by Renee Rose
I don’t release her. I don’t want to. The heat of her body radiates through my damp clothes and crowds my mind with the dirtiest of thoughts. If I were a gentleman, I’d leave the room and let her get dressed, but I’m not. I’m an asshole with a hotel casino to run.
And I still don’t know who the hell this girl is or how she ended up in my suite. And seriously, heads are going to roll for this. Even more because the girl suffered for it.
Right. If my brain were working better, I might acknowledge I’m the only one who can take blame for that part, especially since I’m still holding her naked and captive.
“It’s just a girl who looks like you doesn’t normally clean rooms in Vegas,” I offer as the lamest excuse ever. It’s true, though. I’m sure there are more girls like her out there. But I don’t see them around here. All I see are the fake-boobed hustlers trying to work some angle. The professionals. Women who use their bodies like weapons. And I have no problem with them. I’m happy to use their bodies, too.
But this one—she’s different.
Her full berry lips part, but she doesn’t say anything.
I can’t keep my hands to myself. I run my thumb across her lower lip, trace it back and forth over the plump flesh.
Her pupils dilate, giving me encouragement to keep touching.
“A girl like you is usually on the stage—some kind of stage—even if it’s just a gentleman’s club.”
Her eyes narrow but I don’t shut up.
“Girl like you could make a shit ton selling herself.” Mary, Queen of Peace, I want to kiss the girl. I lower my lips but manage to stop above hers. A kiss would definitely not be welcome. I may be a scary prick, but I don’t force myself on women. “You know how much a guy like me would pay for a night with you?”
This time I really went too far. She tries to yank back from me. I don’t release her, but I do lift my head. She presses her lips together a moment before saying, “May I go?”
I ease back, but shake my head. “No.” It’s a decisive syllable, short and curt.
She flinches. The dilated pupils narrow back to fear. I don’t like her afraid nearly as well as I like her trembling and soft, open to me, the way she was a moment ago. It’s a subtle distinction, though, because I do love the power position of having her here, at my mercy.
“I still need some answers.” I back her toward the sink counter, then pick her up by the waist and plop her bare ass down on the cool marble top. The towel flaps open when I release her, and I get another eyeful of her perfect, full breasts as she scrambles to find the corners and pull it closed.
I shake my head to clear the fresh flood of lust rocketing through me. My cock’s gone rock hard. I’m a man used to getting everything he wants, which usually includes women. The fact that this one isn’t available makes me want her even more. “Seriously,” I mutter. “I’d pay five large for a night with a girl like you.” Even as I say it, I know I’d never want her that way. I’d want to coax the willingness out of this one.
And that’s my strangest thought yet. Because I never, ever spend time dating.
“I’m not a prostitute,” she snaps, blue eyes flashing.
Her anger pulls me out of my sleep-deprived fantasy. I blink several times. “I know. Just saying you could make a lot of money in this town.”
I shake my head. What the fuck am I saying? I don’t want this girl to become one of those women.
And she just wants to get the hell out of here. So I need to get back to my interrogation.
“Who are you and why are you here?”
She draws in a shaky breath. “My name is Sondra Simonson. My cousin, Corey Simonson, works here as a dealer. She got me this job in housekeeping while I wait for something better to open up.” She speaks rapidly, but it doesn’t sound rehearsed. And it has enough details to ring true. “Marissa is my boss, and I offered to help her clean the rooms up here because the regulars are out sick. Her kid got a concussion and she had to leave me up here by myself. All I did was clean.” She lifts her chin, even though her pulse flutters at a frantic pace in her neck.
I wait for her to go on, not because I’m still that suspicious, but because I like hearing her talk.
She babbles on, “I just moved here from Reno…I taught art history at Truckee Meadow Community College.”
I tilt my head, trying to assimilate this new information. It only adds to the wrongness of this girl being in my room. “Why is an art history professor working as a goddamn maid in my hotel?”
“Because I have terrible taste in men,” she blurts.
“That right?” I have to work to keep from smiling. I lean my hip up against the counter between her spread thighs. When she blushes, I know she must be thinking about how close her pretty little bare pussy is to the part of me most eager to touch her.
I’m even more fascinated by this lovely creature now. What kind of guy does an art history professor fall for?
She swallows and nods. “Yeah.”
“You follow a guy here?”
“No.” She lets out her breath with a sigh. “I bailed on one. Turns out we had an unshared interest in polyamory.”
I lift an eyebrow. She’s studying me right back, her blue eyes intelligent now that the fear is wearing off.
“Let’s just say finding him banging three girls in our bed will be forever burned into my mind. So”—she shrugs— “I took our car and headed to Vegas. But karma got me because it got totaled when I arrived.”
“How is that your karma?”
“Because half that car belonged to Tanner and I stole it.”
I shrug. “Whose name was on the title?”
“Mine.”
“Then it’s your car,” I say, like I’m the guy who makes the final ruling on all things to do with her ex. “So that still doesn’t explain why you’re in my bathroom.”
Or maybe it did. My brain is still short-circuiting from lack of sleep. The real truth is probably that I don’t want to let her go. I’d like to string her up in my room and interrogate her with my leather flogger all night long. I wonder how that pale skin would look with my hand prints on it.
Too much, Tacone. I try to pull back. The room swims and dips as my vision trails. Fuck, I need sleep.
She blinks rapidly. “Because you won’t let me leave?”
I was right. She’s smart.
The corners of my mouth twitch.
“Housekeeping is the only place I could get a job on short notice. I’d rather work as a dealer. Think you can hook me up?” Now she’s getting sassy.
Funny, I don’t have the urge to take her down a peg the way I usually do with employees. Unless, of course, it involves her naked and at my mercy.
Oh yeah. I already set that up.
But the suggestion of her working as a dealer irritates the fuck out of me. I don’t know if it’s because she’d be ruined by Las Vegas in a month, or because I really want to keep her in my room. Cleaning my floors. Naked.
“No.”
She flinches because I say the word too hard. I’m definitely having a difficult time modulating my behavior. But she just shrugs. “Well, this is temporary, anyway. Just until I earn enough to get a new car and find a teaching job.”
Okay, even not trusting my instincts, I think she’s who she says she is. Which means I have no good reason to keep her prisoner here. I step back and take another long perusal of her now that I know more about her. Seriously. I want to keep her.
But considering the things I just did to her, she’ll probably quit the second she leaves my suite. I point to her crumpled dress and bra on the floor. “Get dressed.”
Before I do or say anything else to traumatize the girl, I leave the bathroom, shutting the door behind myself.
About Lee Savino
Lee Savino is a USA today bestselling author, mom and choco-holic.
Warning: Do not read her Berserker series, or you will be addicted to the huge, dominant warriors who will stop at nothing to
claim their mates.
I repeat: Do. Not. Read. The Berserker Saga. Particularly not the thrilling excerpt below.
Download a free book from www.leesavino.com (don’t read that either. Too much hot, sexy lovin’).
Excerpt: Sold to the Berserkers
A ménage shifter romance
By Lee Savino
The day my stepfather sold me to the Berserkers, I woke at dawn with him leering over me. “Get up.” He made to kick me and I scrambled out of my sleep stupor to my feet.
“I need your help with a delivery.”
I nodded and glanced at my sleeping mother and siblings. I didn’t trust my stepfather around my three younger sisters, but if I was gone with him all day, they’d be safe. I’d taken to carrying a dirk myself. I did not dare kill him; we needed him for food and shelter, but if he attacked me again, I would fight.
My mother’s second husband hated me, ever since the last time he’d tried to take me and I had fought back. My mother was gone to market, and when he tried to grab me, something in me snapped. I would not let him touch me again. I fought, kicking and scratching, and finally grabbing an iron pot and scalding him with heated water.
He bellowed and looked as if he wanted to hurt me, but kept his distance. When my mother returned he pretended like nothing was wrong, but his eyes followed me with hatred and cunning.
Out loud he called me ugly and mocking the scar that marred my neck since a wild dog attacked me when I was young. I ignored this and kept my distance. I’d heard the taunts about my hideous face since the wounds had healed into scars, a mass of silver tissue at my neck.
That morning, I wrapped a scarf over my hair and scarred neck and followed my stepfather, carrying his wares down the old road. At first I thought we were headed to the great market, but when we reached the fork in the road and he went an unfamiliar way, I hesitated. Something wasn’t right.
“This way, cur.” He’d taken to calling me “dog”. He’d taunted me, saying the only sounds I could make were grunts like a beast, so I might as well be one. He was right. The attack had taken my voice by damaging my throat.
If I followed him into the forest and he tried to kill me, I wouldn’t even be able to cry out.
“There’s a rich man who asked for his wares delivered to his door.” He marched on without a backward glance and I followed.
I had lived all my life in the kingdom of Alba, but when my father died and my mother remarried, we moved to my stepfather’s village in the highlands, at the foot of the great, forbidding mountains. There were stories of evil that lived in the dark crevices of the heights, but I’d never believed them.
I knew enough monsters living in plain sight.
The longer we walked, the lower the sun sank in the sky, the more I knew my stepfather was trying to trick me, that there was no rich man waiting for these wares.
When the path curved, and my stepfather stepped out from behind a boulder to surprise me, I was half ready, but before I could reach for my dirk he struck me so hard I fell.
I woke tied to a tree.
The light was lower, heralding dusk. I struggled silently, frantic gasps escaping from my scarred throat. My stepfather stepped into view and I felt a second of relief at a familiar face, before remembering the evil this man had wrought on my body. Whatever he was planning, it would bode ill for me, and my younger sisters. If I didn’t survive, they would eventually share the same fate as mine.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Just in time for the sale.”
I strained but my bonds held fast. As my stepfather approached, I realized that the scarf that I wrapped around my neck to hide my scars had fallen, exposing them. Out of habit, I twitched my head to the side, tucking my bad side towards my shoulder.
My stepfather smirked.
“So ugly,” he sneered. “I could never find a husband for you, but I found someone to take you. A group of warriors passing through who saw you, and want to slake their lust on your body. Who knows, if you please them, they may let you live. But I doubt you’ll survive these men. They’re foreigners, mercenaries, come to fight for the king. Berserkers. If you’re lucky your death will be swift when they tear you apart.”
I’d heard the tales of berserker warriors, fearsome warriors of old. Ageless, timeless, they’d sailed over the seas to the land, plundering, killing, taking slaves, they fought for our kings, and their own. Nothing could stand in their path when they went into a killing rage.
I fought to keep my fear off my face. Berserker's were a myth, so my stepfather had probably sold me to a band of passing soldiers who would take their pleasure from my flesh before leaving me for dead, or selling me on.
“I could’ve sold you long ago, if I stripped you bare and put a bag over you head to hide those scars.”
His hands pawed at me, and I shied away from his disgusting breath. He slapped me, then tore at my braid, letting my hair spill over my face and shoulders.
Bound as I was, I still could glare at him. I could do nothing to stop the sale, but I hoped my fierce expression told him I’d fight to the death if he tried to force himself on me.
His hand started to wander down towards my breast when a shadow moved on the edge of the clearing. It caught my eye and I startled. My stepfather stepped back as the warriors poured from the trees.
My first thought was that they were not men, but beasts. They prowled forward, dark shapes almost one with the shadows. A few wore animal pelts and held back, lurking on the edge of the woods. Two came forward, wearing the garb of warriors, bristling with weapons. One had dark hair, and the other long, dirty blond with a beard to match.
Their eyes glowed with a terrifying light.
As they approached, the smell of raw meat and blood wafted over us, and my stomach twisted. I was glad my stepfather hadn’t fed me all day, or I would’ve emptied my guts on the ground.
My stepfather’s face and tone took on the wheedling expression I’d seen when he was selling in the market.
“Good evening, sirs,” he cringed before the largest, the blond with hair streaming down his chest.
They were perfectly silent, but the blond approached, fixing me with strange golden eyes.
Their faces were fair enough, but their hulking forms and the quick, light way they moved made me catch my breath. I had never seen such massive men. Beside them, my stepfather looked like an ugly dwarf.
“This is the one you wanted,” my stepfather continued. “She’s healthy and strong. She will be a good slave for you.”
My body would’ve shaken with terror, if I were not bound so tightly.
A dark haired warrior stepped up beside the blond and the two exchanged a look.
“You asked for the one with scars.” My stepfather took my hair and jerked my head back, exposing the horrible, silvery mass. I shut my eyes, tears squeezing out at the sudden pain and humiliation.
The next thing I knew, my stepfather’s grip loosened. A grunt, and I opened my eyes to see the dark haired warrior standing at my side. My stepfather sprawled on the ground as if he’d been pushed.
The blond leader prodded a boot into my stepfather’s side.
“Get up,” the blond said, in a voice that was more a growl than a human sound. It curdled my blood. My stepfather scrambled to his feet.
The black haired man cut away the last of my bonds, and I sagged forward. I would’ve fallen but he caught me easily and set me on my feet, keeping his arms around me. I was not the smallest woman, but he was a giant. Muscles bulged in his arms and chest, but he held me carefully. I stared at him, taking in his raven dark hair and strange gold eyes.
He tucked me closer to his muscled body.
Meanwhile, my stepfather whined. “I just wanted to show you the scars—”
Again that frightening growl from the blond. “You don’t touch what is ours.”
“I don’t want to touch her.” My stepfather spat.
Despite myself, I cowered against the man who held me. A stran
ger I had never met, he was still a safer haven than my stepfather.
“I only wish to make sure you are satisfied, milords. Do you want to sample her?” my stepfather asked in an evil tone. He wanted to see me torn apart.
A growl rumbled under my ear and I lifted my head. Who were these men, these great warriors who had bought and paid for me? The arms around my body were strong and solid, inescapable, but the gold eyes looking down at me were kind. The warrior ran his thumb across the pad of my lips, and his fingers were gentle for such a large, violent looking warrior. Under the scent of blood, he smelled of snow and sharp cold, a clean scent.
He pressed his face against my head, breathing in a deep breath.
The blond was looking at us.
“It’s her,” the black haired man growled, his voice so guttural. “This is the one.”
One of his hands came to cover the side of my face and throat, holding my face to his chest in a protective gesture.
I closed my eyes, relaxing in the solid warmth of the warrior’s body.
A clink of gold, and the deed was done. I’d been sold.
Almost immediately, the warrior started pulling me away.
I fought my rising panic, wishing that my stepfather’s was not the last familiar face I saw.
“Goodbye, Brenna,” my stepfather smirked as the warriors streamed past him, following their blond leader into the forest.
“Wait,” the blond stopped. Immediately the warriors grabbed my stepfather. “Her name is Brenna?”
“Yes. But you bought her. Call her what you like.”
The dark haired warrior tugged me on. I half followed, half staggered along beside him. My nails bit into my palms so I could keep myself from panicking. Fighting the giant beside me wasn’t an option. Neither was trying to outrun him.