Page 27 of Kept By the Bratva

Because she’d never belong with me.

She never had in the first place.

I got up and left him at the bar. That was all I wanted to share with him for now, and I felt sure that he’d trust me to see to getting Amy somewhere else, somehow. Talking about her any further would bother me, and I refused to subject myself to that much more drama and headache tonight. I’d fucked up enough for one day.

I went to my private wing and tried to calm down with the conviction that Amy would be fine at the other place. She had food. She had water. There was no way she could use anything to break out of the many locks, particularly the electronic panels over the door.

This distance was supposed to help. I couldn’t go back to her, never again.

Yet as I lay in bed, well into the night, I couldn’t get over the feeling that this, too, was a colossal mistake.

12

AMY

Nik stayed away all night. He left me there not for an hour or so, but well into the middle of the night.

Confused, hurt, and still so very afraid, I felt trapped and intimidated.

I got up after crying for a while, debating whether this privacy and isolation could be too good to be true. After being captured and transported, it was difficult to assume I had any control of my life. I didn’t. I knew I didn’t just as I knew the panel on this door wouldn’t magically spring open.

But I refused to sit and be idle. I scanned the entire apartment, praying for a weapon. For a tool. A phone. Anything at all that would enable me to protect myself when anyone came upon me again.

I doubted Nik would leave me in here to rot. Despite the clear, undeniable evidence that he was a brutal killer, he had yet to showmeany intention of pain. He’d washed my leg. He’d fucked me just the way I’d instinctively needed him to. I didn’t have the bandwidth to comprehend why he’d wanted to fill me with his cock so suddenly like that, but it wasn’t done out of evil. He hadn’t raped me, not when I’d beenso needy for his touch. And he didn’t fuck me to manipulate me into doing anything else.

He’d lusted for me. And left.

I had no clue what he had in mind for me, but it seemed that my gut reaction to his departure was wrong. I’d jumped to the assumption that he’d gotten his fill and would let one of his friends or coworkers have their turn with me. That they would, in fact, sample me as the man at that warehouse threatened.

No one came in here, though. All night, I paced and searched, torn with this ragged sense of suspenseful anticipation.

I gave up in the end, exhausted.

After snacking on an apple and some buttered bread, I swallowed it down with a glass of milk and headed to the couch. Sleeping in the bed where he’d taken meandabandoned me felt wrong. I didn’t want the reminders, nor could I stomach the guilt and self-loathing that I’d given in to him so damn easily. Yes, he was hot. Sure, he knew how to fuck me good and well. For God’s sake, he’d been on my mind since that one night when he’d met me. He'd certainly made an impression on me, mind and body. Yet I couldn’t deal with the more recent memories of how he’d taken me earlier.

I woke up after a restless sleep. The couch was comfortable enough. I’d been raised to appreciate any bedding, and even though this piece of furniture was slightly lumpy on one side but too stiff on the other—implying only one person ever sat on it and always chose the same spot—it was firm and secure.

Nausea was my alarm clock. That gut-wrenching churn was all the premonition my half-awake mind needed to bolt upright and run.

I barely made it to the bathroom on time, and when I smelled the fruity scent of the plug-in air freshener puffing out, I gagged more and produced even more bile.

Smells bothered me, scents that never before would have made a difference. And it was the last straw. I was, like any other woman, aware of the most common symptoms, but at work, when I was last at work, I’d researchedallthe potential signs of pregnancy.

I slumped over to sit on the bathroom floor. Getting out of this room and not smelling that air freshener would’ve been heaven, but I lacked the energy to move after all that heaving. Besides, I wasn’t sure that spell was over. Just as well that I stay close to the toilet.

Rubbing my stomach and closing my eyes, I rested my head back against the wall.

I revisited the memory of reading that list on the vet clinic’s computer.

Nausea.Check.

Fatigue.Check.

Cranky and irritable.Check.I wasn’t in a rosy situation, but even before I was kidnapped, everything seemed to piss me off in a PMS sort of way.

Lack of appetite.Check.

Faster heart rate and feeling short of breath.Mostly check.