Free Sweet: A Dark Love Story by Kit Tunstall, R.E. Saxton Page B

reach for a new toothbrush, she hissed a breath through her teeth when she saw the faint purple bruises forming on her neck, all in the shape of his fingers. It was visual proof of just how degenerate she had become, and how she had embraced his degradation willingly.
    For all that, and knowing what they represented, she couldn’t suppress the dark thrill of pleasure at the sight of his fingerprints marring her flesh, and she couldn’t help remembering how blissful it was to be completely under his control and at his mercy—assuming he had mercy.
    She brushed her teeth without looking at herself again in the mirror, trying to remind herself just how disgusting those thoughts were. Normal people didn’t like to be choked, and they didn’t get off on it. They probably didn’t sleep with their captors either, especially within a few hours.
    After spitting and rinsing, she washed her brush and put it back in the holder. Accidentally, she met her own gaze in the mirror as she started to turn away, and she was transfixed once more by the sight of his fingers having bruised her flesh.
    Normal people weren’t into this, and normal people didn’t spend two years Googling a man they barely knew, trying to learn his whereabouts. Shaking her head, she turned away from the mirror and tried to forget the memory that had just popped into her head.
    She had started her investigation into Declan Mulgrew within hours of their exchange of words at the courthouse. At the time, she had thought she was acting from empathy and a sense of obligation, based on what her father had done.
    There hadn’t been a lot to discover about him that had seemed overly personal, but she had pored over the business articles about him, along with the social pages. Before her death, Hilary had evidently been big on philanthropy, and he was usually photographed on her arm at different functions, where they were donating or more actively involved.
    Gradually, as the months had passed, her attention had moved from reading the same articles over and over again to simply staring at his picture. It wasn’t until she had moved into a shared dorm room with her roommate, and privacy had become a premium, that she had been able to break her nightly habit of logging in to view her favorite pictures of Declan, along with tri-weekly searches for his name to see if anything had changed.
    After his wife and daughter’s deaths, he had virtually disappeared, becoming a recluse, and though she hadn’t known he had sold his company, she now knew where he had been the last few years. Here on this island, where he now had her trapped.
    She crawled in to bed, not wanting to examine too closely why she had formed such a strange attachment to him. She had honestly forgotten about her infatuation with him, or else had pushed it to the very back of her mind because she had been embarrassed by it.
    And what else could it have been besides an infatuation? Checking on him occasionally would have been a sign of concern and an acknowledgment of what her father had done to destroy his life.
    They hadn’t openly communicated in any fashion, it wouldn’t have been strange for her to occasionally look him up on Facebook or Google to see if there had been any mention of him. Several times per week had crossed a fuzzy line for which she had no name, but she had a feeling if she probed too deeply, she would find an uncomfortable answer of her own.
    Had they been drawn to each other even then? It seemed unlikely. He had been consumed with grief from his wife’s death and the loss of his daughter, and she had never doubted that. He’d grieved too deeply and sharply in his rare public appearances, and she was convinced he’d been a thousand times worse in solitude. Whatever had prompted his obsession with her, she didn’t think it had to do with anything so fanciful as a shared infatuation. More likely, she had just been a convenient target.
    For her part, it must have simply been natural