The Dare Collection April 2019. Nicola Marsh
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didn’t learn how to do it in school?’
‘No. I didn’t go to school. Or high school. Dad hired tutors for me.’
Of course she hadn’t. She’d been kept isolated and deliberately so.
I studied her face as she gave the bacon the same fierce attention she’d given to my dick not an hour earlier.
Poor little one. She’d been alone for a long time yet she hadn’t let it crush her spirit entirely. She was still curious, still interested, still alive to the possibilities of the world.
Unlike you.
Yeah, I knew what the possibilities of the world were. Violence. Murder. Torture. Pain. Betrayal. At least that’s what they’d been for me.
She should have better.
The thought was like a meteor streaking across the front of my mind, blazing, full of light. And I had no idea why.
It wasn’t my job to make her life better. She was my prisoner and now maybe my toy, but nothing beyond that. I’d keep her in my bed for a few more days and then I’d let her go.
‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’ she asked me suddenly. ‘Like, when you were a kid?’
It was such an out-of-the-blue question that I answered without thinking. ‘A sailor,’ I said, memories of watching those boats on the water coming back to me. ‘I always wanted to sail over the edge of the horizon, see what was on the other side.’
She smiled. ‘That sounds so cool. Did you ever get the chance?’
‘No.’ I managed to keep the word casual and not full of any dark undertones. ‘What about you? What did you want to be when you grew up?’
Her expression shifted, rippling with something that I thought was curiosity, and I tensed, waiting for her to push.
But she didn’t. Instead she looked back down to the pan. ‘What didn’t I want to be? A nurse. A fairy. A princess. A firefighter. An ambulance driver. A doctor. A painter. An astronomer. A historian.’ Her mouth turned up. ‘I was interested in everything, which basically meant that I could never decide.’
That seemed to fit her quicksilver mind.
‘You never found the one thing you really wanted to do?’ I asked.
‘Part of the problem is that I want to try everything.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘But then, once I figure it out, I lose interest.’
She was bright and I suspected there was an intelligence to her that her curiosity only hinted at. What would she be like if she didn’t lose interest? If she found that one thing and concentrated on it?
She would be...formidable.
Yes. She bloody well would be.
‘Why do you lose interest?’ I asked.
She lifted a shoulder. ‘I don’t know. I just get obsessed by something and then, once I’ve found out all there is to know about it, it’s like I’m...not interested any more. Or something else catches my attention.’ Her small white teeth sunk into her lip. ‘It’s frustrating, to be honest.’
‘Maybe you simply haven’t found the thing that’ll hold your interest yet,’ I said. ‘You’re still young. The world is a big place.’
‘You say that like you’re eighty years old.’
‘I feel eighty years old.’ I found myself staring into her eyes. ‘Especially when I look at you.’
Her mouth, with its tiny, adorable birthmark, curved. ‘I know I’m young, or at least younger. And Dad is always accusing me of behaving like a child, but...’ The smile faded, darkness flickering in her eyes. ‘I’m not. I’m Dad’s daughter. And no kid should ever have a childhood like mine.’
That strange tightness caught in my chest again, harder this time. All I could think about was how different we were—light years apart in life experience—and yet how similar we were too.
Our fathers, hers and mine, enemies. Our childhoods twisted by the same kind of monsters. She’d been sheltered from it more than I had, but she hadn’t escaped. It had touched her too.
I wanted to ask her how she’d coped, but I suspected I already knew; that quicksilver mind of hers had protected her, always moving, always finding something new to concentrate on, distracting her from the truth of her existence.
I’d had the protectiveness that lived in me, that I cursed sometimes for the way it drove me, the way it denied me.
But in the end it had been the thing that had saved me too.
‘No, they shouldn’t.’ I reached out to cup her cheek. ‘And you shouldn’t have either.’
‘He hurt other people worse. He never touched me.’
‘Hurt doesn’t have to be physical—you know that, right?’
She looked away, her skin soft against my palm. ‘He had his reasons.’
Something stilled inside me. ‘What reasons were they?’
‘I mean, he was right—I’m not that great at controlling myself even now. And besides, he said I owed it to her.’ She let out a shaky breath, staring down unseeing at the pan. ‘My mum.’ Another pause and I waited, because I knew there was more.
Her gaze lifted, the green sharp as glass. ‘I killed her, you know.’
It took effort to keep the shock from my face. ‘You killed her? What do you mean?’
‘I told you, remember? She died having me. And Dad...never forgave me for that. He told me that if I hadn’t been born, Mum would still be here, and that I owed him for her loss. That I...owed her too.’
Jesus. Her dad had laid that on her? The bastard. The fucking bastard.
I stroked her cheek with my thumb, the tightness in my chest aching at the pain in her eyes. ‘You don’t owe him anything, Imogen, not a damn thing. And you didn’t kill her either.’
Her mouth got that vulnerable look. ‘Dad thinks I did. If I hadn’t been born, she wouldn’t have had that haemorrhage and she’d still be alive.’
‘He’s wrong. Grief makes people do odd things and blame others when they shouldn’t.’ I’d seen enough of that in my lifetime. ‘I’m sorry your mother died, but...’ I paused. ‘I think she would have wanted you to be born.’
Imogen had gone very still. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted to die.’
I stroked her again, feeling the softness of her. ‘No, but she would have been glad that you’re alive. That you’re here.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know what it’s like to want to protect the people you love. To sacrifice things for them.’ I didn’t understand what was making me say this stuff to her, not when she wasn’t supposed to matter to me, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Your mother loved you, Imogen. And she would have sacrificed everything for you to make sure you existed. Even her life.’
A tear ran down her cheek and then another. ‘But...why?’ She looked at me as if she genuinely didn’t have any idea. ‘She didn’t even get a chance to know me.’
‘Why? Because you’re beautiful.’ I wiped away the tear with my thumb. ‘And you’re very brave. You’re strong. And you’re fiercely intelligent. Why wouldn’t she?’
‘But I... I’m not any of those things.’
‘Bullshit. You’ve done nothing but be resolutely unafraid of me since I kidnapped you. Hell, no one talks to me the way you do—no one would fucking dare. Then there’s how you took everything I had to give you in bed, all the while