Page 29 of Captive Heart

"More like twenty-seven, I think," Melody decided. "It's winter now, and Daddy celebrated my birthday in autumn. It was just starting to be spring when I lost him."

Her words were telling. Whatever manipulations 'Daddy' had applied to get Melody to live with him before she was legally of age—and Micah certainly had his suspicions—the man had been good to Melody and treated her well.

Whoever he was, he surely had to be the starting point for trying to piece together the jigsaw of Melody's life.

Kept as a 'little' with no autonomy or responsibility and then as a slave with no privileges at all, she knew precious little that could point them in the right direction, so all they could do was investigate those parts which they could identify.

Since the bruises and scars Micah had observed when he'd helped her clean up pointed to long term, systematic abuse, and she freely admitted to being held against her will, it was most definitely time to call in Detective Storer and allow him to start an official investigation.

But Micah was determined to handle the information gathering himself. For now, at least until Melody was a little more comfortable with the situation.

"Do you know Daddy's real name, Melody?"

"When I first met him, he told me his name was Thomas, but nothing more than that."

Micah nodded, drawing his fingers through her hair as he continued to dry it.

"What about the address where you lived?"

Melody sighed. "He treated me in all things as a little girl. That was our dynamic, so those weren’t things he expected me to know. But it wasn’t far from where I was taken… after. And therefore, not that far from here, I suppose. I guess I'd recognise the area if I saw it. I'm sorry I'm so little help."

He patted her shoulder. "Don't worry; we'll piece it all together."

"I can give you the address of the group home, if that helps. Its name was Fairwinds, and it was less than an hour’s drive away. "That's an excellent start!" Micah grinned and leaned down to place a smacking kiss on her cheek.

He caught himself too late to stop it. It was an innocent thing but entirely inappropriate.

21

Melody resisted the urge to touch her cheek where Micah had just kissed it. She was being bombarded with so many unfamiliar sensations.

Daddy had kissed her on the cheek, and sometimes he had even washed and dried her hair, too. But only when the mood had taken him, and then it had been a kind of foreplay. It had certainly never felt like this, and Melody didn't know quite how to quantify it.

She felt an affinity to Micah. His calm and patient demeanour called to the broken parts inside, urging her to trust him.

She did trust him. She wasn't sure why, since they had only just met, but some kind of latent animal instinct had kicked in and insisted she was safe with him. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no logic, and it certainly wasn't rational, but there it was.

It wasn't just because he had a pretty face or a well-built body. She knew far better than to trust those kinds of things. No, it was something far deeper—his whole aura.

For better or for worse, it called to her to relax and share things with him that she'd shared with no one.

Perhaps that was the secret. The fact that he spoke to her and asked her questions, was interested in her life. No one had ever cared about that before.

He saw her, she realised with a start.

No one had ever seen her before. They had only seen what she could provide for them.

He said he didn't want her as his slave, and that made her unaccountably sad because she thought she might actually enjoy being his slave.

In truth, she didn't really know how to be anything else.

He didn't seem to want to take his pleasure from witnessing her agony as the brute had done, and he didn't want to turn her into a little girl like Daddy did.

But if she wasn't his slave, then, what would she be? How would she cope? How would she manage? Where would she live? How would she live? Would he help her with that? Would he help her find herself and become her own person?

The very idea sent a frisson of anxiety skittering down her back. She had never had to rely on herself. She'd never had the freedom to do so.

People might think she should jump at the chance to be what she had never been allowed to be. To make her own choices and decisions and live her life any way she wished.

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