Chapter Seven

Colleen

 

I walk up and down the room, and then from corner to corner, and then up and down again. I try to remember some of the yoga stretches Alma taught me when I was a teenager, but, as always, trying to find that sense of peace that seems to come unfairly easily to her is almost impossible for me. I pick up the e-reader that Gabriel brought me two days ago and try to pick up where I left off in the novel, but the words blur and I can barely focus. Four days is a long time to be locked into a room, especially with Gabriel visiting me, kissing me, touching me.

 

I should want to get out of here. I do want to get out of here. But I also want Gabriel to kiss me again, and I also want other things. And no matter how hard I try to force myself to feel one way, I cannot. Apparently my feelings have a mind of their own and they don’t care a single bit about my actual mind. I imagine what it would’ve been like had Gabriel and I met under different circumstances, because there’s a spark here; there’s a something, anyway. It’s undeniable. When he looks at me, I feel it, and I’m pretty sure he feels it too. He can try to hide it but it doesn’t mean it goes away.

 

“He’s my jailor,” I whisper, standing in the en-suite and staring at myself in the mirror. My eyes are red from the central heating, but I’d rather be red-eyed than frozen through with the icy Staten Island wind. “I hate him,” I tell myself, squeezing my hands down on the sink. “I hate him!” The words sound like lies even to me. I return to the bedroom and lie down, pick up the e-reader, and read the same paragraph about ten times without a single word sinking in.

 

Then a knock comes from the door, which is strange enough to make me sit up in shock. He never knocks. Not once since we’ve been here has he knocked. He just unlocks the door and walks right in.

 

“Uh, hello?” I ask, wondering if Gabriel’s gone and this is somebody new. My chest crushes tightly at the thought.

 

“It’s me,” Gabriel says, and I let out a sigh of relief.

 

“Oh. Um, come in.”

 

He walks in holding a tray with a bowl of soup, a chunk of crusty bread, and a single red rose on it. He places the tray on the bedside table and then offers me the rose.

 

“I won’t say sorry,” he mutters, not meeting my eye. For a crazy moment he looks like an embarrassed boy. Then that image disappears and I see him for what he really is, which is even more shocking than the knock: an Italian mobster trying to apologize—in his own way—to his Irish prisoner. “But things can be civil between us, eh? There’s no need for this … Will you just take it?”

 

I do, and then slide it through my tied-up hair, being careful not to stab myself with the thorns. Gabriel smiles at me, and then makes as if to leave.

 

“Wait,” I say to his back. “Can you stay? Just while I eat?”

 

He pauses, mid-step. His jaw tightens, which is somehow clear from the back; his neck muscles shift. “I’ll stay,” he says after a long pause.

 

I take the tray and eat my soup and bread, washing it down with a bottle of water. Gabriel sits and watches me eat the same way he did that first day, but now he seems different, less like a mobster and more like a man. The stem of the rose fits snugly in my hair, brushing against me every time I move, like a reminder that, though he’s a violent killer, there’s still another side to him.

 

Once I’ve finished the soup and put the tray aside, we both just sit there. I wonder if he can sense the energy between us the same way I can. I’m just waiting for him to make a move on me, the same way he’s made a move on me every day since we came here. I know what Alma and Father would say: he’s taking advantage; he’s confused me. But I don’t feel confused, and I don’t feel like he’s taking advantage of me.

 

“What are you thinking?” I ask, when he remains silent.

 

“Nothing in particular,” he replies. “Why, Colleen? What’re you thinking?”

 

“Do you really want to know?”

 

He shrugs, spreads his hands. “What else is there to do around here?”

 

I can think of a couple of things … that’s what I want to say, but I can’t bring myself to form the words. That’s something flirty, dangerous, outrageous women would say, and they wouldn’t even blush like schoolgirls as they said it. I swallow, interlacing my fingers.

 

“I’ve been thinking about how I feel freer now than I have for a long time.”

 

“Free?” He looks around the room doubtfully. “Really? How’s that? There’s a lock on that door.”

 

“I know,” I say. “But that’s nothing new, not really. I’d rather have a lock on the door than a lock on my life, and—” I pause, wondering if I sound stupid.

 

“Go on.” He sits forward, elbows resting on his knees. He’s wearing a shirt and suit trousers, the sleeves rolled up, looking smart and attentive and so handsome, I could scream.

 

“At least I have the freedom to …” I lower my gaze. “To explore, I guess.”

 

“To explore?” Then he makes an hmm-mm noise. “I get it. At least here you get to be a woman. Is that what you’re saying?”

 

“Yes!” I sit up, seizing on his words, and then sit back down when I realize how loud I just shouted.

 

He grins at me, shaking his head. “But you’ve still got your mother in you, Colleen. I can see that as clear as day. She must’ve worked some pretty damn good magic on you. What did she do?”

 

I laugh bitterly. “She should’ve gotten a dog instead of having a daughter,” I mutter. “I think she would’ve been happier then. Alma never really saw me as a daughter, or as a friend, come to think of it. No, she saw me more as a doll to dress up and control and dance around the place. She was only ever happy when I was doing what she wanted me to do. I remember one time when I was little, I went out into the street and played volleyball with my friends. I didn’t have those friends for long.” I look up, biting my lip. “I know how this must sound. The spoiled rich girl complaining that she didn’t get to play street volleyball.”

 

“Well, I don’t think that one person’s problems rule out anybody else’s.”

 

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask.

 

“Nice? Am I?” He laughs gruffly. “I’ve never been called nice by any lady, not once.”

 

“What do they usually call you?”

 

“I don’t want to talk about other women,” he says, worrying at his knee, picking at his trousers.

 

“I won’t get jealous!” I snap, though I think I already am jealous. It seems ridiculous that Gabriel could be with another woman, kiss her, hold her; it seems ridiculous and yet it should not, because this man is my kidnapper! I need to remember that, but it’s difficult when he’s sitting there with that tight jaw and those intense eyes. “What about you?” I ask, when he just stares silently into nothingness.

 

“What about me?”

 

“How was your childhood?”

 

He laughs, this time even more gruffly. Then he stands up and paces to the window, staring out into the slowly falling snow. “This isn’t some Oprah TV show, Colleen. I’m not about to start pouring my heart out, because there’s nothing to pour out. A childhood is a childhood; that’s all there is to is. Stop, and you end up back there. That’s what growing up taught me. Keep moving forward, no matter what.”

 

“So you never want to settle down?”

 

He throws his hands up. “What is this?” he says, spinning on me. “What exactly do you want?”

 

“You!” I scream, and then catch myself. I collapse onto the bed, roll over, bring my knees up, and stare at the wall.

 

I feel him on the other side of the bed, staring down at me; his gaze sears into the back of my head. “This is such a confusing mess,” I whisper into the silence.

 

“Yeah.” He chuckles humorlessly. “I think that might be an understatement. What do you mean, you want me? Want me how?”

 

“I just … I don’t know. That’s the point!”

 

“I know what you really want, Colleen.”

 

He climbs onto the bed next to me and then moves up close, his pants pressed against my ass. His penis is hard, like it always is for me, rock-hard. I don’t think I’ve ever felt his groin without his penis being hard for me. A thrill runs through me, and I subtly shift my ass, rubbing it up and down his crotch. Then he slides his hand around my belly and down my pants, down my underwear; naked fingers touch my pubes, and then move lower to my clit, which aches horribly, amazingly, unbearably at his touch.

 

Stop, I say, but I don’t say it, can’t say it. For the first time in my life, a man is touching my clit, but not just any man. Gabriel’s touch is sure and dangerous and frightening all at once. He presses his finger down on it and then rubs it, softly at first, but then he quickly gets faster, until all I can hear is my frantic breathing and all I can feel is the scorching heat between my legs.

 

“Oh …” I moan, and then bite down so hard on my lip that I draw blood. “Oh Gabriel.”

 

“You’re going to come for me,” he whispers, close to my ear, now sliding another finger onto my clit. He’s so close to my hole, and I’m so wet, wetter than I’ve ever been. “Do you understand?”

 

The heat gets even more intense, the pleasure even more unbearable. I rock softly with his movements, up and down, his fingers grating against my clit, rough and hard and possessive; it’s like I’m pinned here, his breath caressing my ear. I just float on it, sit atop the searing pleasure and focus only on the way it feels, the intense pressure of it. I feel like I might explode; my entire lower half is pent-up, ready to release. My toes curl and, before I know it, I’m not moaning quietly anymore; my moans fill the room, along with his breathing. That’s when it hits me: he’s enjoying this more than me; he’s taking pleasure in giving me pleasure. He could do this all day.

 

“Oh God …” The orgasm approaches so suddenly, I almost scream. I bite down again; more metallic blood fills my mouth. “Gabriel, Gabriel …”

 

“That’s it,” he says warmly. “Do it, Colleen. Fucking come for me!”

 

“I—I—I—”

 

Everything is about to release—my whole world, it feels like—when a car backfires right outside the window and, downstairs, something shatters. For a second, I lie there, confused, as Gabriel leaps to his feet. How did the backfiring car make something downstairs shatter?

 

Then I roll over and see Gabriel taking out his pistol.

 

“What’s happening?” I ask, my sex so sore it hurts, his stolen touch a phantom against my lips.

 

“We’re under attack,” he says matter-of-factly. “Stay here.”