Nadia made a dismissive sound. "Who cares about that? How tall is he? How broad are his shoulders? How defined are his muscles?"
Mattie laughed. "He's a scientist, not a bodybuilder. If I were interested in that kind, I could have picked any of the immortals leering at me."
That wasn't true because they would have recoiled from her disfigured physique, but it sounded good in theory.
"Not them." Yana shivered. "They bite, which is incredible but also creepy as fuck."
Mattie had heard about that part of the immortals' anatomy and the tales about the wonders of the venom bite. Yana had said that her getting addicted to that was worse than the addiction to the illicit drugs because the effects were so much better.
Mattie was curious, but not enough to try it. Those males were scary on a level that made all the human thugs she'd ever encountered in real life or on the screen seem like toy bad boys.
"Dimitri watched me work," Mattie said. "But not in a creepy way. More like...I don't know. Like he was trying to figure me out. Like I was a puzzle he was eager to put together."
"Trying to figure out how to get you into his bed as quickly as possible," Yana said bluntly.
"Possibly." Mattie would have felt offended if the thought hadn't crossed his mind. "But then aren't all men like that?"
There was a chorus of agreement from her roommates.
"Men are dogs," Alina said.
"Not all men." Mattie turned on her back. "It's nature's way for healthy young men to crave sex, but some crave more than that. Some are just as hungry as we are for companionship, for real emotion, for connection, and I think Dimitri is one of those men."
She remembered Dimitri's eyes and the genuine concern she'd seen in them when he'd apologized for asking about how she ended up here. The way his expression had darkened when she'd flinched at the mention of the brothel.
"He might be a good actor," Nadia said.
"He was in prison." Mattie turned back on her side and propped herself on her forearm. "In Siberia. He told me that much. They let him out because his boss needed him for classified research and pulled some strings. Dimitri chose the island over prison, but that's not the same as choosing to be here. He's a captive as much as we are. There is no way the immortals are letting anyone who was exposed to them off this rock. They want to keep their existence a secret."
"They have ways of erasing our memories," Yana said quietly. "And they have a way to force us to stay quiet about them. Every girl in the brothel knows about the immortals and their fangs and venom, but none of us told any of the guests, and not just because we were afraid to talk. We couldn't."
Mattie hadn't known that. "So why keep us here forever?" she asked. "Can't they let us go when we are of no further use to them?"
She hadn't seen any really old people on the island, and she had a feeling that they were being killed off when they were deemed obsolete, discarded like trash.
"They don't want to take any chances," Nadia said. "So, are you going to see your scientist again?"
That was another intentional pivot away from the depressing subject of their captivity.
"I'll see him if he comes to the bar again."
She hoped he would so she could find out if he knew anything helpful for her escape plans, or at least that was what she told herself. The truth was that she just wanted to see him because he made her feel good, and she hadn't felt anything resembling that since waking up in this nightmare.
"If you talk to him again, ask him if he knows what's happening with Lord Navuh," Nadia whispered. "Have any of you noticed that he hasn't been seen in weeks?"
It was impossible not to notice that something so fundamental had changed and that a void existed where there had been none before.
If Navuh was gone, if the power structure on the island had shifted, did that create new opportunities for escape? Weaknesses? Cracks in the armor that might be exploited?
Or did it just mean that a different tyrant had taken his place?
"I heard he's in his harem," Alina said. "Spending time with his concubines and working from there."
"That's the official story." Yana pushed up on her pillows. "But I don't buy it. Men like Navuh don't take breaks, and they don't delegate. They micromanage every detail because they trust no one."
"So where is he?" Nadia asked.
"I don't know," Yana said. "Maybe he suffered a mental breakdown. I heard that his anger tantrums are legendary. Maybe he's been overthrown. Something must have happened, and they're covering it up."
