Jesus Christ. She’s exasperating. “How many times, woman? I never told you I hated you.”
“You never told me you liked me, either.”
I look up at the sky. I never believed in the big man. I figured that if he is up there, then he won’t have much interest in a little shit like me. But if he is there, he needs to help me.
“I didn’t think that was necessary. I thought I had time to show you. I took you out, I told my friends, I tried to be on my best behaviour… but well, I don’t claim to be very good at that. I couldn’t bring you home to meet the family because my dad wanted you gone, but I told you I’d sort that, and I have sorted it. You didn’t give me time though. You took me into your bed one night and I thought things would turn out alright, and then the next day you ended it. Not a backwards glance. And look at me, still here, still trying to give you time. And now you’re saying I’m the one who’s not been clear? How clear have you been, Lacey? I don’t see you shouting about your feelings and I’ve never once fucking expected it, either.”
“I can’t shout about my feelings because I don’t understand them. This is what I mean, Shaun, you make me weak. I think one thing, and then the second I’m with you it all goes out the window,” she says.
“So you think the answer is to close the window?”
“At the time I did, yes.”
I stand in front of her and run my finger down her neck and along her shoulder. It’s still wet from her hair that’s dripping down, and I watch as my finger hits every one of the beads of water and spreads them out. “And what about now?” I ask, looking her in the eye.
“Shaun, don’t,” she says, her tone conveying a warning that isn’t in her eyes.
“Don’t what?” I ask innocently.
“You know what you’re doing,” she snaps back.
“No, I don’t. Tell me what I’m doing?” My finger traces back up her shoulder and around the back of her neck. I watch her as she shivers and her breathing deepens.
I do know exactly what I’m doing, but I want her to say it.
I want to hear her admit it.
“You’re manipulating me. You’re making me feel things no sane person should feel. You chained me to the wall in your basement, for fuck's sake.”
Not the answer I was looking for, but true nonetheless.
I shrug. “I did. And I’d do it again. If I thought chaining you to a wall in the basement would stop you from doing something stupid, then I’d chain you up and I’d leave you there for as long as it took.”
She just shakes her head at me like I’m crazy.
Maybe I am.
“You hungry? All this talk of chains and seeing you naked earlier has got my cock right hard, so if you don’t want to fuck then I’m going to propose we eat instead.”
Chapter 5
LACEY
This is what he does.
He pushes and he pulls, and then just at the point when I think I know my own mind, he switches it up and the game changes.
When he was stroking my neck and making me feel things I shouldn’t be feeling, I thought I was going to have to fight him. He was looking at me with those eyes that tell me exactly what he wants, and I thought for a minute that he was going to take it. Maybe I would have tried to fight him or maybe I would have given in easily… either way it would have happened.
But it didn’t. He changed the subject and made me feel like I’d won a small victory.
A tiny little victory that normally I would have been pleased about.
But I am wisening up. I’m starting to see that he lets me have these victories so I don’t notice that I’m losing the war.
And now I’m sitting across from him, wearing his t-shirt as a nightdress, eating dinner in his dining room. I’m not trying to escape and I’m not as mad at him as I was when I woke up.
Funny that.
“So what do we do now?” I ask him, looking up from the bowl of pasta I’ve been picking at. He’s already on his second one, the pig.
“After dinner? Thought we could take sweeties and a cup of tea into bed, and then snuggle under the covers with a shite film on the TV,” he says, winking at me.
It’s so fucking ridiculous that I can’t help laughing at him.
“No, really. When you stole me and chained me to the wall in the basement—” I start but I stop again when he looks down at his cock and shakes his head at me.
“I told you to stop with the chain shit if you weren’t wanting fucked. I’ll no warn you twice, darlin,” he says, chuckling.
I clear my throat to stop myself from snorting at him and try again. “When you did what you did, you must have had a plan. What are you going to do now?”
He goes back to eating his pasta and I start to think he’s not going to answer.
I take a bite of my own, wondering if I should push him, but then he puts his fork down and looks at me. “You know they’re not going to give up, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t really going to do it,” I tell him.
It feels better than I thought it would, telling the truth. Which is strange because it was only yesterday I was getting satisfaction from telling him that I was going to do it. “I told Liam that right after I told you. I said we could let everyone think we’d done it, but I wouldn’t really go through with it.”
“You wouldn’t have had a choice. I’m telling you, I know Liam and I know his dad. His dad would have wanted proof,” he says. “But tell me how he reacted anyway, just for my own benefit.”
I smile at him. “He wasn’t happy. Like a petulant little child.”
Shaun smirks and sits back in his chair. “Good. I hope the rejection crushed him.”
“Just like it crushed you?” I tease, looking down at my bowl and stabbing a piece with my fork.
He chuckles and stands up, taking his bowl through to the kitchen. “Didn’t crush me because I didn’t accept it,” he shouts through from the other room. “I take what I want, remember?”
“I’m learning that,” I shout back at him.
He’s away for a little while and when he comes back, there’s a cup of tea in his hand.
“You finished with this?” he asks, nodding at the half-eaten bowl of pasta. I nod, taking the tea out of his hand. He picks the bowl up and heads back through to the kitchen, and I follow him.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I tell him.
“What question would that be?” he says, scraping the food out from the bowls and taking them over to the sink. I remember what Alice told me, about how he doesn’t really lie. Maybe he just avoids questions when he knows lying is the only reasonable option.
“The question about what we do now. Can I go home?” I ask.
He puts the dishes in the sink and pretends like all his attention is focused on getting them clean.
“Shaun?”
“I don’t think you should go home,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you to. I like having you with me and I really can’t be arsed abducting you again. It’s much harder than it looks in the movies, believe me,” he says, chuckling.