Her attacker grabbed her arm and slammed her into the wall next to the door. He didn’t seem disinterested now. No, with the fire in his eyes and breath hissing from his mouth, he looked downright demonic. “That was a stupid thing to do.”
She tried to knee him in the balls, but he easily turned his hips to avoid the blow. He shook her hard enough that her head smacked the wall behind her. “Fool woman.”
“We’re too open out here,” his partner said softly. “Get her back inside.”
She fought. She kicked and screamed and punched. It didn’t matter. He hauled her around like a child throwing a tantrum, dragging her through the door and back into the bar. They hauled her to a chair in the middle of the room, where they zip-tied her wrists behind her back. The chair was icy against her bare back, her dress hanging from her in shreds.
He grabbed her throat, rough fingers digging into the fragile skin there. “Be a good girl or we’ll zip-tie your ankles, too.”
It would leave her completely helpless, far more so than she was now. She nodded as much as she was able to, cursing herself for not being faster. She could have made it if she hadn’t hesitated to run.
He released her and fear gave her words flight. “I don’t have anything to steal. Take what’s in the till if you want, but it’s notmuch. Just take what you want and go.” Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this really was a mundane robbery.
Liar. This is anything but mundane.
He crouched in front of her, and he was tall enough that it brought his face almost even with hers. “We came here for you.”
The one truth she didn’t want to face.Galen was right. I should have listened. Why didn’t I listen?Her mind went fuzzy with the screams she wouldn’t allow herself to voice. Meg pressed her lips together, fighting to think. There had to be a way out of this. Therehadto be.
But the zip ties were tight enough that her fingertips tingled, a sure sign that she’d lose feeling in them before too long. The doors were locked. If she couldn’t get away from them with a head start, how was she going to do it while tied to a chair?
Don’t panic.
If only it was that easy to command her body’s response. She lifted her chin, forcing herself to look at first one of them and then the other. “What do you want?”
“You know Theodore Fitzcharles III.”
She stared. This couldn’t be happening. Oh god, this couldnotbe happening. She hadn’t taken Galen all that seriously when he said being close to them was dangerous. Of course it was dangerous—to her head and her heart and her foolhardy body. She never actually thought it would bedangerous. Even if, rationally, she understood that Theo was the former Crown Prince of Thalania, he was so… Normal wasn’t the word, but it was the only one she had. He was just a rich man who made her crazy. She’d let herself believe that is all he was, because it was all she could handle.
But if that was the truth, then she wouldn’t be tied to a chair right now.
Apparently, he didn’t need a response, because he continued. “And Galen Mikos.”
Meg tried and failed to swallow past her dry throat. “I wouldn’t say I know anything about them.”
He ignored that. “You matter to them.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know if you understand how the hookup culture works, but we just had sex. That’s it. I’m not dating either one of them. I’m never planning on seeing either one of them again.”
“If that was true, Theodore wouldn’t be paying you. We wouldn’t have been sent here in the first place.”
If I get out of this alive, I’m going to strangle you, Theo.
Movement over the shoulder of the second man caught her eye. Meg barely had a chance to register that they weren’t alone when the man hit the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head. Galen stepped out of the darkness like some kind of avenging angel. “Get away from her.”
The man shifted behind her and his hand came down to grip her bare shoulder. “Your father would like a word, Lord Mikos.”
Galen stalked closer, seeming to grow with every step, the menace radiating from him sending panicked thoughts bleating through Meg’s head. It didn’t matter that his rage was focused squarely over her head. In that moment, she had no doubt that he was capable of killing someone—that maybe he already had—and that he wouldn’t lose sleep about it afterward.
The man’s hand tightened on her shoulder and Meg couldn’t hold in a whimper of pain. Galen’s dark eyes flicked to her face and then to the source of her pain. He’d been pissed before. Now he looked downright lethal. “Get your hand off her.”
“Lord Mikos?—”
“If you don’t stop touching her right fucking now, I’ll start by taking your hand, and that won’t be where I stop.”
The man’s hand spasmed on her shoulder, but none of that emotion leaked into his voice. “Threats don’t become you.”
Galen kept coming, his measured steps telegraphing the kind of violence Meg had only ever seen from a distance. If she thought for a second he was coming at her, she might have died on the spot out of sheer terror. The man behind her stepped back, dragging her and the chair with him, but he was too slow. Galen grabbed his wrist and twisted, the sick sound of bone breaking echoing through the quiet of the room. He planted a foot on the side of the chair and sent her skidding out of the way and then he was on her attacker.
