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“Am I going with you?” asked Maddie, her voice a little higher. Almost childlike.
I only had my motorcycle and would need the space for groceries and cleaning supplies. Fuck, I should’ve brought my Bronco.
“No,” I said, and she dipped her head. “You can stay here and clean. Listen to music.” I stopped myself before I asked if she was good with that.
Everything she’d done showed me she needed structure, rules, and someone else to make her decisions. A submissive through and through, but I didn’t have a clue how to manage that. I clamped my bigmouth shut before giving her options.
That, though, was fucking hard.
I grabbed my keys off the counter. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
Maddie
I only needed to takeone sniff of the dust to know the house hadn’t been lived in for a long time. Still, it smelled better than the shit, piss, blood, and cum I often had to clean up at the old mill or at Enigma when Tommy G. wanted me to work.
When Cook said he had no cleaning supplies, he meant it. He had the tools, but nothing to use to actually clean the floors or dust the surfaces. I took the bar of soap from the bathroom and dropped it into the mop bucket with hot water to let it dissolve. The floor had boot prints tracing a regular path from the front door to the bedroom. Dirt would fester if not scrubbed clean. At least that’s what Signora always said when she punished me by locking me in a cage.
She did that when I failed at something. At anything. Whether it was failing to please a client or leaving a spot of dust on her desk when I had to clean it.
The cage had always waited for me to screw up.
I shivered and hugged myself. “This isn’t a cage, Maddie,” I told myself and the empty house.
Cook had left the door unlocked. I was free to go. I liked where I was and who I was around Cook, but I was just so used to fighting, to being aware of every move I made. I was exhausted, but I didn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t constantly on guard.
I no longer needed to spend my energy that way. No more fighting or pretending to be someone I wasn’t. No more being taken against my will without the ability to say no. I wanted things for myself, but I’d never been able to hope.
This was my chance to find something good. Was this what freedom meant? What it felt like to be safe?
Slipping the earbuds in my ears, I plopped the mop in the bucket. Suds rose to the surface, and bubbles floated into the air. As the guitarstarted to play, I stared at my own face, morphed by the curve of the bubble.
I swished the mop in the bucket around and then splattered it against the floor. Music roared into my ears from a playlist Cook said he’d made a few years ago for working out. It had a lot of heavy beats that reminded me of a hammer falling. I wasn’t sure if I liked it, so I picked another song. Turning the music louder, I started mopping the floor.
Better. As I dragged the mop across the floor, my body moved to the tune. My hips twisted. I bobbed my head to the music. This song was actually awesome. I would need to ask Cook for more like this. Maybe I’d create my own list. Spinning around, I skidded to a halt, almost falling on my ass. The floor was slick, but the bigger concern was that there were two people in Cook’s house—neither of them Cook.
“What the fuck?” I raised the mop like it was a weapon and pulled one of the buds from my ear.
A woman moved closer, her hands raised as if she were about to approach a snake. Her hair hung like curtains around her face. “Hey, Maddie. Sorry. We were calling out—”
“How do you know my name?” I snapped.
Why was she here? I swung the mop at her, but the man grabbed it out of the air. He ripped it from my grasp, nearly splintering the wood and tweaking my shoulder. When I fell forward a step, the woman reached out to me, but I scampered backward. I could keep myself standing, especially when strangers had invaded Cook’s house.
“Wilde,” murmured the woman. Then she turned to face him and gave him a warning look.
My eyes dropped to the bump that protruded from her midsection. Pregnant?
“What did you want me to do, Bou?” the man asked. “She was about to attack you.”
I wasn’t. I only needed to protect myself.
Bou crossed her arms. The pose made her belly balloon out, and her breasts toppled over her arms. I looked away. Signora had kept pregnant women from time to time, but they always disappearedbefore the babies came. Once, though, I overheard Signora talk about how one of the clients had requested a pregnant whore. I didn’t know what had happened to them after they left, but I had to be thankful that wasn’t me.
“She was scared. She didn’t hear us,” said Bou. “And can you blame her after all that has happened to her?”
They talked about me without talking to me, like I was back at the mill. Like I was back in the hospital. Like this life wasn’t my own.
Wilde raised his eyebrows, as though he was about to fight, but then Bou spun on me. “Sorry about that. And sorry about him. We were calling out, but you obviously didn’t hear us.”
