“Just don’t tell her we don’t eat the food,” Jagger said. “Like tell her the last thing she made was great or whatever. And wait until she leaves to throw everything away.”
“So don’t eat the food but don’t tell…”
“Reva,” Vigo supplied, his mouth full of Oreos.
“Don’t tell Reva we don’t eat the food. In fact, tell Reva the food was delicious, but then throw it away, but only when she’s not around.”
“Exactly," Vigo said.
I was really confused but maybe it was because my entire system was crashing. It was almost 8 a.m. and other than my brief nap when I’d been hanging on the wall of the tunnel, I hadn’t slept at all since the night before the Hunt, and my stomach had started twisting with hunger.
I just wanted to shower, eat, then sleep for a year.
“I’ll show you to your room so you can shower,” Jagger said. “Then I can make you something to eat so you can crash.”
I followed him up past a larger living area with a huge TV and two big sofas, then started up a staircase to the second floor.
“This is such a pretty house,” I said, running my hand along the polished wood banister. Like the rest of the molding and trim in the house, it was minimal but obviously old, the banisters square and sturdy. “Have you lived here long?”
It was probably weird to make small talk with a man who’d chained me — naked — in an underground tunnel, one who’dbeen fondling my bare tit just a couple hours before, but what else was I supposed to do?
“About three years,” Jagger said, stepping onto the second-floor landing.
I must have been even more tired than I’d realized, my defenses dangerously low, because I couldn’t stop staring at his muscular back, the images so densely tattooed on his skin that I could hardly make them out individually.
His shoulders rippled as he walked, and I couldn’t help noticing that his waist tapered over his jeans, slung low on his hips, the waistband of his underwear somehow tantalizing for what it hid.
The upstairs wasn’t organized like a normal house, with one long hall and bedrooms on either side. The second-floor landing looked out over the main living room below, then narrowed into a hall with three bedrooms. After that, it widened again, revealing a larger sitting area with shelves of books, a window seat overlooking the woods surrounding the house, a large sofa, and a couple of overstuffed leather chairs.
The house was bigger than it looked, the rooms more contained than most of the modern houses I’d been in, and we passed through the second sitting area and entered another hall, two doors closed on either side.
“This should work,” he said, reaching for the second closed door on the left. “But if it doesn’t, just let us know and we can move you.”
I looked at the other three closed doors. “Who’s in there?”
“We are,” he said like it was obvious. And then, just when I was starting to think that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, that maybe we’d just be like… I don’t know, roommates or something, his gaze darkened. “We need you close for all the things we’re going to do to you, mouse.”
My stomach twisted.
But that wasn’t all: I got wet too. Because now I knew what it felt like to be held captive by the Hawks, to have their mouths and hands on my body. I couldn’t even bring myself to object to the nickname, because that was how I felt: like a mouse snagged in the talons of three giant predators, carried off to a nest where I would be devoured whole.
He stepped into the room ahead of me and crossed to an open door, then glanced inside before returning his attention to me. “Towels and everything are in the bathroom.”
“Thanks.” I looked around but only managed to get a series of first impressions — a large room with woodland wallpaper on one wall, a picture window that looked out over the forest, and a king-size bed — before he spoke again.
“Give me your phone.”
“My… what?”
“Hand me your phone,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’ll answer this question, but it would be best for you to accept thatwhyisn’t going to matter for you here. We’re going to tell you to do things, and you’re going to do them.” He said it simply, like he was dictating the terms of a new job I’d already accepted. “I need your phone to add you to the household app. That way you can add things you might need from the store.”
I hesitated, then handed him my phone. “Will I be able to go to the store myself if I want?”
“I meant it when I said you weren’t a prisoner.” He spoke without looking at me as he typed on my phone. “But you will do what we say here, especially when we fuck.”
