Free LovingDragon by Garland Page A

stopped.
    “Hello Catherine.”
    “Douglas, what…what are you doing here?” she asked, even though she knew, and a sick feeling gathered in her stomach. She just might lose her dinner. Her time of freedom was up.
    “I’ve come for my fiancé, of course. Surely you didn’t think I would let you go that easily? Now come along darling, you’ve had your little fun, slumming it up with the bouncer. It’s time to go home where you belong.”
    “And if I choose not to go with you Douglas, then what?” she asked.
    Without waiting for an invite, Douglas stepped into the apartment, his eyes making a show of scanning it. “Where is your little roommate? Mia is her name isn’t it?” he asked as he ran his stubby finger down Cat’s throat and into the opening of her halter top to painfully pinch a nipple. “So soft, so beautiful, I can hardly wait until you are my wife.”
    Catherine jerked away from him. Thankfully she heard the shower running and knew Mia would hear nothing of this conversation. With any luck she would stay there until they left. “She had nothing to do with this. You leave her alone.”
    Douglas grabbed her by the hair. It was sudden and violent and took her completely by surprise. He yanked hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. “Let’s get something straight shall we, darling? I’m in charge here, so you do what I say and I won’t hurt your pretty little friend or the bouncer you’ve been fucking. Now get your tight little ass in the car.”
    He gave Cat a shove and she stumbled towards the door. That was when she noticed a couple of his goons waiting by the black SUV. The last thing Cat wanted to do was go anywhere with Douglas, but to keep Mia and Dragon safe she would go, and she did.
     

Chapter Seventeen
     
    Catherine moaned. Her head was pounding and the inside of her mouth was dry. She tried to muster up enough moisture to lick her equally dry lips, but even that simple act proved impossible.
    “Wonderful, my sleeping beauty is finally awake,” said Douglas as he sat down on the end of the bed that Cat lay on. She forced her eyes to open and they blinked to get into focus. Douglas sat looking quite pleased with himself. The memory of last night came rolling back in and Catherine knew she was living a nightmare. Her brain scrambled trying to recall the last few hours. She had climbed into the SUV, sitting in the back with Douglas as his goons drove them to Douglas’s opulent home, and then she was taken downstairs to the basement and forced to sit on the bed and drink a cup of water, after that she remembered nothing.
    “You drugged me,” Catherine said flatly.
    Douglas shrugged. “I knew you would need your beauty sleep for our wedding today, so I slipped a little something in your water to make sure you were rested.”
    “So you still plan on going through with this farce of a wedding? You know I don’t want to marry you. I don’t love you Douglas, I will never love you,” Cat said with a sigh of resignation.
    She watched as Douglas’s eyes narrowed, the smile falling from his face like a vase from a table. “I have found in my life that love is a useless emotion, only a fool would marry for love and make no mistake, Catherine, I am not a fool. I don’t need you to love me, it matters not. You will however fear and respect me as your husband, follow my orders once given and you will at all times remember that you are my wife and comport yourself as such, especially in the public eye. I plan on making a run for the Senate next year, and I will need you to be the perfectly polished wife of the candidate.”
    Douglas reached out and grasped a lank of Cat’s silvery hair, winding it around his fat fingers. “What matters to me is a beautiful wife from the right kind of family who will be an assent to me as I make my way up the political ladder and I have decided that person is to be you.”
    “You are insane,” Cat hissed.
    Douglas pulled her hair and kept on pulling