Page 19 of The Fire Went Wild

“Happy?” she says when she finishes. She looks up at me, her eyes dark and smokey, her lips bare.

I gesture for her to stand up.

She does, sighing, putting the makeup bag aside. The chain snakes from her ankle to the bed.

“I’m going to take that off,” I tell her. “And you can change your underwear.” I hold up the knife, and her eyes settle on it with a fearful yet avaricious gleam. She thinks she can use a weapon against me.

“Then what?”

“Then you’ll come downstairs.”

Her eyes glitter. She wants to know if I’m going to chain her up. She’s worked through the different possibilities, I think. What to do if I handcuff her. What to do if I lead her downstairs on a leash. What to do if I threaten her with a knife.

I smile a little. She has no idea what I am and what I can do. Even if I can’t kill her.

I pick up the clean panties, relishing their silky fabric. Charlotte watches me, and, to her credit, keeps her expressionblank. Although when I hand them to her, she snatches them away, curling them up in her fist.

I crouch down at her feet, my muscles tense because hers are tense. I can smell her adrenaline.

I wear the key to her lock around my neck, along with the key to the room, and I can feel her staring at me as I set down the knife on the ground and pull the keys out from under my shirt. She says nothing as I slide the key into the cuff, but I sense the shift in her heart rate.

As soon as the cuff springs free, Charlotte lunges sideways—going for the knife, no doubt. But I expect it, and I move faster than I’ve moved for her yet, grabbing her by the waist and throwing her onto the bed so quickly it’s clear she doesn’t understand what happened. Because her fear shifts. Sharpens. And it’s clear on her face, now, too.

“How—” She stops herself.

“Don’t do things like that,” I say. “Just because I can’t kill you doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you.”

My Guardian and the Unnamed both hiss, but Charlotte doesn’t need to know that.

“Let me go,” she whispers. I’m still pinning her down by the waist, her knees spread on either side of my hips. It’s what you might call a compromising position. My cock certainly notices.

“You need to change your underwear,” I tell her.

She glares at me. “Why do you care?”

“Why do you not?” The truth is I want the dirty pair for my own use, but I don’t want to see her look of disgust when I tell her that. “If you’re good at dinner, I’ll even let you have a bath.”

We both know she’s not going to be good at dinner.

“Fuck you,” she says.

There it is. That delicious defiance. It floods me with a sudden surge of confidence.

“Give me the underwear.” I feel suddenly very powerful, with her strong, thick body pinned by my strong, thick hands. Her eyes flash angrily, and she squeezes the underwear even tighter.

“Give me the underwear,” I tell her again, hardly believing the words as they come out of my mouth. “So I can change them myself.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHARLOTTE

Igape up at Jaxon, still not sure I heard him correctly. When I don’t move, he releases my waist to curl his hand around mine, prying my fingers open one by one to get at the clean panties inside.

His strength is—startling. I try to resist, out of principle more than anything. Honestly, I would love to have clean underwear. And a bath. But I’d love not being a psychopath’s prisoner a hell of a lot more, which is why I went along with his demands. Putting on the dress. Playing nice. I figure if I can get downstairs, I’ll have a better chance of escaping.

It was just a lot easier to do when he wasn’t here, smoldering at me. Because as soon as I see him, I want to defy him. I want to piss him off?—

So he’ll do exactly what he’s doing right now.

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