Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
“I’m gonna teach you to curtsy, motherfucker.”
He bolts out of the chair, tries to run, but he trips over his own pants as they fall to his ankles and slams face first into the dance floor of the studio with a crunch.
I’m on him a breath, dragging him up by the collar and then slamming him into the floor again.
“Mother. Fucker,” I repeat. “I told her what would happen to you. You think I don’t keep my promises? Fucking piece of shit. They’ll be finding bits of you in Alaska.”
I grab him, flip him over and slam my foot down between his legs, making him squeal in pain.
I punch his face, but it’s all too good. He needs to suffer, and he will.
“Daddy?”
Her little voice comes from behind me cutting through the noise.
The light pressure of her hand on my arm stalls me as I raise my fist.
“Daddy, stop… Please…”
“Time for lights out asshole—”
My knuckles land one last time, I draw back again but Elodie’s scent swirls around me.
She needs me too.
“Daddy, please… Don’t… I don’t want them to take you away. If you do this…I won’t have you.”
I pause, my heart cracking against my ribs. She doesn’t know this side of me. I could disappear this asshole with one phone call and no one would come knocking. But, not in front of her.
Not right now.
His body goes slack, eyes half closed.
I drop him to the floor, fire racing over my skin as I turn and find her wide eyed, blinking, swaying.
“I think he put something in my food. I don’t… I didn’t eat it all. That butler stopped me after a couple bites, switched my plate. It tasted funny…”
“Did he touch you—”
“He didn’t … I’m still yours, Daddy. Still yours.”
She puts her arms around my waist and everything else fades for a moment.
I kiss the top of her head, nuzzling her hair.
She's still swaying. Still blinking like she's trying to remember where the edges of herself are.
Her wide eyes find their focus. The flush working up her throat. Still here. Still mine.
"Daddy," she says again, and something in my chest that has been locked down since that phone call cracks clean open.
I walk her backward. She goes without question, hands finding my shirt, and when her back meets the mirrored wall, she tips her chin up and looks at me like I am the only fixed point in the room.
Behind us, Patrykov is beginning to stir.
Good.
I want him awake for this.
"You know what you're doing to me right now?" I say against her hair. Low. Just for her, except nothing in this room is just for her right now. That's the point.
"Yes," she breathes.
"Tell me."
Her hands tighten in my shirt. "You want to remind him," she says. "What's yours."
I pull back just enough to look at her face. She's not afraid. She's — God, she's luminous. Cheeks flushed, eyes soft and dark, the corner of her mouth doing that thing that has been ruining me since before I had any right to let it.
"You okay with that?" I ask. I will always ask.
"Daddy." Her hands slide up my chest, around my neck. She tips up onto her toes and puts her mouth against my jaw. "I've been yours since the first night you walked into Club Echo and looked at me like that. Actually, a long time before that." Her lips brush my ear. "Show him who you are to me."
The sound that comes out of me is not civilized.
Let him look.
"Still mine?" I murmur against her skin.
"Still yours," she says, and the steadiness in it, the certainty, after everything this man put her through tonight — it wrecks me completely.
Elodie’s fingers grip my thigh through fabric as she strokes me, her breath hot against my lips, but when we hit the desk, I break contact and whirl her around. Press her forehead to the polished oak surface, tug down my zipper while watching her dance instructor linger in the corner—still a threat even now. Her little hips sway, ass high under that sheer dress. “Yes, Rye,” she breathes.
I kick her feet apart with my boot, dragging her tights down her legs, ripping off the little pink ballet slippers leaving her naked under that tutu that’s been driving me crazy for more years than I should admit.
She smiles, those round cheeks offering herself like a ripe peach begging to be plucked.
Time to mark what’s mine. I turn her again, back to the mirror, and she wraps her legs around me when I lift her and the rest of the world narrows down to this. Her mouth. Her hands in my hair, pulling, like she can't get close enough. The small sounds she makes against my lips that are mine, have always been mine, will be mine after every room like this one is a distant memory.