Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
It’s torture sitting here while she’s prancing around the club doing her damn job and acting like nothing’s wrong, when everything’s fucking wrong.
As she tries to get away, I stand up and stalk to her elbow. She’s startled when I grab her arm and stare down into her eyes, and I’m vaguely aware of the other girls watching—Juniper, Kia, and Ginnie—but fuck them and fuck Gracie too.
“What are you doing?” she asks, looking up at me like I’m about to break open my jaw and swallow her whole.
“We need to talk.” I pull her along behind me as I stalk to the back.
“I have tables. There are customers— wait, hold on Calvino, you can’t just—”
“We need to talk,” I growl again at her through gritted teeth and all but throw her into private room three. I’m breathing hard as I slam the door shut and lock it tight with a solid clunk.
Grace looks afraid. I can’t tell if I like the fear or if it only makes me even more pissed off as she takes several steps backwards toward the pole, trying to put distance between us. She bumps up against it and drops the empty tray onto the floor with a soft thunk on the thick carpeted floor.
“What’s going on?” she asks and I watch her breasts rise and fall in rapid succession—she’s fucking terrified right now. She thinks I’m going to hurt her, but oh, my little thief. She has no clue what I want to do to her, and it’s so much worse than simple pain.
Pain is fleeting. Pain comes and it goes, flitting in and out like the beat of a drum. Pain can be good and it can be horrible, it can intensify pleasure and it can dig down deep into bones and drive a person absolutely mad—but pain doesn’t last beyond the borders of its sensation.
What I want to do will seep into her like a poison.
“You lied to me.” I spit the words out like they’re rotten meat. “I don’t want to hear an excuse. I want you to admit it.”
She watches me carefully, lips parted, her little tongue pressed against her top teeth, and I feel a jolt of want ripple through me at the sight of her pink skin, at her big eyes, at her curly auburn hair, at the long lines of her legs and her hips and, fuck, this girl drives me to insanity. Anyone else and they’d be out of my life already, but she gets a second chance because of this intense unwanted need that courses through my veins.
“I lied to you.” She says it quietly while looking at the floor. She’s submissive, meek, so unlike her normally fiery self like I’ve bent her over my knee, spanked her raw and red, and broken her to pieces. I take a step closer. “I made you think Riley was missing instead of dead. I don’t know why I did it, but once it was done I was too afraid to fix things so I just didn’t say a word. I lied to you and I shouldn’t have.” I take another step closer. Fuck, she’s so sexy when she’s acting all contrite. Her chin raises up and her eyes meet mine and there’s a sharpness to her gaze that suggests she isn’t only afraid—there’s a wave of rage buoying her right now and raising her up.
Like she knows damn well what she does to me.
She continues: “But that doesn’t change anything. It was stupid of me not to clarify right away, but our arrangement doesn’t have to change. I can help you, Calvino, and you can help me.”
I advance until I’m within arm’s reach of her and stop. She’s so small and soft and beautiful, like a moonlight-dappled rose, and I could so easily pluck her from the earth and break her if I wanted.
It should be simple to toss her aside and find some other way to get the information I need, especially now that my trust has been damaged. It should be so easy forget her and move on. I don’t need her, not really, not in a big, cosmic sense—there are a million girls like Gracie I could use to get what I want.
But none of them would be Gracie.
It’s her keeping me restrained. Whatever magnetic pull she has over me makes it impossible to get away, and now that I’m standing inches from her while she’s wearing that outfit and breathing hard and looking at me like she’s either going to cry or fuck me or stab me or maybe all three at once, I know I need to make this right, even if it fucking hurts to swallow my pride.
“You will never lie to me again.” I speak quietly, intensely. I need her to understand this is the most important thing in the world right now. “You will never mislead me. You will never withhold information. You will be completely honest, Grace.”