Page 6 of Captured Pawn
I wasn’t sure exactly where those words had come from. I might not have been a saint, but kidnapping was definitely not my normal gig. Looking down into those wide, innocent eyes beneath me, it dawned on me that for Sophie Locke, I’d enjoy making an exception.
My words had scared her silent, which was fine by me.
“I’m going to send up our housekeeper with a tray of food. Eat, don’t eat. I don’t really care. I’m giving you the rest of today. You can cry, hell, even scream, and pound on the door. No one here is going to go against my orders.”
“And what orders are those?”
“For now, you stay put in this room. You have everything you need here. I’m going to give you this one day of grace to get this wild behavior out of your system, but starting tomorrow…” My voice trailed off. I shouldn’t want to scare her any more than I already had, but hell, taming her might be fun.
“What happens starting tomorrow?” she pressed.
A gentleman would comfort her, but I was no gentleman.
“If you keep hitting and kicking me, I can assure you, you don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER3
Sophie
“I hate you!”
My screamed sentiment was wasted on the retreating back of one Nicholas Knight. I didn’t think I could possibly hate him more than I had four nights ago when I had to listen to my brother take his dying gasp of oxygen over our last phone call. I’d heard the emergency sirens getting nearer. I’d begged Matt to hold on, that help was on the way.
I hated Nick Knight for putting my only brother in danger. I despised the misplaced loyalty my brother had had to the larger-than-life asshole since they were teenagers. But mostly, it broke my heart that my brother’s last words to me were, “Nick will take care of you now.”
“Well, fuck that,” I said to the empty room.
Unable, or maybe unwilling, to think clearly, I curled into a ball in the middle of the mammoth bed. The cream-colored comforter was cool on my cheek, a direct contrast to the burning sting emanating from my punished ass.
How dare the bastard hit me? I’d always known the Knights had two faces to the world—their ship-building empire for respectability and complete domination of the docks and everything that came into and left from every marina within a fifty-mile radius. It was the latter half that Nick and my brother had reigned over, and while I was certain many illegal activities occurred on those docks, not once would I have believed that battering women was on their list of crimes.
Even as the thought formed, I called bullshit on myself. I might have been furious about how humiliating what he’d done to me in the back seat of the SUV had been, but even I knew that if and when Nick Knight wanted to truly beat someone, that would not have been how he’d go about it.
No, I guess what I hated the most was he’d treated me like a kid. A naughty, errant child who needed to be spanked and sent to their room without dinner.
Okay, even that was a lie.
What I hated the most was that there was a tiny part of me that hadn’t actually hated it. And that… right there… terrified me. For a brief moment in the back of that car, when the pain was almost unbearable, the only thing I could think of was how big his cock felt pressing against my tummy. Through my tears, I’d tried to maintain my fury at his mistreatment, but the longer the spanking went on, the harder he’d gotten until for a few brief moments of insanity, all I could think of was hoping he’d pull down my panties and plunge his cock inside me.
It was ludicrous. Pure and simple. It had to be the grief clouding my judgment.
The key turning in the door and one short knock was the only warning I got that I was no longer alone. Rolling over, the pressure on my sore ass mocked my foolishness.
Thankfully, it was a middle-aged woman in a conservative gray dress standing in the doorway and not the man I presently wanted to throat-punch.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Locke. Mr. Knight asked me to bring up some food and beverages for you. With your permission, I’d like to set up your luncheon on the table.”
“Since when does my opinion matter around here?” It was a bitchy move taking my anger out on the otherwise kind-looking woman. Still, I couldn’t resist adding, “Since you used a key to unlock the door, I assume you know I’m being held here against my will.” I didn’t make it a question since it was obvious I spoke the truth.
Not bothering to wait for my response, the woman closed the distance to the round wooden table across the room, placing the large tray down. Only then did I take my first good look around the room. It might have been my current prison, but had the door been left unlocked, the space could have passed for a luxury suite at a five-star resort. Built-in bookshelves held an array of artfully arranged books, photos, and art. A large fireplace was the centerpiece of the outside wall with tall windows looking out onto a balcony on either side.
Even from the bed, I could see we were on beach-front property. I recognized the light house in the distance and knew we were at the juncture of where the Providence River merged with Narraganset Bay. Figures, a square yard of land here was worth what I’d paid for my entire condo in the city.
The door to the walk-in closet was open, showing off the empty built-in dressers, cubbies, and racks where designer clothes were supposed to be, reminding me I literally had not one item with me other than what I was wearing.
My inspection of the room found one final door that was closed, and I assumed it led to a private bathroom.
When my gaze returned to the table near the bookcase, I found the housekeeper staring at me, a kind smile on her lips.
