Bloom: A Dark Romance (The Order, 1) Read online

  He didn’t say anything, his fingers playing with the base of his wineglass. “That bag over there,” he said, motioning with his head towards the small glass table near the door, my ratty old blue backpack sitting on top. “Are those all your belongings?”

  I drained the rest of my water though it did nothing to rid my mouth of its dryness. I didn’t have much and what I did own were mainly gifts other girls gave me when they realized I was finally leaving. I never really got to know the younger girls because there was no point. I couldn’t warn them because they wouldn’t believe me and if I couldn’t warn them, I wouldn’t lie. They only stayed for a few months anyway before they were sold.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was afraid he was going to go through it but instead he remained silent as he brought his attention back to me. “You are going to be interesting.”

  The food in my stomach turned rotten and I pushed my plate away, no longer starving and looking for any excuse to avert my eyes.

  “Are you still hungry?” he asked. “I can order you more.”

  I shook my head.

  “I expect you to look at me when I speak to you,” he said evenly.

  My eyes rose to meet his. “No thank you, sir.”

  “That’s better.” He reached across the table and started to finish what I hadn’t eaten.

  I sat there, folding my hands on the table where the plate had been. The spot was still warm.

  When he had taken his fill, he stubbed out his cigarette even though he had barely smoked half. The game was changing now. The dinner portion was over.

  The silence stretched on and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. What it meant. He was most likely plotting his next move, coming up with all the ways he could hurt and torture me. I tried not to think of the options myself.

  “I suppose we should get this over with while the bed is unmade,” he said, standing, the smooth sound of the chair gliding against the linoleum suddenly too loud.

  I blinked up at him, unable to move. Bile rose in my throat and made my eyes burn. I was a frightened animal and he was an oncoming car in the middle of the night.

  “Sit on the bed,” he ordered, though it was still in the same calm, light tone. He wasn’t trying to scare me. Really, he probably believed he didn’t have to.

  I stood on shaking legs, cursing my nerves for betraying my resolve. I would not show him I was afraid. Men like this liked fear. They fed on it like the demons they were and I was more than happy to make this one go hungry.

  The bed creaked as I sat down. He was in the corner of the room, rummaging through a black suitcase. He took out a smaller bag and made his way over to me.

  Instruments of torture. So this was who he was. Did he like to cut girls up? Leave them scarred? Was that why he had chosen me, because I was already marked up and ready for more in his mind?

  I wouldn’t give him my fear. He might be able to control me, but he couldn’t control how I reacted.

  “Take off your shirt,” he ordered. He wasn’t wasting any time, was he?

  “S-sir?” I asked to make sure I had heard him correctly.

  He clenched his jaw and stared at me, all hints of humor gone. “Do you want me to unbutton that hideous thing you’re calling a shirt or are you going to do it?”

  I almost smiled at how bothered he was at my choice of clothing and the subtle hint of his displeasure at not wearing his. Almost. I didn’t hesitate with the buttons, popping them open and slipping my arms out of the worn fabric before setting it next to me on the rumpled blankets. I still wore my bra and I hurried to unclasp it.

  “Leave it,” he said, cutting through the silence and halting my movements.

  Not knowing what else to do with my hands, I tucked my sweaty hair behind my ear.

  “Where is your tracker?” he asked.

  The question was almost enough to knock me over. I stared up at him as he went into the bag he set on the night table, not looking at me.

  “The tracking device they put in you,” he clarified. “I know you’re a special case that required an implant versus the standard bracelet.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised me that he knew this; he most likely knew every minute detail about me. Still, it was strange that someone who hadn’t known me more than a few hours had all of this information.

  My mouth was dry and it took a few tries to answer. “My tracking device,” I said to myself. It had been put in place after I was returned. My memory of receiving it was fuzzy at best, but I felt it daily. A cancerous thing I had carried with me since that day. I placed a hand over the right side of my neck, just shy of the jugular vein feeding blood into my head and face. I felt the familiar slight protrusion there.

  “Very good,” he said. “Now lie back.”

  Again, I stared up at him, hoping the fear that fluttered in my chest didn’t show in my eyes.

  “Unless you want them to find you?” he asked in an almost teasing way. I was once again amusing him.

  Without answering, I leaned back on the sheets, head sinking into a soft pillow.

  “Just stare at the ceiling,” he said simply. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  I could hear him going through the bag, the sound of metal tinkling against metal. I refused to look at what he was doing and kept my eyes trained on a spot that looked like a crack in the paint above me. I imagined it spreading, gaping open like a mouth and swallowing me, plunging me in the darkness I was so used to. The room was too bright and I didn’t want to be here, but where else would I be? There didn’t seem to be a good choice.

  Finally, he came closer, inspecting the area.

  “My,” he said under his breath. “How many times have you attempted to remove it?”

  My skin prickled with goose bumps as he referred to the marred skin, thick with scars. They didn’t allow me silverware, pens, or anything that could be broken to form a crude tool to cut the offensive thing from me. I swallowed. I didn’t think he wanted an actual answer.

  He sighed, realizing I didn’t have one. “In any case, whoever stitched you up clearly did not know what they were doing.” He didn’t sound stern or upset; it was simply a fact.

  As he sat on the mattress next to me, I jolted away, unaware I had told my body to do so.

  “Relax,” he said, pushing my shoulders back down so I was once again flat. “I know what I’m doing.” His fingers grazed the skin and I fought the urge to move this time. “I won’t have you walking around with something so hideous if I can help it.”

  I supposed that in his mind he was doing me a favor, but I knew his real motivation: this scar would be visible to anyone who knew what to look for. I was sold to him, belonged to him. People would think he allowed such sloppy craftsmanship with his property.

  Most Owners kept the Compound tracker on their girls for a while, but many didn’t like the idea of being tied to something else. For them, once they owned someone, they wanted to own them outright. No lingering strings.

  I felt the sharp prick of something in my neck and then a slow flood of numbness. I wouldn’t be able to feel it. Just like the food, this was a trick. This was a joker card forgotten to be taken out of the deck during a game of war.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said meekly, the way he wanted. I was good at these games. If he could pretend he was kind, I could pretend I was a shy, scared little girl. It would make it easier to manipulate him into thinking I was well behaved, well trained. Then I would slip away when he was least expecting it.

  He didn’t say anything as he set to work, tugging here and there on my skin. It didn’t take long to remove the foreign device that had been embedded in my skin since I was nine. Sooner than I would have guessed, he was sewing up the hole he had made to retrieve it, slight clicking sounds of his tweezers as they fed the thread through my skin.

  “Didn’t this hurt?” he asked casually, like this was normal.

  “No, sir,” I lied.

  Truth was, I was too preoccupied with the situa
tion at hand.

  “No?” He was incredulous; he didn’t believe me.

  “Not in the moment.” I tried to keep my voice polite but there was a definite sharpness. I erased it before I added, “Sir.”

  Though I was still staring at the ceiling, I saw him smirk out of the corner of my eye as he continued to do whatever it was that I couldn’t feel.

  He stitched up the wound in a way that would somehow be more acceptable than what was already there. I was grateful I couldn’t feel any of it, but part of me wondered if he wouldn’t have preferred if I was in pain. Lots of them liked that. It was one of the many reasons they paid such a high price.

  Without ceremony, he threw out the tools as if he had many more—and he probably did if he had come so prepared—in the wastebasket near the bed. “There,” he said, going back into his bag. “It should blend in better once it is healed. It will at least be a prettier scar.” He sounded pleased with himself. “You can sit up now, but lean against the headboard so you don’t get dizzy.”

  I did as I was told, inching my way up until my back met the hard surface masked with pillows. I imagined not having the tracker in me would make me feel lighter somehow, freer, but that was impossible. I wasn’t a dumb little girl. I was far from free.

  “Thank you, sir,” I croaked.

  He looked up from what he was doing, his hands inside the bag again. “So polite,” he said with a twitch of a smile. “Thank me? What for?”

  I wasn’t sure how to word it, but I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t answer. “Thank you, sir,” I began again, “for making my scar pretty.” As if there was such a thing.

  Taking out a roll of gauze and some sort of white tape, he began to cover the new wound. “I like that,” he said, assured as he secured the tape on my tingling skin; the numbness was wearing off.

  A long, thick needle came out of the bag next and he uncapped it. I knew what this was; I had seen one just like it when they found me. They woke me up in the back of a dirty van, plunging it so deep into my throat I thought it would kill me. I remembered the croaking laugh of a guard as they held me down and I cried.

  “Don’t look so scared,” he said lightly. “Your eyes are so wide.” A small dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth.

  I swallowed anyway. I was naïve to think he would have just taken out one tracker without replacing it with another. I leaned my head to the side without waiting to be asked, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t see it coming towards me and have to relive the first time.

  “You want it in the same spot, ma petite?” He sounded surprised.

  My eyes popped open and I couldn’t help staring. He was studying me as if he was just as confused as I was. “Why don’t you pick somewhere else,” he suggested.

  I had never thought about it before. What it would be like to be tracked but to have some control over where I had the reminder. I didn’t have to see it in the mirror every time I looked. I didn’t have to think about it and more importantly, I could hide any attempts to remove it once I had the chance.

  I pointed to my chest, just to the left of my breastbone. An arm or leg would slow me down if I had to cut it out of me and chances were very good that I would need to be on the run when the time came.

  A grin stretched his face. “Right above your heart,” he said. “I’m flattered.” There was a hint of sarcasm to his tone and if it was any other situation, I would have thought he was funny.

  Nothing was funny anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed or smiled genuinely without the thought of it being smacked from my face.

  He paused, the syringe poised in his hand.

  I leaned my head back against the headboard and resumed staring at my spot on the ceiling. I could no longer find the gaping mouth or its teeth. Maybe I had imagined it.

  I felt the pressure as it slid under my skin, how it increased as he plunged the plug down, sending the liquid and the new tracker it carried into my muscle. It felt heavier than the last one and I wasn’t quite convinced it was merely psychological.

  Once he was finished, he threw out what had touched me and packed the rest away in his little bag. I didn’t want to tear my eyes from their safe spot on the ceiling, but that showed weakness and I didn’t want him to think I was a complete and utter doll, posable and mindless. My gaze met his deep brown eyes and he was no longer smiling. His face held more of a frown as he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You can cover yourself,” he said as he sat in the chair by the bed. He cracked his fingers, staring at me the entire time and instead of folding them outward so they all popped at once, one by one he pulled the joints.

  I hurriedly fixed my shirt, crossing my legs in front of me and sitting up straighter on the bed. His eyes were trained on me the entire time, but they did not hold the hungry desire I was used to seeing from men. He was looking at me with all the concentration of reading a book; he was interested, but in a completely different way than what I was expecting.

  “I’m trying to figure out what to do with you,” he finally said, noticing I was staring back.

  I blinked a few times and it might have been the first since he had started studying me. “Do with me, sir?” I tried to sound strong; meek but strong.

  He looked me up and down. “I was going to simply let you sleep until I found you scaling the window,” he said. “I suppose that isn’t an option now.”

  My heart pounded in my ears as he glanced around the room.

  “Do you have to use the restroom?”

  I nodded, slowly standing on my shaking legs. He gestured to a door off the kitchen and I made my way towards it, half expecting him to follow.

  “Leave the door open,” he said without moving.

  I cracked the door, thankful the toilet was out of his line of vision. Otherwise, I would have been left wondering if the reason he wanted me to leave it open was for more reasons than simply keeping me from running away.

  When I emerged, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, a length of rope in his hands. “Lie down,” he instructed.

  I hesitated a second too long by the bathroom door.

  “Ma petite,” he said, sounding somehow irritated and bored in the same breath. “I do not like repeating myself.”

  I moved forward, feet dragging against the carpet. I took a seat on the opposite side of the bed, slowly bringing my knees up and laying them flat on the bare sheet. I wasn’t aware I still wore my ratty sneakers until he was unlacing them, letting each one drop to the floor.

  “We have an early day tomorrow,” he said, and I felt the rope around my ankles as he tied it tightly, but not so much that it cut off circulation. “Hands,” he said when he was done.

  I took my eyes away from the ceiling and looked at him. He motioned with his hands what he wanted me to do, touching the insides of his wrists together in front of him. I did as he demonstrated and he looped the rope around my wrists.

  I didn’t want to think about what he was doing or why. I knew that whatever it was, it was inevitable. I would make it worse when it really did happen but I couldn’t bring myself to not stall him.

  “May I ask where we’re going, sir?”

  Speaking without being asked a direct question would surely earn me at least a hard slap across the face, but I didn’t care.

  He sat closer, near my knees this time. He was in the bag again, and I turned my attention to the ceiling so I didn’t have to look at what he was trying to find in its depths.

  “My home, of course,” he answered.

  I gulped. Of course. But that didn’t really tell me anything. “France?” I guessed.

  He smiled. “Paris.”

  My eyes automatically started darting around the room, searching for something to focus on—anything but his face and how happy he was.

  “Does that make you nervous?” His tone was as pleased as his expression and it made me feel sick, the food I had just eaten spoiling in my stomach.

  He obvi
ously knew the answer, but I trained my eyes on him and responded anyway. “Yes, sir.”

  I stared at my wrists for a split second, wondering if there was a way I could get out of the knots, but it didn't seem likely. It wouldn't stop me from trying though, after he thought I had gone to sleep.

  He placed his hands on his thighs, perfectly at home with a girl tied to the bed in front of him. “Why is that?”

  I felt my eyebrows knit together. Was he serious?

  “I...” I wasn't sure how to word it without being rude or offending him. I didn't care if I did these things on a social level; I just didn't want to earn a punishment—beating—before we even left.

  “You don't have to answer,” he said after only a few moments, filling the silence I had created. Maybe he realized, once spoken out loud, what a ridiculous question it was.

  He abruptly stood, jostling me. “We should get to sleep,” he said in a bored tone.

  My eyes scanned the bed with newfound horror. Was this why he fed me? So I wouldn't pass out as he took what he wanted?

  “My, that mind of yours does all the work for me, doesn't it?” he said with a small laugh. “We are going to sleep. Nothing more.”

  Without another word or even a glance in my direction, he busied himself with shifting my bound weight so the covers were slipped from underneath me to on top of me. He turned, but seemed to think of something before he faced me again. Reaching into his bag of tricks, he pulled out a thin length of plastic that I had come to recognize as a zip tie—they had been used on me many times at the Compound.

  “Up,” he said, pressing his wrists together and lifting them over his head.

  I did as I was asked and he came closer, leaning on the bed and over me. My heart raced as the fabric of his shirt touched me, brushing against my cheek as he pushed my hands even farther behind me until my fingers were touching the intricate headboard.

  He secured my wrists with the zip tie so I couldn't move, then placed a few pillows behind my head and back so my muscles weren't straining as much. When he glanced down and took in my expression, he smiled.