His directness made me flinch, but it also made my pussy throb with desire.
His phone dinged from the pocket of his jeans and he reached for it, looked at the screen, and slipped it back in his pocket.
“I’ll send you a link to the app.” He handed me back my phone. “Do you need anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
He headed for the door. “Any food allergies? Anything you don’t like?”
“I’m allergic to peanuts actually.” I was surprised he’d asked. “I keep an EpiPen in my bag.”
I hadn’t brought it to the Hunt because I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat, but I had it now, plus an extra as backup.
He stopped moving and frowned. “Good to know. I’ll tell the guys.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll make you something to eat while you shower.”
I didn’t have time to say thank you again before he disappeared into the hall.
I shut the door behind him and turned to look at the room.
It was beautiful and well appointed, the headboard tufted in deep green velvet, the mattress covered with a lilac-colored comforter. The furniture was solid and warm without being heavy, and there was a deep window seat that would be perfect for reading.
The strangeness of it wasn’t lost on me. I was standing in a bedroom that would have fit in at an expensive and restful retreat but only because I’d been captured by three masked men known as the Hawks who’d made it clear they owned me for the next three months.
And who’d made it equally clear they planned to exercise that ownership.
I’d been relieved to step out into the sun after the Hunt, relieved that I’d made it through. Now I realized that it hadn’t been the end of the Hunt but the beginning of something else.
Something much more dangerous.
18
JAGGER
Back downstairs,I was unsettled.
I wasn’t used to being unsettled.
Moral quandaries weren’t really my thing. It was why I’d left my career in finance. I’d gotten tired of cosplaying as a good citizen, being looked at with respect just because I wore an expensive suit and drove an expensive car when everything I had was bought with money I earned betting on the rise and fall of other people’s fortunes.
That’s all the stock market was really: a casino where people like me — like the person I had been — bet on other people’s lives.
It had been easy in the beginning to ignore that part. Looking at the tickers on my phone and computers — seeing them in my fuckingsleep— I could view the symbols as the companies they represented and forget about the real people behind them. People who needed their jobs and their 401(k)s and their health insurance benefits.
Then some guy who’d lost his job because of a merger shot himself on the floor of the market on live TV and that had been the end of my blissful ignorance.
Early morning sun was streaming through the windows, Vigo rinsing his cup when I got to the kitchen. “She good?” he asked.
“I think so. I’m going to make her something to eat.”
“Shit. I should have offered her some Oreos.”
“She doesn’t need Oreos. She needs real food,” I said. “And she’s allergic to peanuts.”
I opened the fridge and looked at the stacks of prepared meals we ordered online. We could all cook the basics, but most of the time we didn’t bother, preferring to microwave one of the ready-to-eat meals that arrived packed in dry ice or order takeout.
