My voice wouldn’t utter a single word as he drove us into the depths of nowhere on the country lanes. The car weaved at speed, lurching me around the huge leather rear seat in my seatbelt every time we took a bend, but still I was silent, wide eyes staring at the overhang of trees through the windscreen as we ploughed on through the night.
His voice was still bristling with rage when it came. “You’ll learn soon enough, Paige Emmerson, that girls around me learn to do as they’re fucking told or face the consequences.”
My wide eyes met his again in the mirror, and this time they held. Electric.
His flickered back to the road ahead, but mine were pulled like magnets, sucking on his reflection like it was my last supper.
“Please,” I whispered, barely audible. “Please, I have to make sure my sister is safe. They’ll be after her.”
“And I have to make fucking sure you earn your dues, little girl. As I said, your sister is the least of your concerns. You’ll know that for yourself before the night is done.”
It wasn’t the thought of paying for my disobedience that pricked the tears in my eyes. I’d pay for it a thousand times over, however he chose to take payment.
It was her.
Phoebe.
The girl I’d give my soul for, just to keep her safe.
“Don’t even think about starting up the waterworks,” he hissed, and I realised my eyes were still on his reflection. “Siren tears don’t wash with me, sweetheart.”
I looked down into my lap but couldn’t stop the tears falling. Relief? Sorrow? Hysteria? I didn’t know.
“I could get clothes,” I said. “From my dorm room. I’d be quick, and I could check… check on her at the same time.”
That laugh again. So cold. “What on this earth makes you think you’ll need clothes for sixty days with me?”
I didn’t answer his question. My mouth kept on rattling with my previous train of thought.
“And college. I could send an email to college. Tell them I won’t be back in for a while… that I’ve had an emergency…”
“You’ve had an emergency alright,” he snapped. “Every day from here on in will feel like an emergency to bail out on. Only there is no fucking bail out. No emergency services rescuing you. No safe words. No escape. No changed my mind. Just you, and your time served, and the pay day at the end.”
I knew this.
I’d heard it, right around college and from Carolyn and Rebecca. From him too. From his profile on some dodgy website.
I knew it would be sixty days of punishment without mercy, taking whatever was given in exchange for the pay day of a lifetime. I knew he’d have my soul in his grip, along with my body and mind and whatever else he wanted to break for him.
It was just a shame that at that moment, in the back of a stranger’s car as he whipped me away to a sentence of utter brutality, the devil on my shoulder decided to shut its filthy little mouth up and leave me hanging.
It felt like an age had passed before he slowed down the car and took a sharp left up a wooded lane. There were lights in the distance, a huge house appearing as the lane turned into a driveway and curled off to the right.
The moon was overhead, ominous in its glow above the huge roof as he pulled the car to a halt on the gravel and turned off the ignition.
I stared wide-eyed at the size of the place up close.
It was massive. Grand and stunning in its opulence, even in the night. More like a manor for royalty than a random country house in the back end of nowhere.
“Is this where you brought Rebecca Lane?” I asked without thinking as he wrenched the passenger door open. I was still fumbling with my seatbelt buckle as he muttered a curse under his breath and leaned in to press it for me.
“It’s none of your business,” he said as he yanked me from the back seat. I reached in the direction of my bag but didn’t stand a hope of grabbing it before I slammed into the solid bulk of him. My bandy legs struggled for footing, but he held me firm. “From here on in, you have no business with anything other than doing whatever the hell I tell you to do and taking whatever the fuck you’re given.”
I was staring up at the porch of the manor ahead when he squeezed my arm hard enough to hurt. He tugged me back to face him, and I was right back on the beach that very first night. His eyes were dark and burning, his gorgeousness burning even harder.
“Do you fucking understand me?” he asked and I nodded.