“Unacceptable!” he spits. “My skin is de-hy-drated.” He breaks the last word into distinct syllables. He says it as if the condition is terminal. “Something willhaveto be done. And fast.”
“If you’re unhappy with your accommodation, please visit our website www-dot-we-are-not-the-four-seasons-dot-com and request a room that’s more to your liking.”
He mutters something under his breath. I don’t hear it clearly, but it sounds a lot like, “Fuck you, Asshole.”
I toss him the change of clothes I bought for him. Gray sweatpants and a white tank. His mouth twists down at one side. He doesn’t say anything. Not even when he realizes I’ve forgotten to buy underwear for him. He puts the clothes on quickly, obviously only too happy to cover his nudity. Again, I don’t give him the satisfaction of catching me watching. That’s standard practice for me, by the way. Beyond stopping them from doing something stupid, I never watch marks in the bathroom. It’s not hard to do. It’s called being professional.
“Nice one,” he says once he’s dressed. His face is the equivalent of the most sarcastic slow-clap I’ve ever seen.
The sweatpants are loose on him. They hang low on his hips. Very low. I see the slight indent of his cum-gutters when he breathes. I missed the mark on the top, too. It’s too tight and too short. It rides up exposing his midriff. He has the body of a rockstar. Lean and sinewy. Strangely defined in places I wasn’t expecting it to be defined.
Not that I was expecting it to be defined. He’s a job. I haven’t been thinking of him like that.
“What now?” he says, tilting his head to an even more arrogant angle than it was before.
“Do you need to take a leak?”
“Fuck you, Asshole,” he says clear as a bell this time.
We head back to the living room, and I get him settled in in front of the TV. I hand him the remote.
“You can watch whatever you want.”
“Oh, Jeez, Mr Asshole,anythingI want? Anything at all? How’d I get so lucky?”
I ignore him and stare straight ahead. He’s no sooner found a show when he says, “I need to piss.”
I resist the urge to say, “Told you so,” and stand guard as he uses the bathroom.
“I can’t piss if you’re watching.”
“I’m not watching,” I say without looking up from my feet.
“The fuck you’re not, you sick fucking pervert.”
I don’t reply. When he’s done, I wait for him to switch the faucet on. Right before he wets his hands, I say, “Wash your hands.”
He stares daggers at me.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he says through his teeth.
I confess, that gratifies me a little. Babysitting marks isn’t as much fun as you might think. Kidnapping rich pricks might seem like a super interesting career choice, but honestly, most of the job is boring as fuck. Surveillance has its moments but being trapped in a small space with a spoiled, neurotic stranger for five or six days isn’t my idea of a good time. If the money wasn’t insane, I wouldn’t even consider it.
Chapter 3
Demon
Myfacefeelstight.My skin feels like it’s cracking. If this goes on for much longer, there isn’t an oxygen facial in the world that’s going to help me. I look over at the lout sitting beside me on the sofa in disgust.
Can you even imagine the type of adult who doesn’t own a good moisturizer?
I admit, the whole shower debacle yesterday traumatized me quite a bit. I didn’t enjoy it. I was nervous as hell. I’ve never been put in a position where I’ve had to share a bathroom with a stranger, much less a kidnappy-criminal-type of a person. It was fucking horrible. The outfit he has me in now is fucking horrible, too. It’s so dire in fact, if things weren’t what they are, I’d be on the phone to my assistant having her arrange an emergency style intervention for this guy. God knows he needs it.
I’ve been keeping close tabs on him. He seems to follow the same routine. He cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner from scratch. It surprises me every time, though I’m still not sure why. I don’t seem to recall consciously imagining what it would be like to be kidnapped but I guess I must have, because I was kind of expecting the menu to feature pizza and fried chicken a lot more heavily than the organic produce he turns into meals for us. After each meal, he makes a call. He keeps it short and lowers his voice when he speaks, but given he’s in the same room as me, I can hear every word. He seems to be talking to the guy who was here when I woke up. His partner, maybe? He doesn’t use names so I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I think he might talk to someone else, too. If I had to guess, I’d say there were at least three of them in on the deal. Based on his conversations, it seems that the other guy, or guys, are watching my family and my apartment. So far, Asshole seems completely satisfied that things are going according to plan. No-one has done anything stupid like calling the police, I’m positive of that.
Other than those check-in’s, his sole focus is on keeping an eye on me. There’s a serious-looking laptop on the kitchen counter. It has a whole lot of cords coming out of it. It looks like the sort of thing that would be good for hacking. He doesn’t move a muscle when I go near it, so I’m sure it's heavily password protected. He hasn’t used it much since I got here. He’s too busy not letting me out of his sight. If I move to the bathroom or the kitchen, he’s up on his feet. He’s never more than a few yards from me. His focus seems excessive, as best I can tell, there’s no way for me to get out of this place. There’s only one door that’s an exit, and it’s locked. The windows are locked too. The glass is double glazed. It would be hard to break it. I’d need something big and heavy to use to smash it. I’m sure it’s no accident there’s nothing big and heavy in the apartment, or whatever you’d call this place.
I’m sitting on the sofa now. Unsurprisingly, he’s sitting with me. I’m acutely aware of his presence. His features are hard. Heavy brow. Deep set eyes. His stubble is thick, casting a dark shadow across the bottom half of his face. I don’t need to touch it to know it would feel hard too. He hands me the remote. When he does it, he does it with an air of benevolence, as if he expects me to thank him for it. Needless-to-say, I don’t. Instead, I sit there weighing up my choices. Admittedly, I don’t have many. After flicking through channels for a while, I become aware that he seems to have slipped into some sort of meditative state. He sits dead still, eyes straight ahead, but he doesn’t seem to be watching TV. I eye his profile. His broad chest rises and falls, slow and rhythmic. He shows no signs of noticing when I change the channel.
