Cole had hurt me. Cole would be hurting me if I were still with him.
Why was this different?
Obviously, the threat of being killed, the fact that Vincent was a psychopath and maybe Kie was something that made psychopathy look benign.
I meant, the actual fact of being beaten. There had been times Cole hadn't held back at all. Times that I had felt the strength behind his blows. Usually when he was afraid for me. Usually when he thought I had done something stupid.
I wasn't arrogant enough or angry enough at his "corrections" to not recognize that.
But even when Cole hurt me far beyond anything sexual, there was a sexual component to it. Even if I was so furious at him I couldn't countenance his touching me. Even then, in the privacy of my own mind and the space between my legs, I could feel the ache and need growing.
There was nothing but pain from Vincent.
When he finished stroking my face and turned away I risked one question. "Sir?"
He turned back. I could see that because his feet turned back toward me. I kept my eyes resolutely on the ground, reminding myself that not seeing his angry bitter face and stony eyes was no loss.
"Yes?"
I hesitated. If I asked if I could ask a question, I would have just done so. If I asked anyway – oh, fuck it, I thought. How do you reason with crazy?
"I'd like to ask a question if I may, sir."
There was humor in his voice when he responded, "You may," but it wasn't pleasant and it was aimed at me, not for me. Not with me.
"Am I to be held for longer than the two weeks that was the agreed upon time at the auction?"
His feet moved and he hadn't said anything. As he moved behind me, I flinched. Next instant he had taken a handful of my too-long hair and wrapped it tight in his fist, dragging my head back and forcing me down to my knees in one movement.
"You don't like my hospitality?"
There was no way to answer that. No response was safe. I simply gasped, "Sir!" and hoped he would loosen his hold or let me lift my head back up. When I swallowed it was loud.
Vincent pulled my hair harder. "I haven't decided if I will ever release you, little girl. Imagine the great Cole St. Martin sitting in his remote hideaway, pining for the girl who was taken from him. It's only because he owns you, you understand, my dear." He gave a particularly vicious tug to my hair and tears started to course down my cheeks. Without meaning to, I reached up, wanting to relieve the pressure on my hair. "I wouldn't," he said, "Or I might rip it out by the roots. Then you'd be ugly and I'd have to punish you for that. You would not enjoy what I would do."
I haven't enjoyed anything you've done!
I only swallowed, hard and loud, and waited until he relaxed his grip. "Kneel up!" he commanded and I straightened at once, high on my knees as he circled around in front of me and put his hand on my throat.
"Imagine Cole there. Knowing I have you. Knowing I can do whatever I want to you. That I am hurting you day by day by day by night by day. Imagine when he sees photos of you in the press and the occasional leaked photo seen through a limo window as the car pulls away and you're already naked, your bare breasts being beaten by a crop."
And then he knelt beside me, his eyes a cold flame. I looked because he forced my head up to meet his.
"Imagine him imagining all the things I'm going to do to your body in front of audiences and when we're alone deep in the night and when Kie has served her penance and is with us. Imagine all the things I can do that aren't permanent but will. Make. You. Scream."
And then I didn't have to imagine.
Because he began to tell me.
I slept.
After all the horrible things that Vincent whispered in my ear, and after knowing that somewhere in the house was Kie, even if I wasn't seeing her, I slept. The body can only go so long in shock and on high alert before it gives up and demands sleep.
During the night, no one came in and chained me to the bed. I wasn't attacked or assaulted, I wasn't kept awake or rubbed with jalapenos.
I just slept.
At dawn, I woke in a total panic. The sun was just coming up when I startled upright in the bed, my head swimming with vertigo because I had no idea what city I was in. The instant I established the room around me, curtains pulled against the day, I was on my feet, racing to the window, determined to figure out at the very least the cardinal directions and which way the layout of the room faced.
That was easy enough. The sun was coming up when I leaned onto the sill of the window directly opposite the bed. I'd slept with my head pointing north, and now I knew where the sun was and the approximate time.
I felt surprisingly not at all better. That made me smile a little to myself, grimly, but it was a smile. Sometimes when he didn't know I could see him, Cole would smile with half his mouth at something I said or did. Usually it was over something I felt strongly about, like knowing what the directions were, where north was. He always asked why I cared and I could never answer him.
I just needed to know. I had to be oriented in space. Now, for example, if I had the slightest idea what country I was in, I'd know where he was.
Instead, I was adrift. So I turned to the important matters. A bathroom, for one, because of all the weird games being played around me and to me, that was one I wasn't going to go along with. Elimination wasn't a game.
With relief I discovered a private bathroom inside the room where I was captive. Once I came out of it I went to the door and checked that I actually was a captive because I'd feel really stupid if I just stayed in the room and assumed.
The door was locked and not on my side. I wondered what people told locksmiths when they had doors installed this way. That they had dangerous relatives? Then again, with enough money, I was learning, explanations were unnecessary. Offer someone a $500 tip and they don't care why you want your doors reversed, especially if there was no one screaming behind the one they were working on.
Right. I turned back to the room, scanned the ceiling and found nothing in the way of cameras. Which didn't mean they weren't there. They could be tiny. They could be anywhere. I hoped I wouldn't be here long enough to find out where. Ditto for bugs. Though what would anyone be listening to? Me talking to myself? I had no phone.
That was the next thing I automatically looked for. There was no phone on me. Cole wasn't in the habit of letting me have unlimited access to a phone and I hardly needed one when running through the desert with him.
But on the bedside table there was a phone, a normal old fashioned phone with a cord. It was baby blue. Princess style or Trimline or whatever they were called.
I stared at it as if it were a hallucination. For one wild minute I thought about how many hoops I'd have to jump through to get a call in to Cole. Billionaires weren't listed, surely, but there had to be an office somewhere. St. Martin Pharma was a real company. I'd even heard of it before I ended up the prisoner of its CEO. If I called the offices and insisted they take my crazy message and get it to him, if I spoke of something – anything – I couldn't know without knowing Cole...
And immediately following those thoughts the crushing reality: this would be a house phone. For Vincent to call in his threats, I supposed, or order me down for dinner wearing those godawful heels. Or for Kie to call up and whisper vile nothings in my ear. Where I'd been ready to run to it, I now turned away from it to continue exploring the room. Undoubtedly when I did pick up the blue phone I'd find myself summoning demons to my room – or at least availing myself of the company of my captors.