Rosebud, my heart aches for you every day you’re not in my arms. My hands itch to reach out and touch you. I crave to run my tongue along the lines of your body.

I'm dying to slide between your folds.

But I also want you to need me, dammit. I need you to dig your nails into my flesh when I enter your warmth—not from pain, but because you're overcome with desire. Because you want to hold on for the ride of your life.

Until you let me in again, my dick will continue to throb with longing as it waits for you to open not only your legs, but also your life to me. I can’t wait for the day when your body craves my touch, when your moist pussy hungers for my dick. Don't make me wait too long.

I clench my teeth tight as I shred the handwritten letter and shower the floor with the pieces. I’m furious at myself for reading it in the first place. Why do I do this to myself? Am I searching for the man he used to be? Regardless, his words both draw me in and repulse me.

He has left me alone for a week, to grieve and accept the fact that everyone believes me to be dead, that my previous life has been erased. Not once does he come up to see me. No sound of his voice over the speakers, either. Nothing.

Hanna has clearly been told to stay away as well. He wants me to stew in my isolation, to crave human contact so much that I beg him to come to me. I spend my days sitting on the bed for hours on end, staring at the door.

Damien could leave me in the room to hunger for human contact, entertainment, and food. But he feeds me. Three times a day a small, rectangular partition carved into the bottom of my door is unlocked, and someone slides a tray of food through. Three meals a day, without fail. The first day I don’t eat. The second, I only eat the breakfast and throw it up again, my stomach too unsettled to keep anything down. But on the third day, I’m ravenous. I eat everything he sends up to me, wishing it could fill the emptiness.

He gives me what my body wants, even though I don’t give him what he wants. Giving myself to him would be emotional suicide. I’m not ready to die, not yet—not even emotionally. To hell with the obituary and the lies he told everyone. I’m still here, alive and breathing. My beating heart is proof of life, and I’m not ready to sell my soul. As long as I have everything I need to keep me alive, I might still be able to survive this. How, I don’t know yet.

I should at least be grateful that he hasn’t hurt me physically. Some jailers abuse their prisoners both physically and mentally, destroying every piece of them. But Damien is convinced that once he breaks me emotionally, I will belong to him physically. What he doesn’t know is that it will never happen.

After eight days, I wake from a troubled sleep to the sound of the blinds and shutters being opened, as they always are first thing in the morning. I don’t get why he even bothers to open the shutters every day. Why not leave me in my darkness?

On cue, my breakfast appears through the door partition, and it slides shut again. The aroma of eggs and coffee fills the room. I listen to the commotion on the other side of the door—Adrian making himself comfortable at his post outside.

The last thing I want is to get out of bed to do nothing all day. But I decided two days ago that I have to pay attention to my health despite the circumstances, so I have started putting the yoga lessons I used to take with Chelsea into practice, if for no other reason but to keep my mind calm.

I get out of bed and straighten the sheets. It’s something to do. So is brushing my teeth and washing my face. I eat breakfast once I’ve completed my morning routine. I take my time eating, since time is all I have, then place the tray at the door. Adrian’s hairy hands will pull it through the partition later.

My long, empty day starts, and as usual, I try not to go crazy. It’s hard not to when all I have to think about day and night is not going crazy. I’m so desperate for something to keep my mind off my situation, something to give me a reason for breathing. As though Damien has read my mind—or perhaps my thoughts from my pained expression—in the afternoon, instead of pulling out the lunch tray through the partition, Adrian opens the door. He’s carrying a box in his arms.

“I brought you some books. Mr. Steel thought you might need something to occupy you.”

For a moment our eyes lock. I want to be angry with Adrian as much as I am with Damien. He’s Damien’s right-hand man, after all. He followed me around in Oaklow to invade my privacy when I was none the wiser. But something inside my heart refuses to see him as an enemy.

His dark eyes are too kind, too warm. In them I read only sympathy. He knows I’m suffering and there’s nothing he can do about it. It helps to know he cares. At least, I choose to believe he does, and that’s enough for now.

He leaves the box by the door, nods at me, and walks out with the tray.

“Thank you.”

The genres are diverse, including romance, thriller, and science fiction. Sci-fi is not my cup of tea, so I throw those books back into the box. Next I toss in the romance, since any romantic notions I may have once believed in are stagnant inside my heart. I choose a thriller and settle back on the bed.

Tears fill my eyes with the turn of each page. The story of a little girl’s torture touches my soul. Before I was kidnapped, a story was just a story—something to be enjoyed during a moment of relaxation or boredom. But now I find myself wondering about the facts beyond the pages of the book. Did the author experience something similar, or know someone who did? Or is the story simply a product of his imagination? Isn’t fiction always born of some shred of truth?

In my race to reach the end of the book, I come across notes scribbled in the margins in a language I guess to be Spanish. I wonder who the book belonged to, and what the notes in black ink mean. With no way of finding out, I move on to the next page and then the next, engrossed in the story.

To my surprise, the book I pick up the next evening is a sci-fi novel; I had not planned on reading it, but it pulls me right in. My eyes droop before I finish the story, and the book falls to the floor. Somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, I hear his voice.

“Good night, my angel.” His voice is like poisoned honey. I turn my face away from the direction the sound is coming from and fall asleep.