After taking a comb to the mess of tangles on my head, brushing my teeth, and rubbing lotion on my freshly cleaned skin, I felt a billion times better.
Keeping my bath towel wrapped around me, I wandered into the attached bedroom, shivering from the cool air blowing out of the ventilation system.
The bedroom door was shut, Mason nowhere in sight. I looked around the room again, seeing how ordinary it was. What did I expect? It’s not like he was raised by wolves.
I ran a hand through my wet strands, growing frustrated with myself. Why was I still trying to figure out who he was?
Stop fooling yourself; you’re never going to leave him.
“Whatever,” I muttered and turned towards the bed where a white dress was boldly contrasting with the dark comforter. On top of the dress was a dark red rose.
What happened to the white roses?
I’d never worn anything so nice before. I brushed the flower away and rolled the chiffon material between two fingers.
It was a strapless cocktail dress, something that could be worn to a fancy affair or a night out. I didn’t see any undergarments to go beneath it, and my face flamed at the thought of going commando. A pair of white pantyhose was all I had to accessorize with.
Deciding a scrap of material was better than a loose towel, I quickly slipped into the dress.
The smooth material brushed against my skin and stopped right above my knees. I was grateful my areolas weren’t visible through the fabric. I finished pulling the silk stockings up and then sat on the bed, waiting for Mason to come back.
I waited and waited, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
Pushing off the bed, I padded to the door and slowly pulled it open, peering out into the open hall. The upstairs of his father’s home was shaped like a giant square, with halls splintering from it to lead elsewhere.
Something heavenly permeated the air, reminding me of how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten a thing since arriving there. Cautiously slipping out into the hall, I looked left and right, debating on going straight for the stairs or trying to find Annie on my own. I wasn’t keen on having a run-in with Mason’s father, but I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.
I headed in the direction of the corridor Mason had brought me from, my eyes darting around in their sockets, trying to spot any sign of movement.
My stockings soundlessly slid around on the marble floor, propelling me forward.
Just as I reached the nook that held the large double doors separating the corridor from the rest of the house, one swung open.
I froze, going full deer-in-the-headlights. A man I had never seen before paused midstride as soon as he saw me. However, he didn’t appear to be angry. He smiled, and it reached his odd silver eyes. There was no mistaking his relation to Mason. Dark and alluring seemed to run in his family.
“Katie.” He beamed at me like we were old friends. I couldn’t return his smile—nor did I want to. I was too busy staring at the blood-covered apron hanging around his neck.
“Don’t mind this.” He gestured up and down his front. “Things can get a little messy in the play rooms.” He chuckled, pulling the door shut behind him. A loud clinking sound immediately followed.
I hadn’t realized they locked from the other side.
How was I going to get back there?
“I’m Declan, Mason’s cousin. I’d shake your hand, but I’m too dirty to touch you,” he joked.
I stood unanimated, openly staring at him. If you took away his stained apron, he was just as put together as Mason and his father always were—such beautiful men with such ugly problems.
Was insanity hereditary, or did they simply enjoy snuffing out lives? With as much blood that was covering him, I knew he’d done something terrible to someone.
Ask him what, the perverse side of me whispered, eager to know what bodily harm he’d caused. I bit down on my tongue, ignoring the sick part of my mind that was coming more and more alive.
“Katie.” Mason’s smooth voice broke me out of my haze.
I whipped my head to the left and watched him approach. I noticed he’d changed his clothes and he had a much more relaxed look on his face. A bright smile appeared when our eyes met.
“You look beautiful,” he commented, eyeing me up and down.
“Where did you go?” I questioned suspiciously, forgetting all about the stranger in front of me. Mason did that, made me lose focus of everything and everyone except for him.
It was maddening when I truly thought about it. He didn’t even need to try anymore; I was naturally inclined to give him my undivided attention.
“I needed to speak with my father,” he explained, draping an arm across my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” he directed at his cousin.
“I was on my way to get cleaned up and stopped your little doll to say hello,” he smiled.
Why did he lie?
“Hurry up; you know we can’t start without you,” Mason told him, already walking me back down the hall towards the staircase. Declan said something in response, but I couldn’t understand what it was.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’re going to have dinner.”
Dinner? With his family?
He might as well have just told me we were going to be dining in hell.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I felt like a dirty pauper invading a king’s castle, out of my element in a land of psychopaths. Maybe it was better to compare myself to a jester, simply in attendance for entertainment purposes.
I was the only girl in the room. Mason’s father, who I now knew was named Julian, sat at the head of the table—typical.
His cousin sat across from us, and three other men I was assuming were related to him sat in the other chairs.
There hadn’t been a chance to protest before Mason had me down the stairs and standing in the limelight for all to see. My hair was still wet, and Mason made sure to remind me there was nothing beneath my dress, casually stroking my thigh every few minutes, his fingers getting a little higher each time.
I stared down at the white table linen, robotically putting mashed potatoes in my mouth. The food smelled delicious, but I couldn’t taste it.
When a large finger skimmed over my pussy lips, I almost dropped my spoon. I fought not to jerk or tell him to stop. How humiliating would it be if the whole table knew what he was doing?
Even worse, I knew he could feel the moisture pooling between my legs.
My body was a treacherous whore. I shouldn’t have been so turned on, willing to let him sit me on top of the table and wrap my legs around his waist if it came down to it.
“Where is my sister?” I turned and asked him, mainly to stop him from touching me, but also because I wanted to know. If we were all eating, where was she?
“You think I would let your cunt of a sister sit at my table?” Julian interjected before Mason could answer.
I looked at him, failing to hold his gaze. If Mason ever got as intimidating as this asshole, I would never be able to relax around him.
He was clearly in on this, which made me the odd one out. I bit my inner cheek and looked back down at the table.
“Uncle J.” Declan managed to catch my eye and shot me an apologetic look, shaking his head.
He seemed to be the most stable Andreou in the room, which said a lot.
“She can’t leave her room,” Mason finally responded, paying no mind to his father’s outburst.
A part of me rejoiced, knowing that meant she had done something that warranted her being locked away. “What do you mean? Why can’t she?”
“I’ll tell you later,” he answered absentmindedly before falling into conversation with the man beside him, no longer paying me attention.
He gave me nothing, and it was so tiring.
How could he expect me to sit here like an obedient dog and just accept everything he did?
Because that’s what you are.
Katie Co
rmick didn’t talk back. She didn’t stand up for herself when it counted, and doormat could have been stamped on her forehead. Katie was a spineless idiot.
Slightly shifting so that my dress lowered a little, I took a sip of water and then casually stood up and walked out of the room.
I heard Mason call my name but didn’t bother stopping. It wasn’t until I was back upstairs in front of the double doors that he caught up to me.
“Was that your way of throwing a tantrum?” he asked, sounding bored.
I turned my head to glare at him and saw that he was leaning against the wall, watching me with unabashed amusement as I desperately tried to figure out how to open the doors.
“Katie, you’re a smart girl. You know you aren’t getting past those doors unless I want you to,” he pointed out.
“And why don’t you want me to, Mason?” I spun around to face him.
“Tell me.” He pushed off the wall and took a step forward. “Do you want to save your sister because it’s the ‘right thing to do?’ Or do you want to save your sister because you’re trying to prove something to yourself?”
“Prove something like…?”
“You want to prove you aren’t like me. That we don’t breathe the same, bleed the same, or desire the same things.”
I wasn’t anything like him.
Liar.
“Mason, what if I just want to get my sister and go home to my mom?”
Nothing but silence answered that question. He cocked his head and studied me, his expression unreadable.
“Are you saying you want to leave me?” He lost all traces of cockiness, and his tone softened.
No. I could never leave you.
I didn’t say that aloud. I didn’t say anything. A look flashed across his face but he masked it before I could analyze what I just saw. Was it hurt? Was it even possible for me to hurt him?
He cleared his throat and brushed past me, going straight to the doors. He then proceeded to tap four numbers into a keypad attached to the far wall.
I had to have looked at the thing a dozen times without bothering to actually see what it was.
“There are over twenty rooms in this house. This hall specifically has twelve,” he explained, pushing the doors open and gesturing for me to follow.
“I want you to give me a week to convince you to stay. Within that week, you’re going to pick seven doors. Each door has something different behind it. Your sister is behind one of them. If you find her before the seven days are up, I’ll take you to your mother myself. However,” he paused and turned back around with a cruel grin in place, “if you give up before then, or happen to fail, she isn’t going anywhere.”
My brows slammed together in confusion.
“I don’t understand. I saw the picture—she’s your wife. Why are you keeping her locked away?”
“It was an illusion, Katie,” he sighed, as if he’d already explained this to me in detail.
“The only woman who will be granted the honor of having my last name is you, if you’ll have me. No one else comes close to deserving it.”
How did I deserve it? I quickly reran our conversation in my head, coming back to his earlier statement.
“Did you say something about saving my sister?”
His megawatt grin was the only answer I needed. What had he done with her?
Nothing she doesn’t deserve. Why are you so worried about her? She left you.
Shaking my head as if to clear the negative thoughts away, I went to the first door to my immediate left and tried to open it, but the damn thing was locked tight. The door directly across from it was the same.
His dark chuckle from behind me had every hair follicle on my body rising to attention.
“Did you plan this?” I looked back and asked him.
“I might have had something to do with it,” he teased.
“Is this a game to you?”
“Maybe—although I’d rather call it a proposition,” he replied flippantly.
“And what happens if I decline?”
“Do you want to find out?”
No…
Yes…
Did I have a choice? I didn’t want to try and solve his impossible riddles anymore. What was so special about seven days? What was so special about me? I had no idea how to describe the chaotic emotions swirling inside my chest.
I hadn’t wanted any of this, but now I couldn’t deny that on some level I did need him. I’d started falling for him from the beginning, and there wasn’t anyone around to catch me except the same man who tripped me.
Accepting him as he was would be accepting the devil that lived inside him. It would be doing what I’d done my whole life, burying my head in the sand and being a coward.
Frustrated, I moved away from him, going further down the hall.
As expected, he quickly closed the distance between us, taking hold of my arm and making me stand in front of him, chest to chest. Every time I pushed him away, he just pulled me closer.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, peering up into his gorgeous eyes.
“I honestly can’t give an answer that will satisfy you. I just want you to stay. I need you.” He threaded his fingers into my hair and began gently massaging my scalp. Like a kitten desperate for affection, I leaned into his touch.
I couldn’t hate him, and god, how I tried. Mason wasn’t a bad man. Bad men didn’t save tortured souls. He wasn’t a good man, either—he was just…him. He was something indefinable, tragically flawed and debauched but still oh so human.
“I think you’re insane,” I quietly confessed after a few silent minutes.
He paused at my words, his grip going from soft to harsh. I’d offended him without meaning to, lulled into a stupid sense of safety by his gentle demeanor.
“You think I’m insane?” He laughed humorlessly. “That’s always the prognosis, isn’t it?”
He tugged my head back and looked down at me with blatant displeasure on his face, a cruel smile appearing when I grunted from the sharp pull on my hair. His next words were a challenge.
“Let me show you the definition of insanity.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I led her down the hall and took a sharp left turn, walking straight into a room that was bathed in dark red.
There was a chair in the center like the one I used to restrain people in my studio. I didn’t let her see who was in it, using my body to block her view. Instead, I led her to the back wall and, in quick succession before she could fight me, I tied leathers cuffs around her wrists, ignoring her objections that followed.
“Mason, what are you doing?” She tugged, testing the strength of the straps, looking at me with fury and not a little fear in her eyes.
“Mason,” she called after me when I turned and walked away. Ignoring her was difficult, but it had to be done. This sudden strength she’d found was grating on my non-existent nerves.
She thought she could leave me? That I would just let her go? Not even death would stop me from owning her. Fuck if I knew why I was still going through such extremes for this damaged girl. Killing her would be as simple as counting to three, but I couldn’t do it.
From the moment I saw her tiny form when I was eleven years old, I’d never forgotten about the baby girl born in my basement. When her father fell into debt, it was like fate telling me she had always been mine.
Both our mothers were fucked in the head. That didn’t make either of us insane, though.
I hated that fucking word.
Normal people were the ones ruining the world. All I wanted to do was sit at home, drink a shot of bourbon, and fuck her until my cock went numb.
That wasn’t asking for too much on my end. She needed to forget about everyone and everything but me. I was all she needed, and it was time for her to see that.
Her mind needed to bend and her spirit had to break. Only then could I put her back together the correct way. It was almost like taking her apart to form the
canvassed vision I had floating at the front of my brain—the one where my hands wielded a scalpel to peel the smooth flesh from her pretty white bones.
“Mason, what are you doing?” Her sweet voice broke through my thoughts, chasing my daydream away.
“Patience, Katie-Kat,” I called over my shoulder.
“Are we ready?” Declan asked, strolling into the room with a dinner roll still hanging from his mouth.
“It looks like I should be asking you that.”
He flipped me off and went to stand in front of the chair, giving Katie nothing but a passing glance.
“Hey, Roy. How ya feeling today?” Grabbing the top of the chair, he turned it around so Katie could see my old landscaper, the man responsible for letting Ginger go and trying to take her away from me.
“Remember him?” I asked her, walking back to where she was restrained.
She looked at me warily, saying nothing. I could see in her eyes that she knew what was coming. At least, she knew part of what was coming.
“You don’t have to do this.” She finally spoke, immediately pleading for his worthless life anyway.
“But I do. See, he touched something that didn’t belong to him. Even worse—he touched something that belonged to me.”
“I don’t belong to you,” she spat at me, defiance screwing up her pert nose.
With a sigh, I grabbed hold of her face, squeezing until her cheeks puffed up and her supple pink lips parted.
“This is the problem, Katie. You’re backtracking just when you had started to show so much promise. You belong to me just as much as I belong to you.” I rubbed my nose along her jaw, inhaling her lavender scent.
“You can start,” I directed to my cousin, moving so I was behind Katie, giving her a clear view of what was happening.
Declan quickly pulled his shirt off. Having done this many times for my father, he seemed almost bored about what he had to do.
“Mason, don’t! I’ll take your…deal.”
Obscene: A Dahlia Saga Novel Page 11