shoulders that I hadn’t felt in months.
Who knew Lisbeth would help ease the strain of waiting for my next fight?
If she kept this up, I wasn’t sure I’d ever let her go.
Not if I could help it.
“You’re an asshole,” she hissed at my back.
I laughed as I paused in the doorway of my room and turned back to her.
“Save your breath, beautiful. I’m only getting started.”
Lisbeth
We’ll get to that when the time comes...
It came right after my bags were dragged upstairs and delivered to Callan’s room, four perfectly pressed uniforms also delivered so that I would always be in a proper state of attire. In truth, I didn’t give a damn about how I looked or who I impressed in this Hellscape of a new life, but that wouldn’t matter.
Not to Callan.
Once we were alone again, Callan directed me into his bathroom, tossed a first aid kit at my feet and demanded I tend to the injuries again.
Refusing would have been stupid. Infection wouldn’t hurt him as much as it hurt me, so while he watched, I took off my shoes and carefully unwrapped my feet. The old bandages were pink from the seepage of blood, but I was allowed to sit on the edge of the bathtub and run my feet under warm water, allowed to clean them with soap and bandage them again.
When that was done, I was led to Callan’s bedroom, my body hesitating in the doorway because the room was a mix of black and grey, the only accents a shine of chrome here or there.
It was like walking into velvet midnight, the curtains across the large windows as black as Callan’s soul, the linens on the massive bed the same stygian shade. I’d stared at the wrought iron headboard that mimicked the gates of the Rose estate with its design of twisting vines and sharp thorns, a set of leather straps hanging loose where I assumed hands could be bound.
Beneath the bed was another sea of black over white marble, the rug supple and soft, but so damn dark that it would be like stepping into a bottomless pit, your heart trapped in your throat while you never stopped falling.
My feet wouldn’t move to shuttle me forward, and while Callan disappeared into a large walk in closet, I studied the room and wondered what horrors had occurred here.
My mind was back in that dungeon, hidden in the lower levels and I wondered how many of those poor women had been dragged up here and forced to submit to his will.
And then his words were in my head again, the accusation that I had been the one to make him this way.
No.
I refused to accept that.
He might hate women because of me, might claim it was my treatment that had warped anything good inside him, but I hadn’t caused this.
“Were you planning on standing there all night, or did you want to get some sleep?”
My eyes shot to him to find he stood just at the doorway of the closet in a pair of loose black pants and a T-shirt.
“I’m not sleeping in your bed.”
He grinned.
“You haven’t been invited there, so that works for both of us.”
Turning to look at the set of leather couches near the large fireplace that took up one wall, I assumed my bed would be there.
Callan must have followed my line of sight. “Not there either.”
My gaze flicked back to him. “Then where?”
Armed with a smirk I was beginning to hate more than anything, Callan closed the distance between us and grabbed my wrist. Pulling away from him was useless, my bones were frail and tiny in his monstrous grip.
Led toward his bed, I attempted to keep from being tugged forward, my mouth opening to accuse him of lying. But before I could say a single word, he kicked my feet out from under me, my ass slamming on the thick rug near the end of his bed.
He pulled a leather strap from somewhere I hadn’t seen and secured my wrist in it, cinching it tight so that I was tied to the heavy foot of the bedframe.
I glanced up, my eyes narrowed on his face.
“You expect me to sleep here all night? On the floor?”
“Right where I can see you. I wouldn’t want my personal servant running off in the middle of the night. What if I want a glass of water? Or a bedtime story?”
His palm tapped my cheek before he stepped past me to climb in bed.
On the