I had to get out of here. I started struggling again, aiming a kick at my captor. It bounced off. He didn’t evenflinch. Instead, a low growl rumbled in his chest.
“Stop.” It wasn’t loud, but the power of an alpha bark behind the single word was unmistakable.
I subsided with a frightened whimper, going still except for the tremor in my arms and legs.
“You’re scaring her, Heath.” The other alpha sounded out of breath. Had my captor called him Gage earlier?
“GoddamnrightI’m scaring her.” Red Hair—Heath—gave me a sharp shake. “Knox does notdohookups, Gage. You know that as well as I do!”
“Maybe he does hookups with our scent match!” Gage panted, pumping his hands down rhythmically on Mr. Sex Trafficker’s chest with rough, almost violent motions.
“No.” Heath grabbed my little clutch purse, not letting go of me as he dumped the contents onto the dresser. “I don’t trust her. She smells guilty.”
“Maybe she’s just scared—” Gage began.
“Yes!” I said quickly, my heart rabbiting. “I don’t even know this guy! And now you’re keeping me here against my will!”
“No phone,” Heath said in a monotone. “This ID’s fake, or I’m the fuckin’ pope. Bit of cash. And then there’sthis.”
He held up the empty syringe.
“I-it’s mine,” I managed. “I have a drug problem, okay?”
He set it down and shoved one of my long gloves back, baring my forearm. Then he repeated the action with the other, turning my arms up to inspect the unblemished skin even as I tried to twist away.
“No,” he said. “You don’t. What the hell did you inject him with, woman?”
“Nothing!” I protested.
“Tell me!” he barked in my face.
I cringed back. “Nothing,” I repeated hoarsely, because it was mostly the truth. The syringe had been empty. “We were just having a drink!”
But it was the wrong thing to say. Green eyes the color of the forest in summer scanned the room, fixating on the upended glass next to Knox’s chair. The sad remains of a couple of ice cubes sat in the last dregs of watered-down bourbon that hadn’t spilled out.
Holy shit. I hadn’t cleaned up the tumbler with the acepromazine dissolved in it.
I’d only washed and dried my own glass.
“Having a drink,” Heath echoed. He dragged me over and picked up the tumbler, careful not to spill any more of the contents. “So, if this was his glass, where’s yours?”
“I... wasn’t thirsty,” I told him, knowing how lame it sounded.
“Horse shit,” he growled. “What would the police find if they tested this?”
“Nothing!” I protested. “Bourbon, that’s all!”
He threw me down in the chair and held the glass up threateningly. “Just bourbon, eh? Fine, then—why don’t you drink what’s left here. Come on, down the hatch.”
I couldn’t help it. I shrank back, not sure how much of the powerful drug had sunk to the bottom of the tumbler.
“What the hell are you doing, Heath?” Gage puffed, not breaking rhythm as he labored over the twitching body on the bed. “Knock it off!”
“She’s guilty as sin,” Heath hissed, his forest-colored eyes boring into mine. “If Knox dies, you’re going to spend the rest of your miserable life in a prison cell, you murdering bitch.”
The panic that had been thrumming through me since the two alphas burst in tightened around my ribs like a steel band. I couldn’t go to prison... I couldn’t be trapped inside four bare walls with bodies all around me in the dark, like the inside of the semi-trailer that had almost delivered me into a life of sexual slavery.
My breathing rasped and stuttered, a sick counterpoint to the weak wheezing coming from the bed.
