Five Weeks (Seven Series #3)(46)

But our relationship had seemed so normal! Maybe he was only trying to frighten me as some sort of payback. I couldn’t imagine Hawk doing something like that. Not the man who would sit next to me cracking pistachio shells while watching golf on Sunday afternoons. This couldn’t be happening.
He clapped his hands together so loud I jumped. “So! Cereal or waffles?”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
Hawk grabbed one of the cords and looped it around my neck. My fingers gripped the end, and he tugged. “Come on, sweetie. I’ll walk you.”
Jerk!
I scooted off the bed, feeling the itch to verbally thrash him as he led me to the bathroom like a dog on a leash.
“Can I take a shower?”
“That’s fine. But you come out when I say.”
The bathroom was right outside the bedroom door to the left. The shower curtain had seashells and starfish. After he shut the door, I quietly opened the cabinets and discovered he’d emptied everything except two towels. Even the towel rack had been removed from the wall, leaving unpainted holes were the screws had once been. I examined the plastic curtain rod but didn’t stand a chance against him wielding a flimsy pole. Breaking the mirror would defeat the purpose of a surprise attack and injure me in the process.#p#分页标题#e#
And no windows.
I stripped out of the nightgown and stepped into a stream of warm water. Tiny grains of dirt were embedded in one of my knees. As my skin soaked up the water, my joints began to throb all over again.
Why had I given him a second chance? Never for one second could I have imagined that Hawk possessed the black heart of a psychopath. Nothing I’d known about him would have ever led me to believe he was capable something so abominable. Then again, what did I really know about him? We’d only been living together for a month. I’d trusted my instincts, deciding the things I didn’t like about him were tolerable. Like his tendency to call me his bitch. The way he used it was possessive, and we weren’t in a pack.
I quelled the anger rising within and stepped out of the shower to dry off. I needed to keep a cool head. I had nowhere to run this time, and even worse, I couldn’t fight. Shifting would only exacerbate the situation, and my wolf could end up crated.
The reflection staring back at me was that of a stranger. Isabelle Monroe looked weary and beaten. The skin beneath my eye had bruised, and as much as I wanted to shift to heal, I couldn’t be sure my wolf would change back. Once in animal form, I had no control over my animal. I could feel her tempestuous pacing, so I fought against the urge. My palms were scraped from the sidewalk incident, but nothing looked as shocking as my wrists. They were horribly discolored and raw—some of the skin surrounding the deep cuts had swollen. I rinsed my hands in warm water and patted them with a dry towel. Was this what it felt like to be human? I swept my wet hair away from my face and wondered if I should trim it someday soon.
Someday.
Please let there be a someday. Hawk couldn’t have selected a better girlfriend to kidnap, because I wouldn’t be missed. I’m sure Howlers had waitresses walk out on them all the time. Hawk was a wealthy man. What was he doing at a Laundromat when we met? Why hadn’t I ever found that suspicious? Maybe that’s where he’d found all his previous victims, because women with money and family didn’t go to places like that.
Then I remembered the stories I’d heard about girls who went missing. Their captors had held them for decades. Men were kept for different purposes, like cage fights. It was illegal among Shifters, but everyone knew it still went on in the dark corners of the underworld. Packs that followed barbaric customs, and some Shifters were collectors. I’d once heard a story about a leopard who had his own zoo of women. He kept them locked in cages he’d built on his property—each of them a different animal. One woman had been with him for over two hundred years.
“Stop scaring yourself,” I whispered, turning off the water.
A fist pounded on the door. “Time’s up, Izzy.”
“Did you bring my jeans?” I yelled out in a normal voice. Maybe if I played this out like I didn’t mind being here, he wouldn’t go to the extreme measures of roping me up.
He pounded harder, and I slipped into the nightgown and swung open the door.
“No, I didn’t pick up your fucking jeans. That would mean going back to the house and Delgado’s men finding my ass.”
“Why are you afraid of a bunch of humans?” I kept my voice calm, but stepped back when his face tightened. “You’re not a wolf… are you?”
If his animal was something meek like a deer, then he’d have no choice but to fight my wolf in human form, because my wolf would kill his animal. Maybe Hawk had been bluffing about being a wolf and wanted to find a submissive bitch for his own perverse need to dominate an animal more powerful than himself. I suddenly felt a surge of superiority, one that told me my wolf might be able to take him down.