Page 4 of Escape from the Green

"What..." a deep, rough, gravelly voice said, making my gaze snap from the dresser and look around.

My eyes found the chains first, the one thick, huge chord of it that was attached to a hook bolted into the floor. It was long enough for him to step outside a few yards from where it moved up his back and crossed over his chest in a huge X, the skin beneath always raw and red and painful.

I hadn't been so close to him in longer than I could remember. And I wasn't sure if it had always been true of him and I just didn't realize it until I had the eyes of a woman, but he was almost alarmingly good-looking.

He was a huge mass of a man, both tall and wide of chest and shoulder. And because the chains needed to be on his bare skin to keep him in pain and almost powerless, there was nothing masking his work-hardened, muscular body from view. Most fae I knew were lithe, just shy of thin, even the ones who did manual work. Our diets generally kept us trim. But he was a wall of muscle, down his corded arms, firm chest, and stomach with indentations deep enough to sink a fingertip into, ending in these delicious lines that disappeared beneath the waistband of his thin hemp pants.

His face was masculine, V-shaped, wide of forehead, sharp of cheekbone, then thinning toward the chin. He had strong, almost stern-looking brows, and what I thought were brown eyes, though I had never seen him close enough in good enough light to tell.

"What are you doing here?" he tried again, his voice odd-sounding, like it was rough from lack of use. That, I realized quite sadly, was exactly what it was. No one ever spoke to him, so he never had any reason to talk.

That was even more proof that I needed to get him out as well.

"I don't have a lot of time," I said, rifling through my pocket with clumsy, glove-covered fingers.

"Honey, you have to go," he said, shocking me enough with the endearment that I jerked my hand out of my pocket, the key slipping and clattering to the ground, loud in the quiet space. "It's not safe for you here," he added, looking at me hard, brows drawing together as I just kept standing there like an idiot, mind wiped, completely blank for a long, embarrassing second.

Then it came back to me.

"I'm running away, but I am getting you free first," I declared, bending, and grabbing the key before walking toward him.

TWO

Drake

Sunflower in a tower.

That was the silly, sentimental way I had always thought of Amethyst.

The fact of the matter was, I had very little going on in my so-called life. I did work when it was forced upon me. I took my beatings. I fought the Change.

Aside from that, it was a hell of a lot of nothing.

So I noticed things.

I knew that one of the guards had a bad knee and hip and was doing everything in his power to not let the other guards, Declan, or Opal see that because he knew it would mean the loss of his job. And because he was so good at hiding it, and such an old and loyal guard, he was given the front which was a really important post. It left the grounds all but unprotected because there was no way he could run anymore. The man could barely walk when he wasn't being watched.

I also knew that Opal, bitch supreme she was, had a lover that I was pretty sure no one, let alone her husband, knew about.

And, well, I watched Amy. First, because she was just refreshing to watch. Even from a young age, she was so unlike her parents. There was a kindness there that, while she often tried to hide it, always shone through. She was good to the staff.

Hell, she was good to me.

Seeing as I had been a fucking prisoner since, well, I didn't even know how long, and shown nothing but mercilessness and pain, goodness was like a beam of sunlight in the depths of winter.

I didn't see her often, though, as her parents sent her off into the human realm every couple of months to slowly age her up, to make her useful to them.

I had been around the Winters, most especially Opal, enough to know what she would be used for when she was old and pretty enough.

Then, there was that too, you could say.

I was only a man.

It would be wrong to say that I didn't notice the way that coming back the last time, having aged from maybe eighteen to a ripe twenty-two, had made her become truly, breathtakingly gorgeous.

She was on the tall side like her parents, long-legged, elegantly boned, like her mother. She also had the classic Winters look, just like her older brother and sister. She was light-blonde, her hair kept long and shiny. Her face was angular, but softer than Opal, Jasper, or Jade. Her eyes were large, round, innocent-looking, and of course, green.

Then, well, there was the curve she took on as a grown woman. The understated, but intoxicating roundness to her hips, her ass, her chest, even her thighs.