Chapter 12 Collette
It was still dark. Everything was dark.
My eyes had adjusted to it, but in the pitch blackness that wasn’t much of a comfort. There wasn’t anything comforting about this entire situation.
I thought at least a day had passed, given my body’s hunger and the need to sleep.
Food had taken over all rational thought. It was time for me to have a real meal. I’d eaten the food from the refrigerator twice with no ill results.
He must not have wanted to drug me. There were other things that could be done without using coercion to get what he wants.
All the things he’d done weren’t going to harm me physically. He needed me to be healthy and able to handle whatever he thought of mentally to annoy me.
Darkness was a new psychological torture that I hadn’t been expecting to deal with. It wasn’t unheard of in the foster care world. It wasn’t something new for me.
Foster parents were notorious for throwing an unruly child into a closet to break them. It was sometimes the only way they could discipline us without leaving marks. Sometimes it wasn’t even for discipline they just needed a break or had to go somewhere.
No food, no light, or anyone to talk to for hours, it had been horrible. The only thing that had kept me sane had been Andy.
The Bakers had never done anything like that. We had been old enough and knew that to misbehave would bring consequences of a serious nature. They had always believed in talking about problems and working through them, but it had been ingrained from a small age.
There had been a plan in place to see if there were any problems. Andy and I always had an exit plan. That was why this felt so much worse without my wingman.
This man holding me had a new facet to his personality every few hours. Worse than an onion, his layers continued to affect me in strange new ways. His very presence could make me tingle and want to jump his bones. This very idea made me wish my skin would crawl, but my attraction to him deepens. I had to be crazy.
The only reason I hadn’t done it yet was because he was a killer. I didn’t want to have sex with a killer.
Although, would it really hurt if I had sex with him? It wasn’t going to make him less of a killer? It might be really good because of the possibility of being caught. Something to consider if the opportunity presented itself.
I’d done everything he’d asked so far. He couldn’t be upset with me when he hasn’t given me any instructions.
What kind of psycho did that?
Guessing what he wanted me to do wasn’t the best way to accomplish his goals. No one was a mind reader. If he’d shown me a set of rules for how to behave or his expectations, I’d missed them.
I could work with rules. It was how job requirements were written or more like why. An instruction manual of what to do would have been helpful. Anything but the guessing game.
Mr. Holdt was the kind of bastard that didn’t want to be helpful. He enjoyed making things as hard as possible.
It was as if he were testing me to see if I could make it through any kind of hardship.
I wished I could say that I was going to come out with flying colors, but I had too many triggers and traumas for that to even be something that could happen.
The first time the rules of the contract had been glanced at, I had been in a hurry to get the job any way I could. The second time when he’d read the rules, I’d listened carefully. My outward nonchalance was just to keep him off guard. It was the only way to get the upper hand with him.
Something I instinctively knew would be the only thing that kept me going. I had to maintain his interest. Because what happened when somebody didn’t want to play anymore, they got rid of the toy. That was all I seemed to be. So, I had to keep him amused until I had everything figured out.
With nothing else to do, I lay on the bed again. I had given up wearing anything but my underwear and bra. Business attire wasn’t the most comfortable thing to wear when lounging around a basement home.
It was dark, so the need to feel self-conscious about my body was gone.
My eyes closed, and I drifted off again. It had happened over and over again because I had no idea if it was day or night. With nothing else to do, I allowed myself to rest. Well, as best as I could.
Sleep came fitfully over the next few hours.
Something woke me.
A noise or movement in the room.
I lay still, not wanting to alert whoever was there that I was awake.
“Fuck.”
The word was whispered but felt loud in the darkness.
He was in the room with me. Every hair on my body stood on end. I couldn’t tell if it was from fright or arousal.
The scent of cinnamon, cardamom, and allspice, hung in the air. Christmas and holidays were supposed to be happy moments, but his scent eclipsed any bad memories associated with the holidays.
It was him. I already knew him well enough to identify him by his scent.
Why on earth had I remembered the sexy smell of his body? It made me feel that I was attuned to him. Was my sex drive really that amped up?
“Hello, Ms. DeLandro. I’ve cleared my schedule to spend some time with you.”
“Oh, well isn’t that just ducky,”
I barked in anger. Mad at myself that I was halfway attracted to him. I stood and began to put my clothes on.
Even if he couldn’t see me, I felt more like myself if I had clothes covering my body. A suit of armor to protect me from whatever he might throw my way.
His chuckle sounded from the couch area. It hit me dead center, and I hated my body's reaction to him.
“I feel that a more hands on approach might suit our arrangement. I would hate for you to feel neglected or leave out of boredom.”
Boredom? Ha! He had no idea what a foster kid could do to entertain themselves without access to electronics or toys. I’d been breastfed on abandonment and nothingness.
If he thought that I was going to give up because I was bored, then he really had no clue who he was messing with.
He’d just made himself at home as if walking into where someone was sleeping wasn’t a big deal.
Maybe it wasn’t for him. Afterall, it was his home—or at least one of them anyway.
A shrug of my shoulders expressed my annoyance, but I didn’t respond. He was the boss, I was just his assistant, waiting around in the dark to do his bidding.
“Meals from now on will be served when you ask me to feed them to you.”
The stern tone of voice he used was that of a father to a child that needed to be disciplined.
I felt as if I’d been slapped. He wanted to feed me. How weird was that?
“As in by hand or just to make sure that I have food to eat?”
A deep breath of air helped me to swallow the revulsion I felt at his words.
He hadn’t mentioned it when he’d given me the rules. There were worse things that he could have asked me to do.
Rubbing my feet with his dick, peeing on me or taking a dump, were also on the nope list, but feeding me wasn’t that terrible comparatively.
Thankfully the darkness covered my reaction as I sank to the bed.
“From my hand of course. I’ll choose what you eat and then make sure that you savor it.”
He answered in a firm voice.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather starve.”
I crossed my arms in a gesture of defiance.
“Well, it must feel very powerful to be able to turn down food, when all you have to do is leave.”
His rich laugh filled the room, “You have a strength of character that I’ve come to admire.”
“It’s really delicious of you to think I have a choice to leave. I’m not done with you yet, Mr. Holdt.”
I knew when the chips were down I’d give in and ask for him to feed me, but not until we’d danced around each other for a while first.
“Oh, now you’re using food puns.”
The smile could be heard in his words. “You think if you butter me up then maybe I’ll fall for whatever strange idea you have to offer me next?”
The air stirred as he stood.
I was startled to find him standing in front of me at the side of the bed.
He leaned in and put an arm on each side as he spoke in a low, deep voice.
“Oh, Ms. DeLandro, I’m going to enjoy making you learn to heel.”
His finger traced the edges of my face.
“You may find this distasteful, but it is your choice to stay. All you have to do is say the word.”
“As for being done with me, I think you’ll find that it’s the other way around. When I’m done with you, you’ll be gone.”
The threat echoed ominously in the room.
Abruptly, he turned and walked to the elevator.
“Remember, you chose this.”
I fell back onto the bed as the doors closed.
A pillow over my face was the only way I knew to muffle the scream that I needed to let out.
“AGH!!!!”
I let it all go. The frustration, the anger, and those few intrigued emotions had to be released.
He wanted to train me like a dog. I couldn’t imagine the reasons he’d even want to have a woman respond in this type of manner.
The world he worked in was all businesslike. It came with perks of all sorts and women that would have jumped in his bed at any time.
True. they might not have heeled in the way he wanted in the beginning, but there were so many women that wanted to be a submissive to the billionaire type.
Why was he bent on having someone like me?
This was what he was hiding. His messed up thoughts about what he wanted from a woman. He didn’t want a woman, he wanted someone to obey him. Be his slave. Care for his every need.
He got off on obedience. I was almost certain that he couldn’t even get it up. While an assistant did most of the day to day operations that were beneath a CEO and owner of a company such as Holdt Tech, this was degrading to my intelligence.
Anger filled me. It was going to be a hot day in hell before I let a man dictate my food needs.
Water on the other hand had been plentiful. When the food had disappeared from the refrigerator, a case of water had taken its place. Hydration was important when food was in short supply.
With my hands in front of me to make sure that I didn’t bump into anything, I made my way to the restroom.
While I hadn’t been a large woman to begin with, the college years of fast foods and horrible eating habits had added on more than a few pounds to my wiry frame.
Foster homes weren’t big on letting their wards have all the food they wanted. It was rationed and some places even locked the pantries and refrigerators to keep us from eating anything that they didn’t put in front of us.
Having only a meal or two a day was normal. Which is why in college, I’d had the meal plan included as part of my financial aid. Eating had been much easier and there were so many ways to take some extras with me for when I couldn’t make it to the cafeteria.
After the first couple of years, I’d made enough to live off campus and cooked to save money. I’d still had more food each meal than most days I’d been in foster care.
He was dealing with a pro in the matters of starvation techniques.
Why didn’t the military use foster children for undercover missions where they might be captured? We would have survived much easier than most soldiers that came from other types of backgrounds because we’d had years of experience. Dark spaces, lack of food, being bullied, were all part of foster care 101.
As I moved from the bathroom, I paused in front of the intercom, ready to call his pretentious ass back down here.
If it was my choice to leave, then I was going to do it.
Finger hovering over the intercom, I stood there realizing that as much as I personally hated him I couldn’t leave.
Andy’s killer was close by, and I was the only thing that was standing up for justice. No one else was going to care or try to find a way to make sure that Ian Holdt paid for his crimes.
His words continued to ring through my brain as I went and took a seat on the sofa.
“It’s your choice.”
What did that even mean?
He was dictating all of the rules. There weren’t any signs that he’d negotiate or try to come to some sort of compromise. It was his way or the highway.
What kind of choice was that anyway? It wasn’t one.
“It’s your choice.”
I repeated out loud, feeling the words as if they might reveal some great truth to me.
“Damn, straight it’s my choice. I’m going to make sure you pay for every minute of it.”
I mumbled under my breath not loud enough to be heard by the ears in the room.
“It’s my choice and I’m here to stay.”