He lets out a long-drawn-out breath. “And now you know why.”
“How did you know what to do?” I ask, frowning.
His brows rise. “It isn’t sex. It’s what the brain does when it is in pleasure mode.” He taps his temple. “You shut off and allow yourself to leave all your presumptions, your self-consciousness, and your insecurities behind. And it allows me to apply certain … tricks to get you to see your own sin.”
I swallow hard. “The knife.”
He nods.
That same knife I used on Chris is now on the floor right beside this armchair. I almost tried to use it again, but I couldn’t. Not just because the memories flooded back inside … but because deep down, I couldn’t hurt the man who had brought them back.
The man who feels as though he was sent to judge me.
The man who I thought was my punisher.
But is he really?
Or is he my savior?
His thick chest muscles tense as he wraps his arms around me and gets up from the chair.
Enough? What is?
“What are you doing?” I ask, wishing we could just stay there for a moment so I could bask in his warmth and forget all my sins, if only for a moment.
“Shh,” he whispers.
The air he exudes is both powerful and peaceful at the same time. Like a man wishing to save me, and I can’t help but feel at awe at his commitment. At how he did all this to me just to show me what I had done. Just to make me remember.
And for some reason, I feel grateful. “Thank you.”
The words slip from my mouth before I even realize it, and he stops and looks down at me for a moment to smile. It’s the most genuine smile I’ve seen on his face since I first met him, and it warms my heart.
“Don’t. Please, don’t,” he says, clearing his throat. “I don’t deserve that.”
“But you helped me remember,” I say, frowning.
His nostrils flare. “I did what I had to do to save you. That doesn’t make me a good guy.”
“I didn’t say you were.” My hand reaches to touch his face in a moment of pure need for love, even if it’s the wrong kind, but the look of suffering he gives makes me stop.
“Don’t,” he says. “Please, don’t. Don’t thank me.”
My hand inches back, and I swallow. “Sorry.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it,” he says, and he continues walking. “It’s that I don’t deserve it.”
He takes me to a door on the other side of the study, which leads straight into a bedroom. His room. The room I was never welcome in or invited into, one that was locked when I still had my privileges to roam about the house.
The oversized bed in the middle of the room is large enough to fit five people. The curtains in front of the window are already closed, but I can still check out the room because of the small light next to the bed. A black leather couch sits in the back next to a giant wardrobe and a mirror that spans the wall from top to bottom.
But I don’t have more time to look as Eli places me down on his bed, fierce protectiveness in his eyes as he lies down beside me and pulls the blanket over us. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me in closer until we’re spooning. Like we’re an actual couple.
But that doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t love me. We’re not together. He’s my captor, and I let him do this to me because I asked for it. Because I pleaded with him to punish me, and now I got my wish.
“Don’t think too much. You need to rest now,” he says, tucking me in tighter.
The warmth in his arms almost makes me forget who he is. Almost.
“I can’t. I can’t sleep after all this,” I say, trying to force myself to remain in the here and now and remember he is the bad guy, even when the lines are blurring.
“Then at least rest,” he replies with a stern voice.
“But I need to know more,” I say as I clutch the blankets that smell like him a little closer, afraid of what’ll happen if I admit that maybe, just maybe, I feel something for him. Not love … but adoration. And I know that isn’t right. I’m not supposed to feel these things for a man like him. My captor.
Especially when he knows so much about me. Things I didn’t even know myself.
Because Eli never told me why he knew what I’d done to Chris. Or how he got that knife.
I swallow hard. “I have questions.”
“What do you want to know?” he murmurs against my skin, the warmth of his breath almost distracting me enough not to want to ask.