That’s when I noticed the sharp blade pushing into that spot right beneath my ribs.
Vaughn pressed his entire body against mine like a slithery snake about to constrict its prey. “One jab and I’ll puncture your lung. You’ll drown in your own blood. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded frantically.
“Good. Now tell him.” He slid his hand away from my mouth, but kept his body tightly pressed to mine. I wanted to retch. All I saw was red. Everywhere.
I clenched my eyes shut. “I’m fine, Mack. I ju-just tripped. Be out in a sec.”
Vaughn pressed his cheek to mine. “Good,” he whispered.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.
“I want you to tell King how I touched what was his. You’ll tell him how much you liked it.”
I intuitively struggled, but he jabbed his knife into my ribs, piercing my skin. His hand landed over my mouth the moment I yelped.
Ironically, all I thought of was how badly the women of the world needed to unite to exterminate all and any rapists. It was the most vile, decrepit display of power one human could exhibit over another. It was a telltale sign that evolution had skipped several generations in a man’s bloodline.
But knowing that fact was no help to a woman being confronted by a man like Vaughn who delighted in the unthinkable: murder, rape, buying women like he bought art.
“Might makes right; that’s their only real rule,” Mack had said.
Vaughn began to gyrate and pump against my tensed body, his hand sliding between the slit at the front of my dress, clumsily searching between my legs.
“Don’t fucking move, bitch,” he breathed into my ear.
It’s okay, I told myself. It’s okay. Everyone who loves you will understand that you’d rather die than let this animal touch you. Justin will understand, too. No one will blame you.
“I’m not yours, Vaughn. And after you kill me, just know that King will tear you apart, limb from limb.”
Vaughn continued to rub against me, breathing heavily. “That’s exactly what I want, for him to try anyway.”
“Vaughn, you have one point five seconds to remove that hand from Mia, or I will remove it for you.”
Vaughn froze and turned his head. He attempted to say the name of the angry man in a black tux standing a mere two feet from us, but that was a half a second too long.
King threw him to the floor, somehow severing Vaughn’s arm in the process. Blood gushed from the exposed, raw meat that was now Vaughn’s shoulder.
I kept my back plastered to the wall, which provided the only crumb of comfort available to me in this horrific scene. Then I looked at King and, for the first time, saw something within him that truly terrified me. His eyes radiated with savage brutality. He was rage in a suit. Pure violence masked in a man’s skin.
“King?” I said.
His eyes flinted as if I’d triggered an awareness in him. He stepped away from Vaughn and drew a breath. And though Vaughn wailed and Mack pounded on the door, everything around us seemed to melt away.
“Are you all right, Miss Turner?” King asked.
I nodded, confused and somewhat awestruck by King’s presence. “Yeah. I think so.”
He flashed a reassuring smile and tilted his head. “It was never for me. Remember that.” His silvery gaze flickered to my wrist.
I stared at him, attempting to decipher his words.
Had he meant the tattoo? I looked at my wrist and then at him. That’s when it hit me. How had King gotten here? At the exact moment I needed him, he was there. The bathroom had been locked, and the only two people inside were the monster and me.
I clenched my fists. “How?”
Mack burst through the door, ready to attack. The moment he saw Vaughn wailing in agony, trying to stop his blood from flowing onto the bathroom floor, he froze and grinned. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
I moved to point to King, but he was gone. Gone. Like a cloud of fog.
My head snapped from side to side as did my eyes.
“Mia?” Mack snapped his fingers in my face. “You okay?”
I looked down at my body. Spatters of blood covered my chest and arms.
“I think so, but…where did he go?” I searched in Mack’s blue eyes for the answers.
Mack hesitated before saying, “Let’s get you home.”
“Okay.” I glanced down at the puddle of blood surrounding my feet. Vaughn continued to scream, and that’s when I grasped how I enjoyed watching this man suffer. I wanted to see him die. It made me happy to think of a world without him.
Who was I becoming? I’d never been a vengeful person before.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Miss Turner,” Vaughn howled. “I’m going to catch you and pick the flesh from your bones and make King watch. Then I’ll do the same to him.”
“Enjoy your one arm, asshole.” I turned to leave, but a crowd of men in tuxedos had gathered in the doorway. They didn’t lift a finger to help Vaughn, but they didn’t want to let me pass, either.
Mack began to speak, but I cut him off.
“I’m King’s.” I showed them my brand.
They quickly moved out of my way, and I knew there was no going back.
I was the property of King.
And a dark part of me really liked it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
By about one in the morning, Mack got us back on the jet, heading to San Francisco. We didn’t talk much during the flight even though I sat in the cockpit, wrapped in a blanket, thankful for the black dress—sans blood—I’d brought with me.
The entire flight, I stared down at the veins and clusters of lights as we flew over towns and cities. I thought of the people tucked in their cozy beds, blind to the existence of 10 Club. Congressmen, CEOs, influential celebrities, I saw them all tonight. 10 Club was like a living, breathing cancer roaming the earth, with a deep, influential reach into our everyday world. I wanted to feel numb or afraid, because I think that’s how a normal, rational person might feel, but I didn’t. I felt…hungry. Not for food, but for truth. I wanted answers. And I didn’t mean from Mack. Not that he would have said much anyway. He was loyal to King, and now I knew that King was loyal to us, too, in some strange way. That’s what Mack had meant when he’d said that no one messed with you if you belonged to King. I couldn’t deny that it felt like a drug. It instantly turned you from victim to an absolute. Yet, at the same time, I realized how vulnerable I was without King. Tonight, Vaughn had decided to break “the rules” by touching me. It meant that whatever laws 10 Club had, they were subject to being broken just like any law. That got me thinking again about “might makes right.” It was the only thing that truly kept me safe: King’s ferocious might and his ability to protect what was his from those animals.
How the hell did you get mixed up in this whole thing, Justin? I still couldn’t believe it.
When we landed in the dark drizzle at the S.F. airport, Arno was waiting in the SUV just outside the chain-link fence, but I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to see King. I wanted to rip myself wide open to the truth. I know, it sounded savage, but that’s how I felt. I was knee-deep in this strange world where the rules of civilized men were dead and laws of the physical world—at least the one I knew—meant nothing. I wanted to be armed. I wanted to survive. I wanted to save Justin if there was any hope of it at all.
“I want to see him. Where is he?” I asked Mack before I stepped out onto the Jetway stairs.
Mack shook his head. “He’s not going to be pleased about how the party went, Mia. You might want to let him cool off for a day.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” I said.
“You should be. He gave you specific instructions for the party. You disobeyed him.”
“That thing with Vaughn wasn’t my fault. He attacked me in the bathroom,” I argued.
“Perhaps, yes. But he also told you to keep quiet.”
I nodded. “I know.” I wondere
d if I’d done any real damage, but that wouldn’t matter. King would only care about the “disobeying” part.
“Go home, Mia. You need to get some rest.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.” Because not even I knew that. But I knew I wanted to see King.
Mack looked into my eyes and smiled with pity. “He’s not far. He never is.”
“What does that mean?”
He reached for my cheek and stroked it affectionately as if wishing me some sort of luck. “Good night, Mia.”
“Good night, Mack.”
I got into the SUV with Arno, and we hit the freeway. “Take me to his office, please.”
Arno glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “As you like.”
The entire drive, I thought about what I might say to King. I wanted to thank him for stopping Vaughn; however, I also needed to draw a line. Because now I fully understood King’s world. Weakness would get you killed, and the only thing these people respected was power. That meant I had to be strong. I had to stand up for myself. I had to start with King. Otherwise, I would end up placed in these sorts of dangerous situations over and over again. And some day, King might not be able to save me.
Thirty minutes later, I stood in King’s dark empty loft, desperately hoping he’d be there. I knocked on the door to his personal office, but no one answered.
“I am here, Miss Turner.” His masculine silhouette emerged from the shadows of the corner just like it had that first night we met. Only tonight, he still wore his tuxedo from earlier.
Suddenly, I couldn’t speak. So many questions flooded my mind that they became jumbled in my throat, sounding like an epic fit of stuttering.
King stepped into the light, and I caught a glimpse of his carnally sinful lips. “I am still amazed that my assistant isn’t able to speak, answer phones, or,” he paused briefly, “follow a simple set of fucking instructions.”
I nodded. “True. All true.”
“And yet,” his eyes washed over my body, “you do know how to make a man do incredibly stupid things. Like lose his arm.”
Every girl’s aspiration.
King stepped a few feet closer, and I felt the raw, virile energy raging off his body. The room suddenly felt smaller. And hot. I suddenly felt smaller and hot.
I took a step back and bumped into the desk.
Be strong, Mia. Stand up to him.
King looked at me expectantly, his beautiful silver eyes drilling right through my soul.
I took a solid breath. “Who are you really, King? How can you vanish into thin air? How can you hurt someone with just a touch? How did you track me to Edinburgh using a stupid tattoo and then just happen to have a suite at the nicest hotel in town?” I could’ve gone on for an hour with all of my questions, but it was pointless. Everything about King boiled down to two things: he had powerful abilities that defied logic, and he commanded complete control over everything in his world. Except for me. And I wanted to keep it that way.
He rubbed his thumb over the scruffy tip of his chin. “I travel extensively for business, Miss Turner. There’s hardly an inch of this world that I haven’t touched, but Edinburgh happens to be a frequent hunting ground of mine. As for your other questions, I am just a man. One who’s taken an interest in acquiring unique objects and abilities.”
“You mean magic?”
“Magic,” he scoffed at the word. “We had this conversation already. Magic is a fantasy. It has no basis or foundation in reality. My gifts, as are yours, are real. We merely lack the science and technological sophistication to explain them. Just as cavemen lacked the knowledge to explain gravity. Just as early explorers were baffled when their ships did not sail off the edge of the world.”
“So you can make people do things they don’t want to do, pop in and out of rooms like a ghost, and tear off a man’s limbs with the flick of your finger, and you’re saying there’s an explanation, but you just don’t know what it is?”
He crossed his arms. “I confess I do know quite a bit more than I’m letting on, but many of the objects in my arsenal remain a mystery even to me.”
I just didn’t buy his story. How could someone dedicate himself to finding these “unique” abilities and objects but lack any interest in them. He was hiding something. But what? “And you’re not the least bit interested?”
“I’m interested, but there are only so many hours in a day. I can spend them attempting to unlock the mysteries of the universe, or I can focus on acquiring the tools and power necessary to obtain what I really want.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“It is something I’ve been after for a very long time.”
“The Artifact.”
“No. The Artifact is simply another tool. What I’m after is far, far more important.”
“Which is?” I asked again.
He gave me a look indicating he wasn’t going to tell me. Possibly because, as Mack stated, members of 10 Club never wanted their true desires known. Desire meant you had a weakness. Weaknesses could be used against you. And King would never put himself in that position. He’d never admit to desiring anything. Not even me.
Still, what could a man like King really be after? He had wealth, looks, power, and, well, he could call it what he liked, but I called them supernatural powers. He could do things that no regular person could. The only thing my mind came up with was eternal youth or immortality.
“So this…thing you’re after. Is it why you belong to 10 Club?”
He took a step closer, and I instinctively wanted to take another step back, but the desk blocked my way.
“What I’m looking for,” he said in a deep, low voice, “is like searching for a needle in one billion hay stacks—a fucking unicorn. So yes, the club is symbiosis at its finest. I possess abilities and have acquired things people want. In exchange, the members bring me things I need to aid my search.”
“You trade with them. Just like you were about to trade me away to those disgusting bitches you screwed.”
He laughed, clearly amused. “My standards are infinitely higher than that, Miss Turner. They were merely testing you. So was I.”
“Sorry?”
“The party was a test, as was your dress. I rolled you in honey and sent you into the bear’s lair.”
So that’s what the dress was about? “Why would you do that?”
“I wanted to see if you could be trusted. You failed. You disobeyed me yet again, leaving me no alternative but to punish you.” He grinned, clearly pleased by the thought of laying his hands on me again.
“Oh my God. You’re lying. You knew I wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue. You wanted me to screw up so you would have an excuse to ‘punish’ me.”
The vibe inside the dark room turned heavy and hot, like a steam room that instantly made you sweat and want to shed your clothes. My breath became quicker. My skin began to tingle with anticipation. Images of King touching my naked body, pressing against me with his hard frame, kissing me with that seductive mouth bombarded my mind.
This had to be another of his mind games. Didn’t it? Yet, more than anything, I want it to be real. “Don’t touch me, King.”
“Maybe I won’t.” He spoke quietly. “Maybe I will trade you to Anna and Talia.”
“I won’t play your depraved game anymore.”
“It’s not a game, Miss Turner.” His voice was deep, seductive, barely above a whisper. “You belong to me. I can do as I please with you.”
The twisted little part of me that enjoyed belonging to him delighted in his words, and I hated myself for it.
“People aren’t things; you can’t own them,” I murmured. “It doesn’t matter what the rules of your degenerate little club say.”
He placed his index finger directly under my chin to level me with his gaze, though he didn’t have to. I was already crumbling. “Everyone participates of their own free will, Miss Turner. Even you.”
“Free will?” I took a shallow breath. “You took adv
antage of my desperation.”
“Yes. And you let me. Because I had something you wanted: the ability to find people. Which makes you no different than me. People use people to get what they want, and you went in with your eyes open.”
“Uh-uh. It’s not the same, and I had no idea what I was getting into.” However, as I said those words, I already knew they weren’t entirely true. I felt a sick little rush every time I got near him, even—and God forgive me for it—on that first night.
“But didn’t you?” He stepped in, just inches away, and I felt the heat from his supremely masculine body.
I began to tremble with fear, with yearning, with adrenaline. He was like a flame fueled by pure sin that I craved to touch.
“Didn’t you know,” he slipped his hot hand to the side of my face and threaded his fingers in my hair, “deep down inside, that I was a dangerous man? That, if you made a deal with me, you would have to keep it?” His eyes flashed down to the desk as he bent to my ear. “That I’m a greedy, cruel bastard who gets what he wants?”
Maybe. Still, a part of me wanted to believe that there was a redeeming, good side to him, too. And that part was the reason I felt an attraction. Otherwise, what sort of person did that make me?
There isn’t any real good in him. He only protected you because he sees you as an asset.
I sighed inside my head. Maybe King had been right; I was too frightened to take a good look at myself. I was attracted to a man who was evil—a cruel greedy bastard who gets what he wants.
“Yes, I knew,” I whispered.
“Then why did you take the deal, Mia? What is it that you really wanted from me?” His stubble scraped against my cheek as his husky voice hummed inside my ear, touching my thoughts.
“Help finding Justin.” Another half-truth.
My knees began to shake, and I leaned my entire weight back into the desk to keep from falling.
He quietly tisked at me, sounding like a deadly viper hissing its displeasure. “You’ll have to lie better than that if you’re going to convince anyone, Mia.”
He stepped even closer, our bodies barely touching, and I shivered. Being so close to King drew out an animalistic urge that had no rhyme or reason.
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