The Wrong Kind of Love

My legs are too weak to move, and when I don’t budge, Jude pulls me to my feet.

I sway before he scoops me into his arms, holding me against his chest as he carts me out of the room. I should be fighting him, but shock has stolen all sense of anything. I feel numb, and so I remain limp and compliant in his hold as he takes me into the bathroom, then places me in the walk-in shower. Freezing water pelts down on me, sucking a startled breath from my lungs.

“Take your clothes off,” he says as the water warms.

When I don’t move. His expression darkens.

“Now,” he snaps, as though his patience is running out.

Like he has a right to be annoyed. Anger breaks through my foggy state and suddenly, I don’t care about the consequences, only that he knows what a piece of shit I think he is.

“You sick fuck!” I shove him, but like a concrete wall, he doesn’t budge. “Do you like degrading women? Is that it?” I grab the hem of Caleb’s t-shirt and rip it over my head. “Is this what you want, Jude? To break me?” I throw the shirt at him. “Does it make your dick hard?”

He glares through the steam billowing between us, ignoring my bare chest. Steam billows between us in the silence before he steps back.

“You have five minutes.” Then the glass door closes with a bang.

“Fuck you,” I breathe as the fight leaves me.

I watch the man who almost killed me take a seat on the vanity. He was going to do it. I saw the resolve in his eyes–but he stopped. Maybe he has a shred of conscience left somewhere in that psychopathic mind.

Warm water rains down on me, and I clutch the hummingbird necklace my sister gave me for my sixteenth birthday, trying to piece myself back together. I can’t just give up. She’d never forgive me. Lizzy would come find me somewhere beyond the grave just to kick my ass.

“Whoever you think I am…” I suck in a ragged breath. “I’m just a med student who fell for the wrong guy.”

Water pounds the tile, and the glass fogs enough that I strip out of the basketball shorts Caleb also gave me.

“I have a sister, Lizzy. She’ll be looking for me. We’re all each other has since our mum died of cancer five years ago.” His silence encourages me to keep going. “I’m the only family she has left.”

“Four minutes.”

My heart sinks a little. Of course, he doesn’t care. As long as he gets his money… Twenty grand. That’s what my life is worth. My tears wash away as I soap my body, hating that I’m lathering myself up in pine-scented suds that smell like Jude.

“You have a brother,” I ramble on. I just want him to put himself in my shoes for a single moment, to remember what it is to be human. To make me human. I know he lost his sister, and though I don’t bring it up, I’d have thought he would understand that pain. “If he was taken from you–”

“Stop talking.” His voice is barely above a whisper, a cracked rasp. Footfalls cross the tile before his silhouette passes by the glass. “You need to get out now.”

The anger that drove me to strip off only minutes ago has dissipated, and I’m now painfully aware of my nudity. He’s a bad person who does horrible things. Would he take more than just my freedom from me? If he wanted to, I’d be just as powerless as I was in that room ten minutes ago.

I cut the water, and before I can linger too long, the door opens just enough for a towel to be shoved through the small gap. I snatch it and wrap myself up before stepping out.

“Turn around,” he says.

After a few silent seconds, I face the wall. It seems like an eternity passes before he releases a hard breath, then begins toweling my wet hair. The intimacy of something so simple from a man like him catches me off guard and I still. “What are you doing?” I whisper.

“You’re dripping water all over the floor.”

We both know Jude isn’t a man who gives a shit about a wet floor, though.

He twists my hair up with practiced ease, like he’s done it a million times. Then leads me into the bedroom at the end of the hall. One that isn’t Caleb’s.

Sunlight filters through another set of barred windows. The only decoration is a single, black and white landscape hung over a perfectly made king-sized bed. I’d assume it’s a spare room if it weren’t for the pine scent that lingers in the air.

Why did he bring me to his room? I pause just inside the doorway, as though I could turn and bolt at any moment.