War of Hearts(50)

Maybe she could have sex without removing her top?

She scoffed at herself as she pulled on a shirt. She couldn’t wear a bra yet because her back was still too tender. Going braless was a nightmare. She was too full in the chest to go without a bra and she hated the way some guards watched her like she was a piece of meat.

Guards, she reminded herself.

In her prison.

Where she was unlikely to ever meet someone she was attracted to in order to lose her virginity.

God, would she die a virgin?

Oh, right … possible immortality.

If that was true, she just had to survive this nightmare until Jasper Ashforth died. Unless he became like her.

Thea felt rage churn in her gut at the thought. No way was she staying stuck down here for another fifty fucking years. Or worse, forever.

Right on cue, the door to the room opened and Amanda walked in with a human guard (armed with a dart gun) at her back. She smiled sadly at Thea. “I’ve been granted permission to walk with you around the grounds for an hour.”

That tickle of intuition, of hope, bloomed in Thea and she nodded carefully before pulling on a pair of sneakers to follow Amanda out.

To her surprise, the human guard and a werewolf, who Amanda called Sarah and Jack respectively, trailed them. No others. They kept a polite distance as Amanda led Thea down the basement corridor; right led up to the house and left led out into the gardens.

Another guard opened the exit and Thea blinked against the natural daylight as she walked up concrete steps to the outside. The sun felt amazing on her face after spending weeks in a windowless room.

The large house was surrounded by the island’s forest, which acted as a natural perimeter on three sides. The grounds also housed a tennis court, indoor and outdoor pools, a guest cottage, and perfect lawns that led down to their beach.

Amanda slipped her arm through Thea’s and huddled close. “How are you feeling?”

“Still weak,” she admitted. “The effects of the room take time to wear off.”

“About an hour, right?”

Thea fought to stay relaxed. “Yes, about an hour.”

“We’re going to walk around the grounds for an hour,” Amanda said, lowering her voice. “And then we’ll take a walk on the beach. Jack and Sarah are my personal guards, Thea.”

She looked into Amanda’s eyes. “How?”

“There’s a boat,” she whispered. “Jasper is in Australia on business, and I’ve told about a hundred lies to get guards out of the way for the exact moment when the boat will arrive. You have to be on it at exactly one fifteen or we could get caught.”

“What will he do to you?” Thea asked, fear for Amanda stalling the anticipation of flight.

“I’m his wife. He won’t hurt me. He’ll be furious with me, but he won’t hurt me.”

Thea cut her a dark look. “He’s a bad person, Amanda.”

Her green eyes filled with tears. “I know,” she whispered bleakly. “And I’m … stuck … but I can’t let you be. I loved your mother. She was my best friend.”

Tears momentarily blinded Thea. “Come with me.”

“I can’t leave Devon.”

“He’s at school. He’s grown up.”

Amanda smiled sadly. “He’ll be fifty and I’ll still think of him as my little boy. I can’t leave him alone with Jasper. I just … I can’t.”

They fell into silence as they walked by the pool, not acknowledging the guard placed at the entrance to the lounge area.

When they were finally out of earshot, Amanda whispered, “There’s a backpack with a change of clothes and ten thousand dollars on that boat. You can’t use a passport or he’ll find you …” She tightened her hold on Thea. “You’re going to have to use your gift.”

Thea shook her head. “No.”

Ashforth had made her use it on people and his experiments had brought the realization she couldn’t use it on supernaturals. But she could mind warp the hell out of humans, and it was awful.

The first time she’d become aware of the gift was when she was just a kid. She’d broken one of her mom’s favorite vases and had unintentionally wished her mom wouldn’t see it. And then her mom couldn’t. Her dad, however, could, and he thought Thea’s mom was going crazy until they realized their special daughter might be even more special than they’d thought. After testing the gift among the three of them, they’d discovered Thea could make people see anything she wanted them to see.

William and Laura Quinn had forbidden her from ever using it again.

As a child, she hadn’t understood what a violation the “gift” was, and her parents never knew she’d continued to use it.

It was only now she understood that it wasn’t a gift. It was a terrible power she did not want to use ever again.

“I can’t.” The thought of stripping someone of their free will disgusted her after her imprisonment.

“Darling girl.” Amanda suddenly looked fierce. “You will have to give up a few morals to survive. My husband has almost unlimited resources and he will use them to find you. So you need to be as far from here as possible. The boat will take you to New York. You can’t get on a plane, so you need to find a ship that’s sailing far away. And to get on that ship you’re going to need the right people to think you have a passport.”