Blackbird (Redemption 1)

It felt like my parents all over again—trying to buy my love when they’d really only wanted my voice. The devil’s money and unwanted gifts would never change anything . . . would never make me forget who I was or where I’d come from.

I went to the large dresser that sat in the middle of the closet and searched through drawer after drawer until I realized I had already passed what I was looking for, and my voice suddenly disappeared.

If this was what the shopper thought would make me feel comfortable, I worried what she would have picked otherwise.

My entire underwear drawer was lace.

But after weeks of nothing, I was thankful for it, and hurried to put on the first pair my hands touched.

Shock filled me when I found three entire drawers of sexy teddies, see-through nighties, and nighties that were only slightly less revealing, and I wondered if the women in these situations ever actually wore these for the men who bought them, because I had no intentions of ever touching mine.

I looked through one entire side of the dresser for a pair of shorts or stretchy pants to put on without luck, and was on a second drawer full of different colored camisoles—this drawer cotton, the previous satin—on the opposite side when I heard heavy footsteps on the tile of my new bathroom.

I shoved the sheet I had been wrapped up in all day away from me and hurried to shrug into one of the shirts. I barely had it pulled over my chest before Lucas appeared between the double doors of my closet.

He stood strong and still with his hands in his pockets, and my heart pounded as the first trickle of fear spread through me. I was beginning to notice he only stood that way when he was the devil—when he was about to remind me of every reason why I hated him.

My gaze darted back and forth from his sinful eyes to his hidden hands as I waited for what he wanted, and though I tried to stop it, my mouth opened as a breath of a song left me, too low for him to hear.

“Do you like your clothes?” he finally asked with a tilt of his head.

My shoulders lifted in the slightest of shrugs. “They’re just clothes.”

One dark brow ticked up at the indifference in my tone. “Just clothes, or not, you’ll still thank me.”

“Thank you,” I said quickly. “Thank you for all of them.”

I was thankful. Any clothing after only having tiny robes and then nothing was nearly as satisfying as finally seeing the sun this afternoon after all that time away from it.

When nearly a minute had passed in silence, I bent to pick up the sheet off the floor, but stilled when he spoke again.

His voice was deep and rhythmic, but it was impossible to miss the underlying bite in his tone. “Four seven zero, five . . .”

My knees were weak as I straightened my back, and I had to grab the top of the dresser to keep myself standing while he read the rest of Kyle’s phone number and name out loud from the piece of paper he held in front of him. “No,” I breathed.

His dark eyes burned with rage as he slowly tore my paper in two, and then tore those pieces in half again. “Out.” His lip curled when I didn’t make an attempt to move. “Don’t make me drag you out of there, Briar.”

“Please,” I said weakly. My stomach churned, and I swallowed back bile. “Lucas, plea—” I broke off quickly when I saw the shock covering his face at the sound of his own name.

But just as fast as the shock had appeared, it was gone, and his anger was back and worse than before. “Out.”

I was screaming at myself to move, to walk out of the closet, but my legs weren’t working. It was as though they were no longer a part of my body, and I continued to stand frozen in fear. My body trembled, but no tears came this time.

His first step into the closet finally forced my own—only it was the wrong way. I stumbled backward with each of his long, quick steps in my direction.

“No, no, no!” I screamed when he reached me.

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me away from where I was trying to disappear into a wall of clothes, then pulled me roughly behind him.

“Let go of me,” I continued to scream, and fought against his tight hold. “I hate you. Let me go.” My feet got caught in the bunched-up sheet on the floor and I started falling, but before I could hit the floor, the devil grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder.

He continued his trek through the closet and equally large bathroom to the bed without seeming to care as I punched his back as hard as I could, over and over. “You should have walked out on your own when you had a chance.”

“I hate you!”

“So you’ve told me.”

The next punch aimed at his back ended up clipping his shoulder when he shoved me onto the bed. I was swinging for his face before I finished settling onto the bed, but he caught my hands in his own and used my fists as leverage to pull me up toward him.