Page 65 of Gilded Locks
“Let me make this perfectly clear, so there is no misunderstanding in the future. You are nothing. Everything you touch, eat, and breathe belongs to us. We own you. Disrespect me again, and I’ll throw you out in the snow and let you freeze to death.”
She stilled, because he was that terrifying. She believed him. She believed he’d let her die in the cold and forbid his brothers from saving her.
“Please…” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” Fear choked her as she understood how helpless she was against him. He could do anything to her, and she was powerless to stop him. “Please don’t…” The air chilled around them. “…don’t hurt me.”
He let go, but she stayed bent over the counter, afraid to move.
“Get up.”
Pushing herself back, she slouched in the stool and drank the shot. Hunter poured two more shots for himself and swallowed them down in quick, practiced gulps. “I’m not interested.”
She kept her eyes on the ivory countertop.
“Understand? Fucking you would be a punishment for both of us.”
She should be relieved, but such harsh rejection held so much revulsion she felt like the world’s worst pariah.
“Say you understand. When I speak directly to you, you respond.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a notepad and pen, sliding it to her. “I ask the questions, and you write down the answers. Start with your brother’s phone number.”
Her hand trembled as she lifted the pen. The vodka had made her thoughts heavy and she couldn’t recall the last few numbers. “I can’t remember?—”
“I’ll wait until you do.”
The pressure to write something only added to her distraction. In the end, she put something down but was only partially sure it was right.
“I want the names of all his schools and employers.”
“Since high school?”
“Since birth.”
Over the next hour, she wrote down every detail she could remember about Jordan. Several times she reminded Hunter that Jordan was older and not her full brother, so there were parts of his past she simply didn’t know, but he didn’t care. In the end, her treachery filled six pages, detailing every identifying trait of Jordan in blazing betrayal. Her family would never forgive her.
When she set down the pen, Hunter collected the notepad and left. She let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding for more than an hour.
No matter how many times she tried to settle in, something always came along to remind her she was the enemy, the unwanted captive they had to feed and could fuck at will. This wasn’t home. It was her prison. She couldn’t figure out if the wise response was to accept her fate and surrender, or do whatever she could to escape.
She needed to escape his lingering scent, escape the way she could still feel him on her skin.
Sadness shrouded her every step as she wandered through the halls. The house was quiet and isolated. Sometimes it felt like she was all alone. But she was never alone. Someone was always watching.
Time didn’t exist here. The clocks were merely a decorative reminder that life moved on outside of these walls that both protected and imprisoned her. Her sleep schedule was so messed up, she was often taken off guard by the setting sun, sometimes pausing to decide if it was dusk or dawn.
Perhaps it was the vodka that put her in such a haze. But more likely it was the compounding trauma she’d suffered finally taking it’s toll.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered, wandering down a narrow hall that opened to a wide corridor.
She found Ash in the lodge’s library an hour before dawn, reading by lamplight as another storm exhausted itself outside. Relief flooded her. Of all the men, none should put her at ease, but for some reason, Ash did, so she knocked softly at the door.
Without glancing up from his novel, he turned a page and said, “Printessa, come in.”
Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the first hints of grey light bleeding across the horizon, and for the first time since her arrival, the world beyond the glass looked almost peaceful.
She stood in the doorway, a moment longer than necessary, simply taking him in. He’d changed into dark jeans and a thermal shirt that clung to the lean muscle of his torso, but there was something softer about him in the quiet morning light. Less predatory.
