“You dumb bitch,” he snaps at her, biting each word out precisely. “I was in the middle of a very important business call when you started playing your stupid games, or I’d have been out here sooner. You think you’re being useful to me right now?”
She crawls over to him, clutching at his leg. He shakes her off violently. When she crawls back, he kicks her in the stomach like she’s a dog, wrenching a grunt of pain from her.
Despite how furious I am with her, the blow makes me queasy, and I find myself tensing in sympathy. I hate Elizabeth, but I also hate seeing men hit women.
“Stay here,” he orders me. He reaches down, grabs her by the wrist, and stalks away, dragging her behind him. She scrabbles along, trying to climb to her feet, making grotesque wailing noises.
So she wasn’t supposed to bully me or hit me. Joshua is following the rules that he’s set. Shameful relief flows through me.
Perhaps I should feel pity, but I can’t summon up any at all. Am I a horrible person? She’s clearly a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, in love with her captor and jealous of her new, young replacement, but she’s also keeping me prisoner when I’m sure she could free me. That makes her my jailer just as much as Joshua, and I hate her for it.
I still don’t want him to beat her up, though. I just want her to lie down and die quietly.
He’s gone for about ten minutes. When he comes back, he’s perfectly calm, not a hair out of place.
“She won’t bother you again.”
Shock jolts me. What the hell does that mean? Is she dead? Did he just butcher yet another person, so casually? A woman who genuinely loves him?
I give him a questioning look, but he just replies with a cold, challenging stare. I haven’t earned the right to speak.
I can’t ask what he did to her. I’m so frustrated I want to scream.
And then he leaves me, strolling off with a jaunty stride. I watch him go. He looks as stunning from behind as he does from the front. Those broad shoulders, that amazing, perfect round ass that looks as if it was carved by a Grecian sculptor, those long muscular legs.
As he disappears around the corner, all the things I thought I wanted him to do to me, ever since the first night I met him back at Heaven, parade through my mind. And here I am. I’m in the home of Manhattan’s sexiest, most eligible bachelor, and he’s kissing me. He wants to go down on me. He’s bathing me in his magazine-worthy bathroom, setting out a sumptuous feast in front of me, and telling me that all I have to do if I want him to fuck me is…ask.
I just never anticipated the part where he’d make me his sex slave, force me to sleep chained up in a dungeon cell, and beat me until I screamed in agony for the most minor of offenses.
Be careful what you wish for.
I hook my fingers under the collar and try to make it more comfortable as I start exploring the house. I enter a room that I guess I’d call a parlor or sitting room, with a suite of antique furniture in dark wood, elaborately carved and upholstered in pale blue silk. There are embroidered pillows on the settee and chairs, which are grouped around a coffee table with bowed legs that are sculpted to look like a lion’s paws. More classical paintings on the walls, showing hunting scenes. It occurs to me that’s a theme here; most of his artwork features some kind of hunting scene, and a chill washes over me.
No. Focus. Look for a way out.
I stroll slowly around the room before I work my way around to one of the windows, which has a padded bench seat. The windows all have blackout shades that I don’t dare lift, even though I’m dying to see what’s beyond them. I sit on the windowsill and lean back. Then I slide my hands behind me, secretly trying to open it.
It doesn’t budge. Of course it’s locked. And what would I have done if I could open it? Make a run for it, hobbled by my ankle chains, barely able to move my head? My shoulders slump in defeat.
That front door… The sheer, gleeful sadism of his pointing it out to me, taunting me with it… How can the man who kissed me like he loved me be the same man who grinds salt into my emotional wounds? Tears spring to my eyes, and I stumble over to the couch. A wave of despair washes over me. This house will be locked up tighter than a drum.
No. I can’t give up. I’m Tam with a Plan.
How does one escape from a brilliant, wealthy psychopath’s lair? He doesn’t take any half-measures. He’s designed it to hold prisoners and prevent escape. He’s faster than me, stronger than me. Smarter than me.
I can’t give up. Giving up is death.
If this were a movie, I’d find some clever way to overpower him. Bash him over the head with a vase, tie a string across the stairs so he fell and broke his neck, grind up a bunch of sleeping pills and put them in his drink, squirt shampoo on a tiled floor so he slipped and cracked his head… But this is real life. My life. My horrible, horrible life. I’m not a badass fictional ninja like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. I could possibly take on Elizabeth, or any other woman who’s my size, or an average guy like Jorge the security guard.
But Joshua? He’s lethal. He’s fast death with a smile on its face. I wouldn’t have a chance against him. And he’s hinted that if I do try to physically assault him, I’ll face brutal retaliation.
There are cameras everywhere, all the time. When Elizabeth hit me, he was on her terrifyingly fast.
Think, Tamara. Plan, plan, plan.
The best that I can come up with is waiting him out. Nobody can be perfectly vigilant forever. In the news stories I’ve seen where women escaped from abduction, it happened after the victim had been held prisoner for a long time and the kidnapper got sloppy.
So odds are I will be here for months, at the very least. Maybe years. I have lost my scholarship, the one I worked so hard for. All those nights when I nodded off over my books, every penny I scrimped and saved for school supplies…wasted. I may never go to college at all.
And can I even be sure that Joshua will get sloppy someday? It’s hard for me to imagine, as obsessive and precise as he is, but it’s my only hope. Over time, if I can lull him into a false sense of security, I might be able to disable him some day. And if I did that…would I be able to bring myself to kill him? I hope so.
And then, once I’d disabled him, and Elizabeth, if he hasn’t just murdered her for hitting me…how would I get out? How would I call for help? Where are we, for that matter? This house is huge, so we must be far from the city. Would I emerge into a thickly wooded area, hundreds of miles from the next house?
It doesn’t matter. He will slip up someday, somehow, I promise myself. Nobody can be vigilant forever. That is what I must believe if I’m going to have the strength to take another step, to live another day.
For this to work, I’ll have to make it look believable. If I appear to give up too easily, he’ll suspect I’m trying to lull him into lowering his guard. So I’m going to have to continue to resist, but just the right amount. A believable amount. Not so much that he kills me.
That means I’ll have to accept more punishment. More pain.
I shudder at the thought of more beatings. It still hurts to sit, to stand, to walk. But all the pain in the world will be worth it if it means someday I’ll be free.
Chapter Ten
Joshua
“Come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly. I smile at the sight of Tamara on the video camera, scanning the room, desperately seeking out avenues for escape but pretending not to. I watch her body language, learning her little tells, drinking in all the secrets she’s trying to hide from me.
What is the “bad thing” she moans about in her sleep? Why does she cry out to her mother that she’s sorry? What nightmares torment her…other than me, of course? I’ll find out soon enough.
Conquering her body is the easy part. I’ve already done that. Her soft little moans, the way she squirms helplessly as I tease her with my tongue, the way she pants with desire when I massage the numbing cream into her throbbing flesh… It’s delicious, watching her twisted up with ago
nized, unsatisfied lust for me. She’s strong, my girl, moving through her days in a haze of fear and sexual hunger, forcing herself to deny what she wants so badly. But she’s fighting a war that she’s already lost. The first time she whimpered for me, I knew I had her.
And what a prize she is.
I can’t fully understand what it is that makes her so different from any other woman I’ve been with. She’s pretty, but I’ve buried my cock in so many beautiful women that their faces all blur into one. Is it her inner steel underneath that sweet, spicy exterior? Is it the song of the brave wounded bird that sings to me? Or the push and pull of her desire fighting with her need to hate me? She saw what I did to Jorge, she knows that I kill humans for sport, and she despises me for it. But she wants me. And it’s tearing her apart.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter why she’s the one for me. All that matters is that I’ll make her fully mine.
I’ll invade the dark corners of her mind and steal every last part of her. I’ll slay the demons of her past and be her hero and her destruction all in one.
It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.
Poor girl. So strong, so brave, so doomed. She never stood a chance against me.
I see the way her eyes wander to the window, while she keeps her head perfectly still. What she doesn’t realize is that it’s her stillness that gives her away. Most of her body goes rigid when she’s doing something or thinking something that she doesn’t want me to be aware of. I watch for that, and then I look even closer, seeing the movements that she can’t quite conceal. For instance, when her gaze slides to the window that she so desperately wants to pry open, her shoulders rise just the tiniest amount, in perfect rhythm with her gaze.
She’s announcing her intentions without saying a word.
She thinks she’s being clever, but she has no idea what she’s up against. I’ve been studying human behavior in all its forms since I was in diapers.
It started with my father; I used my powers of observation to learn how to survive him.
Then, after I escaped and found myself in a big, bright, strange world, I was forced to embark on an entirely new field of study: how to be a wolf and yet blend in with sheep. It was hard for me to fit in anywhere at first; there was a glaring spotlight of “otherness” shining on me. The expressions on my face were wrong. My reactions to everyday situations were off. Despite my physical attractiveness, people found me repellant. The things I said frightened or repulsed them.
I didn’t let it discourage me in the least. It was just another game, and I would learn the rules. I excel at winning. That’s why I was the only member of my family to walk away from my father’s house of horrors deep in the woods, with a broken little girl limping along behind me.
I started obsessively watching television and reading books, so I could see how people behaved. I read books about charm and charisma, and meticulously applied the lessons. I mimicked ordinary humans. I read fiction and biographies and took notes on the appropriate ways to react to everyday situations.
I was a quick learner. It didn’t take me long to develop the charm and charisma needed to make people do whatever I wanted them to.
I experimented for a while, pushing it to see how far I could make people go. It turned out there were no limits. I could drive people to suicide, to madness. I could make girls fall obsessively in love with me and carve my name on their faces. I could make people kill for me, give me all their money, break up marriages without a second thought.
Passing for human doesn’t come naturally to me, though. It’s a constant effort not to give myself away as “other”. Monstrous. Terrifying. Yes, it’s important that people be afraid of me, but they have to be the right amount of afraid. If they want to run away screaming, then I cannot trick them into doing things for me, nor can I lure them into a false sense of security. I need them to trust me long enough to sign contracts that will ruin their lives and make me even richer. And I can’t ever become a suspect in the various disappearances that I’m responsible for.
So I am always learning, always studying, always forcing myself to pay attention to how I am interacting with people.
Right now, as I study Tamara, I am learning about myself as well.
Apparently I am capable of a wider range of feelings than I ever knew. I still can’t name these emotions, though. This is puzzling. My IQ is genius level. I’m not used to unanswered questions.
I don’t believe that what I’m experiencing is the emotion known as “love”. The way I behave toward Tamara does not seem to fit any description of “love” that I’ve come across. After all, if I loved her, would I enjoy hurting her so much?
But I also enjoyed hurting the gorgeous escorts I used to bring back to my house. My feelings for Tamara are something different. Once the escorts are no longer useful to me, once they’ve made me come, and I’ve shown my mastery over their flesh by forcing screaming orgasms on them, I feel an absolutely urgent need to get them away from me. If I were forced to spend too much time with them, I’d probably kill them.
I don’t want Tamara to go away. I want her to stay with me forever—so, of course, I’ll keep her forever, because I always get what I want. I wonder if my strange urge to keep her near me is a good thing. Does this mean I’m becoming more “human”, and if so, is that a desirable outcome?
I frown at the screen, concentrating, as if staring more intensely will somehow reveal the answers to this mystery, but nothing comes.
The way I feel when anybody but me hurts Tamara is new too. When I kill rapists and serial killers, it’s not because I care about the fact that they’re hurting people. I’m focused on the predators, not their victims.
But for some reason, seeing anyone other than myself harm Tamara affects my ability to control myself. When I saw that guard try to rape Tamara, he signed his own death warrant, and my only regret is that I didn’t get to spend more time with him. When I saw Elizabeth bullying Tamara, I felt an emotion inside me that I believe people call “rage”. I get angry, sometimes, sure, but “rage” is an out-of-control kind of anger. And when she slapped Tamara…well, the only reason Elizabeth is still alive is that I made certain specific promises to her a long time ago.
As I was slowly, calmly beating Elizabeth bloody, I let her know what a terrible mistake it would be to ever hurt my Tamara again. I told her that if she ever laid another finger on her or hurt her for any reason other than self-defense, I’d drop her off in the middle of New York City and she’d never see me again.
That’s probably not true. I don’t take foolish chances, and abandoning Elizabeth would be too risky. If she failed me, I’d have to kill her. However, the best way to get people to do what you want is to threaten them with what they fear most. Elizabeth is terrified of leaving this house, and of being away from me. She’d literally rather die. So it’s an effective threat, and I believe she will comply.
I would prefer not to have to kill Elizabeth, because of her absolute loyalty to me, but it wouldn’t disturb me very deeply.
I turn my attention back to Tamara. Her fingers keep drifting back to that collar, which forcefully thrusts her chin up and wraps around her neck like a pair of choking hands. It was a good choice on my part, because she’ll come to loathe it more and more in the days to come. Its removal will be a desperately desired privilege, which she’ll have to earn.
The expression on her face right now is pure misery. Lips quivering, glazed eyes staring straight ahead, facial muscles slack and hopeless. She doesn’t understand or appreciate it yet, but I was telling her the truth when I said that her imprisonment is the only thing keeping her alive.
I am supremely selfish. That’s not a put-down, it’s just a fact. My needs must come first, always, and I need to keep her away from the police, or I’d end up either in prison or on the run. Neither outcome is acceptable to me. Like all psychopaths, I’m self-serving and hedonistic and addicted to being in control. A jail cell just wouldn’t work
for me.
So bringing her here was my way of protecting her.
She also doesn’t yet understand my absolute need to dominate. It’s the driving force of my existence. With every situation I find myself in, every challenge I face, every person who spends any amount of time with me, I have to establish my superior position. It isn’t a decision I make when I meet someone; it’s just a part of what I am. Even if I’m just saying hello to a stranger, I need to see that “cornered prey” response, that little spark of fear and submission in their eyes, the look and the body language that tells me that they acknowledge who’s the alpha. If I didn’t see it, I’d keep pressing until I got what I want. It never takes long.
I can’t just keep her prisoner and let her be herself, because “herself” would be defiant and disrespectful, and it is not in my nature to accept that. It’s a logical progression. If I am to let her live, I must keep her here with me. If I keep her here with me, I must take away her free will and independence.
If I were able to explain it to her—not that she deserves to know anything—I’d explain that in order to survive, she must surrender to me completely. A equals B equals C. She’ll figure it out soon enough. Making her bow to me and call me Master isn’t nearly enough. I need every last part of her. Her mind, her desires, her every waking thought. I will own them all.
I turn to my computer, using a software program I designed to hack into the computer system of the NYPD.
I see that just this morning, two people reported Tamara missing. Her landlord, and the director of the battered women’s shelter where she volunteers. Tamara failed to pay her rent, and there was also a pile of mail on her doorstep. And the director of the battered women’s shelter called Tamara and never received a return call, which according to her statement was completely unlike Tamara, so she called her three more times, then went to the police station to fill out a report.
Tamara, Taken (The Blue-eyed Monsters Book 1) Page 9