Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 114936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
It was my birthday. I was officially fourteen, and Papa or his schmucks didn’t know this yet, but I was about to dance the night away and do alcohol. I wanted to drink alcohol like they did on Gossip Girl and I wanted to kiss a Chuck Bass. Maybe. In some of the videos Papa made me watch, the girls kissed multiple boys or men, but whenever I asked him if I would need to do that, he had not answered me.
“Here’s the deal,” Dove said from the driver’s seat of her car. “We will stay until three a.m., because if Dom knows I’ve let you out, I’m in trouble.”
“Dove…” I tapped her nose, but she swatted my hand away. “Nuh uh. The only reason I’m doing this is to save my ass because—” She stopped what she was about to say. “It doesn’t matter.” But it did, because she did that thing where she squeezed the steering wheel again. She clearly did matter—or it mattered to her? English was hard.
She pulled to the curb of a nightclub that she said we could party at. She said it was safe and secure and blah blah blah. I knew no one could touch me. Dominic Stranger was my papa, and anyone who was dangerous enough to hurt me knew who he was.
I shot out the door so fast Dove hadn’t even put the car in park. Sliding past the security at the front, I slipped between the black opening doors. Music played so loud I almost thought my heart beat to the same tune.
A hand slipped into mine, gesturing me toward the bar near the side. “Come on. I need to be drunk for this.”
“How old do you have to be to be in here? Everyone looks so old.” And they didn’t at all look like Chuck Bass. Was there fiction TV like there were fiction books? Was it a genre that could sprawl out across the board?
When I picked up the tiny glass filled with clear liquid, I didn’t think to express those questions to Dove because she held it to my lips and told me to drink it fast.
And I did.
I put them away faster than I did water, and even after the third one, I could feel the room slightly tilt. The bar on my side felt more like it was beneath my feet and the people dancing to the music began to warp together.
A catchy song came on and I pulled Dove with me, twisting her arm up in the air to move her through. The alcohol warmed my blood like adrenaline did riding Hermes, and before I could stop myself, I was grinning from ear-to-ear, flinging around the room until I crashed against a hard chest. As I was dancing, my hands found their way to the back of his neck and I tilted my head to get eyes on him. His face was a blur, but I could make out tattoos, maybe a jaw? Laughing, I thought of the boys I saw in Papa’s office last week. Leaning up on my tippy toes, I was meaning to whisper and ask him if it was him as a joke, when my lips crashed on his.
Oh…
That same warmth that alcohol was giving me had nothing on this. This was hot lava that exploded over a small village and turned them all to molten skin and bones.
This was the kind of kiss I wanted. Until arms came to my elbow and he shoved me away. Bringing his lips to the back of my hair while spinning me around so fast my bum hit his knees. His knees because he was so tall.
“Follow me, princess.” I allowed my feet to carry me to wherever he was going, because again, no one was going to touch me here. Not anywhere. We reached an emergency exit, and I turned to face him finally as his hand rested on the bar to open it behind me.
My eyes flew to the dance floor where I saw the back of Dove as she shoved through people to get out. Not to come and save me. To run away.
He pushed me backward just as the door flew open and someone caught me from below. Before I could say anything, everything went black.
I woke in a room. Small with bars caging me in, but with a single bed tucked in the corner and cold, but clean, floors. My head thrummed and my eyes stung like I had dropped acid right into my retinas, but I managed to roll to the side and push myself up from the carpet. It was cold. So cold my teeth were about to crack from crashing together every time the air frosted over the crux of my spine.
Sliding toward the cell door, my fingers squeezed around the poles as I forced myself up to my feet. “Hello!” My voice echoed through the empty walls. I shook the bars as if they’d pop open and let me out. “Let me out!” I screamed so long it burned the back of my throat.