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“I’m a very light sleeper.” His eyes flash open, and he yanks me toward him so hard that my free hand lands on his solid chest.
I try to pull away, but his hold is unrelenting.
“And I have a big problem with you trying to kill me after I was nice enough to untie you.” He inches toward me, and the brush of his whiskey-laced breath across my face triggers blind panic.
I lash out with my free hand, and my palm meets his cheek with an alarming clap. A muscle in his jaw tics. Oh God, why did I do that? Stupid, stupid. “I’m sorry!” I blurt, not that I expect it to do much.
Within seconds, he has me pinned to the floor beneath him with one hand wrapped around my throat. I fight against his hold, but the more I struggle, the stronger his vice-like grip becomes. He’s going to kill me. I’ll die in this basement, and no one will ever find my body. My sister will have no idea what happened to me. Morbid thoughts run amuck in my mind.
“You have no idea who you’re fucking with, little girl.” His fingers dig deeper into my skin before the pressure releases. The weight of his body lifts from mine, and I roll onto my stomach, gasping in the air.
“Fuck!” He rakes an arm across his desk, sending the telephone and empty liquor bottle crashing to the floor. On a hard breath, he braces his hands on the wooden edge and drops his chin to his chest.
I don’t know the man, but he looks caught between anger and despair; the set of his shoulders seems defeated. He stays like that for a moment before he starts across the room.
“Please.” I scramble back, but he’s in front of me within a second, hoisting me to my feet.
His gaze strays to what I assume must be a mark from his hand on my throat, and as much as I want to look away from those forest-green eyes, I can’t. Silence descends around us, the mounting tension quickly becoming unbearable. Something in his demeanor seems contrite, like a silent plea for forgiveness—I must be going crazy.
Suddenly, the office door opens with a bang, and the man moves away from me, breaking whatever twisted spell I was just under.
“Shit, Jude. Sorry.” A young guy stands in the open doorway, already taking a tentative step back. “I didn’t realize you had a girl here.”
Heat touches my cheeks. He thought I was fucking this guy.
“She’s not a fuck, Caleb. Rich brought her back as collateral. So now she’s ours for three fucking days.”
Ours? It feels like a lead weight just plummeted to the pit of my stomach from the implication.
A disbelieving look falls over Caleb’s face. “What the hell are we supposed to do with her?”
“Put her in a room.”
Jude latches onto my arm, and as much as I want to run or fight, I don’t want to die. My survival instincts go haywire, flipping back and forth between defiance and compliance as he leads me up two flights of stairs, then into a bedroom. He shoves me toward an unmade bed with a Swimsuit Illustrated poster above the headboard.
They can’t do this. You can’t just take a person without consequences.
I glance at Jude, feeling the need to point out the gaping hole in his stupid plan. “You know someone is going to look for me, right? You clearly haven’t thought this through.”
Whatever patience he previously exhibited snaps like a thin, ragged thread. He fists my hair, yanking my head back until I have no choice but to stare up at him. “I’m going to lay this out real straight for you, doll. No one is going to find you here. I’m a fucking ghost, and this house is in the middle of ten acres of guarded woods.” He pushes me away, and I stumble back, collapsing onto the bed.
“What you’re gonna do is be a good little prisoner. You’re gonna sit your ass right here for the next three days until your boyfriend pays up.”
His words are like a punch in the gut. Three days. I just have to stay in this room for three days. Then Euan will pay the money, and this will all just be a distant nightmare. But what if he doesn’t?
Jude moves toward the door, stopping to glower down at Caleb. “If she needs to piss, you follow her.” And then he leaves, taking the storm cloud of tension with him.
Caleb slowly closes his door, then leans against it on a sigh. “Well, there goes my weekend.”
Good, I hope this fucked up all his plans because it sure as hell screwed with mine. “Well, you know, you could always...I don’t know...let me go.”
“Yeah, can’t do that.” He grabs the remote from the dresser then falls to the gaming chair beside the bed as the TV flickers to life. The camera pans out over a stadium filled with screaming fans. “What’s your name?” He wants to know my name, like this is some casual meet and greet.
