the moment my father decided to sell my body to the devil himself and I came to this place.
Because that freedom out there is the only thing that’ll save me from falling for him. For that … monster. Easton Van Buren only cares about his own freedom and no one else’s. But somehow, someway, the perpetuating gaze on his face doesn’t strike me as that of a monster. In fact, it’s the first time since we met that he genuinely looks dispirited, his face marred with worry. And the air is thick with unspoken words and desires.
“I can give you that on my terms,” he says after a while, his voice soft unlike before.
But that’s just it. I don’t want it on his terms. His terms mean being bound to his wishes and his rules. Freedom means the idea that you can make a choice, and in this house, there are none for me.
“You are my captor. The one who keeps me as a prisoner. A toy to play with,” I reply. “You can’t ever give me freedom unless you let me go.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he says, taking a deep breath. “So don’t ask me that.”
“Then you can’t ever give me what I want. And I won’t ever be happy here,” I say.
The look on his face darkens as if he finally realizes that there’s not just a price for me to pay. He too has to sacrifice something in order to get what he wants; my happiness.
“I want to make you happy,” he says, balling up his fists.
“No, you want to own me. Big difference.”
“I already do. It’s not enough,” he says, stepping closer while I move farther back toward the long red drapes in the back of the room. “I need more of you,” he says.
“Too bad you can’t fucking have it,” I hiss. Shuffling around, I fiddle with all the drawers to try to find something I can use to my advantage. A weapon, a device, a key; anything to get me out of here.
“I’m not some slot machine you can insert coins in and get whatever you want out of it,” I answer, still searching the room for anything of use, but he’s locked all the important drawers. Fucker.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for, whatever it is,” he says.
“Shut up,” I hiss.
“No. Remember the way I kissed you, Charlotte? Remember how it made you feel?”