“Are you done for today?” Beth asks, and I realize that she’s been sitting in the same position for the past hour.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I say. “Thanks for being such a good model.”

“No problem.” She gives me a genuine smile as she gets up. “Ready for dinner?”

For the next three days, I work on Beth’s portrait. She patiently models for me, and I find myself so busy that I hardly think about Julian at all. It’s only at night that I have a chance to miss him—to feel the cold emptiness of my king-sized bed as I lie there aching for his embrace. He’s gotten me so addicted that a week without him feels like a cruel punishment—one that I find infinitely worse than any sexual torture my captor has doled out thus far.

“Did Julian say when he’s going to be back?” I ask Beth as I’m putting the final touches on the painting. “He’s already been gone for seven days.”

She shakes her head. “No, but he’ll be here as soon as he can manage. He can’t stay away from you, Nora, you know that.”

“Really? Has he said something to you?” I can hear the eagerness in my voice, and I mentally kick myself. How pathetic can one get? I might as well put a stamp on my forehead: another stupid girl who fell for her kidnapper. Of course, I doubt many kidnappers have Julian’s lethal charm, so maybe I should cut myself some slack.

Thankfully, Beth doesn’t tease me about my obvious infatuation. “He doesn’t need to say it,” she says instead. “It’s perfectly obvious.”

I put down my brush for a second. “Obvious how?” This conversation is fulfilling a need I didn’t even know I had—that for a real girl-to-girl gossip session about men and their inexplicable emotions.

“Oh, please.” Beth is starting to sound exasperated. “You know Julian is fucking crazy about you. Whenever I talk to him, it’s Nora this, Nora that… Does Nora need anything? Has Nora been eating well?” She lowers her voice comically, mimicking Julian’s deeper tones.

I grin at her. “Really? I didn’t know this.” And I didn’t. I mean, I knew that Julian is crazy about fucking me—and he definitely admitted to a certain obsession with me because of my resemblance to Maria—but I didn’t know I was this much on his mind outside of the bedroom.

Beth rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right. You’re not nearly as naive as you pretend to be. I’ve seen you batting those long lashes at him over dinner, trying to wrap him around your little finger.”

I give her my best wide-eyed-innocent look. “What? No!”

“Uh-huh.” Beth doesn’t seem fooled in the least.

She’s right, of course; I do flirt with Julian. Now that I’m no longer quite so afraid of my captor, I am again doing my best to get into his good graces. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there is a persistent hope that if he trusts me enough—if he cares for me enough—he might take me off the island.