“P . . . please . . .” She felt herself turning blue, the words barely having enough room and air supply to escape.
“Please? Please what? Who are you appealing to? I control everything. I control your right to food, water, sleep, oxygen. Who am I that I control so much?”
She shook her head, knowing the stubbornness was stupid. She was buying herself all of what? Five seconds? Because in the next few moments she’d either say what he wanted to hear, or pass out. And she was far too afraid of what he’d do to her while she was unconscious.
Her fingernails clawed at his hand. Lucas loosened his grip a little, and she took in all the oxygen she could get.
“The things I did to you while you were with me were mild compared to what I feel like doing right now. You will die in this room. It can be right now, or it can be twenty or thirty years from now, if you’re lucky.”
If there was no hope of Asher’s return, Grace would dispute which option was the lucky one. She could envision herself driving him to such a rage he’d kill her and all this would be over. But the hope of being rescued and being happy again held her in check.
He hadn’t removed his hand from her throat, subtly reminding her he held the power of her life in only one of his hands. “Trust me, pet, you don’t want to piss me off anymore than I already am. The sooner you get over this bizarre pride or loyalty or whatever it is and submit to me, the better for you. Who am I?”
She looked into his cold, obsidian gaze. “You may get me to say the word, but know this, you will never truly own me. That right belongs to my real master. You might take his symbol off my hip, but there will always be a scar that reminds us both what was there. And you might take his collar off my throat, but you’ll never erase his name from my soul.”
A moment later his fist came back, and then she sank into blissful unconsciousness.
Twelve
It was nearly sunrise when the official unlocked Asher’s cell. He’d been having a nightmare of Grace crying out for him from Lucas’s dungeon. In the dream, he’d been locked up, unable to do anything for her. Though awake, the dream clung to him like a memory of something real.
“You’re free to go.”
“What?” Maybe he was still dreaming. He couldn’t have heard the man right. They’d questioned him for hours, saying they had the body so he may as well confess. The only thing he’d told them was that he hadn’t killed Darcy. In his mind he apologized to her. Of course he knew he was still responsible for it. Darcy had been his responsibility, and she’d had no true power to fight his wishes.
Even if it had been James that landed the fatal blow, it was still his fault for not whipping her himself and for leaving her alone in the aftermath. But disclosing the full truth wasn’t wise right now. Grace was out there, and he couldn’t consign himself to a prison sentence, knowing what that might mean for her. There was no guarantee she’d made it to James.
He stood there, the cell door flung wide, while the guard raised an eyebrow.
“Well? Are you institutionalized after only a few hours? Get the fuck out. This isn’t a hotel.”
“I don’t understand.” You idiot, don’t ask questions, just leave. And yet, he couldn’t make himself move. It was too surreal. He’d thought it would be months before he got out and then it would only be if he was incredibly lucky and could somehow convince them he wasn’t a killer. To be released before the sun rose was hard to process.
“It seems someone has materialized to take the rap for you. James LaFont. Name ring a bell?”
Asher just stared, unsure if admitting to a friendship with James would land him right back in the cell or if denying any knowledge of the man would just look more suspicious. James had confessed? So who was with Grace?
When Asher didn’t say anything, the guard continued. “LaFont claims he took your slave off the property without your knowledge to borrow her and that in the course of the time at his home, there was an accident. He confirmed where the body was buried. According to his story, he couldn’t bring himself to face you afterward and fled to the other side of the island to live with the natives.”
At least the story meshed with him not saying anything one way or the other about knowing James. He finally made his feet move out of the cell and out of the station. He called his driver to bring the car. He wanted to talk to James, but he knew they wouldn’t allow that right now, and he needed to get to his pet.
When he got home, William said James had been by and confirmed Grace was at the camp. In all likelihood, she was safe and sound with the natives. But what if she wasn’t? He couldn’t shake the dream of her crying for him in Lucas’s dungeon.
Many crops were doing poorly this season. Hunting was probably a little rough, too. Which meant even those who lived off the land weren’t immune to the promise of money and the comfort it could buy. If she was with the natives, safe and sound, she’d still be with them if he checked the Stone estate first. But if she was with Lucas, any second he wasted could end her life.
***
Grace’s teeth clattered as the bucket of icy water splashed across her face, rousing her from unconsciousness. The water dripped down her body as she tossed her head back to get the hair out of her eyes. It took her a moment to figure out where she was, and she cringed when the Australian shepherd started licking water off her thigh.
“Not now, boy. I get first dibs, then you can play.” He swatted the dog’s haunches, sending him to the corner to sulk. “Morning, pet. Did you dream about me?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
He raised a hand as if to strike her but quickly pulled it back. “Oh no you don’t. I know your game. You want me to either kill you or keep knocking you out. But if I do that, where’s my fun?”
Grace pulled experimentally on the chains. Her arms ached. They were raised over her head, the shackles looped around a large, metal ceiling hook in the center of the dungeon, the kind of hook a pirate might use for a hand. Lucas had used a spreader bar to keep her legs extended so she couldn’t kick out at him. The temptation to do so was powerful.
Now that she’d awakened, the idea of rescue seemed almost stupid. Even if James had good intentions, as soon as he’d gotten back to civilization, he would have rethought things. He would have realized some random slave he didn’t know wasn’t worth it. He would have justified leaving Asher in prison so he could have his own life. They obviously hadn’t spoken for a long time, why should he give up everything now? He wouldn’t. And he hadn’t.
Either way, Asher probably said something incriminating during questioning. If that had happened, it was unlikely they’d let her master out.
The idea that she’d end up giving in to Lucas turned her now empty stomach. Asher had kept her so well fed that missing a single meal felt like cause for panic. The tears started to move down her cheeks.
“There she is,” Lucas said, approvingly. “I knew you were in there somewhere. My frightened little mouse.”
While she’d been unconscious, he’d set a table up with various whips he liked to use on her. He preferred things that marked well, broke the skin, left scars. It was as if he chose to mark her because he couldn’t truly have her. It was the only way he could be assured his name would remain in her memory for any reason at all.
A wicked-looking knife gleamed from the table, the kind meant for skinning animals. It could take off thin layers so as not to waste lots of meat. Grace shuddered. He really intended to just cut Asher’s mark right off her. The tears came harder.
Even if her master was coming for her, Lucas was ready to get started now. His sadism likely hadn’t been fed in months. She knew she wasn’t going to be rescued before he flayed the brand off her hip. He had a metal disk on the table with his estate symbol, as well as the tools needed to heat it.
She flinched when he brushed the hair out of her eyes, a false kindness that would evaporate as quickly as it had visited. The walls were closing in. She felt like the inmate about to be put to d
eath, watching the red phone in the last few seconds, hoping for a reprieve. Ring. Ring. Ring. Goddammit, Ring.
But there was no phone and no reprieve coming. Instead, she cried out as the whip came down on her, tearing at her skin like a child ripping the wrapping off a gift. She felt the little drops going down her back that weren’t water. Then she was suddenly numb, and she couldn’t feel anything anymore.
***
Grace couldn’t be sure of the amount of time that had passed since he’d started, but Lucas finally grew bored with whipping her. If the hook hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen to the ground long ago.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Please ring. That bright red phone, still in her head, still standing there silent, mocking her. Refusing to give her freedom.
“Why couldn’t you give me what you gave him? You little bitch. I brought you here. I’m your true master. How could you be such an ungrateful cunt that you wouldn’t give me everything?”
She was crying too hard to answer him, and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to her anyway, so she remained silent, hoping somehow to disappear and evaporate into a mist that could slide underneath the gap in the door and up the stairs to safety.
“You will give me everything. Do you understand me? Every fucking part of your soul will be mine. You’ll belong to me so deeply you won’t even remember his name.” The whip came down across the center of her back, flaying another piece of her skin open as he unleashed his anger. The pain snapped back into sharper focus.
“Please,” she whimpered.
He hadn’t made her address him properly yet. But it was coming. She could feel it. He was waiting for the right moment to wring the word from her lips. And he would succeed, so much more easily than she’d ever wanted him to. It was already becoming clear how very little it would take to reduce her to the scared animal he’d turned her into. Asher may have dressed Grace up like a kitty, but it was Lucas who had truly made her an animal, and it was Lucas trying to return her to that state now.
He placed the whip on the table and moved in front of her, hooking his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her to him. His mouth crushed hers, his tongue sliding inside her like a serpent. She tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go.
“Well, if you don’t want to kiss me like you mean it, maybe we should go ahead and start with the fun stuff.”
Her eyes went to the knife and branding tools. “N-no. Please.”
“Please what? Say it, and I might spare you a little longer. He’s not coming for you. He’s in prison. He’s never leaving prison, and you’re never leaving this dungeon. So tell me, pet . . . who am I to you?”
The devil. But she’d already lost the courage to say it out loud, so she stayed quiet.
He grabbed her hair and pulled, wrenching her head back, and then he pressed the knife to her throat. “Or maybe I should just skin you and be done with it. What do you think? Are you worth the effort and cost to keep alive?”
Her heart was fluttering in her chest so fast she couldn’t think. Then the dog started barking. Lucas never let him see this part. She looked over at the Australian shepherd. He’d been getting more and more agitated as things went on, and now it seemed he was aware a life might be on the line, and he didn’t like it, either.
Lucas sighed loudly and went over to the door, flinging it open. “Outside, Jack.”
The dog looked between them, shifting from barking to growling.
“Now!”
Jack glanced warily up at Lucas and then darted from the room, his tail between his legs. Lucas slammed the door. “Stupid dog. Papers or no papers, he behaves like a mutt.”
Then his attention was back on Grace. He took a scrap of black fabric from the table and blindfolded her. She jerked in her bonds as he ran the flat of the knife along her cheek. “Come on, pet, who am I? Tell me, and I’ll fuck you before I brand you. It’ll buy you some time, yeah?”
She stood, shaking in the chains, the chill coming back. He’d juxtaposed the worst two suggestions he could have given her: raping her, or cutting the brand off and putting his own mark on her. Either way, it was all going to happen. The only thing that made a difference was the order. She’d hate herself if she betrayed Asher this soon when at most she’d get an hour’s reprieve. Maybe not even that, since Lucas seemed so excited about the branding concept.
“Fuck you.”
She heard him put the knife back on the table and then he wrapped a hand around her throat. “Say it, you bitch. Say it, or so help me, I will choke the life right out of you.”
He was already doing it: choking her. She was helpless to fight him, without even free hands to claw at him this time. He was so lost in rage, Grace wasn’t sure if he was aware of the fact that she couldn’t say anything in her current state. She felt herself about to slip into unconsciousness again when the door banged open and she heard a crack like the sound of thunder in the air.
Immediately the pressure released from her throat.
“Get your hands off my property.”
It was the red phone.
“Master!”
“Take the blindfold off and step away from her.”
Lucas seemed to hesitate, and then that loud thunder sound happened again. That got his fingers moving. “How did you get in here?” he asked as he untied the scrap of fabric.
“It seems your servants don’t like you anymore than anybody else on this island. It also seems that they fully support the idea of me killing you, since, if no one talks, they get to live off your wealth indefinitely.”
Grace blinked as the blindfold came off. Asher stood just inside the doorway with the bullwhip in his hand. The one that had hung in the other dungeon, that he’d said he’d never use on her. Lucas grabbed the knife, but before he could move toward Asher, her master flicked his wrist and the bullwhip snapped down on Lucas’s hand, causing him to drop the knife and scream.
“Kick it over,” Asher said.
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t swing that way. Kick it over.”
When he hesitated, Asher let the whip go again. This time it hit Lucas’s inner thigh, inches from his privates. Lucas howled and kicked the knife over.
“Good boy. And, just so you know, I could have hit the mark if I’d wanted to. I practiced and practiced with this thing, but I could never bring myself to try it out on a woman. Maybe this was what my practice was building up to. You think?”
Lucas grabbed his own whip off the table. Not nearly as impressive as the one Asher held.
Her master chuckled. “Mine’s bigger than yours. I’ll bet that’s true on multiple subjects.”
Grace wished she could enjoy this as much as he obviously was, but she was too scared that Lucas, weasel that he was, would somehow get the upper hand, kill her master, and then the plans for her would resume, making the rescue attempt barely a blip on the radar.
“P-please . . .” She couldn’t get a full thought out, her lips were trembling so hard.
Asher turned toward her. “I’m sorry, kitten. I’ll make it quick, and then we’ll go.”
Lucas rushed him while his attention was on Grace, and for a second the rotation of the earth stopped, the universe pausing entirely. But Lucas was so outclassed, his attempt would have been comical if she wasn’t still chained and helpless. Asher hauled back and punched him hard in the face, and the earth was moving again.
“You stupid motherfucker.” He beat on him for a few minutes with his bare hands until Lucas dropped the whip. “Grace, shut your eyes.”
She didn’t want to, but she knew he wanted to spare her the gore. She closed her eyes and listened to the crack of the whip and Lucas’s screams until they both stopped and there was silence.
“Keep them closed. This is messy, kitten.”
“Is he . . .?”
“Oh, yes. Like a doornail.”
She heard the water of the sink as he washed his hands. Then he came back and unlocked the chains fro
m her wrists and the spreader bar from her ankles, inspecting them and running his fingers over the raw areas.
His jaw clenched when he saw her back. “Baby, this is bad. I’d like to resurrect him just to kill him again.” He took off his coat and wrapped it around her.
Grace was startled by sounds in the doorway. She opened her eyes and looked up to see servants with dark smiles etched across their faces, all too happy to help dispose of the evidence. A couple of the men had saws to cut the body up, and a matronly older woman held a bucket with hot water, sponges, and bleach. Asher had obviously given orders on his way downstairs to rescue her. He hadn’t been kidding about their disgust with the master of the house.
The woman set the bucket by the door and held a hand out to Grace. “I’ll make her some tea while you take care of the body.”
Grace looked up at Asher, careful to avoid the mess on the floor.
“Go on. I don’t want you down here while we finish.”
She followed the woman up the stairs, clutching Asher’s long coat around her body, feeling awkward that the woman had known the whole time she’d been with Lucas. But what could she do? The officials wouldn’t have stopped him, and it might have put her own safety in danger. It occurred to Grace that, once on the island, there wasn’t a huge difference between household servants and slaves. Maybe they’d become just as enslaved, depending on the goodwill of their employers for their safety and survival.
The tea was already brewing on the stove, and the woman poured some into two cups and sat at the table. She put a hand over Grace’s. “It’ll be over soon.”
The woman looked tired, as if she’d seen far too much cruelty, even from the fringes. She looked as if she’d been through war.