Page 43 of Captive Souls

In the cabin with Knox, it was actually a good thing to engage in toxic behavior, fighting fire with fire and all that. I was not under any pressure to feel safe and secure with him, such a thing was impossible. There was no relationship to preserve, to nurture.

Therefore, the charged silence should’ve been my victory. I could feel it, like a crackle in the air, the sexual tension I’d poked at. His grip on his cutlery was tight, his shoulders taut and his movements stilted, as if he was forcing himself to be still and calm.

Yes, I’d affected him.

Points to me. To what end, I didn’t know. Weaken him in order to manipulate him into saving me? No, I wasn’t that calculated, and Knox wasn’t the kind of man who would save me. Ever.

Did I just want to torture him a little? Or did I really want to act on this forbidden carnality?

If I was asked out loud, by an outside party who was witnessing this, I would obviously say the former. It was only fair to use whatever wiles I had to torture my captor. But in myheart of hearts, I knew that wasn’t entirely the case. I wanted him. My darker side, the side of me that had been starved and denied, was only growing stronger, hungrier in his presence. I’d been so sure my childhood had beaten out any allure dangerous men might’ve had. But instead, I’d just stifled those feelings and ignored them, only for them to come bursting out of my captive soul.

Which was what I was battling with as I forced the food into my mouth. I needed the calories. I had a lot of strength to replenish. And it was good. Flavorful. He had a talent in the kitchen, especially while working with canned food and dried spices.

A little tidbit of information which was at odds with the image of him being a cold psychopath. But then again, just because someone was a psychopath didn’t mean that they couldn’t also be a good cook.

Not only was I battling the arousal I felt in the air but I was simultaneously struggling with the act of eating the food he prepared under his watchful eye. If his intention was to simply fatten me back up like a pig to the slaughter, he could’ve dumped a tin of beans in front of me and commanded me to eat.

I would’ve done it too, now that I’d brushed against the familiar feel of starvation, after hovering much too close to the abyss of death. Would I have eaten meat if he had forced it upon me after waking up? I didn’t want to answer that question.

He could’ve done it, served it up to me and taken the win by breaking me just a little. Instead, he’d made me the beans, tended to my injuries.

And now he was doing it again.

Mulling over all of that took up a decent amount of time from dinner. But I was not an overly interior person. I wasn’t used to going so long without speaking. I worked with children all day who constantly asked questions, helping them develop theirlanguage skills. There was barely ever a moment when I was silent.

When I was at home alone, I was usually speaking to my sister or singing to music. Otherwise, I was out with friends.

Silence was not a familiar companion of mine.

“How did you come to work for Stone?” I asked, looking up from my plate.

I could’ve asked a safer question, his favorite movie or color, perhaps. Pretending we were on a bad first date, skirting past the elephant in the room. But that wasn’t possible for me. The elephant was not an elephant but a huge, black shadow, corporal and oppressing, stifling the life from me.

“I’m curious as to what happens in a person’s life to result in them working for a mob boss, doing his dirty work,” I continued, no bite to my tone.

Half of me didn’t expect an answer. Knox didn’t have the same trouble keeping silence intact as I did. He seemed to despise the human practice of conversation. Or at least with me. Though I found it hard to envision him discussing normal things with anyone.

“Why did something have to happen in my life?” he asked, his voice smooth as silk. “Can’t I just be evil?”

His response caught me off guard. There was no teasing or sarcasm in it, just a note of truth. Did he truly consider himself to be evil? And if he did, then I doubted he truly was. Evil people weren’t aware of their wretchedness. More often, they were puffed up with their own importance or convinced they were the hero.

I put down my knife and fork to answer his question.

“No.” He shook his head before I had the chance to. “You eat and talk.”

I pursed my lips against the command, tempted to fight against it. But the prospect of conversation with him was moreimportant than holding on to the façade of my sovereignty in this situation.

Dutifully, I loaded up my fork with tomatoey lentils and rice then put it in my mouth. I felt Knox’s eyes on me the entire time.

It felt intimate, the way he watched me eat. Possessive.

“No one can just be evil,” I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Maybe a small portion of the population, but I think that’s a farce more than anything. Evil, if such a thing exists, is made. Created. Situations continually push someone into less and less desirable circumstances until they commit more heinous acts, justifying them until they don’t feel the need to do that anymore because they consider their acts to be a reflection of who they are now instead of things they do.” The words spilled out of me, things I’d been marinating on my entire life while desperate to find explanations to my parents’ behavior.

Knox had been impassively, coldly watching me before I spoke, but something in his eyes changed when I finished. His jaw slackened just a little, and the force of his attention no longer felt entirely cold and predatory.

Then he recovered, his mask slipping back on.

That’s what I was becoming sure it was. A mask. There was a human underneath there. Who’d endured trauma. A human with wants. Needs.

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