Then again, it fit for a devil.
He is darkness, I reminded myself.
I flicked my gaze up to where he was staring down at me, waiting for my reply, and instead asked, “Do you have my ring?”
“What ring?”
I lifted my left hand for a second before dropping it back into my lap. “My enga—”
“Enough,” he hissed, and slowly relaxed his arms to slip his hands into his suit pants pockets. “You do not have a family, and you do not have a fiancé—I was told about your life when I bought you. Your lying will only frustrate me and force me to teach you another lesson.”
It took far too long to understand what the first lesson had been, and my lunch soured in my stomach. “T-the . . . the other night was a lesson?”
His nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond otherwise.
“You—I thought you were going to rape me,” I cried out, “and that was a lesson?”
“Keep pushing me and see if I don’t,” he threatened in a dark tone.
A shuddering breath tumbled from my lips before the room fell into a heavy silence. “I mean nothing to you,” I whispered, mostly to myself, then slowly looked up at him. My voice shook as I spoke. “Why do you want to . . . to keep someone locked in a room whose life and body mean nothing to you?” I pre
ssed a hand to my chest. “Because they mean something to me.” When he didn’t respond, I begged, “Tell me why I’m here.”
“Because I own you.”
I shook my head quickly. No. Never. “What does that mean for me?”
“It means you’re mine.” He didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t giving me the answers I needed—and was afraid to have—he just continued to stand there with a look of eternal patience on his face.
My body trembled when I thought about that night—about the lesson—and my question came out weak and breathy. “Am I here for sex?”
He huffed through his nose. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” I mouthed, my body shaking harder at his response. “Then what exactly?”
“Next question.”
I was so horrified about the thought of having been taken and sold into some sex trafficking ring that it took almost an entire minute to ask, “Can I please have clothes other than the robes?”
His sinful eyes roamed over my body, making me feel as though I wasn’t covered. “Not yet.”
“Yet? When can I?” I asked, but he didn’t respond, and my shoulders fell as I searched for another question. “Will I always be in this room?”
“Do you want to be?”
“No,” I said immediately. The room wasn’t small, but it felt like a dungeon. “There aren’t any windows, I haven’t seen outside in . . . in . . . in nearly a week,” I realized bleakly. “I don’t even know where I am.”
“Are you done asking questions?” he asked after a short pause. Again, he looked like he had all the patience in the world, and it was infuriating.
“You’ve barely been answering the ones I’ve asked.”
“Answer that one,” he demanded.
I stared at him as my frustration and fear swirled through me. By the time I spoke, the fear had won out and my voice was nothing more than a breath leaving my lips. “Yes.”
He moved to cross his arms back over his chest, and thought for a second. “This is a starter room, Blackbird. When I think you’re ready, you’ll be allowed to move out and have free rein of the entire upstairs of my home. There is a kitchen up here, other bedrooms that you can choose from since no one else is here, and plenty of windows. Once I completely trust you, you will be allowed anywhere in this house, and out of it as long as I’ve approved where you’re going.”
“Out?” I whispered. “You would let me out?”