“I don’t understand.”
She recalled the bed creaking and sagging under their combined weight as he sat down next to her and patted her knee. “I know you don’t. You’ll learn, soon enough. For now, just know this: you belong to me now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve wanted you for a very long time. Well, in truth, not that long. You haven’t had a woman’s body for very many years, and I’m not attracted to young girls. Too young of girls, I should say. But now, you are fully grown, and you are glorious. And I’ve decided I want you. So I took you.”
“You…you took me?” She’d pictured herself as a woman-shaped diamond or perhaps a ruby. The image was as ridiculous as his words. “What are you going to do with me?”
“All sorts of things, I hope.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. You are just processing, and I imagine it’s a bit overwhelming.”
She stared at his pleasant smile. “Are you…are you going to rape me?”
That smile had turned upside down, and his brows dropped over suddenly stormy eyes. That had been the only moment she’d feared the man himself rather than the situation.
“Absolutely not,” he’d said. “But yes, we are going to have sex. A lot of sex, I sincerely hope.”
She shook her head. Her father had lectured her endlessly about sex, about protecting her body. “If I say no, that’s rape.”
He patted her knee again, that pleasant smile back in place. “You won’t say no.”
“If you touch me, I will.”
“That’s not how it’s going to work. I’m not going to touch you until you ask me to.”
He’d stood then while Shannon’s mind had been reeling, still trying to understand the situation. “Now, would you like any snacks? As I recall, you have a fondness for sour candies. Shall I bring you some?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been watching you, studying you for quite some time, my dear. This sort of plan does not occur in the blink of an eye.”
She shook her head. “I’ll never ask you to touch me.”
His smile never faltered. “Well then, I suppose we’ll never get to have sex, will we?”
He’d visited every day, unless he was out of town. And he’d stayed true to his word. He hadn’t touched her. For almost a year, he didn’t lay a finger on her.
Until she asked him to.
No.
She shook her head. That was the past. She couldn’t change it; she could only learn from it. And tonight, she wanted to learn what it was like to be with Leo. To have sex with this man, on her own terms.
She was no longer a confused young woman who did everything she was instructed to do, whose immature crush morphed into her being kidnapped and held prisoner in a windowless room. Or a grieving fiancée who transitioned from being manipulated by one man to becoming a pawn for his son.
Leo was nothing like those men she’d known. And Shannon was no longer that woman, controlled by the mob, doing whatever she was told because she knew no other way. Hell, if someone had bothered to ask her about her relationship with Hayk during those two years between his freeing her from the basement and his death, she would have defended it.
She would have said it was better than living at home with her parents, who had been simply waiting to pawn her off on someone else. For the right price, of course.
She glanced at Leo over her shoulder, matched his crooked smile with one of her own.
And then she inserted the old-fashioned skeleton key into the lock and opened the door.
***
Her room was smaller than Leo’s, but then again, he’d booked the honeymoon suite. And they didn’t need much room. She had a bed piled with a thick comforter and a bunch of pillows, and a private bathroom; what else did they need?
She bent over and tugged her sandals off her feet and then pointed at the bathroom. “I’m going to freshen up.”
After she closed the door, he wandered about her room, not being nosy, just killing time. Unlike his room, where he’d left his suitcase sitting on the dresser, open, yesterday’s clothes in a pile on the floor, he didn’t even see her suitcase. She’d tucked it into the closet, or she’d fully unpacked and put everything away.
A package of sour candy and a paperback book rested on the bedside table—a romance, based on the embracing couple on the cover. There were several bottles of water in her mini fridge, so he helped himself to one and stepped up to the windows overlooking the patio. She did not have a balcony like he did.
He heard the knob twist, and he turned around and watched as she stepped out of the bathroom, haloed by light that made her look like an angel. She still wore the dress, but she’d washed the makeup off her face and had pulled the tie out of her hair so that it draped in waves around her shoulders.
“Breathtaking,” he whispered, staring.
Her lips quirked, and she touched her hair, clearly self-conscious. “I got the impression you aren’t one of those guys who expects women to wear makeup to bed.”
“Guys like that exist?” He strode across the room until he stood before her. “If you’re fishing for compliments, I’ll happily go on and on about how insanely gorgeous you are just as you are.” He lightly ran his
