Of course.What an idiot.
She smiled, though. Must’ve been amused by my naivete.Naivewasn’t far from the truth.
When we finished up at the booth, Liam and I found a space within the crowd. As we stood by and chatted, I kept looking at him, and he noticed and asked, “What is it?”
“Adjusting to the new look,” I said, trying to be vague in case anyone overheard us.
“You won’t need to adjust for long. Soon we’ll be home, and you’ll be able to see me in all my true beauty, and I’ll do the same with you.”
“I didn’t think we’d have time for flirting tonight.”
“There’s always time for flirting,Blake,” he said, using my alias.
I laughed. As much relief as his humor brought me, I noticed his eyes shifting slightly about. Figured he was checking our surroundings, totally aware of everything that was going on. It was like some kind of superpower, and I admired his ability to take in so much all at once. I sure as fuck couldn’t have done that. Myself, I felt like every move I made was super obvious, just screaming what a fraud I was.
I scanned the room, a particular man catching my attention—Lez Kross, the guy Mick had debriefed us on, the one I was supposed to attract.
“Don’t say anything,” Liam muttered. He must’ve already seen Lez and known where my gaze had been drawn, since the guy was behind him. “Don’t draw any attention.”
Lez was an attractive man, with a shaved head and sexy facial hair. He wore a more noticeable earpiece than ours, with a cord leading to a walkie affixed to the waistband of his pants. He scoped the place out, a few of his bodyguard buddies near him.
“Drift away from me for a bit,” Liam whispered so that I could hear him from my earpiece, but not from his mouth. “Just wander around. Don’t approach him.”
“I remember what we talked about.”
“And don’t talk back to your elders,” he teased.
“If you’re an elder, then I must be a corpse,” Kyle chimed in.
“Can we not crowd the line,” Tara said, though I could hear a playfulness in her tone that wasn’t present when she was really being serious.
Liam tapped my ass gently.
“Get out of here, kid.”
I obeyed, following the instructions we’d discussed in our initial plan of this moment.
It was…surreal.
There was something almost safe about the company around. Everyone was smiling very politely, friendly, and because of the face I knew I was wearing that was not my own, I felt confident no one knew who I was. Hell, I could have acted like a drunken idiot without fear because no one would know it was me.
I found an open spot near the cage and drank by myself.
Mick had assured me that would be the best tactic. As much as he didn’t seem to get people, he understood them in a different way, intellectually. He thought in terms of patterns of behavior and mannerisms. He didn’t think in terms of complexities of emotion, changes of heart. I found it odd that he would think he could attract someone like that, just by changing my face a little bit and asking me to exhibit certain behaviors. Surely, that wasn’t enough. But it didn’t take long for Mick’s instincts to prove correct, as I saw the guy eyeing me from catty-corner the other side of the cage. He smirked before walking away.
Dammit, I fucked it up.
I remembered what Mick said, that a guy like him wants to chase, so I stayed put.
A man opened a door on the other side of the cage and approached a bell beside the door, which he rang, catching the crowd’s attention. They went wild, these people who looked so elegant—regal, even—screaming like banshees over something that unless I was mistaken, was totally vile and disgusting. I noticed movement from a back door, where several men exited and headed through the crowd, into the cage.
Two of the men were shirtless, I figured the fighters for the night. They were both massive in stature, reminding me of Liam, like they were all part of the same lineage, this species of Titans that had somehow come to mingle with mere mortals like myself.
The man who’d rung the bell caught the attention of the attendees, announcing the event, while the men who’d been with the shirtless guys escorted them to either side of the cage.
One of the men turned and caught my gaze. He looked already defeated, not on the outside, but on the inside. It made me wonder how willing he was to be there, particularly with all that talk about human trafficking.
As the audience hollered again at the encouragement of the guy I’d concluded was the host of this production, I couldn’t help but reflect on Liam’s life. He’d surely seen similar events and so much worse. He’d lived his life seeing the worst of humanity, certainly not the best. It wasn’t much wonder, then, why he had such a hard time opening up.
