Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Her fingers touched his navel, sending a quiver through him. She traced the dusky trail to his groin and coiled a finger tightly through the thatch of hair. “Spankings aren’t effective. You’re a pain slut.” She tugged, sparking a twinge of discomfort over the sensitive skin there.
A half-laugh, half-groan escaped with his exhale. “I am not a pain slut, whatever that is.”
“Oh please. Five welts and you fall into a hypnotic trance.”
Okay, maybe he felt some out-of-body weirdness. Wasn’t that normal in adrenaline-charged situations?
She glanced at her phone, and a sharp line rutted between her eyebrows. Her anxiousness was bleeding onto him.
“What is it?”
She angled the phone long enough for him to glimpse the text.
Unknown number: Open the door.
An unnerving metamorphosis washed over her, stripping the emotion from her eyes, smoothing out her breathing, and hardening her body into an armored shell. “You want to be on the same team?” Her voice was cold and terse. “You want to save me?”
He nodded, hoping it wasn’t a trick. Her sudden change in demeanor tightened the muscles in his jaw.
She dropped a hand to her side, snapped her fingers, and pointed at the floor beside her feet, an unmistakable order to kneel. “Then don’t fuck this up.”
Whatever was about to happen, it was evident that her bearing, as well as his, needed to broadcast that she had the upper hand. He knelt at her side, holding her gaze as he lowered. Sure, she appeared dispassionate at a glance, but the hand at her side trembled.
As she entered the code in the keypad—too quickly for him to catch the pattern—he gripped the fingers digging into her thigh. The door clicked open, and she pulled her hand away but not before giving him a tentative squeeze in return.
He kept his eyes on the floor, taking in the scuffed black boots that entered first, followed by Van’s sneakers. The door shut, imprisoning the room with silence.
He’d expected trousers, paired with an expensive suit, a wardrobe that signified wealth and power. Instead, black cotton work pants gathered over the dusty boots. The mystery surrounding Mr. E compounded, surging dread through his veins.
“Raise your head, boy.” Her voice was so detached, even its iciness was absent.
His breath caught as he lifted his eyes and met the drab material of a cotton jumpsuit. The kind one would zip over regular clothes to change a tire or carry out an activity that might be messy. He stopped breathing altogether when his gaze reached the man’s head.
It was wrapped in a potato sack hood, cinched at the neck, with two crudely cut eyeholes and vertical stitching where the mouth should be. Rough-hewed seams rounded the skull, pulling the material taut to maintain the curvature. Then it spoke.
“Stand, slave.” The mouth, stitched as it was, didn’t move. The voice was soft and masculine and cruelly calm.
Van leaned against the door in a display of arrogant composure. Liv stared at her feet, frozen and pale, as if the masked man had chased her into some unseen recess of her mind.
Don’t fuck this up.
Josh climbed to his feet and let his bound wrists loll over his groin. At his full height, he stood four or more inches taller than Mr. E.
“You’ll address me as Sir.” Mr. E glanced at Liv and back to Josh. “Did you give her the black eye?”
His shoulders tensed. “No—”
“That was me, sir.” Van’s smirk oiled the tension in the air.
“Ah.” A chuckle rustled through the canvas mask. Mr. E reached a gloved hand to Van’s jaw and patted it. “I suppose you can’t fuck up her face worse than it already is.”
“Nope.” Van popped the P with a smarmy exhale and slid a toothpick between his curved lips.
A storm of rage boiled Josh’s blood, twisting and shaking his insides. She should’ve been defending herself. And what compelled Van to be at such ease with a man who hid behind a potato sack? The man who, Josh suspected, had given them their matching scars.
The whites of Mr. E’s eyes shifted inside the depths of the eyeholes and settled on Liv. Under the decomposing scrutiny, her shoulders curled forward, her gaze fixed downward.
It was in that moment that his assumptions about her place in the hierarchy were confirmed. Just because she wasn’t a slave didn’t mean she wasn’t viewed as property and used as such. They seemed to think of her as scarred and ruined, and she certainly wasn’t sexually innocent. Her usefulness to them was limited to her proficiency in training slaves. A replaceable skill. Was Van’s apparent ownership of her the only thing that held her there?
There was so much obscurity surrounding the operation, and seeing her like this shook the hell out of Josh’s hope. He bit down on his cheek, checking the turbulence of his emotions, and put on his own phlegmatic expression.