Stolen Heir - Sophie Lark Page 0,46

and neck.

Still she goes faster and faster, leaping across the floor, tumbling to the ground, rolling over, and jumping up again.

I realize she’s acting something out—some kind of scene. She looks like she’s running away, looking back over her shoulder. Then she stops, returns to where she started, and dances the same thing over again.

She’s practicing. No, that’s not right—she’s creating something. Refining it.

She’s choreographing a dance.

She stops, starts over again.

This time she’s doing a different part. This time she’s the pursuer, chasing the unseen figure across the stage. It’s supposed to be a duet—but because she’s the only one here, she’s acting out both parts.

I wish I could see what she’s seeing, inside her head.

I’m only catching bits and pieces of it. What I see is emotive, strung with intensity. But it’s just a girl in an empty room. She’s seeing a whole world around her.

It’s mesmerizing. I watch her repeat this piece of the dance again and again, sometimes as the hunter, sometimes as the prey. Sometimes copying exactly what she did before, and sometimes altering it slightly.

Then the record ends, and we’re both jolted back to reality.

Nessa is panting, exhausted.

And I’m standing in the doorway without any idea how much time has passed.

She looks up and sees me. Her body goes stiff and her hand flies up to her mouth.

“Making yourself at home, I see,” I say.

She’s shoved all the furniture to the edge of the room and rolled up the rugs. She looks around guilty at the bare floor.

“I needed space to dance,” she says. Her voice comes out in a croak. Her throat is dry because she’s been dancing so long.

“What is that?” I ask her.

“It’s . . . something I’m making.”

“What?”

“A ballet.”

“I can see that,” I say tersely. “What’s it about?”

“It’s a fairytale,” she whispers.

Of course it is. She’s such a child.

But the dance wasn’t childish. It was captivating.

The turntable is making that empty, repetitive sound that means the tracks have all run out. The needle skips over bare vinyl. I cross the room, lifting the tonearm and flipping the switch so the platter stops spinning.

“Where did you get this?” I ask her.

“I . . . I found it,” she says.

She’s a terrible liar. Klara gave it to her, obviously. They were the only two people at home.

I suspected that Klara was becoming sympathetic to our prisoner. It’s a conundrum that I can’t quite fix. I knew that anybody with a heart would find sweet little Nessa hard to ignore. But I can’t trust any of my men to keep watch over her. She’s too pretty. It’s hard enough to get them to leave Klara alone, even when she wears her hideous uniform. Innocent Nessa in leotards and gym shorts is a temptation too great to resist. I’ve had to bar them all from stepping foot in her room. And even then, I see them watching her everywhere she goes. Especially Jonas.

It makes me want to cut their balls off, every last one of them.

Nessa is my prisoner.

No one touches her but me.

A clear droplet of sweat slides down her face, down the side of her throat, and then down her breastbone, disappearing in the space between her breasts.

My eyes follow it. The translucent material of her bodysuit clings to her small, round breasts. I can see the puckered areola, and the pert little nipples pointing slightly upward. They’re not pink like I guessed—they’re light brown, like the freckles on her cheeks. They’re so sensitive that they stiffen right before my eyes, just from the heat of my gaze.

My eyes roam further down. I can see the lines running down her taught stomach, and the indent of her navel. Then, below that, the delta of her cunt, and even the outline of her pussy lips, as wet with sweat as the rest of her body.

Most of all, I can smell her scent. I smell her soap, her sweat. And even her sweet little pussy, musky and mild.

It makes me fucking ravenous.

My pupils have dilated so far that I can see every last detail of her body—the tiny droplets of sweat above her lip. The flecks of brown in her green eyes. The goosebumps rising on her arms. The muscles trembling in her thighs.

I feel like I’ve been sleeping for a hundred years, and all at once, in this instant, I’m wide awake. My cock is raging inside my pants. It’s harder than I’ve ever felt it—stiff, pulsing, aching to get out.

I want this girl.