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.