The ghost of Bodhi’s touch lingers, the tingles from the slow, deliberate stroke of his thumb along the inside of my leg as he removed my shoe.
Blinking hard, I turn over in my makeshift bed and grip the blanket tighter, trying to push him out of my mind, but it’s no good. The second I close my eyes, Bodhi’s back, apparently all my tired brain wants to think about. Every time I start to drift off, another memory surfaces to torment me.
His huge body looming over me. The hard press of him against my stomach. That groan when I bit him, and the dark rasp of his voice.
I might just bite you back.
I squeeze my thighs together harder, trying to relieve the ache, but it only makes things worse. When I slide my handdown my stomach, dipping it between my thighs, I find myself wet. Wet and aroused by a man who helped kidnap me.
Any normal person would be terrified of him, not imagining him inside me, stretching me in ways I’ve never experienced.
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it.
Maybe I’m losing my mind. Maybe the stress of the past few days has finally broken something in my brain, rewiring my survival instincts until I can’t tell the difference between fear and attraction anymore.
Cursing, I remove my fingers from my soaked underwear and take slow, deep breaths, trying to calm my racing pulse and ignore the tension building low in my belly. I need to think. I need to focus on survival.
Saturday.Only four days now until the auction, until I’m no longer off-limits, and my life is in the hands of some faceless buyer.
A thought crystallizes slowly.
I can’t escape, and I can’t fight. But if I want to get my revenge, if I want to sabotage their disgusting plans, Icanmake myself less valuable.
Kozlov wants me because I’m a virgin. That’s my worth to him.
So… what if I took that away?
The idea is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. If I’m not a virgin anymore, maybe I won’t be worth selling at the auction. Maybe they’ll just send me to the brothel, where I have some hope of escape. Or maybe they’ll kill me, but I’m dead anyway. This way, I choose to fight back with the only weapon I have at my disposal. I refuse to go quietly.
At the very least, it’ll ruin his day.
A devious grin forms on my lips as I consider whether I’m seriously thinking of doing this, planning to lose my virginity asan act of rebellion. If anyone had told me a week ago that this is where I’d end up, I would have laughed in their face.
But now that the idea has taken root, I can’t let it go.
The question is with who.
The driver with the scarred face and flat eyes? Absolutely not. He’s too strait-laced. He’d report me to Kozlov the minute I tried anything.
Piotr? I shudder at the thought. If I let him touch me, I’d be trading one nightmare for another.
My eyes drift to the bottom of the door. That leaves Bodhi, the giant standing guard outside my door right now.
Despite being a dangerous criminal, he does something for me that I never knew about before tonight.
I want a woman who knows what she’s doing.
The memory of his words stings, but then I remember what came after.
His body told me enough to know I can break that stoic, professional facade and make him want me, maybe even badly enough to his baser instincts.
Fuck it. I have to dosomething.
So, it’s decided. I’m not going to that auction as a virgin.
A strange calm settles over me now that I have a plan. A crazy, reckless,probably-going-to-backfire-spectacularlyplan, but it’s all I’ve got.
I just have to be bold enough to follow through.
