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Her stomach knotted again, and this time she recognized it as hunger. If she had the timeline correct, it had been days since she’d eaten anything beside the sandwich she’d been given, and that might have been a dream.
She was awake now, and the fog in her mind was burned away to a few wispy pieces of mist. But the memory of being tied to the chair, of what, of whom, she saw, must have been a dream. Because that couldn’t be real.
She touched the sore spot on her thigh. It couldn’t be real.
The door to her small if nicely painted prison opened.
“Rose.”
Time slowed and stilled. She didn’t look at him. She let the voice wash over her. Familiar, yet also so foreign. So different than she remembered.
“Rose?”
She opened her eyes, and for the second time said, “I thought you died.”
A scarred, battered man looked down at her. “I almost did.”
She took a deep breath. “Caden…” Her throat closed tight with grief. She had to stop and fight with her emotions, shoving them down until she could speak. “Caden is dead.”
Weston Anderson nodded once. “I know.”
Tears welled in Rose’s eyes and slipped down her cheeks.
“They killed him,” Rose said.
“The Trinity Masters?”
“Christian Stewart Rogers.” She spat out the name.
Weston stepped into the small room, filling the doorway and blocking out the afternoon light that spilled in. “Come on, you need to eat. You’ve been asleep for days.”
Rose dropped her gaze to the cuffs on her wrists.
“They’re safety cuffs.” His voice was low but rough. It hadn’t been like that when she’d known him a lifetime ago. “Just take them off.”
Rose stared at her wrists. There was a little loop at the top of each cuff where she could grab it with the tip of a finger and pull.
She didn’t move.
A submissive accepts a Dominant’s bondage, and does not remove, reject, or complain.
“Rose, come on.”
The cuffs, the command, the emotional shock—it was all too much.
She corrected her posture and said, “Yes, Sir.” She used mental imaging to imagine herself as an adult—strong, confident, poised—walking into a large gold bird cage and pulling the door shut. Out of the shadows stepped a different version of her—younger, maybe sixteen. Timid, fragile, obedient, submissive Rose took over. Inside the gilded cage was cold and calm—numbing. Nothing could touch her there.
“Rose, they’re just cuffs. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.” Weston squeezed into the room. He was a big man, broader than Caden was.
Had been.
Than Caden had been.
She blinked and more tears spilled.
Weston sat on the mattress next to her and cupped her forearm, using the hold to tug her wrists toward him. Her skin tingled where his fingers touched her.
Weston unfastened the cuffs, briskly rubbed her wrists, then bent and undid one ankle restraint. “I can’t reach the other one.”
