Stolen Fate (7 page)

A week has passed since I was brought here to his house, to be kept like some kind of felon. Part of me doesn’t blame him one bit for the actions he took, but the other part of me is silently screaming for him to let me go, to try and forget everything I’ve done. But I know that part will never pan out. It will never come to be a reality.

I see Drayden at least twice a day. He’s the one who brings me my meals and when he can’t do it, he has crew-cut guy bring them to me. Maybe someday I will find out his actual name. Thankfully, I haven’t seen the other one--Jansen, I think his name was--since the day he cornered me in the bathroom. I knew I wasn’t safe in his presence and the fact he hasn’t been to my room since that day proved Drayden doesn’t really want to harm me after all. Or at least he doesn’t want someone else doing it for him. Either way, I’m thankful.

A television is sitting just inside my door when I wake up from another restless night’s sleep. It’s a pleasant surprise, but it only exemplifies the fact I’ll undoubtedly be here awhile.

I’m assuming he’s only going to keep me locked up in this room until he finds out if I’m carrying his child or not. Then I don’t know what his plans are after that. Praying every night that there is no child is the only hope I have left to wish for. If I am indeed pregnant, he can undoubtedly keep me prisoner forever. Or he can toss some money at me, have me sign something and discard me like the whore he thinks me to be. There is no telling which path this unpredictable man is going to take.

One evening, as I click off the TV and settle under the covers, the bedroom lock clicks and the door slowly opens. I’m afraid to see who is standing in the doorway so late at night, so I close my eyes and feign sleep. I hear someone move further into the room, closing the door behind them. Whoever it is believes me to be sleeping but creeps over to the edge of the bed just the same.

There is a pulsating current which hits me whenever he’s near, so I know it’s Drayden who is standing there, no doubt staring at me. But why isn’t he saying anything to me? Why isn’t he berating me like I know he likes to do?

The silence is booming in my ears.

I slowly open my eyes and find him standing at the foot of the bed, naked from the waist up, leaning against one of the four poster columns. I’m attuned to the fact he needs that post to hold him up; otherwise, he’ll stagger and fall over.

He’s drunk.

The small light from the bathroom allows me to see that his eyes are glassy and his head is swaying, trying his best to remain still but failing miserably. He’s still holding onto a glass of some kind of hard liquor, the sweat dripping down and hitting the hardwood floor below.

After he’s done taking in my still form, he makes a solid connection with my eyes and winks at me. He acts as if he is holding on to a secret I’m just not privy to yet.

“Essie, Essie, Essie. Whatever am I going to do with you?” He stumbles over toward the seat tucked in the corner of the room and not-so-gracefully plunks down into it, putting his drink on top of the table kissing the edge of the chair’s fabric. He scoots forward and places his elbows on his knees, never breaking eye contact with me for fear I’ll probably disappear.

We stare at each other for what seems like forever, although in reality it’s only a few minutes. I’m really sick and tired of his crap already, so I break the silence looming between us. “What do you want, Drayden?” I ask him, my obvious annoyance showing through. “Did you come here for a reason? Or are you just going to intimidate me all night with your drunk ass?” I can’t help myself. When I’m scared or uncomfortable, I end up lashing out, making me appear stronger than I actually am.

He doesn’t answer either one of my questions, instead choosing to sit there at glare at me. Finally, after a few more minutes, he speaks. “Come here,” he demands.

I put my head down and avert my eyes away from his intensity. “No,” I respond.

“Don’t make me tell you twice, woman,” he slurs. When I still don’t make a move, he indeed makes his request again. “Come here. Now!”

Still I do nothing, clutching the covers up closer under my chin, as if the flimsy material is going to save me from this man. I know I’m taking my own life in my hands with my stubbornness, but I have to take a stand. Granted, it might be futile, but I must still do this. He may have me locked away in this house, but I’m not going to give up my free will. He’ll have to force me to comply because that’s the only way I’m getting out of this bed.

Frustrated with my refusal, he stands up, knocks the chair into the wall and stalks toward me. Anger and irritation shoot from him, hitting me everywhere. He’s pissed, in every sense of the word. Ripping the covers off me with ease, he circles my arms with his fingers and pulls me out of bed. He’s walking so fast back toward the chair I almost trip, bracing myself by latching onto his arm.

Contact of any sort with him is dangerous. I want so much to be unaffected by him, to truly hate him, but I just can’t. I’m drawn to him on some weird level. I fight it, put on a good show, but in the end, he has this inexplicable power over me. And I think he knows it, too.

“What do you want?” I ask flippantly, aiming for indifference. He sits down in the chair and tugs me onto his lap. My arm rubs against his chiseled chest while his scent infiltrates my defenses.

Fuck. I’m in some serious shit here.

“When I tell you to do something, Essie, you best do it the first time I say or else.” His arm wrapped around my waist is holding me in place so I don’t attempt to get away from him. His other arm is running up and down my leg, his hand teasing my burning flesh.

“You are not the boss of me, Drayden. You can’t order me around and expect me to comply.” I’m trying my best to control my breathing. I can’t give way to the fact that my body is betraying me.

“I own you, Essie. For the foreseeable future, you belong to me and you will do whatever I say, whenever I say it. If you refuse, then there will be consequences.”

“What?” I say as I look at him with disbelief. “No one owns me, you bastard!” I struggle to get free but his punishing hold on me is too tight. “Let me go!” I shout.

“You can fight me, but I will always win.
Always
.” His hold remains strong, never wavering. There is no hope in getting away from him, not right now. My best plan is to remain still, let him do or say what he came here for and be done with it for tonight.

Tomorrow is a different day.

Once he senses I’m not going to fight him anymore, he relaxes a bit. He leans in closer to me and smells my hair. If I didn’t already have a certain feeling toward this complex man, I would surely think he’s a psycho, smelling me and shit. Who does that? And so blatantly, too? Then again, he
is
highly intoxicated, so anything he does shouldn’t surprise me.

“Are we going to sit here all night, or did you come in here for a reason?” I can feel him start to harden beneath me. Well, I guess he kind of just answered my question.

“Would you shut the fuck up, Essie? You’re really starting to grate on my last nerve with that never-ending attitude of yours. If anyone has the right to be annoyed here, it’s me.
Only
me.” When I respond with my silence he continues, gripping my jaw and turning my face toward his. “You know, lots of women have come after me for my money, some even trying to claim they were pregnant with my child. But none have gone about it so diabolically. You get an E for effort in that area.” His one hand inches slowly up my body until he reaches just underneath my breasts. Even though he’s drunk and very upset with me, it’s almost like he’s still conscious of his touch. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he’s trying not to overstep some invisible boundary. But at this point, isn’t it all just moot?

“Were they?” I ask.

It takes him a second to realize I asked him a question. “Were they what?”

“Were they pregnant with your kid? Did you ever knock anyone up?” I’m so blunt about it, but I don’t even care.

“Nope,” he garbles in my ear. “None of them knew I couldn’t have kids. So the joke’s on them, I guess.” He shifts so he can get a closer hold on me, bringing my sex in direct contact with his engorged arousal.

For as tense as my body is now, a small sense of relief floods me. If he can’t have kids then I can’t be pregnant. A small smile starts to form on my lips but disappears just as quickly. “If you can’t have kids then why the hell are you holding me hostage, waiting to see if I am indeed knocked up?”

“Well, nothing’s guaranteed, sweetheart. The doctors said the accident caused a lot of damage, and the chances of me having kids are one in a million. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my lineage won’t go past me, but on the off chance
you
are that one in a million, you’re staying put until I find out for sure.”

I heard everything he said to me but I focus on one word.
Accident
. Is that how he got those scars? And as if my internal question rules my body, my hand rises up and I make contact with his skin. I absently trace the puckered skin on his chest but before I can follow it up and over his shoulder, he yanks my hand away from his flesh, throwing it back into my lap.

Once I’m thrown out of the trance, I let his other words sink into my brain.

One in a million?             

Yeah, I’ll take those odds for sure.

“When are you going to have me tested?”

“What?”

Is he hard of hearing now? “When are you going to test me to find out if I’m pregnant? I want to get out of here and the sooner we find out I’m not, the sooner I can go home.”

“I don’t want to talk anymore.” He licks his full lips and leans in closer, nipping my neck with his brazenness. The two-day-old stubble he’s sporting scratches at my skin. Heat immediately shoots through me as if my body is set ablaze. I start to rock back and forth on his lap, trying to extinguish the embers before they fan out of control.

“What are you doing?” I’m shocked a little bit with his audacity. I know he’s a man who obviously gets what he wants; I’m just surprised he wants me. Again. After everything I’ve done to him.

“I wanna fuck,” he says, quite forcefully. “We did things your way last time. Now, I want to fuck you on
my
terms.
My
way.” He leans in again, trying to dominate me with his mouth but I push him away, shoving his bare chest with my hands.

“No, Drayden. I don’t want to. Let me up,” I plead. “You’re drunk.”

“I know. That’s what’s giving me the balls to surrender to my desire to be buried deep inside that sweet pussy of yours. Do you honestly think I’d fuck you sober?”

His words are like a slap to the face. They hurt. I know this whole situation is fucked up, but his admission that I’m not worth it enough to try and have sex with me when he’s sober, in full control of his faculties, is too much. I want him to hurt like I hurt, so before I can change my mind, the flesh of my palm meets his unsuspecting cheek, driving home the fact that what he just said to me is degrading and offensive. Judging from his reaction, maybe I should have been off his lap before I lashed out at him.

His eyes turn black, his hold turns incapacitating and he sneers at me. “I forgot. You like to fuck rough.” He lunges forward, almost knocking me out of the chair, throws me over his shoulder and heads toward the bed. I’m beating on his back the whole time, trying to get him to release me or at least sober up enough to realize what he’s doing.

“Let me go, Drayden. I’ll scream if you don’t let me go.”

“Go ahead. Scream away. No one will hear your desperate cries.” He tosses me on the bed and waits for me to do something. When I don’t move, he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his bottoms and slowly draws them down, releasing himself from his confinement. My eyes go straight to his cock, almost forgetting how gifted he is. If I wasn’t so caught up in what is going to take place in a few seconds, I would revel in his gloriousness.

He’s quite possibly the most beautiful and virile man I’ve ever seen, minus the controlling, kidnappy, psycho kind of vibe he’s emanating right now. Yeah, minus all that.

“What are you going to do? Force yourself on me? I thought it wasn’t your style.” I throw the reminder out there, hoping it’s going to trigger something in that inebriated brain of his.

He advances closer to me, taking his time drinking in my barely-clad body. “I’m not going to force myself on you, Essie. Before I sink deep inside you,
you’ll
be the one begging me for it.”

“I highly doubt that,
mister
.”

“Wanna make a bet?” When I try to scramble away from him, he catches my leg and pulls me down the length of the bed, closer to where he stands. Then, with one knee on the mattress, he pushes himself so he’s able to straddle my waist. My pink camisole rides up a bit in the struggle, barely preserving my full breasts from his view. My nipples are erect and he knows as much when his fingers glide over the tips of them.

“I will never give in to you. I will never consent to this. So if you want to rape me for real, then go right ahead. I’ve had worse than you happen to me, Drayden.” I say this with mixed emotions. It’s true. Worse things have happened to me in my young life, but I survived it all. And I will survive this.