Tella gave up on pounding against the door with her shoulder after falling with a thud on her bottom.
Her little costume did not provide nearly enough cushioning. Now she was sore on top of being tied up and blindfolded. But at least the floor of her cell was smooth, like polished wood. It was a little hard, but thankfully it felt clean to the touch.
She wondered how long her captor planned on leaving her here. It seemed as if an hour had passed, maybe two.
“Could I at least get something to eat?” she called from her position on the ground. “Some snowflake cookies or hot chocolate? Surely, kidnappers celebrate holidays, too!”
“You really don’t understand how being a captive works, do you?” Her insides cartwheeled at the sound of her kidnapper’s dark voice. He was back.
But where had he come from? Clearly, he hadn’t used the door, which she was still leaning against. Was it possible that he’d just materialized? Did he have that much magic?
She wished she could see where he stood in the room. His deep voice sounded farther away than before. But that could have just been more of his magic, playing tricks on her. He could have been right in front of her, looking down on her with dark unreadable eyes.
Tella sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin imperiously. She might have been in a rather helpless position, but that didn’t mean she had to act that way.
“Does this mean I’m not getting any cookies?” she asked.
“Maybe, if you’re well-behaved.” His tone turned amused. “But for now, I have a little something else for you.”
“Did you get me a Holiday present?”
“Depends on your definition of present.”
She listened to his steps move farther away, toward what she imagined was the other side of the room. She had supposed he’d locked her up in a small room or cell, but the number of steps he took made it seem as if the chamber was actually much larger.
“My performers found an interesting little booklet among your things.” His words were followed by the soft flutter of paper pages.
Tella’s stomach dropped.
“Oh no.” She knew exactly what he’d found.
Before she could protest and say the booklet wasn’t hers, or abruptly fake her own death, she heard her captor’s mocking voice read the words, “‘How Not to Lose the Love of Your Life by Pandora Loveless. Brimming with advice guaranteed to change your love life!’”
Tella felt her face drain of color.
Briefly, she reconsidered pretending to be dead.
“Don’t read that,” she urged.
“Why not? It was the only thing you had in your pockets. Clearly, it’s important to you.”
“It’s not!” Tella squeaked, and shoved up to her feet, which was more than a little difficult given that her wrists were still bound behind her back.
But Tella had to get up. She had to find him, take the book, and then throw it into the fire.
There had to be a fire in this chamber, because the room was suddenly very hot.
There was another rustle of pages. She imagined him opening the booklet and seeing the table of contents.
The panic in her chest swelled.
“For something that’s not important to you, it looks as if you read it quite a few times,” he said. “You even drew little stars by some of these chapter titles.”
“Those aren’t mine,” she lied. “The booklet came like that!”
Once again, she desperately wished that she wasn’t still wearing the wretched blindfold.
She wanted to see his face, to read his expression, to have some idea of what he was thinking as he turned the pages of the book that she’d foolishly carried around.
Tella took an unsteady step forward. But now that he had gone quiet, she had no idea where he was. And yet … she felt him looking at her again. It started like a tiny spark that slowly grew into something hotter.
“Tell me, princess.” His voice was quiet. “How long have you been afraid of losing the love of your life?”
She felt his gaze intensify as if he wasn’t just looking at her but trying to see into her. To read the thoughts frantically swirling in her head.
A bead of sweat dripped down the back of Tella’s neck. “The booklet was a gift,” she lied.
“The person who gave it to you must not have liked you very much. The advice in this is awful. Let’s take a look at this section, which you starred in the table of contents—”
Tella rushed forward on wobbling heels. “Don’t read that!” she cried. Which was exactly the wrong thing to say.
Everyone knows that a lot of people sadly don’t like to read, but as soon as you tell them not to read something, they are suddenly rabidly curious. This was true for Tella’s captor.
From the irritated sound of his voice, he obviously disliked this book, and yet it didn’t stop him from reading out loud.
“‘Holidays can either make a relationship or destroy it. What your lover gets you—or doesn’t get you—as a gift can tell you everything you need to know about your relationship and how your lover truly feels about you.
“‘Therefore, if you have found the love of your life and you wish to keep him, you must buy him a perfect gift. A gift that makes him feel loved and
known and important.
“‘However, if you cannot find the perfect gift, all is not necessarily lost. I recommend simply spending more money than you can afford. This way, even if your lover does not love your gift, at least he will know how much you love him by the amount you’ve been willing to spend.’”
“Please—stop—” Tella’s legs smacked hard into something. “Oof—” She started to stumble.
Her captor’s arm snaked around her waist, and her feet were lifted off the ground.
She flailed—or she tried to. With her arms still bound behind her back, she had nothing to reach for.
Then seconds later, he was setting her down on his lap.
If the room had been hot before, it was suddenly on fire. Her captor positioned her so that her legs were straddling him.
She tried to wriggle free.
His arm tensed and tightened around her waist. “There’s nowhere for you to go, love.”
“You don’t get to call me love,” she protested.
This earned her half a laugh. “Why not? According to the title of this book, it seems as if you’re having a difficult time keeping your current love.”
“That book is rubbish!”
“Then why are bits of it underlined? Like this: ‘If you have doubts about whether or not he loves you, then he doesn’t. If he truly loved you, then you would have no doubts.’ Do you believe that?”
Yes! No! Maybe! Tella thought, but she wasn’t about to say any of those things out loud.
“I don’t have to answer you.”
“It’s really cute how you think you still have any power right now.” Her kidnapper put a hand on her hip, and then the villain slipped his fingers brazenly under her skirt and rubbed her bare skin.
She tried to scoot away. That’s what a captive would do. But the hand on her leg was warm and soft and possessive in a way that shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.
For just a second, Tella decided to give in.
Given all the doubts she’d been having and all the touching she’d been missing, this felt like exactly what she wanted. It felt a little bit like falling even though he held her tight.
Before she knew it, the hand at her waist was traveling up her spine and back into her hair. She could feel his fingers weaving through her curls as he began to pull her closer.
She imagined his lips.
She knew they were close. Too close.
Her heartbeat raced. Her blood rushed. Her lips parted. “I think you should let me go,” she breathed.
“You’re the one who threw yourself onto my lap.” He brushed his mouth across hers.
Her head, the world, everything spun.
It wasn’t even a real kiss and Tella was already unraveling. If he touched her lips again, he’d need to keep her tied up because she would come completely undone, and then she would certainly lose whatever game it was that they were playing.
“I need you to untie me,” she said. “I won’t kiss you unless you unbind my hands.”
“That’s too bad.” He gently kissed her jaw. “What are you doing?” she gasped.
He angled her head to the side and then he pressed another kiss to her neck. “You said you wouldn’t kiss me. You didn’t say I couldn’t kiss you.”
His teeth grazed her pulse. Gooseflesh broke out across her skin.
Then he kissed her again. His lips pressed against the sensitive hollow of her throat. And then he kept going, down, down, down, trailing kiss after kiss across her skin.
Tella tried not to sigh or moan or beg him to never stop kissing her, but he was so very good with his mouth.
“Are you sure you don’t want to kiss me back?” he whispered. “I don’t kiss kidnappers.”
“You just let them kiss you?”
She felt his lips move lower, until they were just above the low neckline of her costume, and for a second Tella couldn’t remember why she was resisting him. She couldn’t remember anything. If she’d been asked her name, she would have said it was Kissing, or Touching, or His Hands— which were doing things she probably shouldn’t have allowed them to do in this situation.
Kidnapper. Captive, she reminded herself. But the words were starting to take on a very different meaning.
She felt his deft fingers at the top of her corset, tugging at the ribbon that tied it together.
“What about the game?” she squeaked. “Maybe this is part of it?”
“Is it?” she asked. “It could be.”
He toyed with the ribbon of her corset. She could feel his fingertips ghosting over her skin just above it. Then she could feel him pulling her closer, until she could taste his lips as he brushed her mouth. “Kiss me and I’ll untie you.”
“Untie me and then I’ll kiss you.” “Done.”
He tore the rope off her wrists. Then he took her mouth captive with his. He kissed her the way he’d kidnapped her, wickedly and possessively, as if he had no intention of ever letting her go.
And in that delirious moment, she didn’t want him to release her. She wanted to stay his captive forever, as long as this was the method he chose to torture her.
She parted her lips; his tongue slipped between them, and then he was untying the ribbon holding together the top of her corset.
It should have been easier for her to breathe now, but she couldn’t remember how. All she knew how to do was find his lips in the dark. For a nervous second, she had a fleeting thought: with the blindfold still covering her eyes, she couldn’t be entirely certain whose mouth was kissing hers, whose teeth were taking her lower lip and gently tugging and nipping.
Her fingers could feel the soft hair at the nape of his neck. She thought it felt like Legend. He kissed like Legend. But what if this wasn’t the real Legend?
He was using his teeth more than Legend usually did.
Tella’s heart raced faster. What if she was wrong about the game they were playing?
She quickly reached for the fabric tied around her eyes and pulled it off with one firm tug.
She opened her eyes.…
She still couldn’t see.
Everything was black.
She knew he was there. She was sitting on his lap. She could feel his chest pressed to hers. But his lips no longer kissed hers.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
His voice was hoarse. No longer smooth or magical. It sounded rough and strange to her ear as he took her by the waist and pushed her off of his lap and set her back down on the ground.
Tella felt a tidal wave of panic.
Had she made a terrible mistake? Could she have really been wrong about him? What if he wasn’t who she had thought and he had used his magic to trick her? The final thought made her sick to her stomach.
“Where are you?” she asked. He didn’t answer.
She couldn’t hear him anymore. Couldn’t feel him anymore. She couldn’t sense his eyes on her as she stood and spun around in the dark.
She cried out other questions. But he didn’t answer any of them. He’d left.
She was alone.
In the dark.
“Happy Holiday to me,” she whispered.
