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  These are not things I am supposed to think of. Confusion causes me to reach down and shove her face all the way onto my dick, choking her.

  She coughs and sputters around me, drooling as I grip her hair and fuck her face like the toy she needs to be. I call her a filthy whore, and she does not flinch. She does not recoil or slow down but instead pulls me deeper.

  It must be my imagination.

  I tell her she needs to do better. That her only purpose now is to serve me and please me. I demand that she learn how to suck my cock and take me whenever I choose. I ask her if she can do these things, and she tries to nod. Then she murmurs yes around me, her voice vibrating against my dick. It sends me spinning out of control, and I pull away from the warmth of her mouth at the last moment to teach her one more lesson as I spill my come over her face and her lips.

  I milk every last drop from my dick before I squeeze it back between her lips and tell her to clean me off.

  She licks me clean.

  Softly.

  Gently.

  Sweetly.

  All while my come drips down her chin and her throat. When she is finished, she tries to wipe it away with her hand, and I stop her.

  “No.”

  She looks up at me, used and filthy and mine.

  “Let it dry.”

  The contempt flashes in her eyes again, but she only nods. And then a quiet question, spoken politely, the way a good girl should.

  “May I have some food now?”

  “When I have finished my dinner.”

  She nods and remains on the floor between my legs while I eat the rest of my meal. And when I am done, I keep my word to her.

  This time.

  I allow her to make herself a tin of soup from the cupboard. She does not protest, and she eats too quickly, burning her tongue in the process.

  I watch her eat like a wild animal, my dried come still on her face. Her body naked and available to me for whatever I may wish. And I feel the undesirable urge to hold her. To kiss her. To reward her in another way and tell her how good she is.

  But I do not.

  Instead, I wait until she is finished. And then I lead her back to the conservatory. Binding her to the bed for the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WHEN HE COMES for me the next morning, I am exhausted. And emotional. The fear of the piano room still lingers, but my hostility cannot be contained.

  "You can't leave me tied up like this," I tell him. "I'm not an animal. This isn't right, Javi. You have to know this isn't right."

  He looks at me, but I can’t make him out from beneath the hood this time. It's pulled low over his eyes, and he has to tilt his head just to see out of it.

  "Is that challenge I hear in your voice, Bella?"

  Even though his voice is harsh, he sounds pleased. I don’t understand it.

  I did not imagine the accent during my breakdown. It is still there. His words are not disjointed. They are eloquent and musical. And I think that his file was wrong. I think he has been speaking for many years without a hitch. It is perfectly natural to him.

  "What do you want from me?" I ask. "You need to tell me, Javi. I can't do what you want if I don't know what it is."

  “This is not your concern,” he says. “I will have what I want regardless, my Bella. You will stay here. And I will own you.”

  I swallow and try not to lose it completely. I need to be calm. Freaking out will get me nowhere right now. Because if I'm calm, then maybe he will let his guard down and I can run.

  "For how long?" I press. "How long do you want me to stay, Javi?"

  His reply takes longer this time. The drawn-out silence only makes my anxiety worse. His voice is too quiet when he speaks. And this is how I know he means it.

  "Forever," he answers.

  Forever.

  The word ricochets around my skull, obliterating what little hope I had left.

  I can't breathe.

  He really is going to kill me. Except, he's untying me now. Gently.

  He's so much bigger than me. There's no way I will make it past him. There's no way I can fight him off. He removes the bonds from my ankles and wrists and then allows me to sit up, gesturing to a tray next to the bed.

  Breakfast. He brought me breakfast.

  I want to cry. I want to plead with him. But he doesn't let me do either of those things.

  “Would you like to eat today, sweet Bella?”

  I want more than anything to eat everything on the tray. But I am not naïve enough to believe that it will come for free. Everything with Javi will come at a cost. To my self-respect. My dignity. My humanity. And there’s a part of me that wants to pretend that there is still a fight left within. That I am stronger than him- at least mentally, and I can defeat him in that way.

  But basic human needs are a motivation unlike any other. When you have gone without for so long, morals fall by the wayside. Everything else falls by the wayside.

  “What do I need to do?” I ask.

  He tilts his head down, giving me just a glimpse of his dark beard and a flash of gold eyes.

  “Lay back,” he tells me. “On the bed.”

  I do as he asks.

  “Spread your legs.”

  This time I don’t move. His voice grows harsher. Huskier.

  “Spread your legs, Bella. Or I will spread them for you.”

  I spread my legs and hate myself a little more. I can feel his eyes all over me. Assaulting me in the most intimate way possible. Visually penetrating the place I have never allowed a man to see before.

  I am humiliated. Ashamed. Degraded. And he is turned on, evident by his heavy breathing.

  “Play with yourself, beauty,” he says. “Show me how you like it.”

  Again, I hesitate.

  A low rumble thunders from his throat. And his next words remind me that I have no choice.

  “Or perhaps you would like to play some more games with me, instead?”

  I reach between my legs and touch myself. It is robotic. Stiff. Awkward. My eyes are squeezed shut.

  I jump when his fingers find my breast, skimming over my nipple. My body responds to him, and a storm of emotions festers inside of me. I try to swallow them back down.

  This monster is the worst kind of evil.

  The kind that doesn’t feel like evil when he touches me. The kind that feels… good. And when his mouth captures the soft globe of flesh and he groans, I am wet for him. It is the worst kind of deception. The worst kind of betrayal from my own body.

  There is the sound of a zipper, and I stop breathing. Waiting quietly for what comes next. I need to be mentally prepared. And I am not mentally prepared.

  “Open your eyes,” he demands.

  I open my eyes. Slowly. Hesitantly. He is right there. Solid cock in hand, next to my face. Swollen and throbbing with his want for me. I try to force my legs shut again, to prevent him from seeing the lie between my thighs. The arousal I don’t want or need.

  I can’t control it.

  His fingers grip my thigh and pinch.

  “Don’t try to hide the truth,” he tells me. “I can smell how much you want me.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head.

  “No.”

  “You will take me, Bella.”

  “No,” I say again.

  “You will take me,” he repeats. “Or you will die.”

  I glance up at him, so close I can almost make out the lines of his face. His mouth. He is rigid. So, so rigid.

  And I don’t believe him.

  Maybe I just don’t want to. But I don’t believe he will kill me. I sense the struggle within him. I just don’t yet know what that struggle is.

  He watches me study him… and he doesn’t like it.

  “Suck me like a good girl,” he tells me. “Get me nice and wet.”

  I breathe out and do as he asks.

  I draw him back into my mouth, sweeping over the velvet exterior of his heavy flesh. Th
e salty taste of his arousal coats my lips and tongue.

  He doesn’t let me have control. The moment he’s inside, his restraint is gone.

  He cups my head and thrusts deep, hitting the back of my throat and choking me. I gag around him, and he grunts out his satisfaction when spit drips over the sides of my lips and down my chin.

  “Yes, my Bella,” he praises. “Good girl.”

  His approval eases my nerves and encourages me. I relax into him and let him use my mouth. But the better I do, the more tumultuous he becomes. With his pleasure comes his wrath.

  The next words out of his mouth are not praise at all. He calls me a lazy slut and tells me to go harder.

  I do.

  He grunts and then asks if I think I’m too good to suck his dick. I tell him I’m not. He rubs his cock all over my face, smearing my spit along with it. He tells me I need to do better. Learn faster. Do as he asks. But all the while, he can’t stop groaning. And I rise to every one of his challenges, meeting them with determination. Because I can hear the lies in his voice. How much he doesn’t want to like it.

  It chafes at him. And it gives me power.

  He must know that I know. Because he shoves my face away, allowing his own hand to take over as he glares down at me from above, telling me I couldn’t suck a dick if my life depended on it.

  I open my mouth to argue, and he squeezes my face in his palm to shut me up.

  “Play with yourself,” he orders again.

  But I already am. Nothing is happening. If he thinks I will come, he really is insane.

  “That’s right,” he says, and his voice is cruel. “I forget that this beauty can’t even do that right.”

  To prove his point, he touches me himself. Jacking himself off with one hand while he fingers me with the other.

  I don’t want to like it.

  I try my best to stay numb. But my body is a war zone of pleasure and pain. Humiliation and want. My legs fall wider, and he praises me again before criticizing me in the next breath. He says I don’t deserve to come.

  But still, he fingers me. And still, I am wet. So wet for him- for this- that I can hear his fingers slapping against me.

  He hears it too. And he likes it whether he can admit it to himself or not. Because his breath is guttural. Broken and agonized. His hand squeezes the life out of his cock, jerking so violently I am certain he is punishing himself too.

  But I can’t focus on any of it. Because molten heat is surging inside of me like a volcano.

  I try to fight it off. To resist. To focus on anything else. But I can’t. I fracture around his fingers with something between a sob and a wail. My eyes fall shut, and I succumb to the pleasure, my ears ringing and my vision dancing with flashes of light.

  Javi comes too.

  Releasing himself onto my breasts with a long, tortured growl. He empties his cock completely and then smears the evidence over my skin. Leaving it to dry like last time.

  Marking me.

  Claiming me.

  And I think this is it. I am humiliated but sated. Hungry. Starving. Now I will get my food.

  But when I open my eyes, the temperature in the room has plummeted. Javi is erratic. Enraged. There isn’t time to question or predict his behavior. He flips me over and pins me down with the weight of his body, settling onto my lower thighs.

  My adrenaline spikes and my muscles lock when he removes his belt from the loops of his jeans.

  I try to wiggle away. His hand crashes down onto my ass cheek, searing a hot palm print into the flesh.

  “Stop.”

  The command is simple. Deep. Terrifying. And I obey.

  But then he grabs my foot, and the terror is real.

  “I did what you asked. I did everything you asked.”

  “But you didn’t please me.”

  It’s a lie. And I know it’s a lie. This isn’t fair. I can’t play the game when the rules keep changing. When he punishes me for doing exactly what he asked of me in the first place.

  I try to tell him so. But the words get swallowed down my throat when he lashes the bottom of my foot with his belt. It is an agony unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

  It is raw. Scorched nerves. Fire and hell. He doesn’t hold back when he does it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I try to scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I try to move, but he is too heavy, and his grip is unyielding. I try to beg him, but the words don’t make sense. And I’m crying now.

  A sniffling, inconsolable mess.

  When I think it might be over, he starts in on the other foot. I am so certain that I am bleeding. Flayed wide open. But when he stops and climbs off me, my feet are bone dry.

  I scurry as far away from him as I can. Huddling against the corner of the bed.I rock back and forth like a lunatic trying to comfort myself.

  For two minutes, he stands there. Quiet. Watching me. Judging me.

  I hate him so much. But then he comes to sit beside me, this tormentor of mine. And he becomes my solace too. Taking me in his arms and holding me. Rubbing my back and kissing my temple.

  It is so much what I need that my mind can’t comprehend this is the same man who just inflicted the pain. Because I am broken. All I can do is cling to the comfort.

  Bleeding more of my sanity.

  My pride.

  My dignity.

  He is stripping me bare with his methods. Destroying me piece by piece. And he makes no apologies for it. I am certain he feels no regret. His next words only prove me right.

  “You are mine to play with, beauty,” he says. “I can do whatever I want because you belong to me.”

  I sniffle and allow my hair to fall in a veil around my face, shielding my eyes from this monster who torments me so. But it does not help. He is not finished. He tips my chin upright and forces my gaze back to him.

  “Now thank me,” he demands. “Thank me for making you come.”

  I stare at him in disbelief. Horrified. The very idea is so disgusting to me all I want to do is spit in his face. And yet, the words come out of my mouth.

  Proving only one thing.

  My mind is a prisoner now too.

  And I am merely a puppet.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I HAD HOPED to find the conservatory lacking so that I could use the excuse to leave this room. To make a dash for freedom. But I was misguided by this thought because the conservatory has most of the things I would need to leave the room for.

  Javi has thought of everything.

  My own toiletries await me in the bathroom. I don't know how many of my most private moments he has watched from his cameras, but if I thought I could forget that for even a second, I was wrong. This is the cold, hard reminder.

  Upon further exploration, I find a mini bar stocked with bottles of water. Water that I drink so greedily, I end up with a stomachache. But perhaps the greatest discovery is what I find at the far end of the conservatory. An entire library.

  A library in the middle of paradise. And if it weren't also my prison, I might cry at the sheer beauty of this incredible sanctuary that Javi keeps hidden from the world.

  I've never seen so many books in all my life. I've never seen such a grand home in all my life. The Victorian architecture, the plush furniture, the stained-glass windows and antique conversation pieces- they are all things that speak to me. Things I would have dreamed of one day having in my own home.

  In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is intentional. If he wants me to love this beautiful room where he holds me captive. If it is a conspiracy or mere chance that when the sky falls at night, it casts a blue light over everything inside and the stars shine through the ceiling to dance on the floor below.

  Is it all by design?

  It gives me hope, and yet it confuses me.

  There is not even a remote possibility that Javi cares about how I feel. I can’t make sense of his motivations. Why has he been watching me? What does he wan
t me for? The mystery only becomes more muddled as my time goes on here. But it feels important. If I can understand what drives him, then I can find a way to get past it.

  It's my only hope.

  I must get to know the real Javi. The one that hides beneath the shadows and the hood and the wild beard.

  And until then, I must bide my time.

  JAVI COMES AGAIN at lunch to deliver a sandwich, and like my meals before, he tells me I must earn it. I don’t have to ask him how because he came prepared. With a cup of dry rice.

  He makes me kneel on the grains for twenty minutes before he allows me to eat. He watches me the entire time. Silent. Brooding. Cloaked in darkness and secrets.

  I grit my teeth through the pain and wonder how he became this way. What happened to make him such a monster? I don’t ask him, and he doesn't speak to me again, except to tell me I can eat before he leaves quickly after.

  And so continues my life over the next week. I read all day, every day, and do little else.

  After checking the bathroom for cameras and finding it empty, I take a few baths as well. When I've grown tired of reading and need something else to keep me busy, I request a notebook and pen from Javi. But what he delivers this evening has the blood draining from my face.

  It's my journal. My already half full journal. He hands it to me and tries to leave. My voice stops him.

  "Did you read this?"

  His back is turned away from me, shoulders tense. He doesn't speak, and I know... I just know that he has.

  "What is wrong with you?" I demand. "Do you even realize how fucked up this is? You watching me on cameras and listening to me in my own home. Kidnapping me... and now this... reading my journal..."

  I choke on the words, and strangely enough, that feels like the worst of his offenses. Because these words are private.

  So very private.

  So very shameful.

  My face is hot even thinking about him exploring the darkest and most intimate corners of my mind.

  "You had no right!" I yell at him. "Let me go."

  He turns deliberately on his heel. Slow. Too slow. Deadly and massive. Looming over me like a black cloud. I back away, but there's nowhere for me to go. I'm pinned between him and the bed.