It prompted a light bulb moment. The balcony wrapped around ¾ of the courtyard’s second floor. She knew that just this suite and the other bedroom were in this wing of the house so it stood to reason that there was at least one more way to the staircase off the rooms on the other side. Maybe that entrance was not gated. If she got over there when he was asleep maybe she could get out of the house.
She narrowed her eyes, sucked on her lower lip, and drummed on the balcony railing with her fingertips, wondering if the terrace doors on that side were unlocked. There were a few sets of them at each of 3 junctions of the inside of second floor balcony. She expected that they would be, given that this door and the guest room’s terrace door had been unlocked.
She thought of his face as they’d looked into one another’s eyes in bed a little while ago. She thought about all the emotion that had oozed out of her. She felt a stabbing pain in her chest and a longing.
For what? Him?
She shook herself back to reality. No. This couldn’t be; it couldn’t be her reality. Pleading with a vampire to bite her? Obviously she must be slipping in and out of hypnosis. Moments of clarity and then moments of weakness? Back and forth like a seesaw. It was the only thing that made sense.
She had to go. Regardless of how he’d made her feel earlier she couldn’t just succumb to this fate, this blood slave prison. Surely her life had to be about more than the physical attraction with him. Eventually he’d get tired of her. What then? How would he make sure she wasn’t out there with his secret? She already felt like she was losing herself, knew she was doing things that didn’t make sense. She had to make this end before it ended badly for her. She had to get her head back on straight. Getting away from him would probably be the key to that and if what had happened earlier tonight was an indication of the power he had over her she’d better get out of here soon before she totally fell under his spell.
Every time he was near her Kyla’s common sense seemed like it disintegrated. Princess? Calling her that hit a trigger for her, a big one, that being the nickname she’d dreamt of being called since a little girl, since before she’d become so skeptical of love, by whatever man would be her soul mate. She couldn’t let her common sense vacate like this. She had to try to get out of here.
She dashed back into the closet to see if there might be running shoes in there with her belongings. Ten minutes later she’d rifled quickly through all the boxes and hadn’t found any other pairs of shoes. She was no Imelda Marcos but she owned several pairs of shoes. So where were they all?
She took a pair of yoga pants and a black hooded sweatshirt and stuffed them under the bed with her flip flops and then changed quickly into a pair of pink cotton Hello Kitty sleeping shorts and a pink tank top that had been with her things. It would be better than sleeping naked beside him, unless he ripped them to shreds like her other clothing, and would serve as underclothes when she left with the sweats. She climbed into the bed, her heart thudding wildly. She felt like she was doing something awful, like she was about to make a mistake. But she had to try to get out of here. She couldn’t just be a victim. Staying would be allowing herself to be a victim.
Right?
She growled in frustration. Almost everything inside her head told her that she had to run. This wasn’t her world. She wasn’t even meant to even know about its existence. If she weren’t some freak of nature she wouldn’t be what he’d called lucid, wouldn’t have a clue. She’d be back home, living her ‘not much of a’ life.
She’d never have remembered feeling those intense blue eyes burn through her, never felt those teeth on her, and never felt these feelings inside of her. A part of her wanted to say fuck it and see where this thing with them could go. She’d never felt like this about anyone. This feeling, this connection, this attraction --- she couldn’t reconcile it in her head. It had to be wrong. It had to be. She shook the feelings off with another frustrated “Grrrr.”
Yep, this was emotion at its finest; it fucked you up and made you weak. It had never equated to anything positive for her. But then again, it had never felt quite like this before, either.
She hoped that he would be back soon, fall asleep, and then she could try and get it over with and find out if the balcony was, truly, a way out. She tried to calm herself down, taking a few deep breaths. She found a TV remote on the side of the bed Tristan favoured and flicked on the television that was mounted over the fireplace directly ahead. She needed something to zone out with and just quiet her anxiety down for the next little while.