Page 9 of Claiming Starlight
“I’m hot. I want to use the restroom. I’ll just take it off, okay?”
“No. Not okay. Leave it on. You gotta pee? The bathroom’s in the back. Go now before the food gets here.” He was a force of nature this man. So far, all she about him was that he wanted her to listen to his directions, and when she didn’t, bad things happened. He caught her when she tried to run, shook her when she screamed, slapped her thigh when she tried to escape him again.
He also opened car doors, was nice when she got sick from the sight of his violence and said things sounded like he wanted to protect her. Well, sort of.
She didn’t understand him.
He got out of the booth and stood, waiting for her.
“Okay.” She slipped by him and headed for the bathroom, and the second she was inside she unzipped the huge, hot hoodie just to spite him.
When she went to the sink to wash her hands her washed out reflection stared back at her, splotchier than a bruised butterfly. It was pathetic. She wanted to yell at herself to do something, run. Anything. Stop just going along. Maybe she could make a break for it. This neighborhood seemed better than the last. Maybe she could find her way home.
Until she saw her shirt. Her pastel t-shirt, still damp from standing in the rain, clinging to the upper slopes of her chest, her white cotton bra right there, easy to see through the fabric. The rude pink of her nipples poked at the material. The old bra was thin and worthless, barely gave the support she needed, and with the rain, was so see-through she might as well not be wearing it.
He’d seen.
They’d both seen. The whole street saw.
Ashamed, Sophie zipped up the jacket.
He stood when she came back to the table, letting her know where he expected her to sit. She scooted into her place, eyeing the cheeseburger, fries, and strawberry milkshake he ordered for her warily. Trapped by him, his body a giant slab blocking all escape, Sophie could barely see around his broad chest.
His tattooed arm brushed hers when he took a bite of his own burger. It smelled like beef. It looked small in his hands, would be huge in hers.
“Eat,” he said after taking a bite.
Sophie felt so helpless. She did not want to insult him, but just because it smelled like beef didn’t mean it was.
Holding half his burger in two hands near his mouth, he gave her an impatient tsk. “Baby, it’s safe, yeah? Not a dick, remember?”
She took a little bite of her own, avoiding his gaze and trying to figure out what to say. What to do. What was going to happen. How she would pay for it. What he would expect for it.
He finished everything in twenty bites. She wasn’t half through hers when he asked, “You’re not in school? You smell like vampir, you’re from Hyde—so you one of Cyril’s lot? You belong to Silver Cyril? He got you in waiting or what? You don’t look old enough for the blood-slave crew or breeding stables. I know they like them a certain age.”
She’d never been in anyone’s harem. Sophie clarified, “I’m nineteen.”
“Fuck. Nineteen.” He said it like he didn’t like the answer.
He was older, then. She knew it. Maybe he’d leave her alone, decide to be a good guy. They could be friends. He could take a step back and quit giving off that low-volume sexual threat.
“Last chance to tell me why you came to South Bloc.”
There was no reason not to tell him. What else was she going to do? “My younger brother met two guys at the park. Pek and Eli? Shifters. I saw them once. They said they could find him work in South Bloc.”
“Did they? How young little bro?”
“Seventeen.”
“He like you?”
“Not a human virgin, if that’s what you are asking.”
“Oh, you’re more than that, aren’t you, Starlight? He like you?”
Sophie flinched. What did he think he knew? “No.”
Micah grunted. His own food gone, he held her gaze, and stole one of the wedge-cut fries off her plate. His teeth were very white and sharp, flashing dangerously as he ate it in one bite. “Eli and Pek, huh? Not young like him?”
