Page 20 of Dangerous Deviance
My heart sank. It was a kind gesture, one that was hard to believe. The man who kept insisting that he was my god, wanted me to be able to sleep? To relax? And yes, sleep sounded good, so damn good, when I couldn’t stand the silence at night, waiting to hear the click of the lock on my door. It would almost be better to sleep, to wait for his demands that way.
He wants to drug you, the voice said.Don’t accept it.
And I knew the voice was right that time. Even if I wanted to sleep, I wasn’t going to let drugs change my ability to think. Not when everything was so screwed up to begin with.
“No,” I said, “but thank you.”
I turned to the side, staring at the room I had wandered in countless times already, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. If Maddie was right, if Wil was willing to kill me just for leaving, then I had to stay put. Had to get him on my side. Had to actually accept his help. If his help was even real.
And I knew, now, that Maddie was right. Wil might have been the kindest of the three brothers, but that didn’t mean he was ‘nice.’ Nice enough to offer me sleeping pills. Cruel enough to kill a man for speaking to me.
“Do you remember anything else?” Wil asked.
I paused, then nodded. “She was supposed to start her second year of college.”
“That’s a start.”
A few minutes of silence passed. Neither of us moved. All my life, from what I remembered of it anyway, I had listened to that voice or things like it, telling me what to do. First, it was my parents. Then it was society, telling me how to protect my sister. Then it was the voice. But doing what they said had landed me here, putting my life into a criminal’s hands, hoping that he had the answers to what I needed, in a position where he told me what to do.
And what was I supposed to do? Playing his game was my best option for survival, but I needed more. I needed to find my sister.
“For a woman that’s been taken from the woods, who has lost so much, you’re awfully quiet,” he said. “Subdued. As if you’re always looking out a window, never in the action yourself.”
Don’t do it, the voice said.Play by his rules. Fall in line. He’ll reveal the truth sooner or later. But if you speak up, if you tell him, he will find out where you came from.
But I couldn’t stop myself. I was tired of him underestimating me.
“Just because someone is quiet doesn’t mean they’re not planning your death,” I said, my eyes locked on his. The tension was thick, making it hard to breathe. A glimmer of a smile passed over his lips.
“Are you threatening me?” he asked, amusement in his tone.
“I’m stating the truth,” I said, my voice strong even though all of that confidence leaked out, deflating me.
He looked pleased with that response. “Funny, isn’t it?” he asked.
There wasn’t anything funny about the situation. “What?”
“Two of our men wind up dead, chopped up. And then you have these dreams about your sister being chopped up too.” He went around the desk and pulled me up by the arm, gripping me like I was a child. I glared at him. He leaned in, his breath on my lips. “Perhaps you’re responsible, Ellie. Perhaps you can’t remember what happened to your sister because you killed her. Is that it? You killed her, then you killed our men. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
I blinked back the tears. I couldn’t say for sure what had happened, but I knew that if his men had died by my hands, then I had done what needed to be done.
But my sister? No. That was impossible. I would die before I let anything happen to her.
He pulled me towards the door, but I stumbled, doing my best to resist.
“Let go of me,” I snarled. I wasn’t going to let him throw me around easily. I may have been under his control, but that didn’t mean I had to bow before him.
He whipped me around, making me face him. That smirk danced across his face like I had done exactly what he wanted. He pressed his body into mine and he seemed taller then, towering over me. As if he could make me smaller. Smoke seemed to pour out of him, surrounding me, swallowing us both in an atmosphere where you could lose yourself and never find your soul again.
He grabbed my hand, putting it down his pocket. This was a sexual act, made clear by the venomous lust in his eyes. I didn’t flinch until I skimmed the cold metal with my fingertips.
A knife.
“Do you really want to tell me no, right now, Ellie?” he whispered. I shook my head, biting my lip again. “Good.”
He gripped my arm, yanking me into another room, and this time, I trotted behind him, keeping up. There were things I was willing to mess with; a knife wasn’t one of them. Once we were in his room, he put a blindfold over my eyes. I clenched my fingers shut, keeping my posture open, ready to fight.
“Let go of those fists,” he said in a low voice, “Or I will drag you down to the bed and cut your throat.”
