Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
He had me plastered to him on our knees but he hauled off and slapped my ass really hard. I jolted. He slapped it again and then let me go and aggressively pointed at the sand.
He laid down and pointed at his stomach.
“Lay on my belly so we can talk,” he demanded.
I did.
“I’m turned on,” I whispered into his stomach, kissing it.
“That’s good,” he said, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood for beach sex. “I fucked up, baby. I tried to give you what I thought I’d want. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Shh.” I shook my head and gestured toward the spot between my boobs. I was wired. “We’ll talk about that later. I have to get to the slave garden. Can I go see Truly for a few minutes alone?”
“What?”
“There’s a Zen garden, a courtyard at the slave quarters and Truly ran into me in the hall and says she has to warn me about something. Says there’s a private spot in the garden.”
“Truly?”
“One of the girls. Redhead from the Townsend room the other night.”
“What could it be?”
“No idea.”
“You trust her?’
“I… I don’t know. She and I were never close. She’s close with a few girls, I heard she was really tight with Lisa back in the day, but Cleo didn’t let anyone be my friend. You know…”
“I get it. But you gonna be okay?”
I nodded. “I don’t think I have anything to worry about with her. Unless she’s overheard somehow.”
“I just had a meeting with some partners. We’ve got the cocktail party in a half an hour where I’ll meet some others. Am I gonna have you with me? They didn’t say.”
“It’s up to you.”
“I’ll go alone. You go there then and see what she says.”
“Okay.”
“You really okay?”
“No,” I told him, “But some time alone and this beach helped. Truly got me thinking, too. And what we, you and me are here doing? If that works out, that’ll help, too. A lot.”
He sat up and pulled me to straddle him. We made out for a little while.
I wasn’t over what’d happened in that punishment room, a room where I’d been punished in my first few months here. But I had to count my blessings. I had Dare. This place wasn’t my home. I had a home, friends, family, and hopefully once this was over, we’d have helped that task force in their efforts to take Kruna down.
Back in our room, Dare texted Lisa.
Can Angel trust Truly?
Lisa had replied instantly.
Absolutely. Yes. 200%
The slave quarters were just the same, a connected maze of several dorm rooms that housed two hundred slaves, twenty per room. It was weird. I’d only been gone a couple months so of course nothing was really different. I was the one who was different.
There was a girl sitting on the mat that used to be mine and I was right. She was Mr. Delgado’s slave the night before and so she’d obviously replaced me.
My eyes landed on her and the way she looked at me? She knew. She knew who I was and she knew she was on what used to be my bed. She seemed like she thought of me as a quasi-celebrity, the way I’d thought of Monalisa.
This dorm room had thin mats with thin blankets and a tiny pillow. These mats were placed around the perimeter of the room. Truly didn’t sleep here. If I recalled correctly, she was one room over, which would be closer to the garden. I walked past her bed, which she was sitting on while reading a book.
I went to the garden door, ignoring the others, some of whom had eyes on me or who were whispering.
I heard someone clapping low. I glanced behind me. Eyes were on me, but the clapping stopped. I saw teeth. Smiles?
I walked out, hearing a few more claps. It wasn’t enough to draw attention, hopefully, but I was getting a little bit of a round of applause. Word traveled fast around here and people were happy to hear about what I’d done to Cleo. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
If I put myself in their shoes and found out that a former Kruna asset, now married, came back and whipped and broke Cleo for being so awful to her? Yeah, I guess I’d want to clap in applause, too.
It wasn’t easy to be in my skin at that moment or feeling the guilt, like I was as bad as Cleo, after the fact. But this? This little bit of validation was kind of helpful. I straightened my back and went outside.
Truly strolled past me quickly and sat at the corner of a koi fountain by the wall. I sat down beside her, but not too close. I looked into the water.
“This corner, the water, the camera angles? This is one of the few places safe to talk. But not for too long.”