Captured by Erica Stevens Page B

voice.
       Arianna tilted her head slightly. The light streaming through the windows highlighted the deep red of it. She was still wearing the nightgown, but in the daylight he could see through some areas of it. Something new began to curdle through him, rising up out of the hopeless pit that had been his soul for so long. He did not know what was going on with this strange girl, why she affected him like she did, but for the first time he admitted to himself that whatever she did to him was deep, profound, and something that he had never experienced before.
       He knew that she was special, that she always would be to him, but for the first time he admitted that he was not going to want to part with her. He had been keeping her here, under the delusional assumption that he would one day trade her off. He realized now that he never would. He may not be using her in the way that a blood slave was supposed to be used, but he wasn’t ever going to allow someone else to use her in that way either.
       What it all meant, he didn’t know. But for now, he simply knew that he wasn’t going to let her go and he wasn’t going to let anyone else near her, especially someone that might hurt her.
       “I’m not defending her,” she said softly. “But you didn’t have to be so mean to her. You were the one that forgot about her and brought her here to take care of what she mistook as her replacement. That’s an awful thing, you hurt her.”
       His eyes narrowed upon the frail slip of a girl. Was she really scolding him? Was she really questioning his way of life, and the things he did? She was a child for crying out loud, a human child. His hands fisted at his side, he fought the urge to go to her, to shake some fear into her because he was beginning to realize that she did not have a healthy enough dose of fear for him.
       “Am I supposed to care?” he grated.
       She blinked in surprise, her crystalline blue eyes widened in disbelief. Then, she shook her head, her eyes cleared and her chin jutted slightly. Her hands folded demurely before her, but he was beginning to realize that it was just an act. There was nothing demure or weak about this girl, she may play it off well, but there were many layers beneath her docile exterior. “I suppose not,” she said softly, even her voice had taken on that decorous tone.
       “She also hurt you.”
       Arianna shifted slightly; though she remained outwardly meek he sensed the raw anger that spiked through her. “That doesn’t make what you just did right. You took her job and her pride away from her. Two wrongs don’t make a right, or at least that’s what my dad always told my brother’s and I .”
       Despite his frustration with her, and his growing urge to shake her, his interest was piqued by her words. It was the most she had talked about her family since arriving. “How many brothers?”
       She shrugged absently, her fingers nervously played with the sleeves of her nightgown. Her eyes were sad, distant as her thoughts turned toward her family. It was the first time she hadn’t looked angry or frustrated with him this morning. He found her preferred the anger to the sorrow that engulfed her. “Two. Anyway you did not have to frighten her. She was simply jealous because she thought that I was a threat to her, when it came to you.”
       “And why would she think that?”
   Arianna shrugged again, sighing softly as she folded her arms over her chest. He did not miss the slight wince of pain the action caused her. “I don’t know. She was wrong of course; I mean I am most certainly not a threat to her, or anyone else. Especially when you were feeding from her…”
   “I was what?” he interrupted her rush of words sharply.
       Arianna’s blue eyes widened slightly, she began to fiddle with her nightgown sleeves again. “Feeding from her.”
       “I don’t know where you got your information, but it is wrong.”