12. Marisol
12
MARISOL
Yeah, right .
I sip from my wine. “You’ll let me go home?”
Salvatore exhales and scrubs his jaw. “Yes. If you want,” he says reluctantly.
This messes heavily with my plans to make him think I’m meek enough that I can attempt another escape. Is he being sincere or is this a test to see if I need more Dungeon Fun Time?
“I put you in the basement,” he continues, “because I thought I was protecting you. But I was wrong. I shouldn’t try to control you. I only want you here if you want to be here.”
“In your basement?” More poison drips into my voice than I intended. I drive my nails into my leg under the table. Chill the fuck out .
“No. You have my word. I’ll never do that again. If you choose to stay, things will be different. You’ll get access to a monitored computer and cell phone, but otherwise, you’ll be free to come and go from the house as you please. I just ask that you bring a guard of your choosing.”
I buy myself time to think by taking another sip of wine. Motionless as a snake, Salvatore watches me.
If he’s giving me an out, of course I’ll take it. I’m not going to stay here so his Highness can change his mind again and take my toys away. But if this is some ploy to test my loyalty, I’ll fail if I seem too eager. I have to be patient.
Ugh . Not my strong suit.
“Why the sudden change of heart?” I ask when the silence has drawn on for too long.
“I… lost track of my goals. I was so concerned with how Junior might get to you, I thought the basement was the only surefire way to protect you?—”
“You said—” I bite my tongue and drop my gaze.
Salvatore places his hand over mine. It makes my skin crawl. “It’s okay. You can speak your mind. I want to hear what you have to say.”
My mouth kicks in before my brain can. “You said the basement was to punish me.”
Salvatore’s eyes flash, and he squeezes my hand. “You escaped when I told you not to.”
“You kidnapped me!”
“You’re right,” he says immediately.
It drives the anger out of me, leaving me empty. His thumb rubs over the back of my hand, and I blink in surprise.
He’s changing tactics.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says. I raise an eyebrow, and he huffs a laugh. “Yes, I know. But you haven’t seen what Junior’s capable of. If you leave my house, he’s going to hunt you down.”
He’s just trying to scare me , I tell myself even as Junior’s manic eyes flash in my mind.
“What if I can stand up for myself?”
“Do you own a gun?”
“No.”
He smirks. Smug asshole. His thumb continues its repetitive, distracting motion over my skin. I want to yank my hand away, but I don’t want to piss him off.
“Junior regularly takes down other capable men and women. He’s a bastard, but a competent one. I wouldn’t send any of my men out alone to deal with him.”
“Will you give me a gun then?” My docile mask is slipping off, but he seems sincere, and I want answers. If this is another trick, I just hope I won’t end up worse off than where I started.
“Can you use one?”
“Point and shoot, right?” I’ve handled lots of guns in Demon Blaster, how different could it be?
“Those are the essentials, yes. I can arrange for you to have one. Is there anything else you need?”
“Money. Just enough to get established.” It’s an absolute stretch to ask for this, but he is offering. I twitch my fingers under his wrist.
The corner of his mouth tilts up. “I’ll make sure you have enough. Anything else?”
My brain works double-time to consider what else I’d need and the potential ramifications of asking for them.
I’ll be in debt to a gangster. Probably not a great idea.
“I won’t be able to pay you back right away. I’ll need some time to get a job.”
His expression softens. “You don’t owe me anything. Consider them gifts.”
Who is this Jekyll and Hyde man who throws me in a basement and makes me shit in a bucket for two days and then turns around and gives me everything I ask for?
“If you run into any trouble at all, promise me you’ll call. My number will be in your phone.”
“Why should I call?” I say with more than a little sarcasm. “You’ll be watching me, won’t you?”
“I will.”
I blame the sudden flush of heat on the wine and finally slip my hand out from under his to place it onto my lap.
God, I need to get my taste in men re-evaluated.
“Cameras, right? That’s how you’ve been keeping track of me?”
“Yes.”
“How many do you have in my apartment?”
“Just the one. In your?—”
“Actually, I’d like to find it myself, if you haven’t taken it out yet.”
“I haven’t.” Salvatore drinks deeply from his water. He adds offhandedly, “Would you like a prize if you find it?”
I frown even as my heart rate picks up. “What kind of prize?”
“How does a hundred thousand dollars sound?”
It sounds like more money than I’ve ever had in my entire life.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, trying to play it cool even as my voice pitches up.
I consider him for a few long moments. He’s trying to buy me back. As far as strategies go, I like this one considerably more.
I reach over to take a sweet-looking twisted bread off a tray while Salvatore watches me approvingly. I bite into it, and the sugar and butter coat my tongue. It’s so delicious—but the rich flavor rings out like an alarm, and I drop the rest of the pastry onto my plate and wipe my hands delicately on a napkin.
A few pastries and a smile are all it takes to convince me to do anything, just like with Kristin. I have to be stronger than this.
“Why are you really doing all this? I mean, with me. And don’t say it’s to give me a job. Tell me the truth—” I almost add a please at the end, but cut it off at the last minute. I can be civil, but I won’t be sweet. Not if I don’t have to.
Salvatore gives a short, husky laugh, and it’s so genuine and unexpected that I almost smile with him.
“I think you know, Marisol.”
I frown. More hot and cold then. “Why don’t you say it out loud anyway? Just to make sure we’re all clear.”
Salvatore glances toward Giordana. “Could you give us the room?”
He waits until she leaves, and when he turns back to me, I have a sudden sense of dread at what he’s about to say.
He doesn’t waste a second.
“I’m obsessed with you.”
“What?” The words tumble over in my brain without meaning. “ What? ”
“I’m obsessed. With you.” Salvatore rakes a hand through his hair and shakes his head, staring at a spot on the wall behind me. “I couldn’t tell you when it happened, I just know it has. I’ve been watching you daily for months?—”
“Whoa, what ?”
“And I can’t stop. I thought if I took you home, it wouldn’t be as bad. I had an honest intention of hiring you to work for me. The team you’d be on—you’d love it.”
“How do you know what I’d love?” I clench the armrests of my chair like I’m about to pitch forward from the sharp edge of a skyscraper. Why would anyone be obsessed with some ill-adapted geek? With a psycho?
Salvatore shifts in his chair, picks up a knife from the table absentmindedly, sets it back down, and flicks his gaze back to me. “That’s what I do. I watch people. I find out every single desire and fear in their little black hearts, and I use it. I know you want thrill and a challenge, and you can’t see a rule without dreaming up a hundred different ways to break it. You’re impulsive and vindictive and stubborn. You’d love working for me. For most people, it takes blackmail, money, or a promise of power to work on my cyber team, but I know you well enough to be damn certain that you’d do it for free, just for kicks.”
Salvatore becomes more animated as he speaks—as if the entire time I’ve known him, he was sleepwalking and only now he’s waking up. I want to shut him down. Stuff the words back into his mouth.
“After you finally came home, I thought the need in me would lessen and finally let me breathe, but it’s so much worse .”
My heart slams against my chest, and my breathing narrows to thin sips of air. Salvatore erupts from his chair, circles behind it, and grips the headrest with fingers like talons. He leans over to stare at me. “Since you’ve been here, I can barely work. I can barely think. I just watch you all day and wonder what you’re doing and what you’re planning. I’ve seen you pick apart every piece of furniture you touch, and I know about your tally marks on the bedroom wall.”
This is a thousand times bigger than I imagined. I thought he was ignoring me all that time, but he was watching me? Like he’s apparently been doing for months?
The bath bubble solution in Salvatore’s bathroom? It absolutely is the same kind I have at home—cherry blossom. Some unnamed emotion settles low in my belly.
“So you’re…” I’m about to say in love with me , but that’s not what he said. He said obsessed . I try again even though I have to swallow to get my voice to work. “You’re still going to let me go?”
“My preference is to keep you.” Salvatore pauses and levels a stare at me to emphasize his point. I shake my head imperceptibly. “I would very much like to keep you. And I do believe it’s in your best interest to stay with me. But I won’t stop you from leaving. I’m taking steps so if you choose to leave my house, I can protect you, but it won’t be as effective. There’s only so much I can do. If you stay, I want to change things between us. We can go at your speed. Dinner, movies, walks on the beach… whatever you’d like. Anything you’d want.”
My stomach dips with a woozy rush , and I jump up from my chair, nearly knocking it over.
What. The. Fuck .
The emotion in my belly? I finally recognize it as a kind of twisted excitement at being the center of anyone’s attention, but especially Salvatore’s.
Some cosmic entity is laughing their ass off right now. I helped my mom stalk my dad for years until I started living with Kristin, and I swore I’d never get near that level of crazy again.
How did I escape the orbit of my mom’s obsession only to fall into the center of Salvatore’s? What is wrong with me?
Dinner, movies… I want to laugh. We are so far past the realm of normal dating that we might as well be on the moon. And the way he described me— impulsive, vindictive, stubborn —that’s not how you describe someone you like.
Salvatore doesn’t move, just watches, as I step back and then forward. Farther, closer. I can’t decide if I want to run or stab him.
“You’re crazy,” I say finally.
Salvatore laughs without conviction. “Maybe. Probably.”
“How many other women have you obsessed over? Did you throw them in the basement too?”
“No. There’s only you. I haven’t been with another woman since I started watching you.”
I scoff, even as my face burns. “I didn’t even realize you were interested in that sort of thing. You’ve completely ignored me since you brought me here.”
Salvatore circles closer to me as he talks. “I’d cut those jeans off and suffocate between your thighs right now if you’d let me. We could see how many fingers I could fit in you before you came. That ex of yours wouldn’t, but I’d love to spank and choke you. I’m very interested in that sort of thing.”
Burning, crackling heat sears through me. I should throw something at him. Be reckless. Suffocate him just like he’s proposing. He’s close enough to touch now. Close enough to see the intense amber of his eyes, the hard muscles shifting under his sweater, the impressive outline of his cock through his jeans.
I clench my jaw. “What’s holding you back? You’ve already kidnapped me. Imprisoned me. You could take me too, couldn’t you?”
He smirks. Suffocation sounds very tempting right now.
“I could justify kidnapping you because I was trying to protect you. I’m not going to fuck you until you are certain you’re ready. You’ve managed to fascinate me with only the back of your head for six months. If you spread your legs for me and have a change of heart, it’s going to kill me. I won’t touch you until you’re dripping wet and begging for it.”
“ Jesus , Salvatore.” My blush only deepens when I remember how often I’ve masturbated in my computer chair. “You’ve seen me masturbate, haven’t you?”
He’s silent for a moment. Then, “Yes.”
“What do you do?”
“I turn off the monitor for about ten minutes and delete that segment of the recording so that no one else will see.” He pauses. “And then I use the cherry blossom lotion I had stolen from your apartment to jerk myself off.”
I place a palm on the wall next to me so I don’t slide down on shaky legs. All of the tension in my body gathers into a single point between my legs, pulsing, needy, frustrated.
I close my eyes for a moment to find an emotion inside me that’s not just wanton desire. I can’t use that right now. I haven’t forgiven him. I’m still furious.
I take that spark of anger and coax it into something more substantial.
How dare he tell me all this after he threw me into a literal fucking dungeon ?
He kidnapped me.
He stood up to Grant for me. Tended to my wounds— no . I watched as Mom tracked Dad down and obsessed over him for years. He hated her for it. This is wrong and unhealthy. I’m—I’m not my parents.
“Marisol.”
I startle, my eyes flying open. He’s right in front of me, looking down with an unfamiliar softness in his normally sharp gaze.
“Stay,” he murmurs, as if his admission of truth was a minor moral failing like jaywalking or cheating at cards and not a huge, arousing—no, infuriating —violation of privacy. “I was wrong to try to control you. Stay, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Whatever I want sounds so good right now.
I want to be special. To be loved.
But he didn’t say love.
I take a deep breath.
“You kidnapped me. Took my phone, my computer, and my cat. You imprisoned me.” My body is thrumming with the desire to touch him, to force him to make good on all his teasing. Salvatore watches me carefully, his gaze darting between my eyes and my wine-stained lips.
“Tonight…” I let the word linger, tipping up to bring my face closer to his, stopping just before our lips touch. He cups my face in his hand, and I smile invitingly. “I’m going to sleep in my own bed, and then tomorrow you’re going to take me home. Alone.”
He needs to experience the tiniest fraction of suffering that he put me through. Even if I’m dying to be touched, I’ll survive without him. God made vibrators for a reason.
But the lazy smile that crosses his face isn’t sarcastic or angry or mean.
He looks proud. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I drop back onto my heels, surprised. He’s supposed to be frustrated, not pleased, but as he takes in my little scowl, his face brightens even more. He frames my face with his hands and watches me for a few moments like I’m the most precious creature in the world.
“You are perfect, Marisol.”
My eyelashes flutter. Lips part.
And then his hands drop to his sides, and it’s like someone’s flicked off all the light in the room.
With a feather-light touch, Salvatore rests his hand along the small of my back. “Let’s go. I’ll walk you to your room.”
When I’m still not asleep hours later, lying alone in the most luxurious bed of my life and squeezing my thighs together with nothing in between, I think, I am a giant, fucking idiot.