Charlotte woke up by inches. First, she felt the pounding in her head, and then tasted the rank, bitter-sour taste in the back of her throat. She realized that she was lying down, and flashes of the evening before went through her mind: the tapas restaurant, a man at the bar paying her tab, walking out onto the sidewalk to get a ride because she’d somehow—contrary to her usual tendencies—managed to get drunk to the point where she found herself passing out.
But then there were other flickers: voices, the feeling of being jostled and bumped, the smell of tobacco. Growls—animal growls—that had managed to stir her enough to briefly awaken, but not so much that she’d been able to summon the ability to open her eyes. Long stretches of being “away” intermingled with brief moments of being semi-aware. There was the smell of deep, animal musk, and something green and sharply sweet underneath it.
All in all, a confused panoply of impressions that Charlotte’s aching brain couldn’t sort out. But I’m in bed now. So, that can’t be too bad. Except... except. Charlotte frowned. The smell all around her wasn’t like her room, and some internal sense told her that she’d been riding in some kind of vehicle for a very long time.
That she’d been unconscious for more than just the handful of hours that would come along with being drunk. Something—she couldn’t say what—told her that she was not at home. She knew without having any way to define it, that she was not in her bed, in her apartment, sleeping off a particularly hard-playing evening.
Charlotte opened her eyes and bit back a scream. For a few moments, the sheer unfamiliarity of the room she’d found herself in was utterly terrifying. Charlotte blinked a few times and tried to sort out what it was she was looking at, where she was. The room looked like something inside of a cabin: wood walls, wood floor, wood furniture, but in differing shades.
The bed she had awakened in was comfortable, with a thick, firm mattress and—she suspected—some kind of plush topper, along with a thick, soft blanket and sheets that felt cleaner even than her own fresh laundry. The room smelled like mint and lavender and cedar, which at least was reassuring. At least if someone grabbed me and took me away somewhere, it wasn’t a filthy hole or a derelict building.
She was also fully dressed; Charlotte almost—almost—would have rather been clean than dressed, but at the moment, it was probably for the best that she was clothed. She couldn’t feel any of the tell-tale physical symptoms of having been either beaten or raped. So apart from a wicked hangover and not knowing where you are, you’re okay.
Charlotte heard a noise, and looked around in a brief moment of panic. An instant later she realized that the sound was the lock turning over in the door, and then the sound of the door opening. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her blood roared in her ears. She slithered back on the bed, pressing herself against the headboard, looking around for something, anything that she might be able to use as a weapon.
Before she could find anything, a man walked into the room, and Charlotte bit back another scream as her mouth and throat went dry. The man who entered the room was tall—easily over six feet, Charlotte thought—with shoulder-length medium-blond hair and piercing blue eyes.
He walked into the room and some part of Charlotte’s primitive brain alerted the way that it would in the presence of a predator, like a snake or a big cat or a bear; it was nothing specific, but something in the way that he carried himself, the sleek, confident movement as he closed the door behind himself.
“Headache, right?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to respond to the question—and for a moment nothing came out. The man held a tray in one hand, with a pitcher of what Charlotte hoped was water, a glass, and a few other items she couldn’t make out immediately. The man smiled quickly—a flash of teeth, surrounded by the wheat-blond stubble and surprisingly soft-looking lips—and came further into the room slowly. “You’re probably not in the most receptive mood right now, so I thought I’d start with something to take care of the hangover.”
“I was drugged,” Charlotte said flatly. Her fear at the strangeness of her surroundings, and the sudden appearance of a man she didn’t know briefly fled in the face of her irritation at how she had ended up there. She hadn’t simply had too much to drink; the taste at the back of her throat, the feeling of being mostly unconscious for hours on end, and more little hints all combined to tell her that she had been drugged and taken somewhere.
“You were,” the man confirmed. “I didn’t do it, but I did order it done.” Charlotte’s fear evaporated completely, and indignant rage rose up.
“What? Who the hell does that? Where the hell am I? What—what’s happening?”
“Like I said,” the man told her, “you’re not in a receptive mood right now. I get it; I wouldn’t be either.”
“Do you expect me to be in a mood to do as I’m told? Because I’m not.” Charlotte’s face burned with the blood that rushed into it, and her heart pounded in her chest, adrenaline surging through her but not leaving even a vestige of her panic. She was angry now and not the least bit frightened of the man who had entered the room.
“I expect you to have a sense of self-preservation enough to listen to me for a minute,” the man said. “I haven’t harmed you. Apart from a wicked hangover and a little bit of a scrape where you fell before my guys grabbed you, you’re exactly the way you were when you walked into the restaurant last night. That should tell you something.”
Charlotte stared at him. His words filtered through her rage, but she didn’t want to go back to being afraid—being angry was so much more comfortable, so much more satisfying. “You drugged me! Even if you didn’t do it yourself, you—how can you possibly expect me to ever want to be reasonable after that?”
“Look,” the man said, setting the tray down on the top of the dresser in the room. “You have some choices. You’re about a twelve-hour drive away from your apartment.” The words hit Charlotte like a gush of ice water.
“Twelve…” she took a breath. “Twelve hours?” The man nodded.
“My people got you at about eight last night—your time. It’s about seven in the morning, the next day, right now.” Charlotte couldn’t look at him. She looked down at her hands on her lap, trying to make sense of what he’d said. “You’re in the middle of nowhere, girl.”
“I am a woman, and my name is Charlotte,” she said, hearing the tightness in her own voice.
“Okay, Charlotte,” the man said, and Charlotte looked up; the reasonable, agreeable tone of his voice—firm as it still was—made her suspicious. “You’re in the middle of nowhere. On a big old piece of protected land in the middle of woods so thick you’d die before you found the one tiny road out of here.” Charlotte’s stomach felt as if it wasn’t sure whether it would rather drop to her knees or jump up into her throat, and she was fairly certain that at any moment she would start throwing up.
“Why did you kidnap me? I’m not rich—I don’t know anyone important…” she looked up again as realization flooded her. “Who else have you kidnapped? Don’t you think people are going to miss me eventually—I am not going to join some bizarre sex cult thing.”
“No one is asking you to join a bizarre sex cult,” the man said, and Charlotte realized she didn’t know his name; he hadn’t volunteered it. “You’re not rich, and you don’t know anyone important—but you yourself are someone important, at least to the future of my community. But that’s a topic for another time, once you’re feeling a little more yourself.” Charlotte glared at him defiantly.
“When I feel more myself, I’m not going to feel any more cooperative,” she told him matter-of-factly. “In fact, I will probably feel like taking my chances in those thick woods.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” the man said, and Charlotte thought she could hear amusement in his voice. Once more, anger rose up to defeat fear and dread.
“Are you threatening me? On top of everything else?”
The man shook his head. “I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head,” he told her. “But you’re stuck here for the foreseeable future.”
Charlotte looked at him doubtfully. “If you think I’ll believe that…”
“I don’t expect you to,” the man said, smiling slightly. “But I expect you to be smart enough to realize that you can’t escape right away—it’s going to be completely useless.” He sighed. “Look, I know you’ve got a pounding headache and probably feel like shit even beyond that. Let me give you want you need to take care of that, give you a hot meal, and then we can talk about things.”
“You just want me to get Stockholm Syndrome,” Charlotte said petulantly.
“Maybe a little,” the man said with a ghost of a smile.
“I am not eating or drinking anything you give me,” Charlotte told him. “I don’t know why you would expect me to.”
“I will drink this water to prove it’s not drugged or poisoned,” the man said. He poured some of the water in the pitcher into the glass and brought it to his lips. He drank all of it down and set the glass back on the tray. “I’ll show you the unopened bottle of headache pills, let you read it.” He tossed the plastic bottle in her direction and against all odds, Charlotte managed to catch it in her hands, awkwardly, but she caught it. She checked the seal: it was untouched. Nothing more than Aleve.
“I still don’t trust you,” she said, knowing she sounded like a sulky child and not caring.
“I brought you some bread and butter, some coffee, and some roast chicken and vegetables. Not really breakfast food, but I figure once you start feeling better, you’ll be hungry enough that you won’t care what time of day it is.” Charlotte grimaced and crossed her arms over her chest. Everything in her revolted at the idea of even trusting the man enough to deign to accept food from him, or water—or medicine.
She wanted none of his help; she wanted, desperately, for the whole bizarre situation to have been a dream, and to wake up in her own bed, confused as to the last events of the evening but at least somewhere familiar, somewhere that was hers.
“Sulk as long as you need to. I’ll leave you to it.” With that the man turned and started towards the door.
“You could at least tell me your name,” Charlotte said tartly.
“Sebastian,” the man replied, without turning. “Sebastian Turner.” He opened the door and stepped out of the room, closing it behind him. Charlotte thought that she could have—should have—at least attempted to go after him, to get through the door, to make things difficult, but her head throbbed, and her stomach was still in such an undecided state that she thought any sudden movement was more likely to result in her throwing up everywhere rather than in any kind of success.
She sat for a few moments stewing over what had happened to her. She’d been kidnapped. If Sebastian was honest, she was twelve hours by car away from home; Charlotte had to think that it would be at least a few hours by plane. He could be lying about that. She couldn’t disregard that possibility. She was angry, hungover, and—for the moment at least—trapped. And scared.
Charlotte looked at the tray on the dresser. If Sebastian intended to do something to her—whether it was to kill her or harm her in some way—she had to believe there would be better ways to do it than just poisoning her. Of course, he could be drugging her to keep her quiet. But why would he abduct someone with a middle-range salary and no real importance in the world? There had to be more to the story, and she needed to know what it was.
“I know the water is safe,” she said to herself. “And the Aleve is probably safe, too.” It was in a sealed bottle, after all—and while she could credit Sebastian with a good deal of creativity, she didn’t think he was quite so devious as to rig a bottle of headache medicine. She sighed. “I’ll think better once my head isn’t pounding anymore,” she murmured to herself.
She managed to get the bottle of Aleve open, and climbed cautiously out of the bed to get to the tray with the glass and pitcher. Charlotte poured herself a full glass and took two Aleve with it, walking back over to the bed. Think, Charlotte, think! She couldn’t do anything about her situation right at that moment; she didn’t think that it would be easy to break the windows, and she had to assume that Sebastian would hear it if she did.
Then, too, there was something about the bizarreness of the situation, the absurdity of it, that made her want to know just what it was that Sebastian wanted from her. He wanted to wait until she was in a more cooperative frame of mind—and she wasn’t sure she would ever cooperate with him, but she was interested enough in finding out what his endgame was that she would at least hear him out.
After a while, she felt the headache starting to ebb, and the feeling in her stomach wasn’t quite so intense in its pitching and yawing. There was a low gnawing hunger in her stomach, and she could smell the chicken and vegetables on the dresser. It’s been at least twelve hours since I ate anything, assuming I can believe him. I might as well just eat. If Sebastian had drugged the food, then she would just deal with it.
She stood, steadier on her feet, and walked over to the dresser, to where the tray still waited. The food actually looked mouth-watering, and Charlotte hefted the tray carefully—mindful of the half-full pitcher of water—and carried it back to the bed. She set the food and water down on the bedside table, and slipped back into the bed, pulling the blankets around her even as she reached for the plate of food.
The chicken was delicious, with crisp skin and moist meat, and the vegetables—carrots, mushrooms, onions, and potatoes—were roasted to perfection, and seasoned with something savory that made her want more. The bread and butter tasted just the way that it should, and before she knew it, Charlotte had cleaned her plate completely, and finished off the water in the pitcher.
That opened up a new problem: how was she going to use the bathroom? There wasn’t another door in her room, and she didn’t exactly enjoy the possibility of using the pitcher. Then too, she wanted—desperately—a shower. She felt dirty and sweaty, and gross in ways that could only come along with being abducted and driven halfway across the country overnight.
Just when she would have started pounding on the locked door, screaming to be let out, Charlotte heard footsteps coming towards the room, and then the sound of the lock moving inside the door.
“You’re looking better,” Sebastian said, looking her over with a quick, appraising glance. “I’m going to guess you need to use the bathroom—and not just for a bath. Right?” Charlotte pressed her lips together. In her preoccupation, she hadn’t thought about the fact that she didn’t have any clothes to change into even if she got the chance to bathe.
“I would like to shower, but thanks to being kidnapped, I don’t have any clean clothes,” she said tartly.
“I’m surprised you weren’t curious enough to check the room out more,” Sebastian said. “Dresser is full of clothes. They probably won’t all fit—but some of them at least should.” Sebastian stepped over to the dresser and opened the drawers. To her surprise, Charlotte saw each one was full; underwear—thankfully in original packaging—but no bras. She saw some panamas, and casual day wear: jeans, skirts, dresses, shirts. There were even socks. “I’m still trying to get you some shoes, but for the time being I don’t expect you’ll want to spend a lot of time away from the house.”
“I’d like to spend the rest of my life away from the house,” Charlotte countered.
“Get the clothes you want to change into,” Sebastian said. “The bathroom is next door to your room.” He gave her a quick look. “I’ll leave the door open, but you should know I’ll be in the living room. It’s not worth trying to escape.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she said irritably. She rose and strode to the dresser, looking through the different options available. She wanted to get clean, and she wanted to get fresh clothes on, and she needed to use the toilet. Charlotte sighed and Sebastian left her to her own devices. Would he be less annoying if he weren’t so hot? The thought startled her—and Charlotte dismissed it, determined to get clean clothes and a clean body.