Devoured

The downstairs bedroom that I'm given - conveniently located a few rooms over from the office - is nearly twice the size of my bedroom across town. Just like most of the rest of the house, it has wall to wall bamboo flooring and smells like lemon cleaner. Unlike the remainder of the house, there's a high, cathedral ceiling with skylights. Lucas explains that this is the record executive's college-aged daughter's room as he slides my bags in the closet. He'd insisted on going to the front of the house and grabbing them for me, telling me how he prefers to bother the housekeepers with as little as possible. When I argued with him that I was capable of carrying my own shit, he gave me a frigid, piercing look.

I'd lunged for the suitcase anyway.

"You're not even halfway into our agreement, Sienna," he said, plucking the bag from my hands and stalking toward my bedroom. If I hadn't followed closely behind him, I wouldn't have heard him add, "And I already want to punish you for not showing up on time, so don't fucking push me."

Drawing my mind away from how the authority in his voice had made my face tingle, how I wasn't sure if it was from nervousness or irritation, I clear my throat and say, "If you're staying in their house, where are they?" Whoever they are.

He sits down on the sofa at the food of the bed. "Artie Morgan, the owner, and his new wife are vacationing in Ireland and his daughter's at school. Vanderbilt student," he says. I'm not sure I like the fact that I'm holing up in a room that belongs to someone who may potentially know my little brother. I make a move to sit down, but Lucas shakes his head slowly to each side. "Not a chance. You've got work to do, Sienna. No sitting on your ass."

Seething, I return with him to the plush office a few doors over. "Stand there," he orders, pointing to an area in front of the desk. Lucas seems pleased that I comply without as much as a whimper. "You read the instructions, right?" he asks, digging in one of the desk drawers in search of something. His unkempt hair flops over his face. It gives him an almost vulnerable look, and my fingers tingle to touch the part of his forehead and cheeks it brushes.

I'll save wants like this, ideas like wanting him, for when I go to sleep and keep them far away from my reality.

"From cover to cover," I answer.

"Good, these are yours," Lucas says. He hands me a small Best Buy bag, and I reach out and take it. Our fingertips skim, causing the hair on my arms and nape to stand on end.

I focus all my attention on the contents of the bag - a cell phone and a Samsung tablet - so I don't spend too much time dwelling on his easy effect on my body. "Mine to keep?"

He deadpans. "I'm giving you a house. Don't push your luck, Sienna."

"What do you want me to do now?" I ask.

His mouth draws up into a grin. Oh, he's got me right where he wants me and he's abso-fucking-lutely loving it. I curse at myself for ever showing my timid nature around him two years ago, yell at myself for showing balls for long enough to go on his radar. When I return his look - an expression that makes my face hurt - his smile fades. He gestures his head toward the leather couch.

"Sit down, Si, and take those god-awful chopsticks out of your hair."

I slam my bottom down on the couch and drag the pretty silver hair accessories from my red locks, letting the tangled strands fall in a mess around my shoulders. Lucas is by my side, standing over me, in a matter of seconds. His hand hovers by my face, as if he wants to run his fingers through my long hair, to tug on it, but then he clenches his fingers.

"I'm not going to touch you," he promises. "I'm not going to have any physical contact until you fucking ask me to."

"Maybe I won't," I say. And, though I know it's cruel, I find myself swishing my hair over my shoulders, and running my fingers through it in an effort to comb out the tangles. I sense when his body goes stiff. He mutters something to his self. I make out a few words like ass and red. "You said that I'm submissive to everyone but you, so maybe - "

"There's no maybe to it," he growls between bared teeth. "By time you leave me - if I send you away - you'll grow a damn backbone and the only person you'll ever answer to will be me."

What does he mean by if he sends me away? I want to ask him, but he begins talking, taking long strides back and forth while he explains in detail everything we're going to do over the course of the next ten days. There's a photo shoot tomorrow for a magazine spread. Then a film crew is coming in from Los Angeles the day after tomorrow. They'll be filming him, outside of his personal space, for a documentary that's being released for a movie about the future of rock and roll. That's on day four, Sunday -

Wait - day four?

When I stop him to ask if he has his days mixed up he shakes his head to each side. "Don't interrupt. But to answer your question, since you accepted my offer early on yesterday, I've decided to be nice and give you credit for it."

Well this is unexpected. I clack my teeth together, side to side, so I don't show how surprised I am that he's taken time off my . . . work schedule. I'm ridiculously grateful, because what he's decided to do will give me an extra day with Gram once I'm able to return to her cabin.

"I'm not a total douchebag, Sienna. I do give a shit what happens to you and just so you know, I'll never, ever humiliate you. That's never my game."

There's a lump in my throat and I choke out a thank you.

Then his mood changes and he raises an eyebrow almost mockingly, saying, "Now, no more interruption or I really will punish you." I open my mouth, but he holds out a finger in front of him, stopping me from speaking. "God, when will you listen? No, I'm not going to physically punish you because that requires . . ."

When he nods his head, giving me permission to speak, I whisper, "Touch."

"And the only way I'll do that is if . . ."

"I beg."

He grants me a smile and then continues giving me a play by play of the schedule for each day after Sunday. Day nine will be a recap of everything I've learned and on the final day, ten, he'll conduct a small assessment. Of what, I'm not sure. "Nothing fucked up or" - he raises his eyebrow wickedly - "too strenuous."

Yeah, right.

"Now, tell me what I've just told you," he says.

I make it to day four, knowing that I've left out important details, and then I completely falter. "I-I don't remember."

"Verbal training," he reminds me, and I flush.

"Sorry, Lucas."

I've not called him Mr. Wolfe or Sir like he's asked me to, but instead of pointing this out or correcting me he seems to shrug the mistake off.  Maybe today counts as like an orientation. "Let's try this again, this time" - he pulls a long strip of dark fabric from the same desk drawer he found the Best Buy bag in - "let's try this." He hands it to me, making sure our skin doesn't touch.

"A blindfold?"

"Yes, a blindfold."

"I won't be able to see. And then - "

"You don't have to see anything to listen. To speak. To learn."

I feel like an idiot for even trying to protest because he has a point. I don't need my eyes for any of those things. Sifting the cloth back and forth between my hands, I ask, "And you want me to put it on right now?"

"Why else would I give it to you?" Lucas demands, in a husky voice, wiggling his index finger to let me know he's ready for me to follow through with his request. Hesitantly, I press the fabric to my face, over my eyes, shivering at how soft it feels, how very dangerous.

As I sit in darkness, I listen carefully, intently, as he repeats our schedule to me. When he finishes, asking me what we're doing on day seven, I don't miss a beat. "Wednesday. A tour of your childhood neighborhood and an interview with your parents with the documentary crew in Atlanta."

He quizzes me a little more, and I ace each question. The entire time he speaks to me, I feel hyperaware of everything around me. It gets to the point where I have to dig my fingernails into my knees because my nerve endings are prickling so fiercely. When I answer Lucas's final question, my voice trembles. He's quiet for a long time, but I feel how close his body is to mine as he paces the floor in front of me. Smell his mind-altering scent. My skin flushes.

"Take off the mask, Sienna," Lucas orders in a strange voice. A moment later, after I've slid the blindfold down so that it hangs around my neck like a supple cloth necklace, I raise my blue eyes up. He's touching the base of his neck and his eyebrows are drawn together. When I stare into his hazel eyes, there's something there that makes my belly twist into an even tighter knot:

Hunger.

The entire mood of the conversation with Lucas seems to shift after I realize he wants me at this very moment. "Sienna?" he whispers.

My eyes close and my back arches. "Yes . . . sir."

"You have a license, right?"

"Why do you - "

"One word," he says. "It's a single word answer."

"Yes."

"Good. Now you won't have to spend the rest of your day at the DMV. They're a pain in the ass."

"Oh," I say, opening my eyes. I push my hair back from my face with damp hands. I know there's more that he wants to say to me. With my body still humming from the experience with the blindfold, now would probably be the best time for him to get it off his chest.

Instead, a few seconds later, Lucas sends me away.

I've done a lot of work - all through high school and college and my job with Tomas - and this is the first time my boss has actually uttered the words "You're dismissed."

"Dismissed?"

"Do I need to have you pull the blindfold back over your eyes? Leave."

I'm shaken and suddenly a little lightheaded at the way his tone has hardened. Gone is the almost teasing voice he'd taken on while he was admonishing me over my lack of listening skills and drilling his schedule into my head. Now, he just sounds . . . like I'm the biggest nuisance he's ever met.

"No sir, no blindfold," I say, a sarcastic edge creeping its way into my voice as I stand up stiffly, and walk past him toward the French doors. When he shuffles his feet, clears his throat just slightly, I know he's watching me leave.

He stops me before I step over the threshold, and into the sitting room outside the office. "Kylie's left a list of her own for you in the smaller office on the bottom floor."

I nod this time because there's a massive lump in my throat and I don't think I could possibly call him sir again without my voice breaking apart and giving away my disappointment. Gripping the Best Buy bag, I clench my teeth and do as he's asked. I don't even know why I'm upset to begin with.

Grabbing my laptop from my bedroom, I take it along with the new phone and tablet Lucas has given me. I find the stairs that lead to the lower section of the house in the kitchen and head down there. It's cooler in this part of the house, like purposely colder, and my nipples harden under my thin cardigan.

This whole floor was probably a basement at some point, but the contractor who did the conversion managed to make it look as elegant as the rest of the house. When I pass by a piano room, my letdown from the Lucas debacle momentarily disappears and I creep inside.

I was never the pianist my mom was - she had wanted to perform before she met and married my dad - but I had taken years of lessons. One of my few incredible memories of her was sitting at the Steinway my grandfather had bought for her when she was a kid. She had guided my fingers to the correct keys, teaching me to play some cheesy eighties song. Of course, twenty minutes later she was yelling at me for tapping a flat instead of a sharp, and my dad was forbidding she ever try to teach me anything ever again, but it was fun while it lasted.

I'm suddenly aware that I'm quietly playing that eighties song, and I drag my fingers from the keys. Rub my hands down the front of my black pants.

Leaving the piano room behind, I find the office Kylie's been using. She's left me a long list of things I should be aware of such as the email address and password for answering Lucas's fan mail along with a credit card paper-clipped to a note that reads: Spend to your heart's content!

But after I've collected Kylie's folder, I find myself standing in the doorway to the piano room, staring inside. That Steinway piano that had belonged to my mom - it was one of the many things Gram sold to help pay for her legal fees.