AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turn to Eve who is still standing in the doorway, and I walk towards her, arms open.
She hesitates for a brief second before lunging forward and crushing her body against my chest.
I wrap my arms around her and breathe in the scent of her. She has been away for many days, and she smells slightly different than normal, but underneath it is the same floral scent of her body, and I inhale it greedily.
I want to soak her in, to stay her with her in my arms for as long as humanly possible.
But she peels her head off my chest and looks up at me with curious eyes.
“What are we going to do about the other women, Luka?” she asks.
I sigh, and she pulls further away from me. “We are going to do something about them, right? We aren’t going to leave them.”
“I’m not sure what we can do,” I repeat. “We can try to take down the Cartel once we are out, but right now, I don’t have the resources to do anything. Even winning you just for tonight was harder than I anticipated. And I have to assume the price is only going to go higher.”
She bites her lip and shivers.
I pull her against me again. “Don’t worry, I’ll win you. Every night. You won’t go with anyone else.”
“I don’t believe you,” she whispers.
I jerk back from her. “What does that mean? You don’t trust me?”
She looks up at me, her caramel-brown eyes glassy and wide. “I trust that you’ll save me, but I don’t believe you’ll take down the Cartel. You are just saying it to make me shut up. You just want me to stop talking about it.”
“Eve …” I reach for her, but she steps back out of my range. The fire in her eyes is raging.
“No,” she shakes her head and flips her hair over to one side, her fingers fidgety and nervous. “The least you can do is tell me the truth.”
“The least?” I ask, anger creeping into my voice. “As if I haven’t done enough already?”
“You should have gone after Milaya!” Eve yells. The force of her words seems to surprise her, and she pinches her lips together. “I could have taken care of myself.”
“I only had a lead on where you would be,” I argue. “My option was to miss my only opportunity at getting into this auction to save you or search in vain for a clue about Milaya’s whereabouts that may not have ever come. Regardless of what you think about my decision, I did the best I could with the time and information I had. I’m so sorry that isn’t enough for you.”
She stares down at the floor, looking guilty, and then looks up at me. “No, it’s not enough, Luka. There are more women here. They need you. They need us.”
Frustration bubbles up inside of me until I can’t see straight. My vision goes blurry around the edges, focusing in on Eve’s face, and I stalk towards her quickly.
She backs up against the wall, and I pin her there, her wrists in each of my hands.
“I don’t want to save everyone,” I growl. “I don’t care about everyone. I only care about you.”
“Luka, that isn’t—”
I press my knee between her legs, making her gasp, and shake my head. “No argument. Those are the facts and they aren’t up for debate. I only care about getting you out of here unharmed, and I won’t hear any talk about anything that could interfere with that plan.”
Her eyes narrow. “You may have bought me tonight, but I’m not actually your slave, you know?”
I step away from her all at once, putting a foot of space between our bodies. “Then leave.”
She moves forward like she is going to. Her eyes are golden with anger, and she is breathing heavily, her chest heaving, drawing even more attention to the low cut of her dress.
“I’m not your captor,” I whisper, reaching out to touch a strand of her hair. “You are free to do whatever you want when you are with me, you know that. So, if you want to leave and go back to your room, go. I won’t stop you.”
Just as the words are out of my mouth, Eve throws herself forward and crushes her lips against mine.
It takes me less than a second to curl her into my body and push her back against the wall.
