Control. Jessa James

feet, and a foot and half tall. It is very heavy and pulling it out and pushing it back is almost too much to ask of my food-starved body.

      I look into the bathroom attached to my room, a simple enough affair. A toilet, a clawfoot bathtub. All done in white, down to the floor tiles. I figure out that I have just enough chain to get to the toilet, but not enough to reach the bathtub.

      I return to the bed when my curiosity is sated, sitting to think. At length, my jumbled thoughts turn to my captor again. I have so many questions about him.

      Who is he? What does he want with me? Where did he bring me?

      More importantly, will he let me go?

      I lie down on the bed again, growing tired. My eyelids are heavy, so I close them.

      When I wake again, he is sitting right beside me, his grey eyes piercing me. He looks down on me as if I were a spoiled lover and he the older beau that liked to indulge me.

      I sit up, recoiling from him. As I stare at him distrustfully, his lips curve upward in the hint of a smile.

      His expression doesn’t reach the cool grey of his eyes though, and that fact gives me chills. He’s younger than I thought, probably in his mid-thirties. And his body is well-muscled, honed. By what, I don’t know.

      Yet another mystery surrounding him.

      “You’re awake,” he says, as simply as though I was a girlfriend and not a frigging captive.

      I can feel his eyes on me, all over my skin. I try to breathe normally, but my heart is racing a million miles an hour. He looks thoughtful.

      “You’re prettier than I expected you to be.” He leans closer, and I cringe. He places his hand on my bare thigh and chuckles at my scramble to get away.

      He just grabs the chain that’s connected to my wrist and loops it around his hand in a smooth motion. He gives it a yank, and I am pulled off balance. I tumble back on the bed.

      “That’s enough of that,” he says mildly. He cocks his head. “I need a new name for you. Katherine Carolla is dead, so I need something feminine and… something small, like you.”

      “I’m not dead,” I say, my voice shaking. I tug at the chain, but he doesn’t even flinch.

      “You aren’t, no. But neither are you Katherine any longer. I killed her when I bought her at the slave auction. Or didn’t you notice?”

      I make a face at the words slave auction. “So, you admit that you’re the kind of man who hangs out at slave auctions, then?”

      My words come out saltier than I meant them to, but he doesn’t seem to take offense. He doesn’t seem to hear me at all. He narrows his gaze on my face.

      “Fiore,” he says. “It means flower in Italian. I think that will be your new name, girl.”

      “My name is Katherine,” I say, defiantly.

      “You will soon learn how very wrong you are. You will soon learn a lot.”

      His grey gaze is heavy on my face, my breasts, the juncture of my thighs. It makes my skin crawl.

      He’s crazy, that much is evident. I need to get as much information from him as is possible, and then I can mull it over when I’m alone again.

      “Where are we?” I say, switching topics.

      He arches a brow. “Columbia. We are on my compound, alone except for the staff to keep things running smoothly. No one will help you.” He pauses for a moment. “No one will come for you. You know that, right?”

      I left my chin, tears pricking my eyes. “You don’t know that.”

      He pulls on the chain, bringing me closer. “But I do, Fiore. I do know that. Your father sold you down the river, your brothers too. There is no one else, is there?”

      I clamp down on my emotions, although I can’t stop the tears from leaking down my cheeks.

      “You’re a monster,” I tell him, tasting those same tears on my lips. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

      “No?” he says, something glinting in those deadly grey eyes.

      He stands up, using the chain to force me over to the edge of the bed, kneeling. I can see the chain is cutting into his hand, but he seems unconcerned. He stands between my knees, holding the chain up high so that I can’t sit on my heels.

      He skims up my inner thigh with one hand, which makes me jump. His hand goes up, up… until he finds the nestle of curls just at the juncture of my thighs. His fingers probe my lower lips.

      “No!” I say. When he slips a finger casually inside me, not the least bit concerned with how I feel, I scream in his face. “No! I said no! Stop!”

      His finger inside my body is an absolute, unquestionable violation. I try to move, to close my knees against him, but he just lifts my handcuff painfully high.

      The invasion of his rough touch is everything I have spent my entire life being told I should fear. So, I do fear it.

      I fear him.

      He leans in close, almost touching his face to mine. “You belong to me now, Fiore. I own you. I can do whatever I want to you, whenever I want it. And you’ll do what I say, or I will kill you. It’s as simple as that.”

      “Monster,” I whisper, closing my eyes. As if that could shut him out. “What do you even want from me?”

      He withdraws his finger from me and leans down until he’s right next to my ear.

      “Everything,” he says, his breath tickling my ear and making goosebumps break out on my arms and legs. I feel a sudden sense of dread.

      And then he releases my chain, walking out of the room like he’s got somewhere better to be. As if I’m not shaking and afraid. Like he didn’t make me feel that way.

      I am left staring as he slams the door shut, my mouth agape.

       What.

       The.

       Hell.