He settles me on the edge of the bathtub and grabs a washcloth. He runs it under warm water and then kneels in front of me, gently using it to clean the grit off my knees from where I fell in the forest. I wince at the sting, and he murmurssympathetically. He brushes his lips over the scrape on my knee, massages my calf as he slides the washcloth over me.
Louis has always liked me best when I’m broken. I’m not surprised when he tosses the washcloth behind me and settles between my legs again, pressing his mouth to the inside of my knee, and then my thigh. His pale eyes flick up to meet mine, and I force my expression into the closest thing to fondness I can fake.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, breath ghosting against my skin. He lays his cheek against my thigh, gazing up at me. “I’m so sorry. This was the only way we could be together. But… I knew you’d be clever enough to find a way through.” He kisses the pale skin of my thigh again, his lips lingering, his breath warm. “I knew nothing would happen, even if he caught you.”
My mind flashes to the scars on Anna’s back.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’re too gentle. Too good. What could he possibly punish you for?”
I bite back a laugh. Feign a grateful smile.
As I gaze down at the man I was willing to spend the rest of my life with, I realize he doesn’t know me at all.
Yet as he continues to murmur apologies and kiss his way up between my legs, I don’t push him away. I lift my hips to help him slide my panties down, and open my thighs to welcome him between them again. I fist my hand in his hair and pull him closer, pretending not to notice when he winces at my roughness.
I lean back, one ankle hooked around his back, and stare up at the bathroom ceiling as he shows me howsorryhe is with his tongue. He’s more enthusiastic than usual. Maybe it’s because he truly wants to make it up to me. Or he just prefers me like this—helpless and pliable, at his mercy.
I wonder if it turned him on, imagining me running for my life through the snow. Begging on my knees in front of that monster.
As I shut my eyes, I imagine Louis in my place. Louis stumbling through the trees, falling to his knees. Pleading for his life in front of Krampus. Crying out as the birch rods crack against his back.
My breath quickens. I pull him tighter against me, legs shaking.
I imagine him sobbing, crawling, groveling in front of me. Imagine my fingers wrapped around a birch rod. Lifting it to strike him again…
I come hard with my fingers twisting in his hair and that image held firmly in my mind.
It’s good he doesn’t know me. It means he’ll never see my plan coming.
Chapter
Ten
Afterward, Louis helps me into fresh clothes, pressing kisses to my shoulder as he zips up the back of my dress. My skin crawls at his touch, but I let him take care of me because I know it will make him feel good, and because I don’t want him to realize how angry I am until it’s too late.
He puts an arm around my waist and pulls me back against his chest, resting his chin on the top of my head. “We should get back to my family,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to be impolite.”
Impolite. I almost laugh at the word. This man helped his family throw me out into the cold for a monster to ravage, yet he’s expecting me to stick to the rules of etiquette.
“You’re right, we should,” I say mildly. “But… could I have just a few minutes alone first? I’m still… processing.”
“Of course,” he says. “You want me to stay with you?”
“No, no. Go be with your family. Please.”
I send him off with a kiss, and listen to his steps heading for the lounge where the rest of them are presumably still gathered. Then I put on my coat and creep down the stairs and straight to the back door.
I reach for the lock, my fingertips grazing the cool metal. But then I hesitate. Is this really the right thing to do? I’m safe insidenow. I could hide in here and leave Krampus out in the cold to rage, and there’s nothing he could do about it.
As far as Louis and his family are concerned, I’ve passed the test. I’ll be accepted as one of them. I got what I wanted. Didn’t I?
“Where do you think you’re going?”
My blood runs cold at the familiar voice. I resist the urge to yank back my hand like a guilty child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Instead, I school my expression into neutrality before turning to face Louis’s brother.
“Surely you’re not so eager to be out in the cold again,” Adrian says, with that god-awful, ever-present smirk on his face. I remember the way he manhandled me earlier, his fingers squeezing me in places they shouldn’t have lingered even as he dragged me out into the cold. My hand clenches at my side, but I tuck it behind my back and plaster on a smile.
