And I had missed him. When he returned I had felt a sense of relief. I was still telling myself I hated him, that I would leave as soon as I could find a way to escape, that I was only playing a game to appease him long enough that he would take me off the island and I could escape.
But inside, I felt quite differently, and it wasn’t hard to play that game, and pretend that I wanted him.
I had run to meet him, and we had gotten no further than the living room before we were at it. That time had been different, more like lovemaking than just sex, and as soon as he closed his eyes and gripped my hair tightly, pumping my body full of his seed, I knew. I just knew. The mistake had made me pregnant. I could feel it.
I had toyed with the idea of taking extra pills. The girls at Kitty Bang Bang had pulled that one a dozen timesat the club.It made you sick as hell, sure, but itwasa solution.
And I couldn’t have this crazy man’s baby. Could I?
But days went by, and I let the pills pile up. At first, I decided I would save up ten or so, and make myself really ill by using them all at once, aborting the baby and getting a doctor to come.
But they piled up, and I didn’t take them. To myself I would say that I was afraid—afraid of being sick, out here so far away, where I depended on him to get me a doctor.
But the real reason was something else, and deep down inside I knew it: I didn’t want to. I wanted his child growing inside of me, because I also wanted him.
And he didn’t help. A change seemed to come over him. He was still prone to sudden withdrawals, deep inside himself, but he didn’t get as dark as he used to, tying me to hooks in the ceiling and whipping me until my whole bottom felt like it was on fire, before pushing me into one of his contraptions to immobilize me, ass in the air, hands between my legs, to take me over and over again however he wanted.
And after a while, even though I wasn’t showing, it was too late. I knew I couldn’t do it.
And that gave me a whole different set of problems.
More than once or twice, while we were enjoying dinner in the open, breezy dining room on the third floor, looking out over the water with candles and some delicious fish he had procured, I came close to telling him. It would be on the tip of my tongue, but the cold, choking feeling in my chest would not let me say it. I told myself that I wanted to keep the secret, but really, in the end, I think I was too afraid to hear him say that he didn’t want it. I wanted to drag out my fantasy that he cared for me, that the tender man inside of him was the real man, as long as I could.
He wasn’t, and I found that out soon enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Alaric
I knew the next day.
I had been consumed by thoughts of her the entire week that I was gone. This was not a good way to be. I am a mercenary, and I have loyalties—purchased loyalties, but loyalties nonetheless—to the men under my command, wherever that may be, and for whatever reason they served. It’s a code, and a man has to have a code.
Nothing bad happened on that mission, but I wasn’t my professional best. Natalia stole something from the thrill of the job and turned it empty and sour. She was eating into my thoughts, stirring up a conscience, making me second-guess the things I was doing.
And distracting me. Distracting me so much.
