When it was securely wedged at the height of my chest, I put my hands on the tray and pressed down with all my weight and strength. The tray creaked and the wood groaned, and little by little, inch by inch freedom appeared behind the board. In a few minutes, and after a few breaks, I managed to loosen the board enough that I could pry my fingers into the hole and yank on the wood. In an hour my hard work was rewarded when the board and its stubborn nails came off in my hands. Victory was accompanied by a loud wrenching noise when the wood pulled from the wall, and I froze with the board tightly gripped in my hands. I listened for sounds of footsteps and voices, but nothing came to my ears.
I softly set aside the board and glanced at the hole. There was only a glass window, and beyond that was the world. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any world I knew. The forest of city buildings was replaced by a forest of tall trees, and the streets were now an expansive lawn that stopped at the edge of those trees forty feet beyond the house in which I was trapped. I didn’t see any road or driveway, so I guessed my room was at at the back of the house. That would make escape easier.
There was a drop of thirteen feet from my window to the ground, but I noticed a thick layer of vine peeked out around the edge of the left-hand panes. I could climb down those and run away, but then I ran into another problem. Which direction was I supposed to go? The sun was out and I knew which ways were east and west, but I didn’t know if any of those ways would lead me back home. There was also the problem with the sun being there in the first place. I’d be spotted a lot faster during a day escape than at night, so with a heavy heart I put back the board. When night came I could make my escape, and until then I’d use their bathroom to clean myself up and act like the perfect prisoner.
Being a perfect prisoner was easier than I thought. Nobody came to check on me except when Alistair arrived with a new tray and took away the old one. I’d tossed the older tray against the wall, and when he picked it up he noticed the bent edges on one side where I’d shoved it between the boards. When he glanced questioningly at me, I scowled back. “I tossed it against a wall,” I told him. That was the truth so he wouldn’t suspect I was lying.
He raised an eyebrow and those old, crafty eyes drilled into me like two steady snipers zeroing in on their target. “I see,” he drawled. “Would you care for anything else, miss?”
“Yeah, I want to get out of here,” I quipped.
Alistair shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s quite beyond my abilities. The master appreciates your company, and would like you to stay.”
What he’d said about being powerless made me angry, and my hands clenched at my side. “But I don’t appreciate his company, and it is in your ‘abilities’ to get me out of here. You’ve got a key to the door and know your way around here, so don’t give me that bullshit about being some loyal servant. You’re just as guilty as he is with keeping me here.”
Alistair bowed his head. “If that’s how you feel about it, miss, but I’m afraid I still can’t let you out. I will return at evening with dinner.”
He left, and I was more determined than ever to escape that very night. I didn’t trust the food, but I drank some water from the tap in the bathroom and planned my escape. I set aside a dark blanket from the bed as a makeshift cloak, and found an emergency flashlight in the bathroom to light my way. That evening Alistair came as promised, but I was startled and disappointed when Luke came with him. I wanted to make my escape into the darkness as soon as possible, and I hated myself when, at the mere sight of Luke, my body jumped at attention. Heat pooled between my legs and I shifted uneasily atop the bed covers. I couldn’t forget how hot and needed he’d made me feel, but the remembrance of his rejection helped me control some of my womanly urges to copulate.
My lead captor noticed the untouched plate that Alistair carted out of the room and stepped up to the table beside the new tray. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast,” he commented.
“I’m going on a diet,” I snapped back from where I sat on the bed.
“I prefer my mate to have meat on her bones.”
“And I prefer not to be your mate.”
He smirked, and I didn’t know if I wanted to smack or kiss that beautiful face. “I’m afraid Destiny has other plans for you, and so do I.”
“I don’t care what either of you have planned, I want out of this place. You don’t have any right to keep me here.”
“Right? Other than the legal one put down by humans, I have every right to keep you here,” he insisted.
His statement made me seriously wonder if he was all there. “I’m pretty sure you’re not excluded from the human population. Might have something to do with you being human, unless you’re an alien in disguise,” I protested.
Luke chuckled and sauntered to the end of the bed. I scooted back away from him, especially when his dark eyes gazed at me with his hot, intense look. “Not an alien, but not human, either. I’ll show you soon what I am, but for now let’s just say I have a unique bloodline.”
“Whatever the hell you think you are, I don’t care. I just want out of here,” I persisted.
Luke sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid that just can’t be done. Any separation of more than a day and I can’t ensure your virginity around me.”
I blushed and stammered out my reply. “H-how do you know I’m a virgin? Maybe I’ve been with plenty of guys.”
He slid around the end of the bed post and up to the side of the bed. “Because I can smell it all over you. Your uncontrolled arousal in my presence, the way you begged me for my touch, and the way your heart beats faster the closer I come to you.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lamely protested.
“Your need permeates this room with its delicious scent. It nearly drives me mad with lust.” He crept closer to me and I squished myself up against the wall behind the bed. His voice dropped to a sultry whisper that lit my body aflame with desire. “And there you sit innocent as a sheep with the wolf creeping up on you from the inside and out. I crave to show you what I’m capable of, what we’re both capable of.” He was two feet away and reached his hand out toward me. I shrank back and turned my head away to avoid his touch. I didn’t trust myself not to give in and yield to his lustful demands that my own body wanted so badly. His fingers paused a few inches from my face, and with a pained expression he pulled back. He nearly gasped for breath from the exertion of self-control. “But not yet. Soon, but not yet.” He stood and looked down at me with an eager gleam in his eyes. “But when that time comes we’ll both enjoy it.”
I shuddered. Not at how he said those words, but because I believed them. There was such a desire inside me, and such an erotic lust in him, that a voluntary sexual relationship with him was inevitable. That is, unless he let me go or I escaped. I opted to give this terrifying man one last chance to redeem himself. “Or you could just let me go. You could blindfold me and put me back at the club where we met, and I won’t tell anyone about you or this place.”
Luke sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid that just isn’t possible. We’ve gone too far to go back, and you’ll know soon enough why that is. Until then, rest easy.” He left and locked the door behind him.
I didn’t waste a minute of precious time. The night was only so many hours, and I needed all of them to hide me. I hurried over to the door and put my ear against it. All was quiet, so I snuck to the window and pried the board loose. That single freed board made a whole large enough for me to scrunch through, but first I had to deal with the glass. I gathered up a pillow and stuck my hand into the casing so the stuffing was in front of my hand. I peeked out to make sure the coast was clear before I smashed my covered hand into the glass. The pillow muffled the sound of shattering glass and protected my fist from the shards. The pieces fell and hit the soft grass beneath my window.
I tossed aside the pillowcase, grabbed my makeshift cloak of bed blankets and crawled headfirst out of the window. I jiggled the vines with my hands and found them thick and sturdy, so I pulled myself up a few feet so my legs could slide out. My hands shook so badly I thought I would fall, but somehow I scurried down the vines without slipping and dropped to the ground. The vines traveled past one of the lower floor windows, and there was a light on in the room. I peeked my head in and saw it was a study lined with bookshelves and a large desk near the window. There was a chair behind the desk with the back turned to the glass, but I could see Alistair in front of the desk staring at someone in the seat.
“Are you certain this girl is the one? Many others have made mistakes,” Alistair questioned.
“I’m absolutely certain, but I get the feeling you don’t approve of her,” replied the person in the chair, and I recognized the voice as belonging to Luke.
Alistair frowned. “She is very unknown to our world, sir, and ignorance is a threat to us.”
“Ah, now we get down to something else. What really makes you worry so much, old friend?” Luke asked him.