‘I trust you.’ These murmured words made his eyes shoot to hers and the frown was gone.

‘Good. I need you to remember that, babygirl,’ he muttered and ducked to kiss her through the bars.

Still with hope that he would consider her request, and let her out of this hole, she accepted his kiss with gusto. All too soon he withdrew his mouth, took her hands from his shirt, and retreated.

‘Please don’t leave me down here,’ she mumbled, but read conviction in him. He wasn’t taking her away from her hell, he was delivering her to it.

Dax left the space and distress built to rage. The adrenaline sent a stream of curses flying from her lips, but she doubted that he heard more than the first couple. Music, activity, and the building structure would obscure her words from his ears, she just wished that they would obscure his actions from her awareness.

Chapter Eleven

Not too much later, although she didn’t know the time, the volume of the music was reduced. A few vehicles left, but the sun was nowhere near rising and the party was still going on. She would guess it was maybe three or four AM, but lying on this foam pad, staring up at the ceiling, the time was the last thing that she cared about.

In Vegas, she’d felt a sexual connection to Dax, even when he was threatening her. After she was brought here she quickly reached the conclusion that she needed an ally; after a few nights starving and dehydrating here in this cell she did anyway. Dax had seemed like the safest, and certainly the most appealing, bet to take on that role.

Having sex with him was part curiosity, part manipulation, only it hadn’t worked. Ivy might have satisfied her curiosity because she had experienced what it was like to sleep with him, but she hadn’t managed to manipulate him into caring about her, at least not enough to want to ensure her safety, or her happiness.

The latter was a pipe dream. A last minute desperate dream for a woman who realised too late that she’d only gone and fallen for the kind of man she’d hoped her whole life to avoid: a bad boy.

‘I fucked up.’

The words startled her into a seated position. She hadn’t heard his approach, but there he was, birthed from the shadow beyond her cell. When she identified it was Dax, and not a chancing letch from the party, she relaxed to lie down again. This time she closed her eyes as though to imply she had been sleeping and unaffected this whole time.

‘I don’t need a blow-by-blow.’

‘Not that,’ he said. His voice was closer, but she wouldn’t let herself be intrigued enough to isolate its point of origin. ‘With you.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t let you make any more mistakes with me where being fucked is concerned.’

‘Every guy in the place tonight wanted you. I told you to make them… only I didn’t bargain on being one of them.’

‘Please,’ she scoffed. ‘Spare me the act. Do you think I’m the type of woman who lets her man run around on her? You get one chance with me and tonight you blew it.’

‘Watching you up there and watching those guys drool over you… not one of them would have turned you down, but you couldn’t care less about that or that they were objectifying you. You always rise above the bullshit and I don’t even know how you do it. After everything you’ve been through and… you’re unbreakable, Minx.’

‘Is that what tonight was about? Was it your attempt to break me?’

‘No,’ he said. She was surprised to hear the loosening of the lock and the opening of the door. ‘Bruno wanted to get you high and let the guys take whatever they wanted. You were supposed to be the only female here and everyone was supposed to take a shot.’

‘That’s not what happened,’ she said, maintaining her sleeping pose because she didn’t want him on guard.

‘I couldn’t let that happen. I told him that you were compliant, that we’d broken you and you were ready.’

‘For what?’

‘To put up with anything.’

‘So you got your chance to screw around and make sure I didn’t get too close to you or get any ideas above my station? Bravo. Well done.’

‘You don’t get it at all.’

He must have come to her and sunk down at her side because his fingers drifted through her hair then his lips met hers. Ivy sputtered away while shoving at him to get him out of her path so that she could once again sit up.

‘Stay the hell away from me,’ she protested, rubbing off his kiss with the back of her hand.

‘That would be the smart thing to do,’ he said. ‘It turns out that I’m not capable.’

Grabbing her upper arms, he forced her onto her back on the bed and lay on top of her. Locking their mouths together, he wasn’t deterred when she didn’t kiss back, he kept on going. Fondling her chest was a brief interlude on route to her crotch. Through it all she fought him, but he was unaffected. He kissed and touched her as though he was making love to an ardent mistress, not an objecting, kicking opponent.

‘Stop it,’ she said, but his strength was too much for her. He pulled her legs apart and explored the reluctant moisture seeping from her intimate passage. Then his hand was gone and the buzz of his fly crackled in the air. ‘No, Dax, no!’

‘I need to fuck you,’ he mumbled through his kisses on her neck. ‘I’m sorry, Ivy, babygirl, I need it. I need to be inside you, it’s the place I belong, you need me there.’

The bulge of his engorged head probed at her entrance. From the gloss of mania in his eyes, Ivy knew that he wasn’t in his right mind. Invading her body with this Goliath was a forgone conclusion for him.

Using all of her might she pounded both of her fists on his shoulder, hoping to break through to him. ‘Hey! I said no, Dax. No!’ Halting his advance, he blinked and his attention met hers; some of his haze cleared. ‘You can’t have me, Dax. Your dick has a new place to call home. You moved him in there tonight. That blonde from the kitchen, that’s who you belong with.’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t fuck her. I just needed them to think that I did.’

‘What? Why would—‘

‘They needed me to prove that you would put up with anything, with everything a partner could throw at you,’ he said. ‘But walking away from you, bringing you down here to leave you alone, it… it hit me… Tonight it hit me how bad I’d fucked this up.’

‘How did you fuck up?’ she asked. Releasing the tension in her arms, she looped them around his neck.

‘I was meant to train you so that you’d follow my every command… Instead, it’s me who fell under your spell.’

‘If that were true then you wouldn’t have taken another woman up to our bed.’

‘Fifi and I go way back,’ he explained, bracing himself on his elbows so that he could peel down the straps of her dress. ‘I paid her to lie. She’ll tell them all that I fucked her, that I was the best ride of her life. But I never touched her, not tonight.’

‘Why should I believe that?’

‘Because telling you this, the truth, could get me into a lot of trouble. Tonight we were supposed to prove that you’d let me do whatever I wanted and still pander to me tomorrow. They wanted to see that you were so browbeaten that I could fuck another woman and you wouldn’t bat an eye.’ He kissed her. ‘I was going to let you believe that I did it, to put some distance between us, you know? But lying up there in that room while Fifi slept, knowing you were down here by yourself… I couldn’t leave you alone.’

‘You couldn’t?’

‘I wanted to come down here and fight with you. Ream you out for believing I could be interested in that tramp, but I’ve never given you a reason to believe that I give a fuck about you. But I do… it just doesn’t mean anything.’

‘It does,’ she said, combing her fingers through his hair. ‘It means something to me.’

Guiding his mouth down to hers, she was ready now to let him fulfil his desire. Never one to shy from doing the work, she took hold of him in a certain fist and elevated her hips to pierce herself with his rigid offering.