Captive Heart (Club Risqué Book 6)

Chapter 20

They”d done a lot of talking over the course of the day, but things were quiet after Micah dressed, and helped Melody into a comfortable chair in front of the ornate mirror in the French boudoir playroom and started to dry her hair with a blow dryer borrowed from the ladies” locker room.

”I could do that myself, you know,” she offered quietly, studying him with a serious look.

”I know.” He offered a small smile. The truth was he needed something to do with his hands, and the hum of the dryer drowned his turbulent thoughts.

The silence was companionable enough. They each had their own slew of thoughts, he guessed.

As he drew a brush through the length of her damp locks, he was startled once again by the length of it.

”I don”t think I”ve ever seen someone with hair as long as this,” he told her. It cascaded down her back all the way past her butt until it brushed against the backs of her thighs.

”Daddy liked it long. He used to put it in pigtails,” she explained then faltered. ”After Daddy, there was no such thing as haircuts, so it just grew and grew. I”m surprised he didn”t cut it off just to spite me… except he used to like to use it like a rope…”

She trailed off and Micah found himself talking to take her mind away from whatever bad memory was skittering across her mind.

”I”ve never seen hair this colour, either.” Micah examined the locks as he dried them, a frown drawing his brows together. He really hadn”t seen hair this colour before. At least not on anyone as young as Melody.

As her hair dried, the colour lightened significantly until Micah realised that what he had assumed was pale blonde underneath all the matt and dirt was actually a silvery platinum. The kind women paid a fortune to have.

Melody ducked her head, refusing to meet his eyes in the ornate, gilt mirror as if she was embarrassed.

”It didn”t used to be this colour,” she admitted softly. ”A few years ago, it just seemed to change. Not exactly overnight, although it seemed like it since I rarely got to look in a mirror. It was quite a shock when I first saw it, and now, it”s even worse.”

And it was shock that had likely caused it. Shock and trauma.

It hadn”t gone unnoticed that there was a raw, bald area on her scalp where her hair seemed to have been deliberately torn out. His lips thinned, but to Melody, he said, ”It”s beautiful, truly. Quite unique.”

He meant it, too, and was pleased at the way she peered at him from beneath those exquisitely long eyelashes which, he realised in that moment, were dark, while a tiny smile played at the corner of her lips.

”Do you know how old you are, Melody?”

Her face became pensive. ”I don”t remember a time when I ever celebrated my true birthday,” she disclosed matter of factly. ”But I know I was almost eighteen when I went to live with Daddy, because I was about to age out of the system.”

”You left before you were eighteen?” Micah clarified.

”Yes, Daddy went to see the manager at the group home and told them he was offering me a place to live, and they let me go early.”

Micah kept quiet about his suspicions on that account but made a mental note to ask Andy Storer to look into children”s homes in the area to see if he could turn up any information that might prove useful.

”I celebrated birthdays with Daddy,” she continued. ”But they weren”t really birthdays, even though he called them that. They were anniversaries of the day I went to live with him. I was five on the last birthday I spent with Daddy, but it wasn”t near my next birthday when the brute came and took me away.”

”So, you must have been twenty-three… when you left Daddy.” If she noticed his pause as he chose his words, then she didn”t allude to it. ”And you said you thought another three summers had passed after that, which would make you twenty-six,” Micah calculated.

”More like twenty-seven, I think,” Melody decided. ”It”s winter now, and Daddy celebrated my birthday in autumn. It was just starting to be spring when I lost him.”

Her words were telling. Whatever manipulations ”Daddy” had applied to get Melody to live with him before she was legally of age—and Micah certainly had his suspicions—the man had been good to Melody and treated her well.

Whoever he was, he surely had to be the starting point for trying to piece together the jigsaw of Melody”s life.

Kept as a ”little” with no autonomy or responsibility and then as a slave with no privileges at all, she knew precious little that could point them in the right direction, so all they could do was investigate those parts which they could identify.

Since the bruises and scars Micah had observed when he”d helped her clean up pointed to long term, systematic abuse, and she freely admitted to being held against her will, it was most definitely time to call in Detective Storer and allow him to start an official investigation.

But Micah was determined to handle the information gathering himself. For now, at least until Melody was a little more comfortable with the situation.

”Do you know Daddy”s real name, Melody?”

”When I first met him, he told me his name was Thomas, but nothing more than that.”

Micah nodded, drawing his fingers through her hair as he continued to dry it.

”What about the address where you lived?”

Melody sighed. ”He treated me in all things as a little girl. That was our dynamic, so those weren’t things he expected me to know. But it wasn’t far from where I was taken… after. And therefore, not that far from here, I suppose. I guess I”d recognise the area if I saw it. I”m sorry I”m so little help.”

He patted her shoulder. ”Don”t worry; we”ll piece it all together.”

”I can give you the address of the group home, if that helps. Its name was Fairwinds, and it was less than an hour’s drive away. ”That”s an excellent start!” Micah grinned and leaned down to place a smacking kiss on her cheek.

He caught himself too late to stop it. It was an innocent thing but entirely inappropriate.