Blackbird (Redemption 1)

He seemed frustrated by my lack of progress, but I didn’t know what more he could have expected. He was evil incarnate; he had paid for me after I’d been stolen from my life and the man I loved. He’d tried to teach me a lesson by making me think he was going to use my body . . . all because I’d refused to eat when I’d first arrived.

I knew I needed to gain his trust, and part of that was doing what needed to be done to get out of this room, but it wasn’t as easy as he thought it should be.

This wasn’t letting a man undress me as anticipation pounded through my veins and made me ache for him. This wasn’t letting the man I loved look at me, bare and vulnerable and ready for him. This was dancing with the devil and attempting to come out of it unscathed.

The door opened, but I didn’t look toward it as my throat closed up, effectively ending the song.

It took a few seconds, but I noticed there was a charge in the room that hadn’t been there yesterday or the day before, and it sent a chill through my spine.

He was staying . . .

I blew a steadying breath out before I found the courage to turn my head to look at him from where I was lying on the bed.

His power, darkness, and masculine beauty stunned me, as it had every time I looked at him, but I didn’t react to it. I watched him as he watched me, and I looked up at the ceiling when his eyes fell from my face to my body.

Sin. He was pure sin. I hated him.

“Blackbird,” he whispered in that voice of his. That invigorating, throaty mixture of warmth and softness that hinted at regret was just another part of his attraction . . . another part of his deceit . . . another part of him I hated.

“Devil.”

His face came into view then, his lips twitching into a brief, amused grin before falling, and then he was saying the words I didn’t want to hear . . .

“Show me that—”

“Is it the weekend?” I asked quickly, cutting him off.

His dark brows pulled low over his eyes as he studied me, and instead of repeating what I knew he’d been about to say, he asked, “Why?”

“Your shirt,” I responded automatically and hated that embarrassed heat filled my cheeks. “Um, you’re just normally in a button-down.”

He glanced at himself. “Do you prefer those?”

I looked at the black shirt that stretched over his tanned, muscled body and shook my head as I pushed myself up so I was sitting on the bed. “I don’t have a preference. I’ve just been trying to figure out how long it’s been since I was taken from home.”

He looked away, but not before I saw the way his face fell. He swallowed thickly and seemed to think about what to say for a while before he spoke. “Don’t think of it that way.” His voice was laced with some emotion I couldn’t place, but it shocked me all the same.

I had only ever seen him angry, annoyed, or menacing. To see any other kind of emotion that suggested this devil might have some humanity made him intriguing—no. He wasn’t. This is all a trick, all part of his darkness, I reminded myself, and forced the sound of his voice from my mind.

“How am I supposed to think of it?” I asked softly. My throat tightened and my eyes burned, but no tears came. I wasn’t sure I had any tears left in me. “I missed my wedding. I missed marrying the man I—”

“Enough,” he bit out, cutting me off. Dark, dark eyes met mine as his chest rose and fell with each rough breath that left him. After an eternity had passed in our agonizing silence, he spoke. Every word was automatic, detached. “You’re finally free here with me. You don’t need to count days.”

“Free? I was kidnapped. You bought me. I’ve been locked in this room for weeks. In what world could any of those things ever be considered free?” What had started out as whispers had turned into tortured yells, but he didn’t react to them.

He just watched me until I was finished, then calmly said, “In my world, Blackbird.”

“Your—” I began, somewhat taken aback. I hadn’t thought he would respond to those questions, and I certainly hadn’t expected that response. “What world is this? Where did they take me? Where are—what country are we in?” I demanded, my voice rising with each question.

The devil looked at me with forced amusement. “Where do you think you are?”

I didn’t even know where to begin with my thoughts on where they could have taken me. I’d been unconscious for the better part of two days while they’d brought me here. And I’d been so naïve to think that sex trafficking would never touch my world, that I didn’t know much about it. I thought it only happened in foreign countries, and I still had a feeling I was in one. “Not the United States,” I finally whispered.

He glanced down at himself for a split second, and when he looked up again, his eyes were cold. “I’m American, Blackbird. What would give you the impression that we aren’t in the U.S.?”

“Are we?”

“Why would I want you close to where they took you from?” he responded vaguely, trying to confuse me even more.