Luke’s smile never slips, but his voice turns sharp. “Stop.”
Men start calling bids like they’re ordering drinks.
My breath comes in broken pieces.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t do this.
I twist again, trying to tear free, but Luke drags me closer, fingers biting into my waist hard enough to bruise.
“Be good,” he hisses. “Don’t embarrass me.”
Embarrass him.
Like I’m the problem.
A sob claws up my throat.
I look around the room, desperate, hunting for anything. A crack in the walls. A face that looks human. A way out.
That’s when I see him.
Halfway back, shadowed in a private booth, like the dark made space for him on purpose.
Big. Broad. Still.
Dark hair, slightly out of place. A short beard carving his jaw into something harder. Tattoos winding up one forearm, ink over muscle, the kind of art a man like that earns. His shirt sits open at the collar, just enough to show the pale slash of a scar near his shoulder.
He doesn’t lean forward with the others.
He doesn’t laugh.
He sits there like violence on a leash.
Then his eyes lift.
And find me.
Deep brown. Heavy. Steady.
The room narrows to the space between us. The lights, the voices, Luke’s hand on my waist, all of it blurring at the edges.
Because those eyes feel like being seen.
Not as a body.
Asme.
My pulse stutters so hard it hurts.
For one stupid, desperate heartbeat, my mind reaches for the stories I sell every day. The ones where the heroine is trapped and the man who finds her is all danger and promise.
He looks like that man.
Like the kind of hero who would step out of the pages and tear this nightmare apart with his bare hands.
Then the bidding climbs.
