This man isn’t human.He can’t be.
When his eyes run up and down my body and his face turns thoughtful, I want to be sick.
“Where are you taking our girl, princess?”he asks.
His voice is gravelly and thick, and I want to smash his face in for the way he’s looking at us.I fight to keep my voice level, though, and say, “She’s not feeling well.I’m taking her out for some fresh air.”
He chuckles, and it’s the epitome of evil, and my fingers twitch for my knife.
“She doesn’t get to go outside.Unless you want to take her place.”His eyes rove up and down my body again, and I feel them like a physical touch.
When I don’t answer, he just smirks and takes the girl from me.“I didn’t think so.”
He jerks her toward him and tucks her into his body, and when I glance at her face I can see a look of pure terror...and then the blank mask again.Her eyes stop glittering, her mouth goes slack.
Just like the girls in the hallway when I was a child.
I watch the man walk away with her, glaring at his back, and promising myself that at some point, I will save her.And then I’ll slit his throat and watch him bleed out at my feet.
When I turn away, unable to watch the scene anymore, I find Lucien at the top of the stairs into the room, watching me.He catches my eye, takes in my face, and starts walking toward me.
Lucien
We stare at each other for a full five seconds, my foot poised above the first step to get to her, before she blinks and loses the horrified, scared look she was wearing.She puts her mask back up to her face, straightens her shoulders, and shakes her head at me.
It takes me several more seconds to understand what the fuck she’s doing.
Then she turns from me and walks toward some guy holding drinks, acting like she didn’t just have her arm around a trafficking victim who was then taken back to the man keeping her.
I watch her leave, letting my gaze move down her body and back up in appreciation.She’s wearing deep green silk, in a design that walks a very fine line between elegant and showing too much skin.The dress clings to her in all the right places, accentuating her long legs and narrow hips.The sharp tuck of her waist.The bulge of her chest.The dress has no back, though, and I let my eyes slide up her bare skin, from the crack of her ass to the spot in the middle of her spine where a tattoo starts.It snakes its way up her back to twine around the base of her skull, and my fingers twitch with the need to trace it.That’s new, or at least didn’t exist the last time I had my hands on her.
I want to lay her face-down on a bed and study it with my fingertips, and then my tongue.I want to know what it is and what it means and when she had it done.And then I want to spread her legs and take her while I stare at that fucking tattoo.
I snap my eyes back to her head, chastising myself for that thought, and continue my catalogue of her appearance.Her hair is up, but tendrils have fallen to curl along her neck and shoulders, and I saw enough of her face to know she did a smoky eye and bright red lipstick.
She’s beautiful without a stitch of clothing on, and adding a fancy dress and well-done makeup makes her nearly irresistible.Which makes me incredibly uncomfortable in a room that almost definitely holds men who trade in girls that look just like Brooks.
I snatch a whiskey off a passing tray and bring it to my lips, finally taking the first step and starting to follow her.I don’t know what she’s playing at or why she motioned not to get near her, but I don’t trust her.When I arrived, she had an arm around a girl and was talking to a man twice her size, and he was looking her up and down like she was nothing more than a chess piece he was considering buying.
And she was standing there letting him do it.
When he took the girl away from her, she didn’t argue–or stab him, which was what I would have done.Instead, she watched them leave with a thoughtful expression.Like she was trying to figure out how to use the man and what he’d just done.
I growl to myself.She told me she was coming in here to get inside her father’s organization, and then left without telling me what she meant by that, and now I’m going through the whole conversation again, looking for a clue.I’m worried she’s come here to do something stupid without telling me, and before I have a plan or the men to execute it.I don’t have to ask to know she’s being reckless, just like she always is, and believing she can do more than she actually can.
I quicken my steps when she turns a corner and stride after her, unwilling to let her out of my sight for more than a few seconds for fear that when I get to where she should be, she’ll be gone.
I do not look at my reasons for this, aside from the simple truth that she’s playing with fire and is going to get burned, which will no doubt cost me time and money.Because I’ll have to find her and save her instead of doing the research I want to be doing.
When I get to the corner, I find her just on the other side of it, leaning against a wall and gazing up at some man I’ve never seen before.She’s looking up at him through her lashes and flirting like her life depends on it, and I very nearly pull my knife to murder the man before her eyes flash to mine and widen in warning.
Right.
No murdering.
Though I take in his face and memorize it for later, so I can find him when we’re not in such a public place.
Brooks, meanwhile, is giggling–giggling!–like he’s just said the funniest thing in the world, and I revise my plan.I’m not just going to murder him.I’m going to cut off his dick and shove it in his mouth, then skin him alive for daring to even look at her.
