Salli appears from the kitchen, carrying a plate full of food. She stops at the view of the scene then smiles and speaks with her strong Italian accent. “Lunch is ready.”

“Grazie, Salli,” he says.

My next idea to escape forms loud and clear in my head.

“I’m not eating.” I stare at Jasper. “Unless you let me out of here, I won’t eat.”

5

Jasper

My little Petal hasn’t eaten for days.

The first day I left her to her fucking antics and ignored her.

By the second day, I’ve had enough of her stubbornness. I had the new housekeeper, Salli, prepare Cannelloni and then I forced Petal to eat.

At first, she threw it away, so I spanked her ass, forced her to open her mouth and then I shoved the food down her throat.

She vomited it back up.

Fuck that.

I stand at the door of the bedroom staring at her as she sits on the balcony, her gaze lost in the distance. She has a book open on her lap, but she’s not reading it.

Her shoulders and cheeks have thinned. She always had beautiful forms and curves, but now they’re starting to lose their usual liveliness.

She is starting to lose her liveliness.

If Petal continues like this, she might lose herself altogether. I can punish her, force her to eat by edging her toward orgasms, but something tells me that will only make things worse.

It might work for a while, but eventually, I’ll break her to the point of no return. She’ll become a shell of herself and I might never be able to find her once I lose her.

So I go down a route I’ve never used before.

With a deep breath, I step inside and sit on the chair across from hers. She pretends I’m not there, her cheeks hollowing and her lips thinning.

Her gaze is still lost in the distance where workers have started cultivating the land. It’s slow, and not many have shown up, but they’ve been doubling and tripling over the past few days.

While people here respect me and my last name, if they know I brought a Costa on their turf, they wouldn’t approve.

Fuck them and Enzo who already figured it out. He’s hell-bent on using her for this war, and that’ll never happen.

“Petal,” I call her name in a soft voice. “Look at me.”

She doesn’t.

“Petal,” I warn.

“Are you going to let me go?” Her usual question is neutral, dead even.

“No.”

“Then I have no reason to look at you.”

“Why do you want to leave so much?” I ask trying not to lose my cool and spank her ass. “You never actually liked your life in Chicago. It’s a place that rejected you and threw you from one foster home to another.”

“It’s still my home.” Her voice is weak but stern as her gray eyes meet mine. “My cats are there, my work, my friends. My life! Don’t sit there pretending like you didn’t kidnap me from everything that mattered to me.”

“How about me? Don’t I matter?”

“No.” She thins her lips in a line and stares in the distance again.

“Come on, Georgina.” I lean closer and take her hands in mine.

Her lips twist, but she doesn’t remove her hands from mine.

She might be on some sort of a strike, but she has missed my touch, just like I missed having her by my side. I didn’t even sleep on the same bed as her for fucking days because since she started this strike, any sudden touch triggers her damn anxiety attacks.

“Georgina…” I coax, my fingers stroking the back of her hand in small circles, making her shudder in response. “I thought we connected?”

I repeat her words from when I first brought her here. We do connect, we did since that fucking day I met her as Joseph, and it didn’t change when I saw her again as a woman in the hospital.

“I hate that,” she whispers.

“You hate what?”

“Georgina,” her voice is barely audible.

“You hate your name?”

“No,” she peeks at me through her lashes. “I hate when you call me by it.”

My lips lift in a small smile. I know that, but I’m a dick and I wanted her to say it aloud.

“I called you by many names since you were a little brat.”

“Hey,” she puckers her lips. “I wasn’t a brat. I was a good boy.”

She’s adorable as fuck when she’s pouting. She always was even when she was a “good boy”.

“Little Joe was a brat,” I insist.

“No, he wasn’t.” She glares.

“We’ll agree to disagree.” Gaining distance, I keep her hand in mine and stroke a lock of hair behind her ear, making her lips tremble. “I liked you then, though, you were soft and innocent and you didn’t let the boarding school’s atmosphere change you.”

“Is that why you protected me?” she murmurs.

“I wanted to protect your innocence, to keep you lively and not kill your light like mine was. You were the reason I remained sane.”

She leans into my touch as I cup her cheek. “Jas…”

“I need you with me, Petal. I need your liveliness and your light.”

“I have no light anymore.”

“You do. We just have to find it again and pull it out kicking and screaming.”

She chuckles, the sound music to my ears. “Is that your method with everything?”

“Probably.”

She sighs heavily. “You can’t keep me against my will, Jas.”

I grit my teeth, but I force myself to speak in a normal tone. “We’ll talk about that, but first, you need to eat.”

She remains silent.

“Georgina,” I warn.

“Fine, stop calling me that.”

I smile, caressing her cheek before calling for Salli. She has prepared her pasta — again. This time alla Norma. Salli even knows how to make couscous but that’s for another time.

The plump housekeeper wishes us a good meal and disappears, closing the door behind her. I pull my little Petal so she’s sitting on my lap and I feed her every last piece of pasta.

My little Petal stares me in the eyes as she wraps those pretty lips around the fork, slightly moaning as she chews. Her pupils are huge, seducing me into their gray depths.

“Are you being a cocktease, Pet?” I push the empty dish away and wipe her mouth with the napkin.

“Who?” Her voice lowers as she rubs her ass against my dick. “Me?”

The traitor hardens in an instant. It’s been so fucking long without her and it might have been torture.

Scratch that. It was fucking torture.

I stand up, and she gasps wrapping her arms around me as I take her into the bedroom and slowly set her on the bed.

She doesn’t even hesitate before pushing the nightgown over her head and throwing it beside her. She’s wearing nothing underneath, not even panties.

She reaches for the handcuffs, but I tsk, making her pause, brows furrowing.

There’s nothing I want more than to make her fantasies come true, and drive her delirious with pleasure, but there might be something she needs even more than this.

Kicking my pants and boxers away, I yank my shirt open then crawl on top of her.