Chapter Fourteen
All those years ago I didn’t like the water. I was too busy clinging to the slippery rubber, too frantic kicking to stay close to Mama. Way too afraid of drifting away.
And then Damon Scott came into my life. A force of nature. A tidal wave. And I learn that there are compensations for drowning. That I can float, my body shivering and catatonic.
My mind can float, too.
That’s how Damon finds me.
He pulls my body from the water, his hands iron-hard on my bruised skin. Strong arms cradle my limp body. Held so close I could hear his heart beating, too fast. I want to tell him—don’t worry. I’m okay here, floating down the river in my head.
Except I can’t say a word. That’s one thing about floating.
I hear him talking to me, his low voice so different than ever before. He’s been amused and casually cruel. Never terrified and tense, never broken.
The words come through a thick swirl of dark water, my thoughts inky black.
“Wake up, sweetheart. Talk to me. Oh God, what did he do to you? Tell me where you’re hurt. Let me help you.” He speaks faster the longer he goes, his voice turning hoarse. “Beautiful girl. Smart girl. Come back to me.”
He carries me for what feels like miles, my uniform drenched, his grip impossibly tight.
Part of me wonders how we must look, a man in a suit carrying a half-conscious girl. Does no one stop him? Does no one wonder? The irony is that he’s the only man who would protect me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against my forehead. “God, I’m so sorry. I tried to stay away from you. I wanted to keep you safe. If he knew… if he touched you…”
Jonathan Scott did more than touch me. He tortured me. He violated me in every way that a man can hurt a woman. I’m sure there’s tearing, enough to show what’s happened. I wish there weren’t any marks, not because it would hurt me less, but because it would hurt him less.
The unlikely prince come to take me away.
No white horse, though. Only his bespoke Italian loafers against the asphalt. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s raining, the water on my skin fresh and clean. Unlike that horrible pool of water where I had been trapped, unlike the salty tears I couldn’t hold in.
Damon swears, but I wish I could tell him the rain will help. I don’t want to be dirty.
We reach a building in the historic district, with white stone and black metal balconies on each window. He pushes inside as if he owns the place, and maybe he does. Maybe he owns the entire street.
I hear a feminine gasp. “Is she—”
Is she dead? That’s what the unknown woman asks.
The strange part is not knowing the answer. Am I dead?
“She’ll wish she was,” Damon says, his voice hard.
It sounds like a threat, but I feel the tension in his body. He’s worried about me. About what happened before he showed up. Before Jonathan Scott shoved me into a black pool of water and closed a grate on top of me, trapping me inside. Before he held me down and—
My mind shies away from the truth.
Maybe I would wish I were dead, by the time this is over.
“What can I do?” the woman asks.
It makes me wonder if she’s Damon’s girlfriend. His lover. His prostitute? I don’t know how he deals with women, except to pay them. She must be close to him if she was in his house.
“Blankets,” he says. “Every single one you can find.”
That sounds practical, but I don’t feel cold. I don’t feel anything, really.
Damon carries me upstairs and lays me down on a large bed. His bed?
He pulls back the covers, settling my wet body into the middle. Part of me recognizes that it must be comfortable—the way I sink into the mattress, the velvet drapes hanging from a thickly carved bedframe. I’m disconnected from my body, though. As if it sank to the bottom of the water, landing on hard rocks.
And my mind kept floating along.
“Damon,” I whisper, surprised to find my lips cracked and hard. How can they be dry after almost drowning? Everything feels upside down, inside out.
His eyes look pure black. “I’m here.”
“Don’t leave,” I whisper, swallowing hard to get the words out. “Please.”
“Not yet.” It’s a promise, both to stay and to go. I have him for now, which is more than I ever thought I would have. More than a peasant girl deserves with a prince.
“I’m sorry.”
He swears. “Don’t.”
“You found them. Tell me you found them—”
“Yes, your breadcrumbs. My smart girl. My beautiful girl.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. I know his lips are touching my skin. Some part of me registers that fact. But I don’t feel anything. Not pleasure. Not fear. When he brushed his knuckles against my cheek at the diner I’d felt the echo of his touch for days. And now I can’t feel anything.
The woman comes into the room with an armful of quilts and blankets. She’s older than me but not by much. Very beautiful. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were together, but she doesn’t look jealous. She looks worried, about me.
Damon reaches to the neckline of my uniform. There’s no warning before he rips it away.
I should feel something. Embarrassment as I’m exposed, naked and bruised. At least I should feel cold as the air touches my damp skin. I’m still separate from my body, unable to feel a thing.
“What are you doing?” the woman asks, concern plain in her soft voice.
Damon gives her a hard look. “Fucking her limp body. What do you think?”
It’s the same voice he used years ago. What would I want with a puny kid?
And then he unclasps his belt. It makes a whip-like sound through the air as he pulls it off. The old me would have flinched at the sound. Now I just stare, unblinking, unfeeling.
“I can do it,” the woman says, moving as if to undress.
A cold laugh. “As much as I’d love to see the two of you in bed together, I don’t want to see what happens when Gabriel finds out I saw you naked.”
“You saw me naked at the auction,” she says.
“That doesn’t count. You weren’t his then.”
So they aren’t together. I can’t even feel relief, not with the word auction hanging in the air. Is that what would have happened to me? And as horrible as that sounds, wouldn’t that have been better than this?
Anything would be better than this.
Damon pushes the damp white fabric from his shoulders, revealing hard packed muscle and lines of ink. I hadn’t expected to see tattoos beneath that expensive suit fabric. None of it peeks out onto his hands or neck. It’s all perfectly contained to his chest, his abs. Ancient scrollwork and dragon scales over a modern man.
What’s the point of getting such beautiful artwork on skin no one can see?
“I’ll go find Anders,” the woman says.
Damon’s voice is a drawl, closer as the bed dips in his direction. “Really intent on making this a threesome, aren’t you?”
“He’s a doctor.”
“He lost his license,” Damon says, his touch burning hot as he pulls me into his arms. Oh God, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t want to feel anything, but he’s like a flame. I’m consumed by him.
I want the girl to be worried about me now, to help me get away from this.
To pull me out of the fire, but she seems content to leave me there, especially as Damon smooths a wet lock of hair away from my cheek. He probably looks gentle, but she can’t see how it burns.
Only Damon’s eyes are cold, black stones that give nothing away.
“Gabriel said it was fine,” she says. “Anders stitched his gunshot wound.”
Damon glances at her. “Gabriel was shot?”
“Grazed. On his neck. The bullet was meant for me.”
“You don’t know that,” says a new voice, male and gravelly.
The girl sounds surprised. “You shouldn’t be standing.”
“And you shouldn’t be in Damon’s bedroom.”
“This is his bedroom?” she asks, uncertain.
So this is his bed. And this is his house.
Of course it is. Expensive and luxurious and completely impersonal.
It doesn’t mean anything that he brought me here, that he holds me tight as if he can’t stand to let go. I tell myself that, but it still burns too hot. His arms and his abs. He’s hard and warm and painful.
And then I feel something against my hip. Oh God.
I may not have gone all the way with Brennan but I recognize that. This one’s bigger and more insistent. When I try to squirm away Damon holds me tighter.
“I heard you almost died,” Damon says, his voice casual, as if he’s not throbbing against me. “Did you lose…what? A whole teaspoon of blood?”
The man responds with equal languor. “A quarter cup, at least. We should talk.”
I can already hear the words. They whip around in the water between us. Words about Jonathan Scott and about pain. About bullets and about sex.
“You can talk in front of me,” the woman says. “I want to know.”
No, you don’t. I want to tell her that.
Damon looks at me, reading the truth in my eyes. “In private,” he says.
She doesn’t give up. “Why? What happened to her? Does it have to do with your father?”
Only when Damon pulls away from me do I feel the cold. It’s deep in my bones, settled like ice that will never melt. I want the fire back, but I know it will hurt. It doesn’t matter what I want. Damon is already getting dressed, already leaving. Already riding away on his invisible white horse.
“Stay with her,” he tells the girl. “Her name’s Penny.”
“What happened to her?” the woman says again, her voice desolate, knowing he won’t answer.
Of course Damon obliges, leaving without another word. Then it’s only this woman and me, someone who was auctioned off like some rare and valuable object, and meanwhile I’m cracked into a thousand pieces like a worthless one. The princess and the pauper.
* * *
She doesn’t undress like Damon, which is a small relief. I don’t think I could handle any more vulnerability in this night. But she does join me in the bed, stroking my hair gently until I fall asleep.
I wake up with the room darker, the shadows deeper.
Her body feels warm and still beside mine, as if she had drowsed too.
Who is she? And why does she care what happens to me? Or maybe she does whatever Damon tells her to without question. I’m all too familiar with that unblinking obedience.
“Are you one of them?” I ask, half in the dream world.
“One of who?”
The whores. I can’t say the word, not only because it would offend her. Because I’m one of them. What are we called, anyway? “One of the girls. The ones Damon collects when someone can’t pay the loan back.”
“Do you mean the strippers?”
“Are they strippers?” I ask, my voice thick with sleep.
I guess it makes sense. A way to make money where none had been. And probably some of the customers are the very same men who owe money. It’s a complete circuit, powering Damon Scott’s rise to power.
But I can’t really imagine Damon on a cigarette littered floor, tossing dollar bills onstage.
My eyes flutter closed again. “I thought he kept them for himself. I imagined a harem of girls, one for every day of the month.”
At least that’s how he had made it sound. Was that supposed to make it more palatable?
So I would go more easily into my captivity?
She sounds contemplative, as if she’s wondering the same thing. “There aren’t other girls. At least not here. What made you think there were?”
Come to terms with what you have to do. “He threatened to take me. If Daddy didn’t pay.”
“Maybe he wanted you to work off the debt,” she says, uncertain.
But I swear to God you’ll be mine.
“No,” I say, drifting back into sleep. He said he’d make me like it. The strange thing was, I believed him. “He told me what he wanted to do. Him and me.”
She holds my hand when the doctor comes.
He doesn’t wear a white coat or carry a black bag. Instead he wears only black slacks, exposing his broad chest with pale red hair and silvery scars I’ve seen on men who fight a lot. His soft-sided grey cooler looks more like it should carry body parts rather than heal them.
“Trust him,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.
I close my eyes, holding onto her when he examines me.
The doctor may look like a thug but his manner is professional. Impersonal, even. He doesn’t express any surprise over finding my ribs bruised or my rectum torn. It’s with a fast, impersonal touch that he cleans my wounds and applies topical antibiotics.
And blissfully he has pain medicine. Serious, hardcore pain medicine. The kind you can get addicted to. That’s what I need right now. I need to escape my own mind, my memories. I need oblivion.
The pain medicine backfires, because I can’t wake up. Not even when I want to.
In the darkness of my nightmares Damon can’t reach me. I’m deep underneath the water, where it’s only black. And on the surface, a thick layer of ice. I don’t know if he could have made me like kissing, if I would have ever liked sex, but there’s only fear now.
Only a cold certainty that whatever comes next will hurt.
Only the strange dread that I’ll like it that way.
* * *
The next morning I wake up encased in ice, the events of last night frozen away. And I’m sure I can stay this way, as long as I don’t talk or move or think. I stare up at the blank ceiling, carefully not imagining about Damon sleeping in this same place night after night.
Avery is the young woman’s name. She stays by my side the whole night, only leaving briefly to confer with the doctor and someone who brings clothes for us both.
She dresses me in a loose tank top and yoga pants.
On an intellectual level I know the clothes are comfortable. They feel like velvet against my skin. Apparently rich people even have different workout clothes.
But on a physical level I don’t feel anything. Not pain.
Definitely not hunger, especially once I see the table heavy with food.
Damon sits with another man at the table, speaking in low tones. Both of them stand when we come into the room. It’s an old world courtesy, but one lacking any warmth. Damon’s eyes are as cold as I’ve ever seen them. And they don’t linger long on me.
Avery leads me to one of the empty chairs before taking one opposite me.
I stare at the teacup in front of me, only distantly curious. It may as well be a flying saucer. Something to be poked and prodded. Examined. Nothing that could provide comfort.
The whole world seems foreign now.
“Did you find anything?” the other man says. I remember Avery talking to him. Gabriel.
There could be a thousand meanings, but I know which one it is. The same way I could count cards and calculate statistics—without really wanting to. Did he find anything in that abandoned mental hospital?
“Nothing useful,” Damon answers, his voice low and flat.
Gabriel presses forward. “You know him best. What’s his next move?”
“He thinks he’s teaching me a lesson. What does any teacher do?”
Reinforce the lesson. Give homework. My mind flashes to Damon in the old trailer, holding that damned book of trigonometry. My stomach turns over, threatening to spill over the nice shiny china.
“Does that mean Avery is safe?”
A cold smile crosses Damon’s handsome face. “The opposite.”
Gabriel makes a low growling sound. “Then we can’t wait.”
“No,” Damon says agreeably.
The men will go looking for Jonathan Scott. Will they find him? That seems doubtful. This is an elaborate game. I haven’t seen enough of the cards to count them. And I’m only a chip in the pile, moved around on the velvet without a thought.
“So I’ll bring Avery back,” the other man says.
Damon nods. “We can meet this afternoon.”
Avery seems to perk up. “Can you maybe talk to me instead of about me?”
“I’ll bring you back to my house,” Gabriel says to her, his expression a strange mix of possession and deference. “And then meet with Damon this afternoon.”
“What about Penny?”
Everyone in the room looks at me, the heat from the gazes searing. Look away, look away.
“What about her?” Gabriel finally asks.
“Who will take care of her?” Avery demands.
Damon doesn’t move a muscle but I feel his fury as if it flickers, his own flame. “I’ll find someone,” he says, nothing in his voice giving away his anger.
“I’ll stay with her,” Avery says, though I can hear the uncertainty in her voice.
“Absolutely not,” Gabriel says. “My house is the safest place for you, especially when both Damon and I aren’t there. The security team is already installed there.”
“Then she can come with me.” Avery kicks me softly under the table. She wants me to say that I agree with her, but I don’t really. I like Avery, but she’s probably safer without me. “If it’s safer there, then she’ll be safer, too.”
The force of Damon’s discontent takes the air from the room. In the tense silence I imagine a million things he could say. I’ll take care of you, Penny. The fantasy gets stronger.
“Take her,” he says, his voice cold as he stands and tosses down his napkin.
Then he leaves the room, as if he decided on his dinner order instead of my fate.
Avery struggles to meet my eyes, but I can’t deal with that. Can’t deal with the empathy I would find. Can’t deal with the questions she would ask.
“What happened to her?” she asks Gabriel instead, a sweet relief. Someone else to answer her questions. Someone else to field the useless empathy.
“You don’t want to know,” he says, his voice hard.
“I should know if I’m going to help her.”
“I’m not sure there’s any help for someone who’s been through that.”
That almost makes me laugh. Maybe if the ice were a little thinner, I would have. But every second that Damon is away from me, the ice hardens. Every time he pushes me away it gets thicker.
It should be a relief that he doesn’t seem to be claiming the debt. That he’s giving me time to heal. But he’s the only person who really understands what I’ve been through. Because he went through his own hell, with the very same devil.
“Are you speaking from experience?” Avery says, her innocence heartbreaking.
“I saw a lot of fucked-up shit at the whorehouse growing up. Women raped, hurt. Beaten until they weren’t recognizable. And still I never saw anything like this.”
She makes a sound of sympathy. For me. For him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, little virgin. I could have freed you. Never forget that. I could have paid a million dollars and then walked away, never fucking that pretty little cunt.” A pause, as if to let the words set in. “He fucked her. And then he drowned her.”
A sharp breath. “How did she—”
“Survive? She left a trail of breadcrumbs for him to find. He didn’t know if he’d make it in time. He had no idea if he’d find a dead body at the bottom of the pool.”
Didn’t he? Like that day on the river I don’t quite remember being pulled from the pool. I don’t remember much of last night except the hard currents, the sharp rocks. The metallic taste of blood in the water. That must have been horrible for Damon, but it’s hard to feel sympathy.
Hard to feel anything at all.
“Thank God he didn’t.” Avery sounds painfully earnest.
“What Jonathan Scott did to her… Most people would rather have died.”
I know I should feel something about that. Shame, probably.
But all I keep thinking is, what if I did die last night? What if the only parts of me worth saving sank to the bottom of that cold pool? I can be dressed up and fed like a doll, but I’m not a person. I can walk around, my body controlled by the people around me.
What makes me human? What makes me want to be human?
It seems like a horrible thing to be, so weak and unwilling.