Caged (16 page)

“I tried…”

He shook his head angrily, inclining closer until I could feel the heat of his rage upon my cheek. “No! You didn’t. You pretended to listen but you didn’t actually
listen
!”

“But this…” I stammered. “Killing people, holding me here. Why? WHY?”

He blinked at my temper and his characteristic cruel smirk curved the flesh of his soft lips. “I’m going to show you why. I’m going to make you listen. And I’m going to force you to accept what you should have recognised four years ago.”

I froze when he trailed his tongue up the side of my neck, a flood of goosebumps breaking out against the damp skin he left behind. “I’m going to make you understand me. All of me. Every ounce of the darkness that no one, not even you, can fix.”

My throat closed in when he pressed a tender kiss to the cool skin below my ear, the gentleness to it a huge contradiction to the vehemence in his words.

“And then I’m going to make you see yourself.”

His promise came with a warning. A warning that scared me like nothing before. “You can’t do this.” My own threat was weak, the fear of his vow making every part of me scream out in silence. Not because I refused to believe him, but because I
did
believe him. And I didn’t want to see the real me, the me I had refused liberation to. The me I knew lurked deep beneath the Kloe Grant I had conjured to deal with the horror of my childhood.

I couldn’t breathe as nausea clogged my throat. Anderson leaned back, his fierce studying gaze seeing into the very centre of me as his fingers softly curved along my jaw. “Shh,” he whispered. “First you get to see the me you should have seen so easily before, Kloe. And only if you survive that will you have to face yourself.”

Fear and shock grounded me when Anderson pressed a kiss to my lips.

“And I promise, if you accept who I am, who you really are deep down, and the truth that your soul is as dark as mine.” He drew his finger down my throat and along the hem of the unfamiliar t-shirt I wore. “Then I’ll let you go.”

My mouth fell open as I gasped for air.

“And I never break my promises. Not like you, Kloe.”

Giving me a wink he turned and walked back up the stairs, the heavy lock of the door making me wince.

I dropped to my knees and sobbed. Yet I didn’t weep for freedom, or for courage. I didn’t cry for Anderson, or for Dave, or Trudy. I cried for me, for what I knew I was going to have to confess to if I was to ever breathe fresh air again.

For twenty years I had buried so much of me in the past that I knew dragging that part of me into the present would be more painful than anything Anderson, or James, or the motherfucker who was trying to kill me could accomplish. My own soul and the truth of what lived in it would be the very thing that tore me apart from the inside out.

H
ESITANTLY
I
TOOK THE BOTTLE
of water and sandwich from Anderson. He watched me closely when I ripped the film from the cheese sandwich and scoffed it down like my life depended on the plain, flavourless product.

“You do know that my workplace and the police will be looking for me?” I told him around a large mouthful.

Still observing my eating, he frowned. “I doubt it. You forget someone is after you. They will most likely believe he’s at fault. Also, they know nothing about me.”

Musing over his words I sighed when I realised he was right. I hadn’t told them about Anderson and I doubted if anyone had seen him come and go.

“I still don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

He sank into a chair that had appeared that morning when I’d woken. I had the strangest feeling that Anderson had been sitting in it all night, watching me sleep. “You don’t need to understand.”

Anger rippled and I glared at him. “So what are we going to do? Talk?”

He nodded. “Amongst other things, yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Well surely we could have done that in the comfort of my own home. There’s no need to lock me up just to talk!”

Leaning back into his chair he crossed his arms over his wide chest, the action pulling the soft fabric of his grey t-shirt flat to his skin. “Trust is a gift that comes from loyalty, Kloe.”

I stared at him, his stupid words making the anger simmering in my gut begin to bubble.

“And so far, you haven’t given me anything remotely resembling loyalty,” he added with that smug smirk of his.

“What the…?” He aggravated me so much that I was struggling to form words. “There hasn’t been enough time spent together to gain any sort of loyalty or trust with one another.”

He grinned widely. “Hence…” he opened his hands, gesturing to our surroundings and his imprisonment.

“You can’t do this,” I repeated, lost for any other words.

“And yet here we are.”

The arrogant fuck!

Taking a huge gulp of the cool water I regarded him over the rim of the bottle. “So you want to talk, then talk,” I snapped after swallowing.

“I said amongst other things.”

I paused when I caught the hint of amusement in his tone, his cool eyes studying me for a reaction. “What other things?”

“I told you that you would learn all about me in the coming months. And you will.” He stood up and turned to face the rack of whips and floggers lined up on the wall. Reaching for a crop, he took it from the hook and slid it through his fingers. A faint shiver tore through his body when he turned back to look at me and I moved back on the bed, burying my back into the bricks as far as I could possibly go.

“Tell me about your ex-husband, Kloe.”

My bones creaked with fear and I blinked in confusion. “What does he have to do with this?”

“Nothing…
yet
.”

“There’s nothing to tell. Ben was always good to me.” Images of James flashed through my mind and my lungs constricted with worry. “You don’t need to hurt him.”

“Yet he was fucking his secretary behind your back.”

I shook my head hard. “We all make mistakes. He doesn’t deserve…”

“Deserve?” he probed, urging me to finish my sentence. “Deserve what, Kloe?”

Licking my lips, I swallowed hard. “What you did to James.”

“You think I did that to James because he hurt you?”

Frowning, I stared up at him when he came closer and peered down at me, the hardness in his eyes making me recoil further. “Didn’t you?”

Pursing his lips, he chuckled. “I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.”

Another blaze of anger scorched my belly and I blew out an exasperated breath. He was impossible. The stark contrast in him from who he had been when he’d been in my care four years ago to now was astounding, like Jekyll and Hyde, two different people in the same body. In fact, even his body was different, much the same as his temperament. Harder, firmer and a heck of a lot more intimidating. The spreading out of his physique had made room for another personality to take root inside him and it wasn’t a charming persona. Far from it.

A thought filtered in and I reared back a little. “How did you know about Ben’s affair?”

Anderson lowered onto the bed beside me. The scent of him washed over me and I turned my face away when the memory of the closeness we had once shared mocked the situation I now found myself in.

“There’s a lot about you that I know, Kloe Grant.” His lips twisted and he leaned into me, the cruel, cold sneer making me catch a breath. “Or would that be Samantha Rowan?” he taunted with a low whisper.

I scrambled back, the beat of my heart fighting with the force of the shock and turning my blood to ice. He surveyed the fear on my face with a curious stare, meticulously watching the blood drain from my face.

His sad smile came with the softest touch of his hand on my face. I swear he could feel the ice racing through me, chilling his skin through the touch. “It seems we have so much more in common than I initially thought.”

“We have nothing in common!”

Dropping his hand from my face he sighed and nodded. “Ahh, yes. I didn’t have the luxury of relocation and a change of name. Plus,” he continued with another deep sigh, “I wasn’t lucky enough to be saved after only two years.”

“Lucky?” I scoffed. “You think I was lucky?”

“Well, let’s face it. Your step-father was just as cruel and evil as the Dawsons, but after such a short amount of time, rehabilitation was easy.”

My teeth cracked with the strength with which I clenched my jaw together. I wouldn’t consider myself lucky, far from it. “You have no idea, Anderson. So don’t pretend to understand what I went through.” I glared at him, at the humour staring back at me. He was exasperating but I knew I was only playing up to the game he was forcing on me.

Instead of giving him what he was after I inhaled slowly and smiled sweetly. “I thought we were going to focus on you before it was my turn?”

His lips twitched and then a huge grin transformed his usual stern features. Something inside my chest shifted at the sight of it but I pushed it away and made sure to concentrate on the cruelty that ran through his blood.

“You’re correct, of course. We can save your sins for another time.”

My
sins?

“How gracious of you.”

He laughed harder, his eyes sparkling with amusement. Abruptly, he stood up, the sudden action leaving me reeling. But no sooner had I caught my breath than it was stolen from me. Anderson crushed his lips to mine, his kiss hard and punishing. I couldn’t move when surprise blindsided me, shocking my body and rendering me motionless. His hands slid into my hair and his fingers fisted cruelly, the pain that formed in my scalp making me gasp beneath his mouth.

Just as quickly, he pulled away. His soft look was succeeded by a cheeky wink. “Soon, Kloe.”

I frowned as I tried to calm the frenzy in my chest. However, as usual, he said no more and left me in disbelief on the bed, the sound of the locks sliding into their housing not even registering. Touching my lips with the tips of my fingers I frowned harder. What had he meant by ‘soon’? Nothing he ever said made any sense. And I had a feeling that anything he would say in the future would be just as cryptic.

“K
LOE.”

I jolted awake, my eyes snapping open with the quiet but eager sound of Anderson whispering my name in my ear. I’d only been asleep for a while and knew it was still the middle of the night.

Anderson’s smile came into focus in the low light of the room, the closeness of his face making me blink with shock. “It’s time.”

I frowned, blinking rapidly to rouse myself. However, my escalating heartbeat did that for me when his words sank in and brought panic. “Time? Time for what?” I couldn’t seem to make my brain wake and I lay still just staring at his face. The short stubble that had dusted his chin that morning was now a little thicker and I reached up, frowning at the purple bruising around his right eye. “What happened?”

The usual cold reflection in his eyes softened with my touch and he took my fingers from his face and brought them to his lips, kissing the tips gently. I couldn’t keep up with his mood swings. One second he was angry, his eyes glinting with hatred and cruelty, and the next they were soft and compassionate, his words kind and tender. I questioned whether he was bipolar, or maybe Dissociative Identity Disorder was a factor, yet surely I would have picked up on that when I did my initial evaluation of his mental state.

“I like that you’re concerned, but I’m fine. I had a fight tonight.”

“A fight? Who with? Are you okay?” Several feelings clashed and I was angry with myself that concern made my gut twist. Why the hell I was concerned about his wellbeing was beyond me. However, something told me there was more to Anderson than he allowed me to see. I had worked with many broken and troubled people, and in nearly every case there was always a confused and frightened person trying to claw their way out of the despair that kept them hostage within themselves. I wanted to think – or rather hope – that Anderson was doing this because he needed me to help him. Suffering, stress and trauma sometimes made us do crazy things. Even though Anderson was keeping me imprisoned, there was a part deep down inside me that knew he wouldn’t hurt me.