Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“How are you feeling?” Sam is by my side, a faint frown on his face.
“Weird,” I say. “Why are we at your house? I thought people were trying to kill you.”
“They’re not trying to kill me. They’re trying to control me,” he says. “I’m far too useful to be killed.”
I sit up.
“Don’t get out of bed,” he says. “You’re not well right now.”
“Why aren’t I well right now? What happened?”
He sits down on the bed and puts his hand on my knee. “You were abducted.”
“By you?”
“No,” he says. “Not at first.”
“Not at first?” I repeat his words with a question because what the hell does that mean?
“You were taken by some people who have ties to the government, but also international bodies. Unfortunately for you, I am not merely a professor and a stalker. I am an asset. The kind of control they want over me does not allow for someone like you.”
“Because I’m too young? Too stupid?”
“Too free,” he says. “I cannot have anybody in my life who can be used to leverage me.”
“So you’re breaking up with me?” I feel tears pricking my eyes.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “There’s no way I will live without you, Laura. You have become the center of my world in a way I never expected. My plan, initially, was to enjoy you anonymously and send you on your way with a good grade and a scholarship to the school of your choice. I was always going to look after you. But things have changed.”
“Why?”
“Because you followed me to Los Angeles, and they were watching. You made a spectacle of yourself.”
“I did? I asked some questions and went to your room…”
“You came in a disguise and spent the rest of the evening and morning in my room. I did not think I was being watched at the time, but obviously I was wrong. They clocked you, and now they’ve assessed you.”
“And?”
“And this will be your world from here on out,” he says. “You are going to have to stay away from the world, lest the world come for you.”
“This is the captive thing again,” I say.
“You were taken and drugged and left for whoever might find you,” he says. “If the people I know get their hands on you again, it will be worse. It won’t just be a matter of being drugged. You will be hurt badly, perhaps turned into an asset and used. There are roles pretty young women can play in this world, and I can promise you that you do not want to play them.”
I get that prickly chill feeling again.
“I don’t want to be a captive,” I whimper.
“I know, baby. But you will get used to it. You’ll live a life of luxury and comfort. You’ll spend every single moment being looked after. You’ll never have to provide for yourself, and I will ensure that your family is well looked after as well.”
He’s speaking to me with a gentle kind of understanding, but there’s a hard steel underneath it. This is what he intends to do, and I have no choice in it. I’ve gotten myself mixed up in a world where there’s no hope of freedom.
That’s what they all want me to believe anyway. I don’t believe that’s how the world works. I know I can get free. I know I can make my own way in the world.
I sit and I think about this while he brings me breakfast.
The way he’s speaking is just so odd. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even really sound like him. I know he is a man of many faces, but I don’t think he’s this… pathetic?
“I’m not buying it,” I say.
“Not buying what, baby?” He gives me a curious look. I can see something glittering in his eyes. Not quite disbelief. Something else. Something like it. Excitement, maybe. He likes it when I surprise him. He loves it when I defy him. That means he gets to punish me. Underneath everything between us is a current of pure filth and kink that is never really all that far away. Scratch the most kindly conversation and you’ll find sex spilling out between us.
“I’m not buying the notion that you would let some federal agents force you to hold me captive. You called yourself an asset. There’s no way you see yourself that way. You are the master of your own domain. Of everyone’s domain.”
He smiles. A little at first, and then it broadens more and more until he is outright grinning at me with a Cheshire cat expression.
“You are starting to get to know me a little too well,” he says.
At that moment, his phone rings.
He listens for a moment, then hangs up.
“I have to go,” he says. “I’ve been called away to a gym.”
“Why do they need a world-renowned psychologist in a gym?”