12. Rosalie

12

ROSALIE

L ast night I dreamed I escaped the penthouse. It was all very dramatic and exciting, though the details live just outside the edge of my awareness—fuzzy and unreal. I somehow know it was so vivid while it was happening, but now in the day, I can't latch onto a single clear detail. I just know I got away.

It's been nearly a week in Coopers house. I tried to stay locked in my room in a battle of wills over if he'd just let me starve in here or bring me food. I was betting on the fact that if he's telling the truth about this mate bond thing, that he isn't going to be able to stand for me to suffer or go hungry.

That worked for the first couple of days—mainly because he had to go out during the day. Even though he's independently wealthy, he runs an architecture firm eight blocks from here, and while he can sometimes work from home, he had client meetings those days.

While he was gone, I was able to forage in the kitchen. I took boxes of snack foods back to my room and squirreled them away under my bed, along with bottled water. I know how ridiculous this all sounds. I Know! Okay? I get it.

If it were you, you'd have swooned into his arms the very instant you saw him naked and let him fuck and bite you with wild abandon. Good for you. I'm not that way. I need… I need time. I need to get to know someone, trust them. I need to know how this is going to affect the rest of my life. Where am I going to paint?

Look, I get that he's hot. I get that he smells like something I want to climb. But no matter how wonderful he may be—and that's still largely theoretical—I can't spend my entire life just swooning over him and fucking. That's going to get boring… eventually… maybe in a decade. And then what?

I want to paint. I want to follow my dreams and build my career. I know artist fame isn't as glitzy as other types of fame, but I want it!

I don't want to be a bear! I don't want to give birth to baby bears. The idea of something with FUR growing inside me is just… I know some babies are born with hair on their heads but just… no. Okay? Just no.

Is he going to keep me barefoot and pregnant in the penthouse? Am I going to become Internet famous from my videos of making cheese crackers from scratch while wearing a 1950's housewife dress and pearls? Who can say?

How do I know he'll even let me leave if I complete the mating bond with him? Maybe he'll get even crazier. Maybe it's just a way to trap me forever.

For all I know, resisting him and waiting for my first good opportunity of escape and then running until I can't run anymore is my only shot at a real life. He isn't the only hot successful guy that exists.

If he'd lock me inside his penthouse, is he even going to let me paint? And it's not like I can paint inside this glorious Architectural Digest centerfold spread with all the ridiculous white and beige. So where am I going to do it? Maybe up on the roof while the weather's still nice enough. But what about when winter comes? Am I expected to go a whole three months without painting?

He could probably spring for a studio rental , my logical brain supplies.

But probably not until I agree to the mating bond.

In the two days he was gone, I had a chance to really take a look at this place. The master bedroom is on the second floor, and it's enormous. There is a tiled floor and a giant tub inside the bedroom next to a huge window showcasing that glorious view. He has three walk-in closets and a master bathroom. I have no idea what the hell you put in three walk-in closets, but I found out. One was for casual clothes. One was for formal and business wear. And the last one was for his hobbies, of which he seems to have many.

The roof does in fact have a pool, a hot tub, a sort of cabana bar, and a small vegetable and herb garden. I'm sure he has some kind of help… a cleaning lady, a gardener, something. There is no way he keeps this all up by himself. And eventually that person is going to come here. And then I'll have my chance.

But… he's kept the place clean without anybody's help this week. I have never seen a man keep a space this clean. It's unnatural. He is fastidious… like a serial killer, which also gives me pause. I've checked his freezer but there's nothing suspicious—like human body parts.

Surely this neatness can't be a bear thing. I wonder if he hibernates in the winter. If so, do I just need to wait him out a few more months and then make my escape?

He also has a big grill up on the rooftop and solar powered string lights around the edges, supported by steel poles. Does he throw parties up here? At some point other people are going to be in our space. Right?

He confiscated my cell phone and he hasn't made the mistake of leaving any other phone in the penthouse, so I can't call the police. I push against the guilty feelings that rise when I think about getting him locked up. Besides, the full moon is coming soon, and I don't want to think about what would happen to him if he shifted inside a jail cell. But why should I have to be the one to sacrifice myself? Why should I feel guilty? Just because he saved me in the woods?

Nikki must be worried sick. When I didn't come home after the art show, she must have called someone. My family? Surely she filed a missing person's report. Is someone out there looking for me right now?

By the third day with him finally home all day and refusing to bring food to my room, I eventually had to come out.

The inexplicable primal need for him has climbed to the point where he doesn't even have to touch me to start my body humming. He just has to be in the general vicinity. I've masturbated probably twenty times a day since this thing escalated. Still, I resist him because this doesn't feel like my free will.

This must be how an animal in heat feels. He just has to be in proximity to me now. Even a shut and locked door doesn't lessen the need. I feel like I'm about to crawl out of my skin, and it takes all my will power not to beg him to take me. I have vivid full sensation dreams at night of his cock buried deep inside me as I buck against him and wail like some wild animal.

Each night, I wake from this dream with unbearable need between my legs, demanding my body surrender to him. All my senses are aligned in a mutiny against me, screaming for a satisfaction I won't give.

The first time I woke from this dream, I discovered the night table drawer beside my bed was filled with sex toys and a note: "Until you decide to let me take care of you. - Cooper."

I have no idea why he felt the need to sign that note. It's not as though I had questions about who left it. I'm sure with his super senses he heard the buzzing toys, and the sounds I made when I came. I'm sure he smelled me. And yet… he remained on the other side of that door, full of self-discipline.

Do I want him more than he wants me? That seems unfair. After all, I was the one who wanted him to just let me go.

I almost crumbled last night and begged him to fuck me. The arousal has gotten so bad when he's here, I can barely think. This penthouse isn't big enough if he's going to be… smelling like that. I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

And I can barely remember why I was trying to. Oh yeah… freedom and painting, and he might be secretly evil. I should write these top reasons of resistance down so I don't forget them again.

That brings us to today. He's out again. I think he had another client meeting. But he said he'd be back by sunset. And I can finally breathe. The sticky hot irritation of his hands not being on me has finally receded, and I feel somewhat normal in the calm peace of his absence. I'm only getting occasional mental flashes of his wet sudsy body in the shower now.

Oh yeah, that's another thing that's started happening these past few days. When he showers, I get these vivid technicolor mental pictures. And it comes with sounds and smells. It's like I'm in there with him. Oh… Rosalie don't think that thought. Shut it down!

I think he's sending me these images telepathically—in fact I'm sure of it. I remember the night I met him when he was in bear form and I heard "Mine" in my head. I thought I was imagining it, but I heard his thought. How could I not? He aimed it right at me. He wanted me to know. I would say that's not possible, but… given all the other fun new facts I've learned about reality, I've decided not to call anything impossible.

I heat up a bran muffin in the microwave and grab a glass of milk. Then I go up to the rooftop again. I'm starting to get cabin fever and need to be out in the fresh air. It's early fall and the air is crisp but not cold. I can still walk on the rooftop with bare feet and the concrete feels perfectly warm against my skin.

Not too hot, not too cold. It's weird to be so high up you don't have to worry about fallen leaves. Even in my third floor apartment, if I left the window open, sometimes a leaf would blow in during the fall months.

I know he's got a hot tub, but I wonder if his pool is heated, then I shake that thought away. I tell myself I'm not going to be here long enough to need a heated pool, even though escape seems futile.

I peer down over the ledge. We're thirty stories up, I counted. And the elevator door won't open, no matter what I try. I've tried picking the stairwell lock with no luck. It's not as easy as they make it look in the movies.

I'm leaning over the side of the building when I hear some construction sounds below. Saws and hammers and drills on the floor just underneath the penthouse. The window is open. Actually it's not "open", because windows in high rise buildings like this don't open. It's a safety hazard. Nobody wants a small child to open the window and fall to their death.

The window is just... missing. They've started working on this floor. And they must have just started in the last few minutes because I would have been able to hear all this noise from the main floor of the penthouse, I'm sure of it.

I shout down. "Hello! Hey!"

A bolt of fear runs through me. These are strange men I'm yelling at, and I can't exactly tell them I've been kidnapped and am missing. For all I know they'll try to capitalize on my already "missing" state.

But then I reason that I'd just be asking them to call the cops. It's not like I could let them up here even if I wanted to. But what if the deadbolt on the stairwell door doesn't have a keyed lock on the other side? What if Cooper just installed that to keep me in but there's nothing to keep anyone else out? I have no idea about the layout of this building.

But the workers don't hear me for all the drilling and hammering and sawing. I decide not to yell again—at least not for now. Cooper probably won't be home until around six-thirty if his pattern on the other days he went in to the office holds. And I'm betting the construction workers will be off work for the day before then.

They'll take a lunch break, of course, but there's no guarantee they'll go off site to eat. They might just stay and have bagged lunches in their work space.

I go back inside and search through Cooper's closet. He may be rich and polished in one side of his life, but he's also a bear. He has wild in him. Nature in him. Plus he's very fit. That's a level of activity that probably isn't maintained with just two visits a week to the gym.

So I'm not at all surprised when I find not only a lot of camping gear but hiking and mountain climbing gear as well.

I can't possibly be about to do what I'm thinking about doing. It's completely crazy, and more than a little dangerous. I could die. Am I willing to die to get away from this guy? And why do I want to get away from him so badly again?

But then on the other side of the coin, why would I want to stay? He's keeping me in a gilded cage and even once I give him what he wants, there's no guarantee my circumstances will change. And this is not okay. This… civilized cave man routine. It's ridiculous to just throw my life away to live in a pretty cage with a hot guy.

Who does that? I blame all those princess movies we watched growing up.

I pull the equipment out of his closet and untangle the ropes and rappelling gear. Then I go downstairs and change into jeans and a T-shirt and some running shoes, because I will definitely be running in this adventure I have chosen. I just hope when I turn to page 132 that there's an ice cream cone and laughter and not a dragon waiting to eat me. Though the more likely horrifying scenario is just falling to my doom and splatting on the pavement outside. Lovely.

I find some cash on the bedside table in Cooper's room and stuff it into my pocket. I'll probably need to get a cab or something to get back home. I need to let Nikki know I'm okay, but I also probably shouldn't stay at our apartment. If he was a vampire he'd need an invitation to get in—assuming that's not a myth.

I'm not sure which formerly assumed fictional realities are true and which are not.

I wonder if there's someone who could do some kind of spell on my apartment to keep Cooper out or even mask my scent so he can't find me. But my mind immediately revolts against this idea. Shifters and vampires are enough supernatural elements. The idea that there could be witches and even more magic is something I don't even want to contemplate right now.

If I hadn't been forced to contend with the obvious magic of Cooper shifting into a bear right in front of me or the powers of the mating link, I'd still be denying the few things I've grudgingly allowed to co-exist in my reality.

I take the equipment I need up to the roof, and then I wait. I watch the clock all day, distracting myself in the meantime with food and TV. By midafternoon it occurs to me that I probably should know what the fuck I'm doing before I end up dangling off the top of a thirty story building.

He obviously hasn't left me with access to the internet, but I do find some mountain climbing and other nature magazines under his bed, so I skim the articles looking for information that will aide me in my escape.

Finally at five-thirty, all the drilling and hammering stops. I rush back to the rooftop and lean over the ledge to listen. I hear some muffled speech and then a door close, and then… silence. Still I wait. About ten minutes later I see men walk out of the building onto the street below.

I take a deep breath and look over the ledge again. It is so high up. But I have a way out. I wouldn't have been given this means of escape if I wasn't meant to take it. Maybe fate decided to let me out of this. Maybe if you can resist your fated shifter mate's glorious scent for six days in a row, you get a Get Out of Mating Free card.

If some mystical force of the universe can command you to be with someone for all eternity, can't that same force have mercy on you and give you a means of escape?

Maybe this is my opportunity to make a choice. To have a choice.

I get into the harness making sure everything is locked and snapped firmly into place, then I use some knots I learned years ago in girl scouts to tie the other end of the rope securely around one of the steel poles on the rooftop. I test the strength, pulling as hard as I can and forcing all my weight into it, but the pole doesn't budge. It is strong and firmly embedded in the concrete. And the knot is solid as well.

Okay… Rosalie, you can do this.

I think you should just stay and have hot mating sex with the growly bear shifter.

But I ignore that part of myself. That's the me who used to leave her drink unattended and went partying with strangers during finals week of my senior year of college. It's a miracle that me survived long enough to be in my current situation. That is not a smart or healthy me. Smart me, by contrast, has decided to rappel down the side of a building like I'm in an action movie. Totally sound choice!

It's probably close to six by the time I'm ready. I mean nobody is ever totally ready for something like this, but as ready as I'll ever be. I've done the math on the distance between the rooftop and the windowless floor I want to end up at and made sure I have the right amount of rope—not too much, and not too little.

But I miscalculated the rope length, and now I'm eye level with the floor of the floor I'm supposed to be on. I panic. I do not have the greatest upper body strength in the world. I can't even do a full pull up, so even though I can reach the floor with my hands, I can't exactly just hoist myself over the ledge. If I were in a movie, I'm sure I'd be able to. It happens all the time… Young heroine has never spent a single day of her life in the gym training to do pull-ups, but when she falls over the ledge of the dragon's lair, she's somehow able to hoist herself up to safety just in the nick of time.

I will my heartbeat to slow to something approaching normal and then I lean back, grip the rope, and plant my feet on the side of the building like one of the magazine articles said to do. The honking traffic below reminds me unnecessarily that I'm basically in a sky hammock with very little separating me from my own grizzly death.

But I pull on the rope, lean back, and put one foot in front of the other, and somehow I make it the twelve inches I need to go to get back inside the building. I'm breathing heavily when I flop onto a bare floor covered in sawdust.

I remove the harness, get up, cross the room, open the door, and walk out into a plush green carpeted hallway like it's just a normal day. I avoid the elevator for fear of running into Cooper. I'm not sure how long that death defying stunt took, and he could be home any minute. Instead, I go to the end of the hallway, find the stairs, and jog the rest of the way down to the ground level.

Five minutes later, I'm standing on the street feeling like a certified badass. I hop into a taxi and reach my house just before dark. I'm about to put my key into the lock when a familiar scent assaults my nostrils and the blackness takes me.