"I'm not taking you back." My reassurance sounds more like a threat, given the hundred pounds of wild animal bucking atop my chest.
"Sure, buddy." She stops fighting for a split second before sinking her teeth into my forearm.
"The hell!" I press harder into the bite, shoving my arm into her mouth to break the force of her assault. "Just fuckin' listen for a second, would you?"
"Ligh-en?" She protests against my arm, tongue lashing my wounded skin in the process. “Ah oo er reel?”
"We're not from the same club as the one who probably brought you here, okay?" I rearrange my hold on her and push up so that we sit tight against one another, her nestled sideways between my legs. "We're here to get you home."
She falls silent while hollers and squeals echo from the distant house.
"I don't have a home to go back to." Her whispered confession cleaves my heart more than anything else that might have happened in that cellar.
"What?"
"Neither do most of those girls." She nods toward the house. "That's why we're here. Because we had no other option."
"To sell yourself into slavery?" I swallow hard. Bite back the torrent of reprimand begging to be let free.
"Fucks sake. We're not that stupid." Her head lolls backward as she sighs. "They told us we'd have work in a bar. Waitressing. Or, if we wanted the big bucks, stripping."
I let loose a sigh and lighten my grip on her. "When did you realize?"
"That this was something else?" She chuckles. "When they stripped us naked and took photos of our bodies."
"Either way, you're not staying here." I move my grip to one of her arms and get to my feet.
Damn woman slips my grip and scrambles to make a run for it.
A swift boot beneath her feet sends her crashing to the ground again. "Quit it."
"You quit it." She tries to run again.
I pin her to the ground with my boot between her shoulders. "You want to go back in that cellar?"
"I already said I don't."
"Then why are you makin' this so damn difficult?"
"You try having your independence taken away by a man and then see how receptiveyouare to taking instruction from one."
I heave another deep breath. "At least go calm the others down." I frown at the distant outline of Darko wrestling a kicking and screaming woman toward the bikes.
The girl on the ground begins to speak, yet falls silent as yellowed light sweeps across the field.Shit.The headlights turn toward the house, approaching from the opposite direction we did.
"You've got two seconds to decide," I growl. "Run for the bikes or take your fucking chances in that cellar again."
Her wild gaze meets mine, hands pressed against the dirt. An understanding passes between us as I lift my foot off her back.
The woman matches me stride for stride as we bolt toward our escape, hair flowing behind her as she pushes herself to the limit. I boost her over the fence, hollering as I vault it myself, "Far right!"
She sprints toward my bike as Darko settles his wildcat in front of him, Chaos and Hammer each with a wide-eyed woman on the back of their rides. My chest tightens when I spot Fang, helping what has to be a fucking child onto the tank of his bike, a young woman already poised on the back.
"Are there any more?" I yell as I pass him.
"Not alive." He starts his bike, barely a second passing before he twists the throttle and follows the others in a spray of dirt and stones.
"You're gonna need to hold on tight."
