Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
I swallow down my fear. Something about him…calms me.
He turns slightly, though his eyes don’t leave my body. His deep voice calls out, saying something in a lilting language I don’t understand. He’s got a lovely accent. A familiar one. Suddenly, the curtain to the tent drops, and I can clearly see again. Yes, the shadow is a man, a beautiful, terrifying man, but at least he seems human.
Maybe what I saw before was just…the dream. Yeah. I don’t have good instincts. I’m back to dreaming.
“She does not speak Gaelic, Your Highness,” said the small man who’d greeted me and explained a bunch of rules I hadn’t listened to because…well, I was busy freaking out. He’s standing beside the big guy. He’s only a few inches taller than Cara.
The man with the pitch-black hair grimaces, his sensual lips curving down as he switches to English. “I have no title here, Reeve. Speak to me as you would any other customer.”
He looks at me straight in the eyes for the first time, and I swear I can feel something rolling off him. A thrill of excitement flashes through me. Not excitement. Fear. The racing of my heart has to be fear, right? I can’t be looking at him like he’s a treat and I’ve been starving.
I should be very afraid because I know suddenly that the man standing in front of me can make me do the one thing I’ve sworn never to do again—feel. I like my cocoon of numbness. He could pull me out of it, make me want to really live again.
And isn’t that the cruelest dream of all?
I need to wake up and now. I don’t want to know where this dream is going.
“What’s your name then?” His voice rolls over my skin, even from across the tent.
And just like that I know where we’re going. I can play along. I want it over with. I always wake up before the truly bad stuff begins. When I have dreams about being killed, I wake up right before the first blow. So all I have to do is push through and it can be over, and I swear I’ll stop listening to true crime podcasts before I go to sleep.
He’d hit me, that thing that had taken me. He’d reached out with his emaciated arm and struck me into darkness. I hadn’t imagined he would be so strong, but then he hadn’t been a man at all. He’d been a shadow stalking me on my way home, following me into the alley, and then I’d woken up somewhere else.
“Are you all right then?” The man in front drew me away from those dark, confused thoughts. “Come on. Don’t be afraid. Tell me your name.”
Maybe I’m sick and this is some kind of fever dream. I’d been stuffy the last couple of days.
“My name is Twenty to Life because that’s the time you’ll do for kidnapping me, you son of a bitch.” A little anger flares through me, and I can’t help but push.
I steel myself, waiting for the broad man to strike, then I’ll wake up and go about my dull life.
Then maybe I can forget those red eyes and how cold his hands felt. I can forget how those eyes burned into me as he chuckled, and right before I lost consciousness, I’d been certain he was taking me to Hell.
I’d gotten out of that nightmare. I can get out of this one.
I should have known it wasn’t a pleasant dream and that these weirdos with their soft beds and good-smelling food would eventually turn into monsters. It’s how my damn brain works since the divorce. Sure enough, someone is going to smack me, rape me, and then potentially gut me. It looks like it’s the big, hot guy’s job. I wait, ready to feel the terrible blow that will likely signal the end of this dream, but the man with the long black hair simply smiles, showing even, white teeth.
Despite the terror, or maybe because of it, his expression takes me totally off guard. When he smiles, he’s devastating. An unwelcome attraction sparks through me, and once again I am forced to reconsider all of my life choices.
“All right then, Twenty,” the man says in his lilting accent. Irish. He sounds Irish. “My name is Beckett, but you can call me Beck. And my mother was actually quite nice. I would prefer you didn’t curse her. Yell at me all you like, but let’s leave my mother out of it. Tell me, why should I purchase you instead of these other lovely women?”
What the actual hell does he mean? “I’m being sold? Someone is selling me like a piece of fucking meat?”
Beck shakes his head. “Language there, darlin’. You’re in a market, trussed up like a pretty, plump pigeon. Did you think you were just hanging on the chains for show?”