I’d never see her again.
Never watch her grow up.
Or maybe I would.
Ivan only pushed the blade down to remove the gag over my mouth. As the fabric fell, freeing the scraped skin there that was abused from the abrasion of the binding, I sucked in deeperinhales. Blinking my eyes open when I heard his step backward, retreating from me as he shoved his hands in his pockets, I tried to understand what was going on.
“Did you like what that man was doing to that woman at the club?” he asked, his voice gritty with lust and curiosity.
Of all things. Ofallfucking things he could have asked me. I was suspended between utter fear and hot rage, stunned that he’d… that he’dmockme.
I gritted my teeth and lunged at him. “Let me go!”
He didn’t break a sweat restraining me and setting me back on the bed. He waited until I sat up from the slump I fell into with my hands tied behind my back.
My chest heaving, my breath coming too shallow and fast as I fumed at him, I stared so hard that I prayed he’d see how angry I was.
A smirk. That was all he gave me. Not even breaking a sweat from handling me and forcing me to be submissive again.
“Did you?”
“No.” I huffed, blowing my hair from my face. “What’s it to you?” I sassed back. I wasn’t going to assume he cared, that my reply mattered. He was in charge here. Not me.
“I noticed how intrigued you were.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Intrigued? I wasn’t intrigued. I was appalled. Shocked.”
He arched one brow. “And aroused?”
“Fuck you!”
He sighed, not losing that dangerous aura but showing some modicum of patience.
“You’re crazy. My reactions to that man and woman in that…”
“Scene. It’s called a scene.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. My opinions about that stuff don’t matter. Let me go!”
He simply stared at me, almost as though he was content to wait me out and let me burn through this anger.
“You’re crazy.”
Still no reaction.
“I swear to God,” I muttered hotly, fighting with my hands to see if I could slip through. “I swear, no man is ever going to control me again. I swear it.”
“Who controls you?”
I glowered at him, wiggling my wrists to get out of this impossibly tight rope.
“Murphy?”
I went still, locking my arms.
“Steven Murphy,” he clarified.
“Did he set you up to steal me out of that club? Huh? Did you set me up to go there?”