Page 116 of Ghost Hunted

“I don’t… want you,” she lets out in a choked voice.

I flip up her skirt and start playing with the cotton fabric, stroking over it until it’s grown wet from her arousal.

“I don’t need you,” she moans, as I slip two fingers underneath the cotton. “I can… come on my own.”

“Is that right?” I keep my fingers just inches from her wetness, and she arches toward me. “Have you been masturbating, naughty girl?”

“Every single fucking day. And I do it a whole lot better than you ever could.”

I grin. “You’re very cute when you lie, baby.” I rip off her panties and push her to me, my hands gripping her ass, my thumb and index finger hovering threateningly over the spot I used to keep permanently bruised. “I know for a fact you haven’t been touching yourself at all.”

“What? How the hell do you—”

I graze the skin I used to pinch, and she yelps. “Okay, okay, sorry! Sorry! I didn’t! I never did!”

She looks adorable, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. The memory of the pain must really be vivid. I tap the flesh threateningly, smirking when she cries out again.

“What kind of a captor do you think I’d be if I didn’t have a state-of-the-art camera surveillance system, hmm?” I have the inexplicable urge to tease her with the information I’d been trying so hard to keep from her up till now. “There isn’t a second that goes by in the day that I don’t have my eyes on you, baby.”

Her lips part in shock, and my smile turns to laughter.

“Just how much have you seen?” she squeaks out, apparently so embarrassed she forgets all about the fingers I’m currently stroking over the spot. She looks around hurriedly, as if searching for the cameras. “Are there… uhm… any in the bathroom?”

I chortle. “A few, yeah.”

“A… few? Are you fucking kidding me, Logan?” Anger takes the place of humiliation, and she whacks at my chest.

At once, I grab her wrists with my hands. “Careful there, Lia. And you’d better get used to me filming you. At every angle, and at all times. If I’m not watching you, a camera is. So you’d better fucking behave, baby. Okay?”

She grumbles something that sounds a lot like, “Sicko.”

“Yeah, maybe I am.” I sit down on the bed. “But I don’t care. I’m a selfish bastard like that, Lia. I don’t give a fuck about what you think, or what you want, or how much you’re just aching to be free. Now, I know I promised you I wouldn’t lock you in the cage. And I won’t, but I can’t have you disappearing on me again. No more ghost games for you, ghost girl.”

I pull her to me so that she’s standing in front of me, pinned between my two legs.

“Logan,” she hisses, “you promised a lot more than that! You promised me my freedom!”

“Hmm. Maybe I did.” I kiss her thighs. “I guess I changed my mind.”

A silence follows my words, but I know without even having to look up that she’s not surprised. Just sad.

“Logan,” she whispers. “Logan, please... I don’t want to leave you. But I can’t be trapped like this all the time. Like I’m a prisoner. I want to be free. Can’t I be free, Logan?”

“No.”

Her lower lip trembles. “But that’s not fair, Logan. That’s not fair at all.”

I run my hands down her waist, over the swell of her hips. “Life isn’t fair, baby. Some girls are meant to be free. Others are meant to be locked up in pretty gold cages. That’s you, Lia. That’s your fate in life. Now, be a good girl and cry for me.”

She does cry—she cries a little too convincingly. I lead her down on my lap, cradling her in my arms.

“Baby,” I murmur. “Please, Lia… please, don’t…”

“You’re cruel.” Even as she says the words, she nestles her head in my chest. “I wish I’d stayed in Ireland. I wish I’d lost my memory for good, so it wouldn’t hurt so much when you talk to me like that. I wish the rope had…”

“Shh, Lia.” I place a palm over her mouth, unwilling to hear the rest of that sentence. “Please don’t talk like that. I love you.”

“People don’t lock people they love up in cages.”