Page 36 of Wilt

“You—” She stops. “You would.”

I don’t. “Keep your hands off my property, Rosalind. That isn’t a warning. It’s an order. Iwillfind out if you do.”

This time, her gaze turns dark, twisting down into hate and unwilling submission. She nods, glancing down.

“I’ll send you some new clothes tomorrow.”

Her gaze bounces back up to me. “And-And something to read? Please? I… I’m going crazy.”

“Maybe that’s how I want you.” I contemplate her, keeping my face, my expression, cold. “Clean up. Behave. I’m done with you for now.”

With that, I turn and walk out of her room, without a backwards glance.

Chapter13

Rosalind

Icould barely sleep last night. I don’t understand him at all. Oh, I get Nikolai is dangerous, probably the most dangerous man I’ve ever met, and the more I think about it, the more I’m sure he and his friends are mafia or organized crime. In what, exactly, doesn’t matter.

What matters is he’s not letting me go. He’s got some crazy plan about revenge and a man who he says is my father, a man my mom apparently spent her life running from. A man I’ve never met.

Nikolai is a monster. I hate him.

Yet, his touch is electric, makes me melt and lose my mind. He makes me want him when I shouldn’t. When he took control, when he spanked me… I put my fingers to my burning cheeks, even as my hair sits wet and cold around me from my shower this morning, a shower I needed because when I sleep, my dreams were infected by Nikolai.

When he spanked me, it crossed some kind of line into pleasure, into something I wanted.

“What is wrong with me?”

There’s no answer.

He sent me a book.Good Manners for Young Ladiesby Mrs. Edward Pattison, published in Eighteen Seventy-Eight. God only know where he got it from. Maybe his library for imprisoned girls? Gallows humor is probably against Mrs. Pattison’s teachings.

I pull my towel a little tighter around me, glancing nervously at the tiny camera. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. Is he watching now? I swallow. Hot and cold, that’s this man. He’s either cold, smooth ice or he’s a blast of a solar flare, burning me into a crisp.

Thing is, there’s that part of me I can’t deny, the one I can’t pretend isn’t there, that wants to be burned by him.

Two days ago, I’d have been shocked. Four, I would have checked myself into the closest psychiatric hospital. Now? There’s no option but to admit a small part of me throbs with need for his touch. For what he can do to me. The pleasure he can give or deny.

I don’t like him. I can’t. Still, he’s compelling. He burrows deep into me and makes me wet and aching, just for him. He’s experienced. I’m not. That’s what I tell myself, over and over, but there’s a tiny voice whispering that there’s more to it. I want to please him. Pleasing him might just give me a chance to get out of here. And…

I suck in a breath. I have no idea what he wants from me, how to please him. It’s like he wants to fuck me and yet doesn’t. He tells me he’ll hurt me, he humiliates me, and then he gives me his jacket like he doesn’t want others looking at me. He gets me off without asking for anything in return, without asking me forpermission, like he knows what my body wants. He turns it on and off like it’s nothing at all.

It’s driving me around the bend not knowing what it is he wants.

I hate it.

I hate him.

I hate everything.

I almost scream when there’s a knock on the door. I turn as the maid comes in, her eyes not on me as per usual, doesn’t utter a word. Behind her is the big man from last time.

He looks at me, seeming indifferent to me and my state of dress. He doesn’t spare me a second glance. He sets down a few bags and boxes while she places the tray on my bed. They go without a word, the key turning in the lock again.

I look at the tray. No food, but there’s another rose on the silver surface, and a folded note.

Slowly, I move towards it, wanting to crush and destroy the rose, but something stops me. “Maybe later.” I push the flower out of the way and pick up the piece of thick paper, opening it.

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