He left the light on, and while I wanted to think that he was being kind, I doubted it. Serge didn’t strike me as the sort of person who did things out of the kindness of his heart. He’d done it for some reason. Maybe to show that if I was agreeable, things wouldn’t be so bad.

As if anything that happened in this room wouldn’t be bad.

I still didn’t have windows, but I felt like I could better judge the passage of time this way. While I didn’t know what day it was, or even what time of day, I was confident that only a few hours had passed before the door opened again.

Then again, that could’ve had less to do with light and more to do with the fact that the pain in my torso had lessened but not completely faded. It wasn’t Serge this time, but I didn’t lower my guard as the scrawny guy from before brought a paper cup and plate over to me. Just because someone wasn’t big didn’t mean they couldn’t be vicious.

My father was proof of that.

The guy set the food and drink down in front of me, removed the tape from my wrists and rattled something off in what sounded like Russian but wasn’t quite Russian. Croatian maybe. Or Romanian. One of those countries that had been part of the Soviet Union before it dissolved. I did know some Russian. I wouldn’t have needed it as much as an FBI agent as I would have if I’d been trying to make it into the CIA, but I’d studied it along with Spanish, French, and Korean. Spanish was the only one I’d really been any good at, but I knew enough Russian to know that it wasn’t what this guy was speaking.

“Thank you.” I shifted around, not bothering to hide my winces of pain as I moved. If I let this guy think I was weaker than I was, I might be able to use it in the future, either to catch him off-guard or to play him and Serge off each other.

For the first time in a while, I wished I’d made it further at Quantico.

“Welcome.” The word was heavily accented, but now I knew that he understood at least some English, probably more than he let on.

Filing that away under possibly useful information, I turned my attention to the food in front of me. Despite how much I was hurting, my stomach growled. I forced myself to take a small sip of water first and was pleasantly surprised to find it cool and clean. The food was a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple, but the fruit wasn’t rotten, and the bread wasn’t moldy. I hoped that meant they cared whether I got sick. I took my time eating, in part to keep myself from throwing up if my body decided it didn’t want to accept food just yet, but it was more about having something to do.

After I finished, I leaned back against the wall and wrapped my arms around my knees, holding them close enough to let me rest my head. The light was still on, and I found myself able to relax. Well, as much as anyone could relax in this sort of situation. I let my mind wander rather than forcing it to start looking for ways out. The food had given me some energy, but I needed some non-chemical-induced rest. I doubted I’d be able to sleep, but if I could rest for a couple hours, I’d be thinking a lot more clearly.

Forcing my mind away from my current circumstances, of course, meant that my thoughts went to Jalen. I hated how we left things, and I hoped that he didn’t think I was ignoring him because of Elise. Then again, maybe that was better. If he knew I’d been taken, he’d be out of his mind trying to find me and feeling helpless when he couldn’t. I hoped that if he did know I was gone, he’d go to Clay, or at least to Jenna, who’d bring Clay in on things. It wasn’t that I trusted Clay more, but he’d been trained in this sort of thing, and he had resources that Jalen didn’t. If Jalen had been able to find a missing person, we never would have met…

I’d been hoping for a white Christmas, I thought as I stood in front of the window and watched the snow fall in thick, wet flakes that promised even more accumulation. Now I was thinking that I might’ve been hoping too hard. It was a snow emergency. Non-essential businesses were closed, and the schools would have been too if they hadn’t already been on break for the holidays. People were being told to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, and snowplows could barely keep up around the hospitals and emergency services.

Muscled arms slid around my waist and pulled me back against a broad chest. I rested my head on Jalen’s shoulder with a sigh.

“Do you think Santa’s going to be able to make it through all this snow?” Jalen’s breath was hot against my skin, and I shivered. He tightened his embrace. “If he does, are you expecting something special in your stocking this year?”

My mind immediately flashed back to the previous year when Jalen had dressed up like Santa and crawled into bed late Christmas Eve, a ring box in hand. I didn’t think Jalen could top that, but I was pretty sure I could.

Before I could spoil the surprise, I turned around and coiled my arms around his neck, pushing up on my toes to brush my mouth across his. “That depends,” I said. “Is Santa going to give me what I asked for?”

“And what was that?” Jalen’s lips curved into a sensual smile.

“A handsome man, all trussed up and blindfolded, wearing only a bow.”

“I think that can be arranged even if Old Saint Nick can’t make it here.” Jalen’s hands slid down from the small of my back to my ass, each one cupping a cheek for a moment before he gave me two quick smacks.

I made a pleased sound and ground my hips against his, smiling as I felt his erection pushing at my stomach.

“Are you sure you’ve been a good girl this year?” The wicked grin he gave me said he’d already decided which list I’d made.

I shook my head. “Not at all. But I don’t want coal in my stocking.”

“Do you think I can come up with a better punishment than that?” His grip on my ass loosened, and a moment later, his hand moved underneath my silky pajama shorts.

“Yes, please,” I breathed, my eyes closing. In the time we’d been together, he’d introduced me to all sorts of delightful punishments.

Spankings, of course, sometimes with his hand, sometimes with a belt or flogger. Orgasm denial. He’d once kept me on the edge for two exquisite hours, begging and sobbing for him to let me tip over the edge. On the opposite end, last year, he’d given me a pair of panties that had a vibrator that fit right against my clit, then had me wear them to a party Jenna and Rylan had thrown. He’d practically had to carry me out by the end of the night. Then there was…

I gasped as he pushed a finger into my ass. Yeah, there was that too. Anal wasn’t always a punishment, but he could make it be one. I grabbed the front of his shirt and buried my face against his chest as he worked his finger in and out, the dry friction burning even more than usual.

“How do you want it?” he asked, teeth scraping the top of my ear. “Up against the window? Bent over the chair? In the playroom, on your back, legs in the air?”

All of them sounded wonderful, but at that moment, one choice stood out. “I want to watch the snow.”

He nodded. Without missing a stroke, he backed us up until I could feel the chill from the glass. He claimed my mouth with a harsh, bruising kiss, his tongue plundering my mouth, exploring every inch of it. I was breathless by the time it broke, barely noticing as he spun me around and pressed me against the glass. My silk shirt did little to protect my skin from the cold, my nipples immediately pebbling. He tugged down my shorts until they dropped the rest of the way on their own, then he kicked my legs apart.

“I hope you’re ready, because this is going to hurt.”

The voice registered a second after the words, and I screamed. That wasn’t Jalen behind me. Not his hands on my hips. Not him pushing his way inside me. I didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Jalen.

I screamed again, but I couldn’t hear myself. All I could hear was laughter and the loud grunts of the man forcing himself into my body.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It was a nightmare. It had to be.

I needed to wake up.

I knew the world I was waking up to was bad, but this was worse. There, the bad was limited to reality. Here, my imagination had no limits.

And I didn’t know if I could survive them.