Page 45 of Bought for Blood

Two words. No inflection. He doesn’t look at me while he says them.

The guard’s hand comes to my elbow, careful. Everyone in this building is careful with me now except the man who just had me against a door. I lift my chin, and I walk, because walking out of rooms on my own feet is the one thing I have left here.

The corridor is cold after the fire. My legs shake the whole length of it. My throat is healed and humming, my body ringing everywhere he was, wet with him. And beyond it all is my wolf, warm and satisfied in a way I can’t explain. I hate it. I hate that she’s happy with that.

He sent me off the same way he sent her off.

Entitled asshole!

Her perfume is in my nose the whole way back.

The fury needs somewhere to go, and I aim it at everyone. Him, for being a dick. Her, for the pity. And me. For giving in…and loving it.

In my room, I peel the dress off and leave it on the floor where it lands.

If the house wants it back, they can send a guard for that too.

Chapter 17

Bastien

I stand in the room for six minutes before I make myself walk out of it.

Six minutes.

I count them off. My hand didn’t shake until the door closed behind me. It stops trembling at minute three, and I stand there. The attendant at the stairs keeps his eyes on the opposite wall the entire time. He’ll live longer that way.

Then I walk down through the lobby, past the night men who straighten as I pass, out to the car. Yves pulls onto the access road, and the compound falls away behind us. I sit in the dark leather with my coat buttoned, my thoughts refusing to line up.

Nothing has changed. Nothing.

And my mind is working, running over problems I had counted as covered. The protection order holds. Vasile will enforce it to the letter, because he knows what will happen if he doesn’t. But an order is only as strong as the fear that carries it,and fear needs feeding. I come here twice a week. That leaves five nights for them to fill behind my back. A house bleeding money on its best earner. A guard on a bad salary opening a door for the right envelope.

She’s theirs on paper. And she’s not safe as long as she belongs to them.

“Yves. Turn around.”

The car slows. He takes the next farm entrance, swings us, and the headlights come back around. Within minutes, we’re back at the compound gates.

The night manager meets me in the lobby with his collar undone.

“Get him,” I say. Whatever he sees on my face has him on his phone without asking anything else. I stand in the lobby listening to the building: the generator behind the east wall, twenty-odd heartbeats stacked through the floors below, slow with sleep. One of them, I could find with my eyes closed.

Not yet.

Vasile arrives inside ten minutes. The cologne he keeps for clients doesn’t cover the sweat under it. The man ran here from his quarters. Good. That works for me.

“My lord.” The bow is perfect. His pulse is at a sprint. “The house is honored, at any hour. How may—?”

“Your office. Now.”

We go back to the room with the false window, velvet drawn over concrete, brandy on the sideboard. He moves toward the decanter out of pure habit, and the look on my face stops him.

He sits behind his desk instead. I stay standing.

“My lord, I can assure you that not one other has touched—”

“I’m buying her,” I say. “Outright. Tonight.”