CHAPTER SIX
That night, after a dinner filled with casual conversation about Luke’s favorite tropical fish, followed by me finishing laundry while Luke worked out at the gym, I took a hot shower and crashed. The stress had been taking a toll on my twenty-six-year-old body. For four months, I hadn’t slept well—my every breath haunted by thoughts of my sister. How had she died? Why would anyone want to end her life? Cici had not been just an honest-to-God good person and my sister, she’d cared for me while my bereaved father, a war correspondent, chased death on every front line of every war he could get his hands on. I think it was his way of escaping the pain of losing my mother to a sudden heart attack when I was young. Or maybe he was just crazy. Really, it didn’t matter anymore. All that was in the past. Unchangeable. What I could change, however, was what would happen going forward.
I rolled over onto my side in my pitch-black bedroom, the tick-tock of the silver alarm clock on my nightstand echoing through my ears.
Sleep, Stephanie. Sleep, for fuck’s sake. My new bed and soft white linens were comfortable enough, but all I could think about was hunting for Rook’s real office.
“Stephanie, come outside. We must speak.” Rook’s deep voice streamed from the doorway of my room.
“Whatthehell?” I catapulted upright, my tired eyes straining in the dark. “Rook?” My bedroom door was ajar now. Had I left it like that, too exhausted to notice?
In a white tank top and gray knit shorts, I hopped from bed. “Rook?” I peeked into the living room. The light had been left on over the stove, so I could see everything clearly, including Luke’s bedroom door, which was closed. There was no sign of Rook, but I knew what I’d heard.
I went over to the front door and opened it, peeking out down the long hallway. There were ten other apartments on this floor, but all seemed quiet.
Am I dreaming again? I froze in the doorway. I felt awake. Completely and totally awake.
Okay. So maybe I’d dozed for a second and heard a voice. But now I really was awake, so what were my options? Go back to bed, where I’d get zero sleep now, or go do some snooping. If anyone saw me, I could always claim I just couldn’t sleep—true—and that I’d decided to make the best of it by becoming more familiar with the island for the sake of my job. Also true.
I went back into my room, pulled my hair into a ponytail, grabbed my running shoes and map, and headed out, closing the door quietly behind me. I took the elevator up, guessing that I had to hurry because I was likely being watched by security. Or maybe not. There were currently no guests on the island and Rook had everyone clearing fallen trees and inspecting structures.
I exited the small lobby and paused just outside, where the dimly lit walkways cut through the dark jungle and led to various parts of the island like the offices, the fantasy stations to the south, and the guest area to the north.
Which way?
If Rook’s house didn’t hold any information, then it was time to move on. I could try to find Mrs. Day’s trashed office. There had to be lots of interesting things in there.
Speaking of interesting…I thought of Rook’s dirty little control room housed in the same structure. He had cameras installed at every fantasy station, the beaches and bay, and at the pool and restaurant. I’d stumbled upon the room when I’d been down in the offices, looking for Rook last week. It had made me sick to my stomach at first, since I could see the guests getting romanced, picnicked, slapped around, and enjoying every flavor of consensual fucking imaginable. Rook had found me in the room and calmly put up with a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing before he had the chance to explain that they supervised each fantasy in real time and that the hosts—or what I called actors—wore earpieces so they could receive direction. The job of ensuring the staff followed the guests’ requests to the letter had belonged to Mrs. Day and now it would belong to me.
Not for long, I hoped.
I made my way down the dim gravel path. A warm breeze dusted the tops of the trees, making the moonlight form organic shapes on the ground.
Almost to the fork where the path split off to the offices, I noticed a deep patch of worn earth going off in another direction like a fresh game trail.
Or a Rook trail?
I couldn’t afford to be timid or afraid. Not anymore. Without a flashlight, I stepped onto the path, following it as best I could. But only twenty yards in, I couldn’t see jack. Not my nose. Not my hands. I had to turn back before I got lost.
“Stephanie…” whispered a deep voice.
I instinctively froze. A flicker of light that appeared to be a flashlight caught my eye. Fuck. Or it’s a lamp.
It’s hard to explain the sensation of being in a dream, and knowing it, while a part of you fights to stay right where it is. It wants you to keep dreaming. That was how it had been last week when I’d literally sleepwalked across the entire island, following a monk with a lantern. I woke to Rook shaking me by the shoulders right as I was about to take a swim in his sacred lagoon. Tonight felt different. There wasn’t one tiny crumb in my mind that knew this was a dream, and my nervous stomach told me to go back. Whatever was out here was darker than the night.
Fuck it.
I followed the faint light through the jungle, my feet crunching over twigs or squishing into the wet, rain-soaked dirt. After what seemed like a half hour, me ten steps away from losing my nerve and the light no longer anywhere to be seen, I spotted one of those utility sheds. The same kind covering the lobby to the staff housing and the offices.
I approached slowly and reached for the door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” said a deep familiar voice, blasting hot air into my ear.
I yelped despite knowing it was Rook.
His strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me back from the door I still faced.
“I asked you a question, Stephanie,” he growled into my ear.
Shit. Shit. “I was just taking a walk.”
“At two in the fucking morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I whispered, squirming in his iron grip.
He released me, but only to turn my body toward him. “Do not lie to me, Stephanie.”
It was too dark to see the fine features of his exquisite face, but I didn’t have to know he was pissed as hell.
“It’s not a lie. I couldn’t sleep. And here I am to prove it.”
He slammed his fist past my head into the door behind me. “Bullshit! What the hell are you doing here?”
I held up my hands defensively. “I’m just going for a walk. Okay?” I eked.
“How did you find this place?”
“I don’t know!” My words came out frantic. “A voice woke me up and told me to come outside. I just followed it.”
“Here. The voice told you to come here?” he yelled.
“It said to come outside, but then I saw a light and I—”
Rook let out a loud growl and reached past me, pushing open the door. “You want to spy on me, then see. I have nothing to hide.” He gave me a push, too, and I stumbled inside. The lights came on, blinding me for a moment. Within the space of a few breaths I realized this wasn’t a structure to cover a stairwell. It was a single room with cement walls and a twin bed in the corner. A single exposed bulb dangled above an old wooden desk that sat in front of a bookshelf filled with dusty old texts. A small bathroom, with a washbasin instead of a sink and one of those toilets with a raised tank and pull cord, were the only other things in this space.
I turned to Rook, who stood in the doorway, wearing a snug black T-shirt and dark pants. He folded his arms over his broad chest and the ropes of muscles on his forearms strained with angry tension.
“What is this place?” I asked apprehensively.
“What the hell do you think it is?”
“I don’t have a damned clue.” My eyes darted around the dirt-floored room. “An old monk’s dwelling you preserved for posterity?”
“No. My dwelling.”
“You—you live here?”
He made a curt nod, his eyes drilling into me.
“But what about your house?”
“I think you’re smart enough to know, Stephanie, monks do not get to live in mansions. Nor do they sleep on ten-thousand-dollar mattresses covered in silk sheets.”
“Okay, but this? This is—it’s awful.” Oddly, what saddened me most was the thought of him being here alone with nothing to keep him company but these dusty books. No one should live in such a dreary place.
“This reminds me of who I truly am and why I am here,” he said.
I nodded hesitantly. “And just why are you here, again?”
“This is the last truly sacred place in this world.” His voice came out like a mixture of strength and resentment. “I keep it that way.”
“But why you?” I wanted to genuinely comprehend.
“Why not me?”
“Because living like this can’t make you happy,” I said sympathetically.
“Just as life can be beautiful and joyous, it can also be cruel and ugly.”
Yeah. I got that. “So you suffer quietly, living in one of the most luxurious places I’ve ever seen, and you chalk it up to ‘misery is just part of life’?” I made little air quotes for emphasis. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I am no more happy or miserable than you or any of the guests who come to this island and have everything the material world can offer.”
I guess he had a point, but…“It just bothers me to see anyone live like this.” It was a garden shed, at best.
“I live on a beautiful island. That I own. I wake up every morning knowing my purpose, and I have every tool and resource required to see it through. Even by your shallow modern standards, I am a wealthy man. By my standards, I have everything I could ever need.”
I got what he was trying to say; however, this looked like some sort of self-imposed punishment. There was no air-conditioning, no fan, no comforts. The floor was made of dirt. The roof appeared to be made of rusted-out tin sheets. And now that I looked closely, the bed was a cement slab with a blanket over it. I knew he lived by some other belief system, one he hadn’t fully explained, but did he truly think that living in such dire conditions was his duty? I mean, yes, I wasn’t ignorant. There were examples of people all around the world who chose the monastic life—Tibetan, Buddhist, Trappist. But those people had each other, whereas Rook was all alone because, according to him, there was no one from his monastery left. So whatever he believed, whichever religion he suffered for, he did it alone. No community, no family, no one who truly knew him.
“I think you’re wrong about my definition of wealth,” I said. “To me, it’s getting to share your life with people you love. And, if you’re lucky, you find someone who understands and loves you more than anyone else. If you’re very lucky, you get to have a family or grow old together.”
He stared at me for a long moment. And then another. I could see the hunger in his eyes. I could feel his desire to touch me. Then it quickly turned to something I didn’t expect: anger.
“Then by your own standards, you’ve proclaimed yourself impoverished,” he threw back in a stale tone.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wear your suffering like a goddamned badge, an excuse not to live the life given to you. At least my suffering has a damned purpose. It means something more than an excuse to whine and hide out here on my island. So how about you stop judging me and take a good hard look in the fucking mirror, Miss Fitzgerald?”
My jaw dropped and my heart felt heavy. It wasn’t true, and if it were, he was to blame, because I couldn’t move on until I knew the truth—something he had no intention of giving me. Worse yet, he’d stolen the only thing in this world that truly meant anything: my sister. She had been my second mother, my home.
“How about you go fuck yourself, you lonely, fucking bastard,” I snarled.
My words visibly enraged him—hard eyes, a snarl on those lips, and a glare to end all glares.
He slammed the door behind him and closed the gap, leaving nothing but hot fury between our warm sweaty bodies. “What you really mean is that you want me to fuck you. Isn’t. That. Right. Stephanie? You want me to fill that aching void between your thighs because touching me makes you forget how sad and miserable you are.”
I backed up until I hit the cool plaster wall. I stared up into those hypnotic sky-blue orbs with silver flecks. I did want him. But now it was like this pull coming from some hateful place deep inside that wanted him to sin and regret it as much as I wanted him to enjoy it. I wanted him to loathe himself as he took me, knowing it was wrong. I wanted him to love it so much that he’d come back for more so then I could deny him.
I smiled up at him. “Yes.”
He stilled for the space of three lust-filled heartbeats and then grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’re going to regret this.” His mouth was hard and demanding on mine as he pushed past my lips and took the kiss.
I didn’t shrink back. When I was done with him, he would despise himself and dream about nothing but being inside me for the rest of his goddamned solitary life.
I clawed at his shirt, half lifting, half tearing it away. He did the same to me, only breaking our spite-filled kiss long enough to remove my pink T-shirt. My fingertips dove for the front of his waistband, wedging between his pants and the coarse hair just above his shaft. I didn’t unbutton. I tore and shoved until his rock-solid cock was bare to me and warm against my belly. He had no trouble shimmying down my stretchy loose shorts and panties, leaving me naked.
He pulled back and looked at my body for a split second, a furious hunger in his eyes. For a moment, I thought he might stop. Shockingly, I feared it. I wanted this.
Instead of stopping, he spun me around and grabbed my hands, pushing my palms to the wall. “Don’t you fucking say a word.”
I braced myself as his hand slid between my legs, his thick fingers parting my folds before he shoved them in. I gasped at the delicious intrusion. Rook. Inside me. Not his dick, but what did that matter? His body was inside mine, thrusting, feeling, enjoying the wetness that came from my lust for him.
“You fucking like that?” he growled. “You like thinking that I need you and want you. But really you need me. And when we’re done, you always will. They all do,” he said ominously.
All. They all do? A cold chill swept through my bones. While the penetration of my body felt sinfully delicious, his words did not. They were an intrusion of my soul.
“Wait,” I said, trying to turn and get him off me just as I felt him thrust his hard cock inside.
I gasped from the pain, from him going too deep.
“This is what you wanted.” He bucked his hips, triggering another sharp pain. “To fill me with hate and self-loathing.” He pressed his chest firmly into my back, pinning me to the wall. His cock pulled out and slammed into me again. “But I could never hate myself for fucking you. I would only hate you.”
“Stephanie?” A cold slap across my cheek jarred my body like an ice pick to the heart.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my fingers fisting the fabric beneath me, my eyelids exploding open. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
“Where am I?” I felt something rough beneath my back and the heat of the blinding sun on my eyelids, coming through a small window.
Rook leaned over me, frowning. “I think the bigger question is: Why are you here? In your underwear?”
With dread, I slowly looked down, finding my body stretched across the length of a narrow bed. I wore nothing but my white tank top and pink lacy thong. My eyes shuffled around the sparsely decorated room with smooth plaster walls, a rickety old desk and chest, and five plank wood shelves filled with dusty books.
What the hell?
Terrified, I returned my gaze to Rook, not knowing how I’d gotten to this place or managed to dream of it. I’d never been here.
Horror filled me. The feeling of not being in control of my mind and body was as close to hell as I ever wanted to come.
My eyes teared up, and Rook’s expression turned from stern to something more sympathetic.
“Another of your dreams, I assume.” He shook his head and sighed exasperatedly. “What am I going to do with you, Miss Fitzgerald?” he murmured, staring affectionately into my eyes.
“I don’t know.” Because I think I’m going mad.
He smiled with pity. Or compassion. Or regret. Who knew?
“Neither do I.” He drew a shallow breath and released it, infusing a sigh into his quiet words. “But you have a home here as long as you like. At least I can give you that.”
My tears turned to a silent sob. How this man knew exactly what my heart ached for, I didn’t know. But he did. It was his gift.
He stood from the bed and looked down at the dirt floor. “It’s my fault that she’s gone. I should’ve had more security that night, and for this, I am sorry. I wish I could give you more.” He headed for the door.
I got up, grabbing the rough gray blanket from the bed to cover myself. “Wait. Where are you going?”
“I cannot be around you when you’re…like this.” He swallowed the words.
“Like what?” I mumbled, guessing he referred to my mental instability.
“So in need of me.” He looked away, his jaw clenching. “There is a robe in the chest in the corner you may borrow. In fact, anything on this island is yours, if you wish. Anything except the one, of course.”
The one. Himself.
My body shook with the urge to stop him from leaving—I didn’t want to be alone—but I held myself back and watched the door close behind him.
I felt completely scrambled, and it wasn’t entirely due to the nightmare. It was that Rook had been right. As much as I hated to admit it, the one thing I needed in this moment was him. The strange connection between us soothed me. He was like an addiction.
But why would I have feelings for such a bad man?
Maybe he’s not bad. Maybe I’d convinced myself that I’d seen strange things simply because I’d wanted an excuse to stay. Rook had said that I wanted to hide from the world, I wanted to suffer. But that had been me speaking, a product of my own dreams.
Goddammit. I felt like every step I took got me further away from the truth and brought me closer to my own demise. Because my heart was broken, and so was I. Yet, for a moment, when Rook offered me a home, I’d felt hope again.