Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I looked away. Just five hours, I told myself. Get her to a phone and then we can part ways. Five hours. You can do five hours. I’d just have to harden myself and be gruff with her. Keep her at arm’s length. I could do that…, right?
I risked looking at her again. She was barefoot and that made her seem even smaller and more helpless as she looked up at me. That protective urge I was fighting came rushing back.
Dammit!
“Yeah,” I told her. “I can show you the way.”
10
Ralavich
I HURLED the decanter across the room. It shattered, glittering shards spraying across the marble floor as the rich stink of bourbon filled the air. “How could you let this happen?” I bellowed. “You let her steal a car and just drive off?!” I pointed at the three guards who’d chased Bethany down. “And then your men, they just let her waltz off with some yokel?!”
“You didn’t see this guy,” one of the guards muttered. “He was fucking huge. Knew how to handle a gun, too.”
I scoffed and, behind me, Alik gave a grunt of agreement. He’s former Spetsnaz, Russian special forces, and he didn’t think much of the mansion’s guards.
The head of the club, a bald man called Preston Cairns, was unfazed. “Mr. Ralavich. I understand your frustration. While you wait for this to be resolved, perhaps you’d like to spend some time with one of the others you purchased? I could have one of them brought to your room, along with some vodka.”
I glared at him. I’d disliked him right from the start. I knew he thought I was beneath him, that I wasn’t good enough to be in his fucking club. But he needed my money and I needed him. There were powerful Russian men who would pay dearly to fuck unwilling American women. With the supply chain Cairns had set up, I could make a fortune.
But for myself, I wanted Bethany. It wasn’t just that she had a body made to give pleasure and a perfect, sweet face. There was something about her I found fascinating. Back in St. Petersburg, I’d sat for hours, watching her in the call center. At first, it had just been about her innocence, her goodness. The way she helped her colleagues, taking the calls they didn’t want to. The way she looked truly pained, as callers called her a bitch or a whore. That was intoxicating. Few women were innocent, anymore. Defiling a woman like that would be fun.
But then I discovered something else about her. As I watched her take call after call, hours of abuse that would break any other person, I saw an inner strength in her. Deep down, she was made of rock.
Breaking a woman like that, seeing her fight and fight and finally snap and become my personal whore...that would be an experience. One I wasn’t going to miss out on. “I don’t want the others,” I snapped. “I want her.”
Cairns sighed. “We have procedures in place, Mr. Ralavich. We’ll get her back. And we’ll kill the man who’s helping her.”
11
Cal
WE WERE WALKING. I wanted to make as much progress as we could before the clouds moved in and we lost the moonlight. Bethany was keeping up a respectable pace, considering she was in bare feet and wearing a dress.
The dress. With the moonlight shining through it and the breeze shifting and flattening the thin layers, it looked ghostly and insubstantial, like those gorgeous curves were cloaked in nothing but mist. When she took a step, I could see it pull tight across her ass. When she lifted one knee to climb over a fallen tree, the dress fell away from her leg and I glimpsed her smooth, pale thigh.
I forced myself to look away.
“So you live out here?” she asked.
I went to answer but nothing came. It had been so long since I’d talked to anyone. When I’d first found her, the adrenaline had been flowing and we’d been talking about things, and that had helped. But now we were onto small talk, and the parts of my brain that were supposed to do that were jamming and snarling like rusty gears. It was all I could do to spit out a few words. “That way.” I nodded east. “‘Bout ten hours’ walk.”
She looked around her. “I can’t imagine being so far from everyone.”
She didn’t understand that being far from everyone was exactly what I needed. What I deserved. I looked down at Rufus. We had each other. That was enough, right?
Rufus looked up at me, then trotted over to Bethany and pushed up against her legs as she walked. She reached down and tousled his coat. “I can’t believe he found me, in all this.”
I grunted. If it was fate, fate had a twisted sense of humor. I shouldn’t be anyone’s white knight.