Page 11 of Reckoning

Madeline

My mind swam with questions. When had my mother lived here? Had she been pregnant with me before she left? What drove her away? And perhaps most terrifying, what made her choose to be with a man like Conrad Schaf in the first place? I tried to remember the conversation at my birthday party, the exact words she and Conrad had exchanged. But all Meyer would give me was this evidence of his family’s cruelty, the intense loathing a person must possess to force a child to kill an innocent creature, given in good faith as a gift.

“Why did you bring me here?” I whirled on him, feeling new tears in my eyes. How many times had I cried in the past two days? Meyer stood only inches away, wearing that same cruel smile on his face. I could kiss that mouth or slap it. Maybe both. “Why are you so spiteful? I never did anything to you!” I tried to push past him, but no matter how I moved, he stepped in front of me. “I’m not your slave, Meyer, no matter what your psychopath father promised you. I’m never going to bow to you.”

His face darkened at the mention of his father. I was gathering that there was more to their relationship than I realized; the familial love between them seemed sparse, to say the least. “It’s not Conrad you have to blame for this. It’s your own mother.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I cried, but he turned away, keeping me in the dark. Refusing once more to clue me into this Hatfield and McCoy-esque feud I barely knew anything about. “Please, Meyer, tell me what’s going on. Why am I here?”

“You want the truth?”

“Yes!”

He turned back to me suddenly, and I pressed my back against the tree. Jagged bark scraped at my skin, but it was nothing compared to what I felt rolling off the man staring me down. He was furious. His eyes burned with unbridled anger. “You’re here because your whore of a mother couldn’t keep the promises she made. Promises that should have been sacred, she threw out the window like trash. You’re the payback, and you’re going to keep every last obligation she ran out on.”

My mind flew through what I knew, which was next to nothing. What promises could he be talking about? Promises to him or to his father? “That doesn’t tell me anything. You have to give me more.”

“I don’t have to give you anything.” He grabbed me again, and this time, he didn’t hold back. His fingers dug into my skin, bringing new bruises to the surface as I struggled to free myself. “That’s the entire point of this exercise. You’re mine for as long as I see fit. The rest of your life, however long that is.”

My blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

He sneered. “There, you’re finally understanding this arrangement. What part of ‘I own you’ isn’t clear?”

I trembled. “You can’t mean you intend to…”

“What? Murder you? Take your life? Draw every last drop of blood from your body and send your corpse back to Eva in a black trash bag?” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “No, Mads, I don’t intend to do that, but don’t think that thought hasn’t crossed my mind a dozen times. And if you want it to stay a passing thought and not an inevitable future, you’d better learn to show me a little goddamn respect.” He grabbed my face, avoiding my bruises but holding my jaw tight enough to sting. “You think I don’t see the way you look at me? How your eyes linger on my body just as much as mine do on yours?”

I shook my head as I backed harder against the tree. “My God, Meyer. You’re delusional.”

“Am I?” His hands landed on my torso, over my bruise, but he didn’t push. He held me gently, almost tenderly, before stepping forward once more to press against me with the rest of his body. “Let’s experiment.”

“What are you talking about?” He let his hands drift down my front, caressing my body, and my chest started to ache as my breathing became shallower and more labored. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m not listening to you right now, Mads. Do you know why?”

I closed my eyes as he tucked his fingers underneath the waistband of my shorts. Of course I knew. He’d only been telling me for the past seventy-two hours. “Because you don’t have to.”

“That’s right.” He whispered the words against my ear, and I whimpered a little—but not out of fear. God help me, I was so angry, but it felt so good for him to touch me like this. To hold me with a strange tenderness even though I knew he possessed none of the sentiment his touch seemed to convey. I’d felt nothing but dismay and dread for days, willing my body to heal so I could formulate a plan to get myself out of this. But now he was offering me warmth and reassurance, even if it was in his own commanding way, and the elemental nature of his need for control showed through every crack. I moaned as he drew a finger across my hip bone.

“I knew it.” One hand dived fully beneath my clothes, hand flush against my skin, fingers pushing and searching until he found that space between my legs. “Do you know what I feel?” His fingers tickled my skin, causing me to jump. My shirt tore against the tree. I knew he felt the wetness that allowed his fingers to slide easily against my lips. My arousal at being so close to him, smelling the clean perfume of his shampoo from his just-dried hair. I would have given anything to touch it.

I struggled to inhale. “That doesn’t mean anything. It’s an unconscious response.”

“Sometimes. But not right now.”

His forehead pressed against mine, and I turned my head as he sought my lips with his own. I would not kiss him. One finger pressed against my clit, and I summoned every ounce of will to keep from reacting outwardly. But inside, the stirrings of pleasure could not be ignored. The shiver traveled all the way to my brain.

“Please,” I whispered, halting before I uttered that word he’d forbidden me from using. His free hand shot up to wrap around my throat, forcing me to look at him, into those blue eyes that seemed, for now, to let me see into his soul.

“Please, what? Keep going?”

I was shaking with the effort of holding back. His fingers never stopped working, never ceased rubbing my clit and my skin and intensifying the arousal he’d manipulated out of me. “You can’t just ignore what I say. I’m a person, Meyer.”

He kissed my cheek softly, the one still so bruised and swollen from the night I was kidnapped. His lips were cool against my hot skin. Everything about him was cold; even when I was too warm, he seemed to run a few degrees lower.

“If you make another noise, I’m fucking you.” One of his fingers slipped past my defenses to slide inside me, hooking against that tender spot deep within while his thumb continued work on my clit. I bit down on my lip. “Let that be your warning. I won’t fuck you if you stay quiet. But I’m not stopping until you come, one way or another.” He ducked his head to kiss my neck, just over my pulse. My fingernails dug into his bicep, barely making a dent against his hard muscle. Even if I wanted to escape, I was helpless against him. And I wasn’t sure that I did. “You’ll crave me for everything. For every ounce of pleasure and even a certain amount of pain. I’ll break you down, Mads.”

He paused, and I opened my mouth to admonish him for the nickname before snapping my jaw shut again. He grinned and returned to my neck. Soft lips moved in time with his fingers; I felt lifted off the ground with how deeply he was pushing into me. “Things don’t have to be all bad. You give in to me a little bit, and I can make things better. But you do have to give in.”

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