The corner of his perfect mouth tugged up into a smirk, his body moving with more force, more speed, so much that the woman choked.
As his lips parted and she whimpered in complaint, his eyes shut, and he thrust forward one more time with a single deep-voiced command.
“Swallow.”
I did. My throat moved over nothing, but I followed the instruction regardless.
Even if it wasn’t spoken to me.
There was never a better time to get the fuck out of a place then at that moment. And once released from his eyes, I somehow forced my legs to move, practically running as I left the gym to find Holly.
She was still scrubbing away without any clue that I’d be dead before the night’s end.
“Did you get them all put away?”
Her blue eyes turned to me, a sweet smile adorning her face.
It took effort to answer.
“Yep. Are we done here?”
Her brows tugged together in the center, the smile fading.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
It felt like it, too, but I didn’t tell her that. This ghost from my past was as real as any threat, as real as the knife he’d probably use to slit my throat.
“I’m fine. Can we go?”
She dropped her sponge into a bucket and stripped the yellow gloves from her hands.
“Yes. It’s lunchtime anyway. We should get to the dining hall before all the best food is gone. Are you hungry?”
Oh, I’d worked up an appetite, just not for what she was suggesting. Something was seriously fucking wrong with me. Not even twenty-four hours earlier, that asshole had been dragging me (literally) around the mansion, and now I was standing here hoping like hell Holly couldn’t smell me like I was in heat.
I wasn’t sure who was crueler: Callan or the god who made him.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t a god.
Maybe Callan had been forged in fire by the devil himself.
Highly doubting food would sit well in the terrified somersaults in my belly, I was willing to go anywhere if it got me the hell away from here.
“I’m starving.”
Walking to the cart we’d been pushing around all day, I gripped my fingers over the handle for balance. Despite no longer being in Callan’s sight, my legs wouldn’t stop shaking. “Let’s go.”
Holly gave me a funny look as she grabbed her bucket to set on the cart. Thankfully, she didn’t ask any more questions.
I was practically speed-walking to get us the hell out of there, my heart hammering beneath my ribs in a desperate bid to rip free and run for safety.
We’d made it down several halls before Holly spoke again.
“Sheesh, Lisbeth, slow down. You act like you’re running from somebody.”
No truer words had ever been spoken.
I could only pray he wouldn’t catch me.
Callan
For a split second, I’d thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
Lisbeth had been so quiet, her small body crouched on the floor, and I didn’t believe I’d seen her movement at first.
I wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been for the light behind her, the glow pouring in through another door that flashed as she moved to shove towels onto the shelf, her head dodging this way and that so she could see through the tiny slits in the wood to watch what Isabelle and I were doing.
My mind.
Just another trick.
Another ghost.
But then she stood up, and those blue eyes locked with mine. So perfect, that look.
Fear.
Shock.
Desire.
For years, all I’d wanted to see in those cruel blue eyes was desire. I’d watched Lisbeth from the shadows, and now she watched me.
It stoked the flames inside me, heat raging to pour over my skin and through my veins. But my anger ran cold as she stared, the color draining from her face, the tension of her body palpable from where I stood on the other side, trapping her gaze in place.
And, of course, my body reacted.
How could it not?
She may as well have branded her name into me over the years I was her servant.
I’d been owned once, and now I struggled to break free.
Swallow...
I’d spoken that command to Isabelle, but to Lisbeth as well.
And she did, so obediently. Her delicate throat knowing what to do, her eyes rounding as she realized that she’d followed the instruction without thinking.
It was the first word I’d said to her in over eighteen years, and Lisbeth’s body knew only obedience.
I’d fallen over the precipice at that moment. Made a decision that would only destroy us both. But it couldn’t be helped.