She wanted to. She thought about it every day. Every part of her burned for him whenever he got close to her. But she wasn’t going to take his virginity like this. She wasn’t going to steal that away from him.
“Bullshit!” Captain barked. “Everyone does! PJ, are you fucking yours?”
“Yeah.”
“Graham?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m fucking mine,” Captain declared, slamming his hand on the table. Sam flinched at the ensuing crash, but she did not look up. The thing about Captain was his extraordinary ordinariness. She thought him unspeakably cruel and vile, sharp elbowed and hedonistic, but he wasn’t alone. Every man in this room was born to the same privileges as him, and she saw Captain reflected in every one of their silent, unmoved faces. “If we’re all fucking ours, why wouldn’t you be wasting yourself on your mechanic?”
“I’m not attracted to him.”
Lie.Everyone knew it. Especially Captain. He’d seen them wrapped in each other’s arms. Beads of sweat rose on Sam’s exposed neck; a chill rattled her even as her temperature spiked, and her cheeks flushed. Breathing grew increasingly difficult, like she was pulling the air through hardening concrete.
“Tell me the truth.” Captain’s voice was rising now.
“Iamtelling the truth,” she snapped.
“Then why haven’t you called me back?”
Sam’s blood itched, mortification sinking into her every pore. She’d struggled to make them see her as their equal, someone who couldn’t fuck her way into this group. She’d adopted the nickname, worn nothing but underwear, and met every challenge they leveled at her so no one could mutter she didn’t deserve it. With this one outburst, Captain ruined everything. The sting of judgment weighed on her shoulders, heaped there by the men seated around her. Only one man stood between her and Captain, but even his defense was weak. Everyone bowed to Captain’s red-faced fury.
“Mate, you’re being—”
“Stop talking!” he shouted again, stammering over his Ks like a tantruming toddler. “I wanna know why.”
“There’s nothing to say.” Sam reached blindly for a decanter in front of her. “Let’s have another drink.”
Everything was too close, too hot, too mean, and too sharp. The walls closed in—on one side there was Daniel and the words she could never say to him,I love you.On the other, there was… Well, there was everything and everyone else, a pack led by the slobbering, raging drunk at the head of this table.
“I want all of these guys to know what you’re doing.”
“I haven’t beendoinganything.”
“You love him,” he accused.
Captain was a hunter, the type of bred killer who could only be trained and raised in an environment where life in any form was meaningless unless it was one’s own. He didn’t sling the charge at her thoughtlessly or because he wanted to love her or because he craved love from her. He picked this particular weapon because he’d studied her and knew it was the most effective one.
“I don’t,” she choked out.
He rose from his chair and strode around the room like some kind of hateful catwalk, a Shakespearean stage built specifically for her torment.
“You’re picking him over me. Do you know who I am?” A dark chuckle stabbed needles of ice under Samantha’s fingernails. “You American bitch, if you weren’t your father’s daughter, I’d use you and wipe the floor with what I left of you.”
PJ attempted to cut his friend off one last time. “Reginald.”
“Stop.” He knocked over a plate. “Fucking.” He stomped on the pieces. “Talking.”
It was a scream. It was a command. It was so loud and so violent it rattled a misplaced fork off of the table. But more than anything, it was the nail in the coffin of dissent. Captain was out for blood, and he would get it. His rage covered them all, extended to them all, but focused on the shaking woman who would only look at him through the reflection in a nearby mirror.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“Everything!” He picked up a vase. It soared past Sam’s head, but only barely. “I want everything!”
Crash.Sam lifted a shaking hand to her face. Her fingertips came back sticky and red. The shrapnel from Captain’s expensive projectile had cut deep into the skin.
The room clutched the tense silence of an executioner’s chamber. Sam stared at the blood on her hands, unsure if they were moving because her vision was blurred or because of their trembling.
