Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“Your eyes were scanned before you woke yesterday. You have access to certain areas of the property, including my suite.”
“Can I go outside?”
“Of course.” With his legs spread wide and hands laced behind his head, he didn’t seem to have a care in the world. “I thought you had to pee.”
She slipped into the bathroom and used the toilet, buzzing with the new information. While she brushed her teeth—with his toothbrush because fuck him—she entertained scenarios of freeing all the slaves in the compound and leading them through the rainforest like a Rambo woman. She needed a badass rifle and a bandanna headband for maximum effect. Oh, and some survival skills, because she didn’t know shit about trekking through two million square miles of jungle.
The dangers that lurked amid those majestic palms were so beyond anything she’d prepared for. Not to mention, her escape would provoke a manhunt. If Matias was willing to let her go outside, the odds of getting out were probably not in her favor.
But her goal had never been to save herself or existing slaves. She’d come here to stop them from taking more women. If she couldn’t persuade the cartel to end that business, she would have to kill them.
Nausea curled in the pit of her stomach.
She rinsed out her mouth and stared at the wide brown eyes in the mirror. The anguish in those eyes was everything. Matias could be the most atrocious man on the planet, but there was no use lying to herself. She didn’t have the emotional strength to end his life. Not now. Not ever. As inconvenient as that was, it loosened some of the knots inside her.
When she returned to the bed, he’d shifted into a half-sitting position, his back leaning against a stack of pillows and a tube of ointment in his hand.
As she crawled toward him on the mattress, he tracked her movements and patted his thigh. His ever-present desire to be all up in her personal space might’ve been a coercive tactic, but there was more to it. Maybe that was the key. She just needed to find a way to peel back the layers, starting with his obvious attraction to her.
Reaching for his waist, she dragged the sheet off with a quiver of fear darting down her spine. She pushed through it, lifting a leg over his nude lower body and straddling his partial erection.
His hands gripped her ass before she sat down, holding her upright on her knees.
Confused, she looked down at his swelling dick.
“Hold still.” He squeezed a dollop of ointment into his palms and rubbed the icy balm over the backs of her thighs.
Instant relief shivered into her skin, and she swayed, dropping her hands on his chest.
“This is new.” She twitched her fingers, indicating the sprinkle of dark hair on his sternum.
“So is this.” He met her eyes as his caress glided over her ass, making wide circles to encompass the curves of her hips.
“Not the scrawny girl you remember?”
“You were never scrawny.” The corner of his mouth lifted, and his gaze wandered over her body. “I spent the majority of my teen years hiding a chubby from you.”
“You did?”
“You have no idea.” He added more ointment to his hands and massaged the fronts of her thighs. “Last night…” His chest rose, fell. “The empty chair at our table belonged to a close friend.”
The sudden somberness in his tone stiffened her muscles. She held still, focused on the movements of his hands, willing him to continue talking.
After a nerve-racking pause, he told her about Gerardo’s betrayal, the information leaked to a rival cartel, the dismemberment, the blood, and the spy who still lived among them. His voice became rougher, angrier, with every word, leaving her cold long after he fell silent.
With the nudge of his hands, he lowered her to sit back on his thighs, his semi-flaccid cock resting in the V of her legs.
“There are other secrets.” His jaw shifted. “Valuable secrets that Gerardo may or may not have released.”
“Like what?” She liked this, him sharing, her listening, even if the subject matter fucked with her blood pressure.
“The kind no one talks about.” He looked her firmly in the eye. “In time, you’ll see things as they really are, and when you do, I want you to come to me and no one else.”
Warning bells sounded in her head, raising the hairs on her nape.
Maybe he was working against the cartel? Except he seemed to be genuinely hurt by Gerardo’s betrayal. What the hell was he hiding? And who was he hiding it from?
They need to know you’re just the slave of the month. A fresh hole to fuck. You mean nothing to me.
She’d assumed he was just being a dick last night, but now… “Is your paranoia because of the spy or are there others here you don’t trust?”