And what if he had seen all of that?
My cheeks felt hot as I reached up for my hair, to push the damp strands from my face.
I almost felt his fingers tugging the strands from my cheek, the wet lengths snaking over my neck, his hot breath against my skin as he whispered:
“I’m not done with you yet.”
I sat up.
Fucking Stockholm syndrome. Isn’t that what it was called?
I needed to get a grip.
I swiped the sheets around me, just in case hewaswatching, and then I stomped into the bathroom. It took some doing, but I figured out how to get the water on.
Okay. It did not help my Stockholm situation at all that this was the best fucking bathtub I’d ever imagined, let alone seen. It was like a small pool. At some point—I didn’t know how, or care—I turned on the bubbles. Jets of water came out of the concave seat and massaged me everywhere.
That included right on my sore ass, which at first was too tender, and then started to feel good, and then finally, got me all heated up again.
I moved, dunking my head. I stared up at the ceiling.
Then, after floating for a bit, I sat up and let my arms wade in front of me.
“Okay, Nat. Get your shit together,” I whispered to myself.
One: this guy was a kidnapper, an obvious bad guy. Really bad, if he made that fat-necked thug Andrej tremble like a little baby.
As fun as that had been to watch, and as fun as it might have been to have him raking his hungry eyes over my body... as fun as it might have been to imagine this guy pushing me to my knees and boring a hole through me with his blue eyes while I took every inch of his cock into my mouth...
What the fuck. I didn’t even really like doing that.
For anyone else...
Natalie, get the fuck back on track.
Okay...as fun as that might all be, it was all fantasy. He was a bad guy, a very bad guy, and I needed to get away from him.
Which led me to... why the hell I was here to begin with. He had let me go. So what had happened since I last remembered, and now, that made this freak show pick me up and lock me in this room with an IV? Why would he let me go and then kidnap me?
I lowered my face into the warm water until my eyes were level with the water’s surface.
Why would he want to give me ten thousand dollars and tell me to get out of town?
I had never even had time to think about that in full.
Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single fucking reason someone would do that. Not for me. Especially not some hot bad guy I didn’t even know.
Okay. So let’s say I could convince him I didn’t do drugs, and that I’d get out of town and stop working at Kitty Bang Bang. Would he let me go?
I rose from the water to breathe, and then lowered myself back down.
Seemed unlikely, if you went by TV shows and shit like that. He seemed like some kind of criminal element, and I’d seen his face.
Panic knifed right through my heart again, and I had to rise up to take a few shallow breaths and get myself under control.
Okay. So... I guess if this guy was going to kill me, he was going to kill me.
Then why hadn’t he just killed me to begin with?
