Prince Player(81)

It’s not, of course, and I get into the shower to wash myself. I feel like I’m cleaning days’ worth of grime from my body even though I showered the night before, just as the auction was about to begin.

Showers can be hard for me sometimes. It feels good, but it’s strange. I can still remember waking up in a shower, half naked, my body bruised and battered and wondering where the hell I am. That was one of the lowest points in my life when I realized what I did just to score some drugs.

It was when I was lying on the floor of that shower, half conscious of what had happened, that I realized I was at rock bottom. It was the lowest point of my life. And I can’t help but think about it every time I get in the shower.

I’m disgusted by the person I was. I’ve been clean for two years and have no plan to go back, but I still feel that stupid junky deep inside of me, begging to get out.

I made mistakes. I’ve been weak and frail and stupid before. But I pulled myself up off that shower floor, got the fuck out of that house, and checked myself into a rehab treatment facility.

Six months in there and I never looked back. I still owe them, which is actually just one small part of my debt, but it’s one debt that I won’t mind paying off. They saved me there, saved my life, showed me that a life without drugs is the life I want to lead.

I shut off the shower and get out, toweling myself off. I stare at myself in the mirror and wonder how I got from the bottom of that shower to this place. I run my fingers over the marble countertop and although I know that I’m just this man’s plaything, I can’t help but imagine that I’m something more.

I can’t let myself indulge in that, though. Ethan doesn’t care about me. He just wants to play a game. He wants me to be his pet and to stay in this room. Sure, he’s spoiling me, but it’s still his game that I have to play. He doesn’t want Aria, he doesn’t want the real me. He would turn and run the second he found out about me.

But maybe I can pretend, at least for a little while. I’ll have to pretend harder than I have been so far. I need this to go well.

Once I’m dry enough, I wrap a towel around me and head back out into the main room. I look around for my bags, but I don’t find them anywhere.

Instead, the drawers have clothes already in them, but they’re not my clothes. There are bras, panties, and some tops and bottoms. In the closet, several dresses hang, and it all looks to be in my size. For a second I panic, afraid that he took away my phone and my things. If I don’t have my phone, I can’t contact The Syndicate, and that would be bad.

But tucked in the back corner of the closet are my bags. I breathe a sigh of relief as I fish out my phone and shoot a text to the number they gave me, just letting them know that I’m fine and taken care of.

When that’s done, I go back into the main room and get dressed. I put on a matching bra and panty set, looking at myself in the mirror. I want to be pleasing to him, so I pick out a cute, revealing top and short little jean shorts.

Once dressed, I stand there and look at the room. The clock next to the bed says that it’s eight in the morning, and I realize that I have all day to kill.

I get my laptop from my bag, but there’s no open WiFi. Nervously, I grab the phone and hit zero before listening to it ring.

“Yes?” It’s Jenkins’s voice from the night before.

“Uh, hi, it’s Aria,” I say.

“Yes?” he asks again.

“I, uh, was wondering if there was a WiFi password?” I ask.

“No internet,” he says.

I pause. “No internet?” I repeat.

“I was instructed to keep you off the internet.”

I frown, disappointed. What the hell am I supposed to do all day then?

“Okay,” I say. “Thank you. Are there any books you could bring up?”

“Of course,” he says. “Will that be all?”

“Uh, yes. Thank you.”

The phone disconnects and I flop back onto the bed.

“No internet,” I groan to myself and roll over onto my side.

Jenkins brings up a box full of books not too long later, but he doesn’t stick around. He simply places the box outside of my door, knocks twice, and then leaves. I pull the box inside and start fishing through it. They’re mostly trashy romances, but that’s good enough.

I spend most of the day reading. It’s boring and slow, but it’s all I have to do. Eventually I figure out how to work the television, so I switch from reading to watching TV and back again all day long. Jenkins brings me lunch and dinner, but that’s the only human contact I get all day.

The food is good, so at least there’s that. After dinner, around eight that night, I start getting really antsy.