My cock had no place in that moment.
My hunger did.
It sat under my ribs with teeth.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“My penthouse.”
Her grip tightened around the water bottle. “So the answer is one cage to another.”
“The answer is Gennady can’t enter mine.”
“That isn’t the same as safe.”
“No,” I said. “It is only the first step toward it.”
She stared at me like she wanted to hate that I’d answered plainly.
The car turned again. Light from a pharmacy sign slid red over her cheek, over the powder someone had brushed there to make her look soft for a room full of bidders. I wanted every man who had looked at her tonight brought to his knees. I wanted names, ledgers, locks, camera feeds, the auctioneer’s hands on a table in front of me.
I had Nadia in my arms instead.
She came first.
Lev’s phone buzzed once.
He read the screen. “Two Kask cars left the venue. Neither is on us.”
“Keep one team on Gennady and one on the auctioneer,” I said.
“I already have men moving.”
“Move more.”
Nadia looked toward Lev, then back at me. “Auctioneer?”
I had not wanted this in a car. Not with her half-fainting under my coat and the city jerking past the windows. She deserved a chair, heat, water, and the truth given to her without engine noise under it.
But she’d heard the word.
“Yes,” I said. “The auctioneer.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him.”
“You were there to buy someone.”
“I was there for you.”
Her breath caught. Her eyes moved over my face, trying to place pieces she hadn’t been given. The lounge. Petya. The auction room. My coat. My hands carrying her out while Gennady shouted behind us.
“You don’t know me,” she said.
“I know enough to begin.”
“That sounds like something a man says right before he does whatever he wants.”
