Catching Pretty (Lovely Broken Doll #2)

4. Ava

AVA

“ T his will hurt,” a younger Ty said, standing between my thighs as I sat on the bed at the school nurse’s office.

The door had closed behind the nurse only a few moments ago, but the silence in the small office was deafening.

It was as if we had always been alone together, him and I.

He dabbed the antiseptic onto a cotton pad, but as he applied it to my scratched knee, I barely felt it at all.

I only felt his hand resting flat and firmly against my inner thigh.

His breathing quickened.

Mine did, too.

I looked at his face as he followed his hand’s movement up my thigh with his eyes.

His lips were slightly parted, bright and wet. His dark eyebrows were knitted together; he was focused, but there was something more.

He was upset. But not quite upset.

It was an emotion I couldn’t put a name to nor explain, except that I felt something similar stirring in my lower belly. A strange heat.

When he lifted his gaze, I was shocked by his eyes.

The blue of his irises was gone, consumed by pupils as dark and shimmering as an oil pit.

Outside, birds chirped and the last shouts of children before being called back into class could be heard. But they seemed so far away from where I was, from where we were.

“I’m going to wash you clean of him,” he said, his voice so husky it was almost unrecognizable. “Every inch of your skin, every cell of your body. I’m going to cleanse you.”

His thumb made small, reassuring circles and when he grazed the scalloped lace edge of my panties, a hot ache went through me.

My breath hitched as something tightened in my belly.

I… I shouldn’t be feeling things like this for him. It was wrong.

Then, somehow, I wasn’t wearing any panties.

What? How did that happen?

I dug my teeth into my lower lip as he brushed his finger between my legs.

The sensation made me break out in goosebumps all over my body. I’d never experienced anything like it before.

And I wanted more.

I bucked my hips slightly, afraid to put into words this urgent need I hadn’t even known existed inside of me.

The crepe paper on the examination table crinkled as I gripped the edge.

When he slipped just the tip of two fingers into me, it took everything I had not to cry out.

My first instinct was pain.

But as he held his fingers there, I realized it wasn’t pain.

It was intensity .

A need.

There was a wetness between my thighs, and I worried I was leaking onto the crepe paper.

But when he pushed his fingers in, I felt how easily they slid deeper into me, all the way in, filling a part of me I never knew needed filling.

I forgot about the examination table. The nurse. The school.

All that existed was the pleasure that his fingers pushing in and out of me was giving me.

At first, he moved slowly, almost tenderly, but then it went faster. And then faster still.

I could feel his breath on my forehead. “I’m not going to stop till all you feel is me .”

I wanted to tell him that I didn't want him to stop. But I couldn’t speak. I could only whimper and moan as he worked my body.

I wanted to grab ahold of him, to hold him, to kiss him, to pull his hand closer, urging his fingers deeper.

But I couldn’t move apart from rocking my hips toward him.

It was as if my hands were tied down by my sides. I could almost feel ropes around them, even though I couldn’t see them.

The need for some kind of release soon became all that I could think about. A heated pressure had built in my stomach and I knew it couldn’t just keep growing. Could it?

There was something on the other side of this. I longed with every cell in my body to get there, wherever there was.

This wave began to crest, about to crash over me, and I wanted to scream at the pressure of it. But only a moan left my lips.

“Till I’m all over you,” he promised. “Till you’re full of me. Only me .”

My eyes shot open as I gasped for air, my heart pounding, disoriented and groggy from whatever drug was still coursing through my veins.

For a second, I just lay there, staring up at the delicate fabric of the pale-pink canopy above my head, struggling to piece together where I was.

The sheets felt like silk against my skin, cool and smooth, while the pillows cradled my head in a cloudlike softness. It was the kind of bed that should have offered comfort and safety.

But it didn’t.

The luxury, the comfort—it all felt wrong. Like a cage disguised in velvet.

My wrists throbbed, the skin raw and stinging from where the ropes had dug in. There was a bruise on the back of my neck and on my knees, too.

My throat was sore and dry from whatever he’d given me and something musky coated my tongue.

Between my legs I was soaked. I could feel my wetness dripping down the crook of my leg, running across my ass, pooling on the mattress.

A needy ache burned in my lower belly like a furnace and I squirmed in the bed.

I had been dreaming. And the sensation during my dream had been so real. The pressure of his fingers, the urgency as it thrust into me with increasing violence, the almost painful strain of every muscle in my body as I tried to come.

The agony of being denied it at the very last moment.

I glanced down. I was in a silk nightgown in a deep-crimson color. No robe. The bastard had changed me again.

Had my captor touched me while I was passed out? Was that why my memory of Ty had morphed into a dream of him fingering me?

I tried to feel for any lingering proof of him between my legs. But I couldn’t be sure, dream mixing with reality to muddy my drugged memory.

I just knew that I couldn’t give him a second chance to claim me against my will.

And I couldn’t give myself the temptation of liking it.

I sat up slowly, and a wave of dizziness hit me, making me press my hand to my forehead. The drug’s effects were still wearing off, leaving me foggy and weak.

When the room stopped spinning, I took in my surroundings.

I was in a four-poster bed, the dark wood spindles towering above me, intricately carved with designs that seemed almost too detailed to focus on.

I was in a cavernous bedroom, elegant in a way that felt far removed from reality. Gleaming wood floors stretched out before me, polished to a high shine that reflected the dim light filtering down from above.

Heavy dark wood furniture filled the room—ornate dressers and armoires, each piece meticulously carved with the same intricate detail as the bed.

There were touches of pale pink scattered throughout the room, softening the otherwise imposing atmosphere.

Something flickered in the back of my mind—a strange sense of familiarity.

I knew this place.

But figuring out where I knew this room from wasn’t my first concern. My first concern was getting the hell out of here .

I pushed the covers off me, wincing as my shoulder joints ached, and pushed myself out of the bed.

My legs were weak from disuse and from the drugs. Just getting my feet back underneath me took my breath away. Swaying dizzily, I stumbled forward and caught myself with my hands flat against the door.

I knew instantly that this hadn’t been the original door. It was lined with a flat piece of bolted steel, a strange industrial oddity in this dark gothic room.

Perhaps if I’d stopped to think, I’d have realized that a psychopath who took the time to line the fucking door with metal, wasn’t going to leave it unlocked.

I yanked at the door handle nonetheless, dots flashing in my vision as blood rushed to my head.

Locked.

Fucking locked.

“Let me out, asshole,” I screamed, banging my fists against the iron sheet.

Each slam sent sharp jolts of pain through my hand, but I didn’t stop. Not at first. Panic and adrenaline overrode the sting, fueled my desperate need to escape.

But as I kept going, it hit me— how pointless this was .

I’d seen people do the same thing in movies, banging and yelling like that’s all it would take for their captor to have a change of heart, unlock the door, and say, “Well, because you asked so nicely…”

The absurdity of it hit me like a slap. I was trapped, and this—this pathetic display—wasn’t going to change a damn thing.

I stopped, gasping for breath, my lungs wheezing as I leaned forward and rested my forehead against the cool, smooth surface.

My breath came out in ragged bursts, and I squeezed my eyes shut, a dull throb in my right hand.

I would not escape by the door.

But I would not give up.

The windows.

I ran to the pink drapes, certain a window would be behind it, perhaps even a door to a balcony, and my freedom.

If it was locked like the door, I’d use one of the dark wood armchairs to shatter the glass.

If I was lucky, I was on the ground floor and I could climb out.

If the bedroom where I was being held captive was on a high floor, I’d climb down a gutter, a vine of ivy, a few jutting stones on the facade of the house because risking my life would be better than staying prisoner.

My heart raced and sweat pricked at the back of my neck as I threw back the curtains, their soft rustle and scrape sounding like the scuttle of cockroaches.

My skin crawled as I stumbled back from the windows. A heavy pit sank deeper in my stomach. There was no way I was going to break through the glass in the window, because there was no glass at all in the window.

There was only red exposed brick, messy globs of concrete between them as if he’d done it himself.

He’d fucking bricked me in.

No light from the outside world. No chance I could catch the attention of a passing car or use a mirror to signal to a nearby house. I couldn’t even see where the fuck I was being kept.

Oh God. I was trapped. A prisoner.

Fuck him. I’d been stupid enough to think escape would be that simple.

He’d planned for this. Planned for me. He’d already thought of every way that I might escape and he’d foiled it in advance . He was one step ahead of me.

I could feel the walls closing in around me, the room tightening, suffocating. Panic swelled in my chest, threatening to take over.

Calm down, Ava. Think.

I forced myself to stop, to breathe.

I turned back to face the room, wringing my hands together to try and stop them shaking. I had to figure out my next move.

There had to be a way out, something I wasn’t seeing yet.

The first thing that caught my attention was the full-length mirror that took up the whole wall. It didn’t seem to fit the gothic bedroom. Too modern. Like it had been installed recently.

I walked toward it—toward my own reflection, the short crimson slip shifting across my body as I walked, an uneasy feeling growing in me.

I remembered Lisa grabbing my wrist before I started to change in one of those double-sized change rooms at Brown Thomas and telling me to always place my fingernail against the reflective surface.

If there was no gap between your fingernail and the reflected image, it was a one-way mirror .

I lifted my finger to the glass and pressed the tip of my finger to it.

Shit. There was no gap.

He was watching me from the other side.

A shiver went up my spine as I imagined my hulking masked stalker standing directly in front of me, watching me, his breath fogging up the glass.

I did what any self-respecting girl would do in my position. I stuck both my middle fingers up at him.

“Fuck you, asshole.”

Later I’d figure out a way to cover up at least some of this mirror.

If I hadn’t escaped, that was. Escape was still plan number one.

Through a second door I spotted an en suite. A quick inspection showed me a dark marble bathroom, a large claw-foot tub in the center, its white porcelain contrasting starkly with the shadowy tones of the room, the bronze clawed feet adding a touch of vintage opulence. The polished marble floor gleamed under the soft, warm light of a hanging chandelier.

The air was thick with the smell of jasmine and I knew he’d bathed me in here.

In here was yet another full-length mirror taking up most of one wall.

I used the toilet, scowling at the mirror because I knew he was still watching.

I walked back into the bedroom and studied the room and found more details in the low lighting from an iron chandelier.

The dark wood paneled ceilings were high and molded. I spotted several small air vents, but they were too high for me to reach even if I stacked furniture into a makeshift ladder. Besides, they’d be too small for me to crawl through.

There was a large antique armoire which I ran to. If I was going to escape, I had to do it in something more than a tiny slip.

Perhaps a pair of jeans and a warm hoodie. Anything to make me feel less naked. Less exposed.

But inside I found only silk dresses and slips in pinks, reds, and deep purples, hanging on satin padded hangers. All of them providing little more coverage than the one I had on.

Bastard.

I didn’t have to look at the designer labels to know that every single garment was expensive, but tastefully expensive.

My captor didn’t just have money. He came from money. And therefore power.

I could be stuck in the middle of a remote island on the other side of the world from Ireland for all I knew.

I shivered as I rummaged through the clothing, recognizing not only designer tags, but that each garment was my exact size .

It shouldn’t have surprised me. He’d had access to my body for what was possibly days now.

But I suspected he’d bought these long before he captured me. He’d been watching me for long enough.

My kidnapper was patient, diligent, always two steps ahead. There was a cold intelligence to everything he’d set into play.

He’d used Cormac as a pawn to capture me before killing him. Perhaps he’d even used Dr. Vale. Was the “High Lord” just another role in his twisted game?

Then a deeper fear sent ice racing through my spine.

Was this the man who took Liath? Had she stood where I was standing now, in this very room, staring at the dresses he’d selected to fit her like a glove?

Was the only thing for me to look forward to now—death?

I closed the armoire doors and leaned against them, staring at my pretty prison.

I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that something about this room was familiar, a strange déjà vu creeping over me.

Then it hit me all at once like a punch to the gut.

How had I not recognized it before?

I’d been too disoriented when I woke, too consumed by panic, too desperate to find a way out. But now, as the room came into sharper focus, I knew. The carved wooden bedposts, the pale-pink canopy, the heavy velvet drapes— this was my childhood bedroom.

My heart skipped a beat, and a cold dread settled over me.

My captor hadn’t just taken me anywhere.

He had brought me home.

I heard footsteps echoing down the hallway, growing closer with each passing second.

He was coming!

My heart hammered in my chest, panic swelling as I frantically scanned the room for something— anything —to defend myself.

My eyes landed on the heavy brass lamp sitting on the bedside table. Without thinking, I snatched it up, gripping the cool metal tightly in my shaking hands.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door.

My breath hitched, my pulse roaring in my ears as several locks clicked from the other side, the sound muffled by the metal.

The door creaked open, and I raised the lamp, ready to strike.

But the second I saw him—now without his skeleton mask on—the weapon slipped from my hands, falling to the floor with a dull thud.

He stood there, his dark figure framed by the dim light of the hallway. Confusion crashed into me, so intense it left me breathless.

Scáth.

My stalker, my protector— he had kidnapped me.