Page 149 of Pink

It was love, she knew.

Jensen could do many things to Gigi while she was his captive, but he couldn’t take that away. He could make the world hate her; make the industry turn their back on a model they saw as a problem. He could even ruin her reputation, break her body, and then discard her to a grave when he was finished.

But he couldn’t take away what she found before he brought her here. After all, she spent years pretending to be the embodiment of happiness and love for the world … finally gaining those things without false pretenses was something she would have in her heart forever.

“Perhaps next time, you can eat alone if all you’re going to do is sit there and stare at nothing,” Jensen muttered at her side.

Annoyed that she couldn’t even be quiet and do it right, Gigi opened her mouth to snap back a reply that would undoubtedly earn her a punishment. Not that her body could really afford to take another one.

Before she could, though, a ringing phone inside the office sent Jensen up out of his chair and heading beyond the flapping curtains of the veranda doorway. He didn’t immediately come back with the phone in hand, his voice slightly muffled as he picked up the call with a sharp greeting past her view.

“What do you mean?” he demanded suddenly.

Gigi might have been interested in whatever conversation—or problem—had come up, but something else caught her attention instead. The choppy woosh-woosh-woosh of something approaching overhead. Though she couldn’t see beyond the roof of the veranda, she did recognize that sound and how fast it came in.

It was a helicopter.

“And you only saw it now?” Jensen roared in the office.

Gigi didn’t know what propelled her to her feet, but it was something … and she didn’t question it. The piercing screech of a wailing siren cut through the air, overtaking even the sound of the chopper as it came closer.

“Every fucking man on the grounds, right now,” Jensen barked, his voice coming closer to the veranda again.

Was it someone coming for her?

Gigi raced for the stone railing of the veranda, her hair blowing wildly around her shoulders as she leaned out over the side to see what waited below.

Rushing water.

Too deep.

Probably too cold.

Not at all safe.

Overhead, a black chopper came into view before cutting fast to the side and out of her sight. Not before she caught what looked to be someone with a gun at the wide-open door, though.

Could it possibly be—

“Where do you think you’re going, you fucking little bitch?”

Gigi glanced over her shoulder, the sight of Jensen coming back through the veranda doorway with a gun in his one hand and the phone in his other sent her heart leaping into her chest. She had no way out and nowhere to run here. That much was clear.

But he wouldn’t touch her again.

She didn’t care what she had to do to make sure of it. He wouldn’t lay another finger on her; he wouldn’t stick his cock into one of her holes while she cried and bled.

She wouldn’t let him.

And if the distraction overhead was her one chance to keep that from happening again, then she was going to take it. Even if it meant jumping.

But jumping to what?

Freedom?

Death?

What if they were one and the same?

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Jensen snarled.

She didn’t look back as she drained every ounce of strength she had to climb up onto the railing, the sheer robe whipping around her naked figure from the wind. She hadn’t even noticed the black boat that cut through the water from the mouth of the bay, coming straight for her, before she jumped.

The water greeted her body cruelly.

And yet, still kindly.