“You’re tougher than you look, Daisy Burdan.”
But his admiration quickly faded as she followed Peter onto the bed of the cabana. Jack changed camera feeds. His hand tightened on the phone as Pangbourne climbed over her, pushing up her mask.
“What changed?”
There were nuances to intimacy that Jack would never understand. In his mind, it all came down to control and who craved it more—how it played out in action. Years of watching others had taught him that every power dynamic was different, each player a unique collection of proclivities.
And then there was him. Empty.
Daisy lifted her hands over her head in what looked like surrender. His molars locked as they kissed—actually kissed, not a one-sided exchange with a reluctant captive, but a shared moment of passion. Her body arched in response to his touch.
She was…enjoying it.
Jack swiped his thumb, and his phone went dark.
He glared into the dark silence of his suite, the distant chaos of the hunt filtering through the windows with the music for the party below. Another bell tolled. Another conquest. Another scream. More masculine cheers.
Inside, fury raged for reasons he didn’t understand. He twirled his ring.
“Enough.” He had hunters to hunt.
Shame on him for letting a tribute distract him.
Chapter Eighteen
Seek
The bells continually tolled, like periods at the end of sentences in an epic tale, each one marking the conclusion to a sequence that would inevitably repeat again and again and again. On and on, tributes were being consumed, one by one, the way a snake swallows mice. Whole. Inescapably. Persistently.
Daisy was deep in the gardens, far from any path she recognized. The manicured hedges had given way to wilderness and untamed growth. Topiaries transformed into shapes and animals that looked more like monsters under the darkness of night. A swan with a neck ten feet long. A lion whose mane had become a bristling mass of unchecked growth. An elephant whose trunk had split into three reaching branches, each one tipped with tiny white flowers that glowed in the darkness like eyes.
There were fewer torches in this area, but she didn’t mind. Fewer torches meant less company.
It was as if she’d wandered into a forgotten acre on the property, but there was deliberate intention about the neglect, as if it were purposely left to create a false sense of safety.
A swing draped in vines, suspended from an ancient oak, swung in the steady breeze. It was getting colder, and her throat burned as if she were breathing in tiny shards of glass with every gasp. Her legs trembled with each stride, the muscles threatening mutiny. She hadn’t eaten since that morning, hadn’t been sleeping properly for weeks, and her body was beginning to present its bill.
Daisy reached up to push hair from her eyes. Her elaborate updo had devolved into a sweaty tangle of pins and frizz, listing to one side like a sinking ship. Her locket had returned to her neck, safe and sound, after her run-in with?—
A pulsing thunder tore through the air, and Daisy froze. The buzzing, repetitive whir came fast, moving closer, loud enough to overshadow the music, and out of place in this Gothic wonderland.
Lights flashed, defining black clouds above as a helicopter appeared, lowering as if set to land. Bare feet rooted in moss, Daisy shaded her face and stared as the chopping wind from the propellors moved the tree line as it started to descend.
Daisy rushed for cover beneath a crumbling folly sculpted of four stone columns that held up half a roof. The shh-shh-shh-shh of the helicopter blades swished like swords through the air, louder, closer, pushing her hair back from her face as the wind whipped, snapping leaves from branches that twirled in little tornadoes across the ground.
Its belly lights blazed like eyes that never blinked, blinding her as she tried to look up. The fabric of her beaded dress plastered against her ribs as the scent of fuel overpowered the salt air.
Her lungs locked. What was happening? Had someone been hurt? Was there an emergency?
Lights threw the grounds into stark relief, illuminating the hedges and giant shrubs so their manicured faces glared at her with gaping mouths and frozen green expressions.
Shielding her eyes, Daisy clung to the stone pillar claimed by ivy and time, and watched in curious dismay as the helicopter landed in the not-so-far distance.
Things were getting curiouser and curiouser around here.
Her heart beat wildly against her ribs. Whatever was happening, it didn’t feel planned. It felt—”Mmph!”
A hand clamped over her mouth from behind.
