Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109286 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109286 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Shit. I close my eyes and swallow. No decent man would be standing here thinking about those legs wrapped around his waist. But then again, I’m not decent. I’m no longer army sniper, Special Forces Daniel Hays who may have once been lauded as a hero for killing insurgents in Afghanistan. Now I’m Daniel Hays, mercenary who kills people for money and spends all his spare time in brothels and flesh dens like this one. Decency is a word I don’t even know the meaning of anymore.
It’s been too long since I’ve had a woman. That’s my only excuse. That and I’m becoming the monster that I’m hunting. I focus on the bruises on her knees that are scraped red and raw from time on the floor and the manacle around her ankle. Any feelings of arousal are jettisoned by the obvious signs of abuse.
Glancing sharply at Gomes, I wonder how he’s come to possess a beauty like Regan Porter. Gomes is a small-time flesh peddler, stuck up here in the slums, with a house full of females—half of which are missing their teeth or are too old or too broken.
He usually gets what the market calls secondhand goods, the girls that no other house wants. But Regan Porter is gorgeous, and while she looks a little run-down, she’s still model beautiful with big pink lips and wide green eyes.
“Nice tits.” I smirk for Gomes’s sake, and her shudder of disgust only feeds into my growing belief that I’m as dirty as the flesh trader beside me. The dark edges of the world that I now inhabit are seeping into my skin like an oil slick covering an ocean. I shouldn’t want to touch her. And if I have to fuck her in front of Gomes to get her out of here—I don’t even let myself finish that thought.
There’s still life in her eyes. If she’s biting and spitting out acerbic insults, there’s spirit left in her, and I don’t want to be the one to snuff out that last flame. Her eyes convey her hate, and if she had a knife, I’d be sliced from my throat to my belly. I stare back, not because she’s fucking beautiful, but because she’s still standing. I’m not sure I would’ve been as strong. I don’t know if she sees my admiration or whether she can only interpret varying degrees of lust and degradation, but she sees something. An invisible string spools out between us, and her eyes widen when it hits her like an electrical shock.
For months I’ve swum in a pool of blood and death and ugly deeds, and to hold on to my sanity and maybe my soul, I’ve told myself that saving these doves balances the scale. For every life I take, if I save one then it’s all a wash in the end. Don’t think it’s tallied that way at St. Peter’s gate, but that’s the lie I tell myself so I can sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror the next day. Regan Porter will either be part of my attempt at salvation or the bloody stone that etches out the words He Failed on my headstone.
“She looks like a live one,” I say to Gomes, playing up my role as the asshole merc who’s just been paid for some godforsaken deed and needs to plow his victory lap into some unwilling broad.
He squints at Regan, tallying up her worth. She’s valuable now because I’m willing to pay so much for her, and Gomes doesn’t really understand why. “Twenty-five thousand could buy you a harem. Her pussy isn’t lined with gold. Let me hook you up with someone different,” Gomes whines.
Don’t know why he wants to hold on to her so bad, but I can see that he’s torn between wanting my money and wanting to keep Regan in the whorehouse.
“I prefer to eat domestic,” I say. Gomes doesn’t really expect a response, or at least he shouldn’t. Buying and selling human flesh requires some discretion, even here in Brazil, where prostitution is legal but houses like these aren’t. Gomes and I stare at each other while the bangles on the dirty American flag bikini tinkle in the background. Don’t draw attention to yourself, I silently command the girl.
The urge to beat Gomes until his own mama won’t recognize him washes over me in a red, violent haze. My fist in his mouth, the heel of my boot crushing his dick, would be phenomenal. I’ve been in and out of these houses of horror for the last eighteen months looking for my sister. She went on her first and only spring break trip and never came back. I was in Delta Force, playing sniper, when I got the news. I arrived home to find my mother distraught and my dad . . . fuck, I’ll never forget the look on his face. Dad was a hardened rancher who’d held on to his family legacy by the repeated sacrifice of his blood to the land. He’d seen shit and done shit, but the loss of his baby girl had hollowed him out. His eyes looked empty as if the news had sucked his insides dry.