“Some man,” he said, and his dark eyes flashed with frustration. “I own you.”
“No, you don’t,” I reminded him.
His lip curled, but without saying a word, he got off the bed and began walking away from it.
“Another day, Blackbird?” I asked as I sat up on the bed, mocking his normal parting words, and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to do.
Even if it hadn’t been for the deadly calm that washed over him when he turned to face me, I would have known from the way his hands slid into the pockets of his jeans as he did.
For a man that exuded such evil—and could easily destroy my heart and my soul during a few minutes with my body—he had been patient with me during these progress days . . . all things considered.
As much as I hated him and hated what he was trying to make me do, I knew it could be so, so much worse . . . as he’d just reminded me.
I needed to be glad it wasn’t.
I needed to not provoke him.
“Watch yourself,” he growled in warning. He glanced at his expensive-looking watch, then said in a low tone, “There are people who should be here any minute for you.”
I froze as a dozen different thoughts, horrors and dreams alike, flew through my mind. “F-for me? Why? What’s happening?”
“They’re coming to change your hair color.”
I glanced down at where my hair was falling to my waist in waves. “It’s only ever been blonde.”
His eyebrows rose, as if I was missing something crucial. “And that needs to change.”
He looked away when the doorbell could be heard throughout the house and glanced to his watch again. “They’ll come in here. Don’t bother asking them to help you leave. You aren’t the first girl they’ve visited.”
I hated him.
The women who had come to dye my hair hadn’t said a word to me the entire time they were there. They had tilted my head down and up as needed and had disrobed me and shoved me into the shower to wash the dye out, but they hadn’t spoken. When I had exited the shower, they’d handed me a plush robe to dry off in and forced me into a chair as they began the process of drying my hair, but again, no words.
When they were done, they once again stripped me from their robe, dragged me in front of the mirror, and waited.
“It looks beautiful,” I said honestly.
Gone was the blonde and in its place was a warm brown. It transformed my face even . . . but the sight made my chest ache. The naked brunette in the mirror was not me. Briar Chapman was disappearing.
Both women had kissed my forehead before leaving, and I had turned around to grab one of my robes from the small closet in the bathroom.
Only the third robe was gone, as were all of my towels.
My brow furrowed as I walked out of the bathroom to my room, wondering if I had left the robes in there, and I stopped abruptly when my feet hit the carpet.
I hadn’t had to look around the room to see if the robes were there or not. The stripped-bare bed told me all I needed to know.
I hated the man in that house.
After searching every corner of the room and bathroom for anything I could have used to cover myself and coming up empty, I had curled into a ball between the bed and wall, and hadn’t moved since.
My legs had cramped up, but I knew the second I moved would be when the bedroom door opened, so I continued to sit through the pain as I waited.
And waited.
Dinner must have come and gone, judging from the way my stomach painfully growled before eventually stopping, and after nearly falling over too many times from drifting off to sleep, I finally stretched my legs out on the floor and rested my head against the wall. But he never came, and my eyes grew heavier and heavier until I couldn’t keep them open any longer.
I woke later to the feel of him lifting me off the floor.