Page 72 of Hideaway

“Hurt me. Like he did,”Kara said softly, averting her gaze as she felt an irrational wave of mortification at the suggestion. Her heart fluttered anxiously, her skin flushed with the heat of embarrassment as she awaited his answer, the room filling with a tense silence.

“You want me to hurt you?”Cade asked dangerously slowly, enunciating each word carefully as though talking to a delusional child.

“Yes,”Kara answered calmly, her voice quiet but assured.

“You’re fucking insane. I’m not going tohurtyou, especially not in your goddamn condition. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Do not presume to tell me what I know, Caden Ashford. I know what I want. What I need. What webothmight need if you actually took a moment to consider it instead of immediately stooping to insults and belittling.”Kara was getting angry. He had the audacity to throw her vulnerability in her face and declare it ignorance.

“Alright, let meconsiderthe asininity you’re suggesting. You want me towhat? Hit you? Violate you? Paint your body in bruises and violence? Why? Whythe fuckwould you want that?”

“Because it would bemychoice, Cade. You think the worst thing Jace did was violate my body? No. He stole my freedom. He took away my ability to choose what happened to me. I want that power back. I want you to help me find it again.”

Cade’s body vibrated with fury at her suggestion, but the blood in his veins also sung with the need to fulfill her violent desires. His face was a collage of conflict between the two as he stared at Kara in wordless indecision. Could he do it; could he hurt her? Would he be able to live with himself after? Would she?

“What’s wrong, Ashford? Scared to hit a girl? Lost the taste for it since the last time you hit me with your belt?” Kara goaded, resorting to desperate measures if it would get her the reaction that she wanted. And she wanted him angry. Angry enough to fight back. Angry enough to prove that he wanted it just as much as she did.

“Careful, love,” Cade growled, seething with anger at her dangerous attempts to rile his darkness. “You’re taunting a monster, and I don’t think you’ll like it when he unsheathes his claws and comes out to play.”

“Fuckingtry me.”

An eerie stillness pervaded the room, like standing in the tranquil eye of a hurricane before total chaos and destruction came to obliterate everything in its path.

“As you wish,” Cade said ominously. Without another word of explanation, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of the room.

Kara tripped over her own feet as she tried to keep up with Cade’s furious strides, his crushing hold on her wrist the only thing keeping her upright as they stormed down the hall. Prickles of fear danced along her spine as she realized she’d provoked a menacing man who’s limitations she didn’t really know. Was he capable of actually harming her? Had she just made the stupidest mistake of her life? Her head screamed at her to escape while she still could, while her heart knew that she could trust him, even as he hauled her through the manor with a fiery glint in his eye.

Kara was puzzled when Cade came to a sudden halt in front of the library doors, swiftly dug out his keys from his coat pocket, and unlocked the door. He forcefully pulled her inside the room and left her standing alone and confused as he turned toward the doors and locked them, the scrape of the key sounding sinister and foreboding. Returning to her side, Cade reclaimed her wrist and pulled her toward the bookshelves at the far end of the library. He stopped in front of a particular shelf that housed navy rows of identically bound, numerically organized texts on nautical law; it was one of the few areas in the library that Kara had never taken any interest in.

“Are you sure you want this, Kara?” Cade asked seriously, his back pressed against the shelf as he loomed over her, studying her with the intensity of a predator about to go in for the kill.

Trembling from head to toe as fear and anticipation wracked her body, Kara could only summon the strength to nod.

“I am going to need verbal consent,”he demanded sternly.

“Yes, I want this,” Kara answered, surprised by the strength and determination in her voice.

His eyes alight with excitement mingled with resignation, Cade turned toward the bookshelf and tinkered with something on one of the higher levels. Instantly, the wall gave way to reveal a hidden passage with a staircase leading down into dark, unknown depths.

What. The. Fuck.

Instinctively, Kara took a step back, that alarmed voice of reason in her head screaming at the top of its lungs for her to get the fuck out while she still could because nothing about that dark, secret passage lookedsafe. Cade noticed her hesitation and allowed her a moment to adjust to the situation, his hands kept non-threateningly at his sides.

What the hell was she doing? She knew Cade was dangerous; she knew he was a criminal. Technically she still was his fucking prisoner. Maybe she wasn’t the first. Maybe there had been others. Maybe he had a bluebeard complex, and this was where he lured his victims and stored the fucking bodies. Had she really succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome so completely that she was willing to follow a man she truly knew very little about into a hidden chasm, tucked away from the rest of the world with no visible escape?Absolutely everything about the situation saidrun, and yet, there she stood, contemplating if her curiosity outweighed her fear.

Cade watched as Kara’s internal conflict played itself out before offering his own encouragement.“Do you trust me, Kara?”he asked in earnest, extending his hand as he walked through the opening in the wall and settled on the first step of the darkened staircase.

Kara’s brow furrowed as she considered his question, her teeth tugging on her bottom lip anxiously as she pondered her answer as though it encapsulated her very fate. And perhaps it did.“Yes,”she answered finally. And whether or not it was folly, she meant it. With a sigh of finality, Kara took Cade’s hand and began her descent.

With the library door closed behind them, the way down on black steps was dimly illuminated by small, antique sconces along the wall. The aesthetic was very dungeon-esque, and Kara had to suppress a shiver as she slowly walked further down. She relied on Cade’s guidance, holding his hand close to her chest as they navigated the enclosed tunnel of steps until they finally reached level ground. Through a shroud of shadows, Kara attempted to discern the purpose of the secret room as Cade left her side, presumably to locate a light source. With aclick, the space ignited beneath the radiant gleam of an exquisite black chandelier adorning the center of the room. And the huge chandelier was not the most conspicuous item in the room, which was saying a lot.

Black wallpaper with elegant silver patterns decorated walls lined with racks upon racks of torture implements. These weren’t the toys of someone who dabbled in deviance. These were the tools of a professional. Terrifying whips, canes, paddles, and other sinister weapons she couldn’t even begin to describe draped down in organized rows. Other racks held ropes and cuffs and chains. There was a black leather bed with dark sheets and no pillows, a matching leather couch, a black bench that seemed designed for something other than sitting, an imposing desk in one corner that seemed to be a replica of the one in Cade’s office, and a monstrous wooden X looming in the other corner.

What the fuck had she gotten herself into?

“So...youdohave a sex dungeon,”Kara commented blandly after the shock of the room had finally dissipated enough to allow her the ability to speak. She supposed his remark the first time she was in his room hadn’t been a joke after all.

Fucking fantastic.

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