A wicked smirk pulled at his full lips. “Like I said, that will only be once I trust you. By that point, I won’t be worried about you trying to run.”
There would never come a time where I would want to stay.
“If we don’t ever get to that point, you won’t leave this level of the house,” he added quickly, diminishing my hopes of running from him. “Once you’re out of this room and have picked a new one, you’ll have a closet that we will fill. Until then, you’re only allowed the robes because you need to understand that you are mine and that means your body is mine. I want you comfortable in nothing around me.”
My head shook as he spoke. Again, something that would never happen.
“Your body is mine, but that doesn’t mean you’re here for sex, Blackbird. If you’d been bought by someone else, you might have ended up as a sex slave. Most of us don’t see the women we buy that way. You’ll help cook and clean, take care of the house . . .” He lifted a shoulder in an easy shrug. “You’ll take care of me and I’ll take care you.”
I blinked slowly, trying to process what he had told me. “I-I-I,” I stuttered, then stopped trying to speak, because I didn’t even understand how to phrase the question in my head. Instead, I said, “You said no one else was here.”
He nodded. “Yet.”
My eyebrows rose. “Yet? Who will be coming here?”
“You are only one of many women who will end up in this house.”
“How long do we each stay?” I asked, and embarrassed heat filled my cheeks when he barked out a laugh.
“Forever, Blackbird. My mentor has thirteen women in his home.”
Thirteen?
It felt like I had been punched. “Thirteen? I don’t—why? Why do you—why can’t I just go then? Who wants or can handle that many wives?”
“Wives?” he asked condescendingly. “No. Women. Life partners. I will never marry any of you. I will never enter into a relationship with any of you. As I said, I own you, just as I will own them. There is nothing more to it.”
Tears burned at my eyes, and my fingers automatically went to play with my ring before I remembered it wasn’t there. As I had so many times over the last week, I wondered how I had ended up here.
I was supposed to be getting married soon.
We wanted to have kids and move to a large plot of land where we could have horses, cows, and goats. And instead of a farm and the man of my dreams, I got the devil and twelve other women.
“You aren’t meant to have multiple life partners. There’s supposed to be one and that’s it,” I whispered, and clutched at my chest, trying in vain to pull the invisible weight from it. “A life partner is someone you love and want to spend the rest of your life with. Not someone you claim to own. You can’t force someone into that—or multiple people for that matter.”
One dark brow arched in response. In challenge.
I gripped at my chest harder, still searching for the weight pressing down, and tried to force my tears back.
And then it struck me. The man said if I ever gained his trust, I could leave.
I knew what I had to do. I had to do whatever it took to get out of here. To get out of this nightmare and back to my life with Kyle.
The man suddenly snatched my left hand from my chest and brought it closer to him, as if inspecting it.
I slowly looked up at him, but never asked what he was doing.
“What is your name?” he asked gruffly.
Was he testing me? I thought of the furious look on his face before, and said, “B-blackbird?” making it sound like a question.
An amused smile played at his lips for a second before it was gone. “No, what is your name?” he demanded.
“Briar Chapman.”
His eyes drifted to the side, away from me, and after a moment he dropped my hand. “Not anymore. Your last name is Holt, do you understand?” He didn’t wait for me to respond before he turned and left.
Once the door slammed shut and locked, I glanced at my hand.