Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
And yet, all I feel right now is fear.
“I need to call my mother,” I say.
“No.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean, no?”
“You don’t need to.”
He steps closer to me, his movements slow and controlled. “It’s time for you to take a shower, Blair.” And once his knees bump the edge of the mattress, he reaches out to run his fingers through my hair.
My body recoils before I can stop it.
His eyes narrow slightly, but a faint smile touches his mouth.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You were worth the trouble.”
Trouble? My pulse spikes, and fear blossoms in my stomach.
“You’ll be valuable,” he adds.
Valuable? The word echoes in my head, and something cold spreads through my chest.
“Uh… I need to leave, Damien. I really need to talk to my parents. I think we should probably reschedule this trip,” I say, but his answer comes without hesitation.
“No, you don’t need to leave because you belong here. With me. We have lots of things to do together, Blair.” His smile makes my skin crawl. “And I’m sure you have lots of things to tell me, about where you’ve been and who you’ve been with the past few days.”
“I really need to go,” I say and rise to my feet. I move past him to walk toward the door, but when my fingers wrap around the handle, it doesn’t budge.
And not even a second later, he’s behind me and his hand clamps around my arm.
“Don’t.”
“Let go of me.” I twist, but he simply picks me up as if I weigh nothing, carries me back over to the bed, and drops me down unceremoniously. The shock of it all knocks the air from my lungs.
“You’re here now,” he says, adjusting his cuff like nothing just happened. “I paid good money for you.”
The words slam into me. Paid. Good. Money.
“Maybe too much,” he continues coolly. “Considering the trouble you’ve caused.”
Everything inside me starts to shake, and Kane’s voice flashes through my mind. All the things he told me. All the things he warned me about.
“I need to go home,” I say, swallowing against the ball of emotion in my throat. “I need to talk to my mom.”
He looks at me like I’m naïve. “You don’t need to do anything right now besides take a shower and wash the vile stench of him off your skin.”
Him. He means Kane. I know without a doubt.
“The bathroom is behind that door.” He points across the room. “Everything you need is in there and in the large closet near the fireplace. I’ll be back when you’ve finished, and then we can start the process of checking if you’re still intact.”
“Intact?”
“Your virginity. You smell like you’re still a virgin, but I want to be sure.”
The urge to vomit overwhelms me.
Oh my God. Oh my God. I should’ve never left the cabin. I should’ve never fucking left the cabin!
Without another word, he walks to the door, doing something briefly on his phone, before it unclicks and opens.
He steps into the hallway. The door closes behind him, and the lock clicks firmly in place.
And I sprint into the bathroom and throw up.
I fear that I might not leave this place alive.
Kane
Manhattan doesn’t sleep. The city hums—engines, voices, footsteps, a thousand overlapping intentions bleeding into the air. Greed. Impatience. Hunger. Desire.
Normally, I can ignore it.
But right now, it presses against my skull like a hammer.
Cal leans against the brick wall of the small alley we’re standing inside. His eyes are half closed, and he’s focusing hard, trying to let his ears pick up anything he can. Across the street, the fancy skyscraper rises sixty stories high. It’s the kind of place filled with residential penthouses that are built for men who believe money makes them untouchable.
And Damien Snow lives at the very top.
Cal tilts his head slightly, and I can only imagine what a fucking maze it is filtering through all this noise to identify conversations that will help us get to Blair.
“Front desk rotates every twenty minutes,” he murmurs. “Two guards in the private lobby. Keycard elevators only.”
I keep my eyes on the tower.
“Service routes?” I ask.
“There’s a loading dock on the west side,” he says. “Maintenance elevator. No cameras inside the shaft.”
I nod once.
“Damien’s penthouse has two guards outside his door,” Cal adds after another moment.
All of it’s good info to have when I’m planning on barreling through that slimefuck’s place like the Kool-Aid man, but the words barely register because something else hits me hard.
It’s fear, but it doesn’t stem from confusion or anger. It stems from clarity, and behind it sits outright terror and the desperate need to escape.
Blair.
The closer I am to her, the more I can feel her. The more I can sense her intentions and her emotions and every beat of her heart. Her pulse is racing. Her breaths are short and choppy. She’s not just scared; she’s terrified.