Chapter 7
Irelynn
The first thing I see is a rich, brown wood ceiling that arches high. For a moment, I just lay there, blinking in confusion at the beautifully stained timber that’s replaced the water damaged sight I’ve been greeted with first thing, every morning, for the last year and a half.
Where am I?
My body aches, as though I’ve been hit with a violent flu. My head pounds.
My mouth is so dry, I think I could drink a pool of water and still be parched.
Focusing on my body, I do my best to wiggle my toes, then my fingers.
I’m not paralyzed. I just feel heavy. Too heavy.
Where am I?
The lighting is dim and warm. The bed I’m lying on is the comfiest thing I’ve ever lain on in my twenty-one years. The comforter is plush and black.
It’s not mine. Going on how soft it is, like liquid in fabric form, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s got a thread count of a bajillion.
I’m not in a hospital, either.
There’s no hospital with sheets like these and a ceiling like that.
The violent throb in my head when I try to pull myself up has me laying back down against a cloud-soft pillow. If I weren’t so obviously not in my space, I’d moan in pleasure.
Where am I?
At my movement, a chirpy sound I recognize precedes the feeling of little paws traveling up the length of my body. But of course, he must walk on my body. Like every morning when my alarm blares, Lucy is there to walk the plank of me, before he shoves his little nose into mine.
I moan when Lucy bumps me with his nose, turning my head to the side as I do my very best to lift my hand to give my boy a pet.
Then, I realize that I’m not in a room I recognize—not in my bed—under my blankets—and Lucy is here with me.
How? What happened?
Did I get hurt? I’m so sore, it wouldn’t surprise me to find I’ve been hit by a bus.
Or, considering the softer than heaven bed I’m in, maybe it was one of those massive, armoured SUV’s that billionaires get chauffeured around in. Maybe Mr. Money Bags in the back seat felt bad about his beast of a vehicle hitting me and brought me to his overly comfortable guest room to let me heal.
Lucy meows, shattering the fantasy. If someone hit me with their car, they wouldn’t have known to bring Lucy along.
What happened?
Moaning, I do my very best to sit up in the bed. The room spins. I blink hard and slow, my eyes struggling to focus through the dim light. Lucy pushes into my lap, clearly hungry for grub. How long has it been since he’s eaten? How long have I been here?
Where is here?
With another garbled moan, I press my fingertips into my eyes.
My head is pounding.
“You’re awake.” A low, male voice sounds softly in the space to my left. I freeze, my fingertips still in my sockets.
My mind races. I’m in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room—and there is a man in the room with me.
The last man I remember having any contact with is Hank—when he asked me out.
Oh no. No, no, no.
I’m in his bed!My body feels as though I’ve been hit by a train, and although I don’t drink—I figure—if I did, this could be what a hangover feels like.
Oh no!
“Did we—did I—did we—” I gasp, unable to pull my hands from my eyes just yet. If I don’t look, maybe none of this will be real. “Did we have sex?”
There’s a long, heavy silence. Then, rustling. Movement.
I want to die. Being hit by a car feels damn favorable to finding out I’ve not only tossed my virginity away on a night I can’t remember—but to my boss, no less.
I want to cry.
If I cry, will he fire me?
Lucy’s tail swipes across my chin as he turns around in my lap, reminding me of his presence as the man speaks, closer now. “Is that something you do often?”
“What?” Affronted, I drop my hands and let out a squeak of alarm that has the pounding in my head increasing. “You!”
“Me.” Tattooed hands dip casually into the pockets of his black suit pants as he peers down at me from where he stands at the edge of the bed—his bed—far too close to me. “Answer my question, Little Blue.”
Little Blue.The name has a spark of fear igniting in my chest as a flash of memory, distorted and horrific, flares in my mind.
Him.
Leaning in.
A prick of pain.
A kiss.
Darkness.
“You—”
He interrupts me, his voice dripping with warning. “Do you often find yourself in the beds of unfamiliar men?”
“What?” I gape. Is he for real, right now? I sputter, “N-no!”
I’m still trying to make sense of my fractured memories, trying to piece the shards of a broken, distorted puzzle together.
“Yet you assume we’ve slept together.” The ice dripping from his words is enough to chill me to the bone.
Glancing around the room, I note that it’s impossibly large. And there’s more than one door.
Which door would lead to escape?
If I grabbed Lucy and ran, could I make it into the bustling streets of New York to escape him?
“Irelynn.” The clipped call of my name has my eyes snapping to his. A deadly blue pulls me in, threatening to pull me under.
I shiver. “What?”
“Why do you think we’ve slept together, if it’s not something you do often?”
“I—I’m sore. Everywhere.” I shake my head. “I have a headache. I don’t drink—not ever.” I rub my temples and cringe. “I think I’m hungover—” I look around the room again before glaring up at the man. “How did I get here?”
How is he here?
I’m so confused right now. My thoughts are disjointed. Panic flares before being chilled by blue eyes that threaten to bind me to this place, this sweet nightmare, forever. Pieces of the puzzle flicker, illuminated, only to grow dark again. Mental fingertips stretch into the abyss of murky depths, searching for answers that play out of reach, taunting.
I ask again—no, I demand, “How did I get here?”
He doesn’t sever his gaze from me. “Plane, then car. From the car to the bed, in my arms.”
In his arms.
Wait…what?
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t under—” I pause, my brain playing catch-up. “Did you say plane?”
He nods, that cool gaze still fixed on me.
Lucy gives up getting my attention and curls into my lap.
Ice begins to freeze the blood that pumps inside my veins. Gooseflesh prickles my skin. The hairs raise on my arms, the back of my neck. A wash of something cool, like dread, slithers down the length of my spine. It pools heavy and clammy in my belly.
I wheeze. “Plane.”
Again, he nods.
My vision blurs. I swallow hard and cringe at the way my throat feels too dry. I croak, “Like—you don’t mean—like—an airplane?”
His head cocks, just a little. “What other kind of plane is there?”
Oh, my God.
Oh. My. God.
Horror strikes me like a lash to the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs.
I’m surrounded by air. A heavy, weighted kind of air. I’m gasping, but I can’t pull any into my lungs.
I can’t breathe.
“You’re joking.” I finally realize, laughing a little at the hilarity of it all. Then I wince, because I’ve got a doozy of a headache. Now that I’m low on air, I’m feeling a little lightheaded, too.
“I don’t joke,” he says simply, matter of fact. As though this conversation is entirely normal. Something the crazy man of my dreams—nightmares—obsession—does every day.
Another unnerved giggle spills from between my lips. My eyes dart past him to the wall with the windows. Right now, they’re covered by heavy, dark blue velvet drapes. The urge to see what lies beyond them is so strong, before I can think it through, I’m pushing Lucy my from my lap. Ignoring his meow of protest and the pain that jars every inch of my body, I find myself running across the room for the windows.
Pulling back the drapes, confusion turns to dread, that morphs to icy horror. There hadn’t even been a dusting of snow outside my apartment in New York.
Outside, snow blankets the land in a way that tells me there’s a lot of it. It tops trees for what looks like miles and miles surrounding this place where I’m being—what? Kept?
I swallow a swell of panic.
Snow weighs needled branches heavily, making even the trees appear sad. I can tell it’s cold outside. Really cold. A chill clings to the air, ribbons of fog weaving down from the blanket of it that tops the forest trees to lick at the snowy floor.
Starbursts of frost stretch in the corners of the black window grills like a spider’s web, telling of a cold I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced.
Slowly, I turn to find the man from the roulette table—the man who has haunted me every moment since. He’s watching me. Studying me. Hunting me even now.
There’s a coiled calm about him. It should be impossible, but he feels even more dangerous now than he had at that table.
I feel chilled to the bone.
“Where am I?”
His hands are still in his pockets. He looks entirely put together, calm, and unaffected. I’m breaking apart at the seams.
“You’re in my home.”
A whimper falls from my lips. I hadn’t meant for it to slip free, and clap my hand over my mouth.
My thoughts rattle. A tremble is overtaking my body. I whisper, “Where is that?”
“Russia.”
My stomach drops.
“How?” It takes everything in me not to fall to my knees. I’m shocked. Horrified. Confused.
He explains simply, “I took you.”
“You—you took me?” I gasp. I can’t breathe. I really—can’t—breathe.
“Yes.”
I shake my head, fingers clawing at the shirt that covers my chest. I’m still in my jammies, I realize. An oversized t-shirt and panties. Nothing more.
Oh, God. I can’t believe this.
My mind is spinning.
I think I might faint.
My vision blurs. A sharp fragment from my shattered puzzle slams into place, and I flinch.
Me, waking in the middle of the night in my room. Him, above me drenched in shadow as he whispered dark words.
I point a finger that trembles at him before I slap it against my now wildly beating heart. It’s rioting so violently inside my chest, so overcome with fear, I’m terrified it’s going to tear from my flesh to bleed out on his gleaming wood floor.
I sob.
Words leave my lips on a strangled breath, “You kidnapped me.”
“I did,” he confirms. There’s not even an ounce of apology in his words.
My world falls out from under my feet, leaving me to free fall into a very dark, very terrifying nightmare.