Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
I didn’t move when I was free.
He seemed disappointed.
It was three against one, it was survival.
I was on high alert; anything could be used as a weapon if you hit hard enough, right? If they tried something, if a weapon was pulled, I would need to fight my way through it, I would need to do something — anything.
I was a De Lange.
My name meant something to me. Once a proud family, now on the run, my father was one of the last made men still alive.
It meant something.
I meant something.
I was valuable alive.
I knew this.
Did they?
My stomach sank as the two men who helped free me walked in the opposite direction of the blond-haired man.
“This way.” He sounded bored or maybe just indifferent as he led me down a richly lit hallway with sconces lining the walls, nude art that had me blushing to the roots of my hair, and the sound of people screaming in the background.
Whether it was from pleasure or pain, I wasn’t sure.
And even then, I asked myself, did it even matter anymore?
He stopped at the end of the hall, slid a key card over something black and then looked up at the camera.
The door beeped open.
And I was hit with steamy hot air.
A spa? He was taking me to a spa?
I narrowed my eyes as women of all shapes and sizes stared me down, several of them were in a hot tub looking thing, completely nude sipping champagne, the other half were getting massages.
Everyone looked, happy.
And curious.
We kept walking through that room.
Nobody made eye contact with him.
I kept my head down in fear that it would trigger the beast because that’s what he was, a magnificent lion moving through the rooms like it was his kingdom and everyone else, his subjects.
People didn’t bow. Then again, they didn’t have to.
It was like he knew without looking from left to right that people took a step back when he took a step forward.
I swallowed the dryness in my throat when we came to another dark hallway, he picked up his pace.
My legs ached, but I kept up with him.
Until finally he stopped at a large set of black doors, they were at least twelve feet tall and said Dante’s Inferno across the top.
I forgot to breathe as he shoved them open and whispered under his breath, “Hell, sweet, Hell.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Andrei
Every human has a tell, whether it be a flinch, tapping of their fingers, lip biting, wringing their hands, popping their knuckles, deflecting with too much cursing — I had hundreds of ways to study someone.
And it was so easy it annoyed me when others didn’t catch on, when they didn’t see the slight movement of someone’s fingers, the rough exhale or the darting eyes.
This woman — this girl who I refused to call by name, had too many to count.
And for some reason, it made me want to study her more, to actually look into her haunted eyes and ask her why she hugged herself when it was apparent she wanted nobody to comfort her.
Why her eyes widened in wonder when she walked down the hall.
Why she blushed, when she saw all the nude paintings.
Fucking blushed like she hadn’t been on the receiving end of absolute hell at her brother’s hand.
It was tempting.
Too tempting.
I didn’t like it, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, how to compartmentalize my feelings and do my damn job like the rest of the grown-ups I had to work with.
Bastards.
They’d be entertained by my lack of finesse.
Shit, I was entertained, and I’d been in her presence all but five minutes.
The doors closed with finality behind me. My rooms might look safe, but they were built with the same sin. The same prison that kept her here, kept me here too.
I could feel her soft intake of breath.
“Don’t speak,” I interrupted.
She listened.
I squeezed my eyes shut and moved down the hall toward the kitchen. She would be hungry. The least I could do was feed her before I told her what I was going to do with her.
The leather of my gloves tightened around my knuckles as I held my fingers tight against my palm and measured my steps.
Numbers helped, they gave me something else to focus on. Yes, the thirty-two and a half steps to the kitchen cleared my mind in a way that would alarm any sane person.
It kept my mind off her dark hair.
Off the way she still smelled — clean, even though I knew she was dirty in more ways than one.
“Come,” I barked when I didn’t hear her soft footsteps behind me, and then the sound of feet slamming against the cement floor as she fought to catch up to me.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—
“Where are you taking me?”
I stopped suddenly.
She slammed into my back.
She was very soft, wasn’t she?