Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Skimming over the most up-to-date reports, he stilled when he read the summary from her medical screening. Level II Virgin.
“No wonder Hadrian was sniffing her out.”
His finger stilled over the paperclip pressing through the page. Knowing what he would find and giving himself the chance to do the right thing and put the file back.
Jack turned the page.
The stark expression on her face showed anger. Which doctor had done her exam?
“Ah.” Dr. Tannhäuser.
His gaze lowered to her pale, pink nipples, but her ribs distracted him. Thin. No less beautiful, but it was clear that her build was a consequence of her situation, not a choice based on any beauty standard.
Jack shut the file, angry not just with her appearance but with his lack of discipline. The tributes deserved their dignity. They deserved at least the semblance of privacy.
“You shouldn’t have looked,” he growled, tossing the file onto the table so it was out of reach. But he wasn’t done.
Picking up his phone, he pulled up the historical footage, scrolling back further this time, until he found her encounter with Peter Pangbourne.
Jack’s jaw tightened as he slowed down the recording. Still lying to himself as if he needed to review the footage for protocol compliance, when he damn well knew Cole’s team already had. But who the fuck did he have to answer to?
Jack rewound the encounter to the beginning, when Peter snuck up on her in the labyrinth. The footage started innocuously enough—Peter prancing out from behind a statue, bowing with theatrical flourish. Jack looked away to roll his eyes.
“Idiot.”
When he rolled through the feed, Daisy backed away. The two of them moved through the gardens, Peter following at a lazy, playful pace as she spoke to him, and Jack frowned.
Why wasn’t she running?
When they reached one of the cabanas, she tore down the curtains, ripping the fabric into strips to wrap her battered feet. He had the strangest urge to plant shoes in her path, but that would be completely out of line. She could find supplies at the safe zones like everyone else.
As she sat on the ground, Pangbourne moved closer. Her demeanor hardened instantly. Her expression tightened like a fist, severe and firm as she said something to him. Pangbourne stepped back and…
“She’s figuring him out.” He chuckled. “Playing him.”
She was a quick study.
Jack could see how a man-child like Pangbourne would respond to a firm, maternal tone. And it surprised him to see her activate such a side of herself so swiftly, switching from soft to stern as flawlessly as a ballerina pivots.
“You’re tougher than you look, Daisy Burdan.”
But his admiration quickly faded as she followed Peter onto the bed of the cabana. Jack changed camera feeds. His hand tightened on the phone as Pangbourne climbed over her, pushing up her mask.
“What changed?”
There were nuances to intimacy that Jack would never understand. In his mind, it all came down to control and who craved it more—how it played out in action. Years of watching others had taught him that every power dynamic was different, each player a unique collection of proclivities.
And then there was him. Empty.
Daisy lifted her hands over her head in what looked like surrender. His molars locked as they kissed—actually kissed, not a one-sided exchange with a reluctant captive, but a shared moment of passion. Her body arched in response to his touch.
She was…enjoying it.
Jack swiped his thumb, and his phone went dark.
He glared into the dark silence of his suite, the distant chaos of the hunt filtering through the windows with the music for the party below. Another bell tolled. Another conquest. Another scream. More masculine cheers.
Inside, fury raged for reasons he didn’t understand. He twirled his ring.
“Enough.” He had hunters to hunt.
Shame on him for letting a tribute distract him.
Chapter Eighteen
Seek
The bells continually tolled, like periods at the end of sentences in an epic tale, each one marking the conclusion to a sequence that would inevitably repeat again and again and again. On and on, tributes were being consumed, one by one, the way a snake swallows mice. Whole. Inescapably. Persistently.
Daisy was deep in the gardens, far from any path she recognized. The manicured hedges had given way to wilderness and untamed growth. Topiaries transformed into shapes and animals that looked more like monsters under the darkness of night. A swan with a neck ten feet long. A lion whose mane had become a bristling mass of unchecked growth. An elephant whose trunk had split into three reaching branches, each one tipped with tiny white flowers that glowed in the darkness like eyes.
There were fewer torches in this area, but she didn’t mind. Fewer torches meant less company.
It was as if she’d wandered into a forgotten acre on the property, but there was deliberate intention about the neglect, as if it were purposely left to create a false sense of safety.