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"Will you let me wash you?"

He is silent and still for a long while. Too silent. Too still. I don't know what he's going to do. Not until he removes his shirt and unbuttons his jeans and discards them on the floor beside my own clothes.

Then he climbs in behind me, pulling me into his arms. He does not let me wash him. But he holds me. And that is more than I had hoped for.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

WHEN THE WATER IS COLD, Javi helps me from the tub. He dries my hair with a towel and then my body too. He uses the same towel on himself, and I watch.

Then he takes me by the hand and leads me back into the library in the conservatory. He pulls one of the chairs onto the hardwood floor and cups my face in his palm.

"Do you know what I need from you, my Bella?"

His voice is gentle. Filled with want. And it doesn't matter what he needs from me because whatever it is, I will do it.

I nod. He kisses me.

"Good girl," he says. "Now stay right here."

I stay in place while he walks back across the room and returns a moment later with a cup in hand. A cup that I recognize well from my early days with him.

It is filled with dry rice. Rice that he scatters on the floor beneath me. I swallow and look up into his eyes when he is finished. Wondering if he is angry. Wondering if I've done something wrong.

But that isn't what I find. Today, I only see need. He needs this from me. And so when he asks me to kneel, I do it without question. It has been a long time since he punished me this way, and I have forgotten the pain. But I bear it.

For Javi.

For Javi, I would bear anything. The thought scares me. Excites me. Confuses me.

He sits in the chair in front of me. Naked. Hard. Swollen. He spreads his thighs in offering, and I lean forward to take him into my mouth. I draw him in, and he strokes my cheek reverently.

"Good girl, my Bella. That's such a good girl."

I work him over for a long time. Until my knees are on fire from the pain and I'm certain he's about to come. But he stops me before I can get him there.

He grips me by the hair and leans down to meet my lips. Kissing me in a way that he never has before. Like he is worshipping me. Like he is tasting me for the first time. It goes on until I am dizzy. And then he instructs me to lay back.

I do.

My knees are grateful for the reprieve, but my back smarts when the tiny grains of rice dig into my flesh. The pain is soon forgotten as Javi kneels down before me and squeezes my thighs in his palms. He buries his face between my legs, and his tongue inside of me.

I cry out and jolt against him. He presses his palm into my stomach, holding me in place while he pleasures me.

I come hard.

And then I reach down and touch his face. I beg him for more. I plead for him. Javi leans back and drags me closer. His knees digging into the rice as he drives inside of me in one solid stroke.

He squeezes my hips and angles them for his pleasure, thrusting in and out of me with violent need. Grunting and slapping against me as he stares into my eyes.

It goes on forever. Until he can't hold himself up anymore. Until my body is completely limp in his arms. Until he finally roars out his release and then collapses beside me.

We lay there for a long time. Catching our breaths. Entranced by each other. I can feel that shift again. A barrier being swept away. It’s liberating. It feels like progress. We have come so far together, extricating ourselves from the prisons of our hearts.

He kisses me again, and it's sweet.

Then he lifts me into his arms and sets me down on the chair, brushing the grains of rice from my skin and kissing the swollen flesh with his lips.

"Such a good girl, my Bella," he tells me again. "Would you like your reward now?"

I nod because it does not feel like a trick. Javi dresses himself. And then me. He retrieves a remote and turns on a projector I never knew existed in this room.

Fear twists in my stomach, but one look from him quickly snuffs it out. This is not a trick. Not this time. He brings me into his arms, turning me to face the screen. When it comes to life, I am surprised by what I see there.

A YouTube video. Of me. Singing at the piano. In Javi's house. Here at Moldavia.

Nobody else would know it, but I do. The room is black. So black. And I am playing one of my new songs. One that I sang for him. One that I wrote about him.

The video is public, for all the world to see. My chest squeezes as he scrolls through the comments. I'm expecting the worst.

I close my eyes and try to turn into him, but he guides my face back towards the screen and whispers in my ear.

"Open your eyes, Bella. This is your reward."

I open my eyes. And I read. The comments are not what I expected. They are positive. Uplifting. The listeners say how much they like the song. How they miss my voice. How they hope that I will put out more.

And there is more of the same, the longer Javi scrolls. I don't know how it's possible, but it is.

"You uploaded this?"

"Yes," he answers. "They miss you, Bella. It is not fair for me to keep your voice only to myself."

I turn to him, and this time, he lets me. And he does something else.

He wraps his arms around me and presses my cheek to his chest. And then he dances with me. Humming along to the music that I made. Music that I didn't even realize he recorded.

I wrap my arms around his waist, and I relax in his arms. For five minutes, nothing else outside of this room exists. For five minutes, Javi lets me inside. And in those five minutes, my emotions become so clear.

I am in love with my captor. He is my tormentor. My greatest source of pain and fear. But somehow, he has also become my sanctuary.

My whole world.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

BELLA IS IN MY BED.

The same place she has been every night for the last three weeks. She came to me on her own, and I could not bring myself to ask her to leave.

Even though I know it makes me weak. Even though I still question at times if it’s real, or if she is even more skilled than her father at trickery.

She continues to come here, night after night. Curling her body into mine and wrapping my arm around her. She wakes in the morning and cooks breakfast, humming pieces of new music every day.

She seems happy. And this was not the way it was meant to go. This was not the way at all.

But when she kisses me this morning and looks up at me with sleepy eyes, I think that perhaps I never really stood a chance as far as Bella was concerned.

I think of Ray, and he seems like a distant memory now. My Bella does not speak of him. And I often wonder if she thinks of him. If she misses him, still. If it’s true, she doesn’t say.

Each night, I go to bed with a new resolve. That tomorrow, I will punish her. That tomorrow I will make her pay. But each dawn, my resolve is gone all over again.

My pulse hammers in my throat when she looks upon me. When she touches my scars and does not recoil. When she begs me to fuck her.

I do not know what she is doing to me. She is poisoning my mind. Ruining my plans. Making me forget my revenge. I

should be furious with her for doing this. But instead, the contempt I feel is for myself.

I know that it cannot last. I know that my own mind is playing tricks on me. That given a choice, Bella would leave me. Because I have conditioned her to be this way.

It is an illusion. A temporary illusion. And in time, the spell she is under will fade away, leaving only her bitterness and her own desire for revenge.

If we continue down this path, I would let her take it. I would let her take my life to satisfy the inevitable darkness that lies buried in her heart beneath the lies. Because Bella cannot ever truly care for me. That was not the way this story began, and there’s no changing that now.

She is a weakness. One that only metastasizes over time. And this is why I must act now. Before it is too late.

Today, I decide, is the day.

There is no other choice. I can no longer give in to the temptation of her. Which is why I climb from the bed before she can say a word. Before she can touch my lips, or ask me sweetly to be inside of her.

I tell her there is something I must do before I dress and leave the room.

I wait in my office until she is up and about, moving around the kitchen. And then I text River my instructions. When his reply comes through, I retrieve my toolbox and move to the entryway.

The window is stiff, and it must be pried from the place it has rested for so many years. It groans loudly, and I do not have to look to see if she is watching.

I can feel her eyes on me. Curious. I can almost hear the questions in her mind. And it is exactly what I wanted. So I do not know why I feel so ill. I do not know why I hesitate to answer when River’s call comes through exactly as I asked.

I want to look at her. I want to see her one last time. But I don’t. Because I know it will only make me change my mind. It will only make me weak.

With a stiff greeting, I answer River’s call. He mumbles into the other line, asking me what’s up. I tell him to hold on. I shut the window, but I do not lock it.