Page 53 of Gilded Locks
The door opened and Marigold’s entire body went taut with tension. Her gaze shot over her shoulder and she stilled. Not Stone, but Ash.
He shut the door and paused, holding his hands out, palms up, like she was a skittish animal. “Easy. I just came to check on you.”
She turned back to the shirt she held, the one Stone had left, and continued to wipe her face. It was Stone’s and she hoped she was ruining it with stains.
“No, don’t use that,” Ash said, moving to an ornate cabinet on the wall. He pulled a hand towel from the drawer and opened a closet that turned out to be a washroom. Water briefly ran, and then he returned, crouching down to the mattress to kneel before her. “May I?”
She dropped her hands into her lap and nodded.
Gently turning her chin, he carefully washed her face. The cloth was soft and warm. “He really got you.”
Shame churned inside of her, and she turned away. No amount of washing would wipe away her sins at this point, so what did it matter?
Sensing her distress, he stood and held out a hand. “Come with me.”
She hesitated, unsure if she could take much more.
“Please,” he said in that peculiar way that made her feel safe.
She placed her hand in his and he carefully pulled her to her feet as if sensing the weakness in her legs. If Stone was right, Ash and Hunter watched everything he’d done to her. She had no secrets left.
More shame swirled in her stomach.
“Lie down.” He pointed to the antique four-poster bed, much taller than the low mattress on the floor.
She hesitated. If he expected a repeat performance, he was out of luck. She was dead on her feet and on the verge of collapse. “I…”
“Trust me.” He took her choice away and nudged her down to the mattress, forcing her to ease onto her side. Then he surprised her by crawling behind her and pulling her close. “Just relax. I’m only going to hold you.”
Confused, she blinked at the wall covered in strange sexual paraphernalia and wondered why he was, once again, being so nice to her. He held her so gently, her mind finally stopped questioning. She gave it to the unexpected comfort, her greatest fear in that moment that he would take it away.
Part of her feared this was a trap, but her fraught heart and tired body was so in need of gentle contact, she was too weak to resist. And wasn’t that pathetic? Desperation filled her eyes with unshed tears. This man—this stranger—was the only source of affection and safety she had left, and she wasn’t even sure if he meant to betray her.
Her family didn’t want her anymore. She’d been running for days and living in survival mode for months, only to become the captive of three wild men. Strangers from a different culture in the isolated, barren tundra where no one could get in and no one could get out. And they wanted to not just ruin her in every way imaginable, but wreck her in the process.
A sharp gasp slipped past her lips as a sob unexpectedly escaped.
“Shh, I’ve got you.” Ash’s hand rubbed gently up and down her bare arm.
Pressure built in her chest and throat as an avalanche of reality crushed her. The fear and worry built up, needing an exit, and she couldn’t hold it in any longer, despite pressing her eyes and lips tight.
A high-pitched squeal hummed from her throat as sobs built inside of her like steam building inside of a tea kettle without a valve. The world came back in pieces.
First, the trembling. Deep, bone-rattling shivers that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the raw, flayed-open feeling Stone left in his wake. Her backside and palms throbbed where the crop had bitten deep, phantom sensations of the toys pressing into tender flesh left an unfamiliar ache she couldn’t rationalize.
Her throat ached for many reasons. Hunter. Stone. They were all awful. Even Ash. She wasn’t naive enough to believe he honestly cared about her wellbeing. He was obviously being nice to her for some other reason. Soon she’d find out, and for that she’d need her strength.
But she was out of strength at the moment. She was weak and wrung out in every possible sense. And to top it all off, she couldn’t escape the needling sense of shame stabbing into her with every conscious thought.
Her entire being was a raw, exposed nerve. And she couldn’t contain her confusion anymore.
“Hey,” Ash whispered, concern softening his voice. “Everything is okay.”
But it wasn’t. Nothing was okay. She was lost and confused and afraid of where this nightmare would leave her in the end.
She could have fought him, but she didn’t. She begged Stone to do all those terrible, beautiful things to her. He pulled out her submission like a secret she had no idea she’d been keeping. A rational person would hate what he did. But some shameful part of her enjoyed it.
Until he mentioned branding her. Then she only felt stupid. How utterly foolish of her to think he was meeting her as an equal. She was his play thing. A possession to use and destroy. He wanted to brand her body, burn her flesh, and abandon her to deal with the wreckage.
