by Lena Fox
Owen’s hand tightened around my breast and his hips pumped slightly against mine. I could feel the stiffness of him below the fabric of his pants. My own body reacted to his, a longing throb building between my legs. I wanted- no, I needed him. My whole body ached for him.
I tugged at his shirt, releasing buttons and flinging it off his shoulders as they rolled above me. The firm waves of his chest muscles delighted my fingers. He was sculpted, but nothing about him reminded me of stone except the temperature. His skin gave under the press of my fingers, his muscles twitching and rippling under my touch just like a true human lover.
When Owen ran a finger along the join between my thigh and my hips, tracing the lace edge of my panties, I moaned and shuddered with need and thrust a hand to the hem of his black jeans.
The handcuff scraped against his abs and rattled loudly. We both paused and looked at it. His face changed expression again. His body went rigid and he got off me.
He was two feet away in a flash, his face betraying the emotions running through him. “How dare you attempt to use sex to sway me?”
You couldn’t blame a girl for trying could you? It seemed he could though so I said nothing. He was furious and it showed. His hands clenched and unclenched and blood leaked from one of his palms. He ignored it but I couldn’t. It was my stolen blood that he bled. I felt almost bitter watching it leak from his skin, now nearly black.
“I do not know why you make me feel as you do, Strawberry, but I don’t like it. I’ve half a mind to kill you now and be done with it.”
Scared shitless does not begin to describe it. Then I remembered something, he was just as much a foodie as I was, just in a different way. He would savor my succulent blood until he could not get any more flavor or enjoyment from me, whether he liked it or not. Or whether I did either. A gourmand wouldn’t light their favorite restaurant on fire just because the veal got a bit frisky with them.
“Go on then. Kill me now vampire, do it,” I challenged.
He left, slamming the door so hard the picture on the right wall fell and shattered. Making him angry was a bad mistake. If he ignored me for a day or two he might come back all undead and unemotional and kill me just for the hell of it. He might decide I was like that trendy restaurant with the great food but the bad wait times and sloppy service. He might not think me worth it any more.
I might have to rethink my strategy. Or rethink whether it was still a strategy, or just an excuse to let my body have its way. Why did I want him so badly now? This man who had kidnapped and hurt me, who would probably kill me? Is this what Stockholm syndrome feels like? I didn’t know, but I did know it was taking the hot bad boy attraction thing to a whole new level. I rolled over to try and sleep. There was nothing more I could do now.
A quiet cackle at the balcony jerked my head up. The thrall met my eyes with her normal grin, but there was something in her eyes this time. They weren’t vacant, but I dare say a shred of sinister glee lingered in them. How long had she been standing there watching me? Watching me and Owen? I jerked the satin sheet up over my exposed body.
“Pretty girl.” The thrall’s voice scraped from her throat in a long slow whisper.
I clung to the sheet, scared out of my wits.
The maid backed away into the unlit hall, the glint from her teeth the last thing visible in the dark.
I collapsed back onto the pillow, curling up on my side. I had to get out of this madhouse.
Chapter Six
When I woke up the next morning I realized I had access to no clothes but my itty bitty lace panties. The room was always a pleasant temperature, so I probably could have wandered around mostly nude, but I had some modesty left in me.
I considered tearing and tying a sheet together into an elaborate toga, but resorted to simply wrapping a big fluffy bath towel around myself. I was happy to have something on when the maid came in again.
She surprised me, showing up at a time outside of her regular routine, her eyes lit with something not there before. She held a giant meat cleaver in one hand and a raw whole chicken in the other. She was wearing the same ratty, dirty clothes as she always had. It made me wonder if she ever washed them. Even from across the room the smell almost made me gag so I doubted it.
I don’t think she saw me standing at the bathroom door, but I watched her like a petrified deer.
“Pretty girl,” she crooned as she set the chicken down on the nightstand and began to cut it into bits and pieces. I kept still, hoping she wouldn’t notice me and decide she wanted to chop me up as well. Terror rose in me, greater even than the panic I’d felt when Owen had first sunk his fangs into me and left me fighting for my life.
The thrall kept chopping. Pieces of raw chicken flicked onto the wall. The mangled corpse minced smaller and smaller. The cleaver dripped thin pink blood onto the carpet. The woman hummed a quiet song through whistling teeth. It was so bizarre, so surreal that hysteria bubbled up in my chest and I began to laugh silently and covered my eyes. I covered my face with my hands to try and muffle the gasping breath I couldn’t seem to control that was halfway between a sob and a laugh. I felt chilled even though I knew the room wasn’t cold.
Tears welled up and I battled them back. I could not afford tears. Tears were a luxury and right then what I needed was a stronger, harder emotion, one that would shake me to the core and help me survive. I just could not seem to find it though.
The chopping sound ceased. I wondered if that meant she was coming for me. If she killed me now all it meant was Owen could not have me for supper.
No, at least with Owen I still had time, had the hope of escape.
I uncovered my eyes, preparing to defend myself, but the thrall stood vacant and eerie in the center of the room, staring at the ceiling. The sun picked out the grey streaks in her hair and I realized how old she was, and wondered how many of her years had been lost in this service. Terror of a new sort hit me. Was I going to wake up one morning old and bent over and used up? Just how long would he keep me alive as his food? I had been thinking in terms of weeks, months, but what if it was years, or decades?
I suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of pity for the woman before me. Against the instincts clamoring in my head to stay quiet and hide, I edged into the bedroom.
“What’s your name?”
I don’t know why I asked. I certainly did not expect her to answer.
Time ticked by, I counted the seconds in the beats of my heart.
Her voice was lilting and sweet when she did reply, girlish even. A grotesque smile painted its way across her lips and she batted her eyelashes before saying, “Loretta.”
Sorrow filled me. She had a name. Perhaps she was a lot more like me than I cared to recognize. She was a prisoner here, too. Maybe more so, since her mind clearly wasn’t as free as mine. Unless mine wasn’t free either.
I moved closer, in slow, careful movements, circling up beside the bed. “I’m Kitty.”
“Meow. Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
I blinked at her. The reply was crazy talk, but at least I was getting replies. My mind raced with the possibilities. I could conceivably reach her, enlist her help in escaping.
“Loretta,” I said softly as she began to clean my room in her jerky autopilot manner. Except instead of a duster or cloth, she was using the chicken head, smearing the severed neck across the top of the dresser and over the book shelves. “Loretta, do you want to go home?”
“Hooooooooome.” The word was a drawn out hiss of air. Green rot had begun to set in along the upper edges of her teeth, turning her gums a speckled black. My stomach churned but I could not let her see my disgust. I was reaching her. I knew it.
“Yes, wouldn’t you like to go home, Loretta? Where are you from?”
“Meow!” Her eyes turned cunning and her mouth turned downward, the upside-down smile of an insane clown. “Kitty, kitty, meeeeeeeeow!”
“Yes, I’m Kitty.” My optimism had begun to fade with every second that pas
sed. “You’re Loretta. We are prisoners but we could both get free if you would help me.” I could tell I was losing whatever ground I had won. Her eyes were glassy, but something sparked inside them.
She began to bark like a dog, lunging at me and yipping loudly. I recoiled, her body odor hitting my nose like a stone wall. She slunk closer, her mouth opening and closing in huffing little pants, her tongue hanging out almost to her chin. Drool hung in silver strands and dripped down to the floor. I backed away and hit the bed, falling onto it.
She lunged at me. The crazy assed creature thought I was a cat and she was a dog! She pounced on the bed and I rolled off just in time, her teeth closed on the air where my nose had been a moment before.
My jaws rattled together as I ran around the side of the bed and into the wall. Stars exploded in the corners of my vision and Loretta caught up with me. Her teeth closed around my arm. “Get off!” I howled, beating at her head with my free hand. When she fell back I saw to my horror that she’d broken the skin. The impressions of her teeth on my arm welled with blood.
Loretta stumbled backward, her tongue lolling out and her eyes rolling madly about like marbles in their sockets. She barked again and I ran, heading for the bathroom. I got there just in time, slamming the door shut as far as it could go given the chain stuck in it. She howled and barked. I could hear her feet pattering up and down in front of the door. The chain pulled taut as I strained to break free, wanting to put some solid wood between the two of us.
Her feet quit moving but I could see her through the crack in the door. I kept my back to it, bracing my feet on the toilet partition wall to keep her out. The door shuddered as she began to kick and punch it.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop!”
My cries seemed to enrage her. The blows landed harder, jarring my spine and sending bolts of pain through my legs and feet. It felt like she was throwing her whole body against it, and I could hear her long, cracked nails scraping at the wood. I grabbed towels and wedged them like doorstops under the door.
The bathroom window beckoned but there seemed to be no reason to go out it until she began to hit the door so hard the wood began to split open under her blows. I ran for the window and attempted to open it. It was stuck but after a few frantic moments of shoving at it the frame gave with a rusty screech, and the window opened.
Cool air slapped me in the face. It had begun to rain.
I hoisted myself up, balancing my chest on the sill to look out. The drop was sheer and long, at least two stories, if not three. When Loretta burst through the door behind me, I didn’t think about it, I just tumbled out. Part of me even hoped that the leap would somehow sever the chain that held me. If then I could only survive the fall...
I reached the end of the chain and my body snapped in the air, sending pain shooting into every part of my body. The chain swung me like a pendulum and I grabbed it with my other hand, clinging for dear life. The towel I wore slipped loose and fluttered to the ground far below. The cold and the sharp jerk that nearly dislocated my shoulder left me gasping and blinking to try and clear the stars out of my vision.
Icy rain hit my nearly bare body, but terror chilled me more when I saw the maniac’s face hanging out of the window and her hands hauling at the chain.
“Let me go you crazy bitch!” I yelled, digging my bare toes into the side of the stucco walls. Blood bloomed against the rough side of the house as my toes scraped and found purchase then lost it again.
She let go. I dropped a few sickening feet and began to scream like a banshee. Loretta opened her mouth and howled as well. She leaned further out, her ratty hair creating a stinking nimbus around her slack face. She grinned wildly, gnashing her teeth as she continued to grunt and growl like some wild animal.
She angled further and further out, her eyes searching for a way to grab me and bring me back in. I saw little trickles of pebble-filled sand going past me but did not comprehend the danger until there was a low groaning creak.
The window sill gave under her weight just as she climbed out onto it. It shot past me, a chunk of it hitting me in the side of my head. Loretta never even screamed, she just went down, her witch-like hair standing up in a nearly comical peak and her tongue still hanging from her chapped, raw lips.
She hit the fence and then the concrete of the tennis courts and shards of thick wood lay scattered about her bloodied and broken body. The green of the court was marred by a spreading maroon pool.
I buried my face into the wall. The rain could not wash away the tears that fell from my eyes.
My wrist ached. I was sure it would break, or my hand would just tear free from my arm. My other hand grew slick with blood, trying to haul myself up time and again, slipping away from the chain and causing me to drop sharply each time, my weight causing fresh agony in my bound arm and wrist. The rain chilled my skin and the wind blew into my eyes, forcing me to close them. I couldn’t stop shaking.
Chapter Seven
Twilight hovered over the world.
Owen’s face appeared over the broken window. I could see him quickly survey the scene, and thought he would reel me in like a fish on a line. Instead, he jumped out of the window as well.
He held what remained of the sill with one hand and brought me in to him with his other, tucking me in against his shoulder. He was cold, but for once, I was colder, and clung to his dry clothes desperately for warmth.
With the ease of something like flight, he lifted us both back inside.
When my feet touched firm ground again, my legs gave away underneath me, but Owen kept me upright. All of my limbs were shaking and my head felt like it was about to detach from my body.
Owen scooped my legs up and cradled me as he stepped into the shower and ran the hot water. He wore a fine silk shirt, suit pants and leather shoes, but didn’t seem to care. He stood with me under the water, letting it drip warmth back into my body.
He undid the manacle from my tortured wrist, and I wasn’t surprised when he simply moved it to my ankle. I was surprised when he started gently massaging the life back into my fingers.
He’d changed again. His face had gone the color of milk—deathly pale but with a slightly cream cast below, rather than the more pure white it had been. Water beaded and dripped from his long lashes, making them cling together, star-like.
“Tell me what happened,” he said in a soft voice.
My teeth chattered around my words. “Your nuthouse slave hacked up a chicken.”
“I saw.”
“Then tried to hack up me.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea she’d become so free from my control.” That concept seemed to trouble him deeply.
It troubled me more.
“It was probably your control that sent her insane like that. Keeping her brain numb, making her serve you. It was worse than being a prisoner.”
Owen gave me a level look. “You would not pity her if you knew who she really was. She was one of my employees until I first realized the psychopath she was. She had killed at least two husbands and one of my waitresses before I turned her into my thrall.”
In death her face had been calm and still, wiped clean. She looked like an aged woman at peace. Was she a murderer? I recalled the gleeful way she had chopped up the chicken’s carcass, the way she’d hunted me, and looked back at him. “Why didn’t you let her just stand trial?”
“Do you really think that is the only justice in this world?” He snorted and I saw his lips curl in disgust. “Do you think I did not try that first?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one.
“Things are never that simple, Strawberry. She was a dangerous woman, her mind lost to violent illness before I took her in. There is no need to pity her in life or death. When the justice of your kind failed, I decided I could not allow her to roam free.”
Tears gathered in my eyes then fell and splattered his chest. “But it was my fault. I tried to talk to her, tried to run away. I made her snap. I killed
Loretta.”
“Loretta killed herself.” The words were mild. I felt his arms tighten almost imperceptibly around me.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut but tears pushed out insistently anyway. “She didn’t have to. Why didn’t you just let her go?” I yelled, angry with him for no reason at all or maybe for every reason.
“Would you rather her be free to torment innocents?””
“Why didn’t you just kill her then?” I knew I was hysterical but I couldn’t seem to stop the angry, bitter words. He paused for a long moment.
“It gets lonely.”
The words opened my soul, cut me to the already raw core of my being. It got lonely in this isolated, windswept little spot of earth. In the long years that made up the centuries. In the dark hours of night without seeing the day.
He was lonely.
I whispered, barely audible over the sound of the shower running around us, “That still gives you no right to hold people against their will.”
Owen set me down on my feet.
“Do you hate me so much, Strawberry?”
My feelings for him were incredibly conflicted. On one hand, I had begun to care about him in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to me but on the other, I longed to be free of his teeth inside my flesh, and to be able to walk in the sunlight unencumbered by fear.
I dropped my head. “No. No, I don’t hate you.”
Owen turned the shower off and carefully dried me down. He wrapped me in a warm towel then left the bathroom without a word. I didn’t move except to sit down on the edge of the bath. I wasn’t sure my legs would support me yet and my abraded toes stung. I felt so incredibly tired.
It was some time before he came back. He returned in dry pants, bare feet, and still buttoning up a new shirt. The moonlight filtered through the windows and outlined his incredible body and handsome face. The bloodsucking thing had kidnapped me and all that but he was undeniable gorgeous. He picked me up and carried me out to the bedroom. I didn’t even try to resist.