Knot (Road Kill MC #2) (34 page)

~ 12 ~

He punishes me tenderly. Each kiss erases the hurt of his words. A man could never speak an apology as perfect as the one he makes with his mouth.

Mick drops my hands, and they grip his tailor-made suit, crumpling the shoulders without mercy as the kettle sings. With a casual slap, Mick hits the kettle off the burner. It skitters across the surface, screaming its anger at the rough treatment, as he plunders my mouth.

His body begs to take mine, his every hard line against my soft ones. I forget again, my body melding to his as though it's always been meant to.

Then my cell alarm chimes.

Once, twice.

Three times. I lift my head. My early alert before work.

“Let it go,” he says, kissing me into oblivion. Our tongues twine in an intimate dance.

I almost do. Then I think of Mom. The sinful selling of my morals needs to continue for her to live.

She has less than a handful of years to exist, but they have to be on my terms. A state home is not part of the plan.

I gently push Mick away. His lips are slightly swollen, and I can't imagine what mine must look like.
No collagen needed for these babies
. My sarcasm doesn’t make a dent in my grief.

“What?” Mick asks.

“I have a second job... That's my alarm...”

Don't ask.

Mick smiles, his sexiness lighting him from the inside. “I know what you do, Faren. It's fine.” His fingers bite into my hips, a fraction away from a location too intimate for anything but consummating what we've begun.

My stomach drops. “You do?”

He nods. “I know you're a physical therapist. I know about your mom.”

The air in my lungs freezes into shards of glass that cut me from the inside. Only Kiki knows about my mom. Now Mr. Perfect Billionaire knows.

“I think you should leave.” It creeps me out that he's stalking me, checking my background. It’s a small relief he doesn't know about
that job.

Guilt.

I assume he knows I was attacked by my psychotic stepfather and saved by my mom. Who was beaten into a coma by fists that know no mercy.

Double guilt.

I’m not interested in being somebody's pity case. I have enough pity.

I want to forget.

Can Mick distract me?
I roll my lip into my teeth.

His eyes track the movement. He leans down and touches my mangled lip with his own. “I want you.”

“It's not enough,” I say.

Mick puts his hands on either side of my head, caging me, and cocks his head to study me with hard-edged eyes. “I thought you didn't want a relationship? Think of what I can give you. Think of what we can have.”

I think those thoughts until it repeats in an endless loop. It's all I think of lately. It's all I can. “You know more about me than anyone else, Mick. You've seen to that.” I can't keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“I don't know everything.” He's so close I taste his breath, yearn for it. “I want to know more. All.”

He moves aside the strip of dress across my breast and presses his mouth to my nipple in a possessive suckle. A thread of connection I didn't realize existed that tethers my breast to my core begins, and a slow ache steals my will. I arch into his lips and moan.

How can I stand anyone else doing this to me?

He lifts his head, wraps my full breast in his palm, and squeezes just shy of true pain. I begin to pant.

“Do you like this, Faren?”

I can only nod as I step away to deny myself. By the look on his face, I deny Mick as well.

“I can't talk you into staying?” he asks, his voice so low I strain to catch it.

“No, you won't be deflowering me tonight, Mr. McKenna.” That came out harsher than I meant it to.

Mick's expression darkens. “I apologized for my presumptions about you. That wasn't fair.”

His eyes follow me as I walk to the door, hyper-aware of his gaze on my body.

I whirl around to face him, so close to the knob I can touch it.

“I know. And I already told you I'm not into rich men.”

His lips twitch as though he's amused, and I want to impale him with my stiletto. Speaking of which… “Do you have my shoe?” I ask.

A shit-eating grin lights up his entire face. “I do indeed. Why do you think I came by?”

Another chink in my armor forms.
Because you want to see me
. I hoped. Of course, Mick dashes that all to hell.

He strides to the front of my apartment, and there by the door, a fancy silver high heel mocks me. I don't wait for any more indecision. I yank the door open and sweep my palm out.

“Why are you being so difficult? We both know what we want—what we need.” Mick asks against my cheek as his hands grip my shoulders.

“Why do you assume we'll end up together?” I counter.

“I assume nothing,” he says.

My brows arch as his hands heat my bare shoulders. He pulls me to him, and I'm so sure he'll kiss me that I close my eyes, holding in my sigh. But it moves out of me unbidden, like an invitation.

Mick doesn't kiss me. “I know it.”

He walks out, leaving me standing there holding the door.

My lips are swollen from his kisses. Every patch of my skin burns from the memory of his touch and my desperate want of it again.

I slam the door and stalk to my vanity table.

Time to put on my face for strangers.

*

I arrive promptly, the bronze dress a perfect complement to my coloring. I know how it looks in all lighting. Kiki encouraged me to pay attention to detail, and I stay the course.

Hardest path of my life.

I strut inside, not feeling like myself after Mick's frontal assault. I haven't felt alive in so long that I feel as if I'm dying piece by piece as I move deeper into the underbelly of the newest venue.

I walk with a false seduction toward the knot of men like I always do, but a man I've never seen intercepts me.

“Miss Faren?” He cocks a brow in question.

I nod, glancing nervously about me.

“You’re the auction tonight,” he says.

I blink stupidly, and he smiles, all teeth and condescension. A rolling hot lump moves through me.

“Here's how it works,” he begins, taking my elbow as he scans my outfit. He gives a slight nod of approval, and I adjust my mask. “You go behind those curtains there”—he indicates ceiling-to-floor velvet drapes in a deep scarlet. “and come out when the bell chimes. Walk the entire length of the floor, come to that center, spin.” He does a little pirouette, and I fight a surge of nausea through sheer grit. “Then continue back from where you entered.”

I’m a piece of flesh to be chosen by one of the men tonight. A random dancer selected like a prize, my humanity forgotten in the discarded pile of hundreds before me.

“Faren,” he gives me a significant look, “the winner might pay quite a bit to have you crawl onto his lap.”

I cast my eyes at my feet so he doesn't see the sick anger swimming in them. “How much?” I ask to the ground.

“I have seen some prices go as high as ten.”

I meet his eyes, so filled with greed I can't make out the color. He takes my silence for acceptance.

“Good.” He smiles at me, and I just stare. He moves nearer and I fight not to move away.

“Now move that hot ass to the stage.”

I feel him leer at said ass as I move away. I don't blink so the tears won't fall.

~ 13 ~

The lights are too bright for me to see the shadowed faces of the men.

I make out the white bidding paddles easily. I step onto the stage, and the curtains whisper open. The velvet makes a sinister slithering sound as it drags across the floor, widening the crack I look through.

I stroll across the mock stage, and the whispers stop.

I turn, and I feel the eye-molestation of the all-male crowd.

I walk back and try not to cave to my desire to run and never stop.

The curtains close, and the shouts and bidding begin.

The horrible auctioneer goes on and on as I wait for the winner in the cramped space between the hall and the stage.

Finally the gavel sounds, the stern echo final and unforgiving.

A security guard comes for me as if I would run off and leave the money.

I think about it.

In the end, I hear the amount the winner promised. I walk down the hall to the room I always dance in. Different building, same rooms. All with peeling, elegant wallpaper like memories of a time when there was hope. The rooms weep their sins all around me.

I move through the door and walk to the damning chair.

I don't turn when the door opens and shuts behind me. I wait until the unknown man makes the first comment. That’s what I always do.

Then his voice paralyzes me, my every nerve ending singing with adrenaline.

I can't turn. I'm rooted to the spot. My heart beats a jagged rhythm of fear.

“Well hello, Faren,” he says, and I turn.

It's better to face the nightmare than hide from the monster underneath my bed.

My hands grip the back of the chair, the only safeguard between us.

“I've been waiting for this for a long time,” my stepfather says like the predator he is.

My mother’s murderer.

“I know.”

I see the tunnel of my escape narrow to a pinpoint of light.

Then disappear.

Instead of thoughts of escape, I have only one thought. It fills my mind, pressing every empty space in my skull until I think it'll explode.

As despair chokes me, I think only of him.

Mick.

#

Faren Mitchell keeps the secret of her second job from the one man who could see her through some of the darkest moments of her life. She doesn't want Jared "Mick" McKenna for the billions he's amassed, but for the one thing she's never given any man: her innocence.

Mick's guilt over the injury he inflicted fuels the beginnings of something more; a sexual consumption of each other that neither were anticipating. When Faren's actions don't match her words, Mick suspicions are raised. His feelings turn to ones of protection after Faren is mugged and he can't reconcile his desire for her with the reality they now find themselves in.

As Faren's bucket list grows, so does the danger that surrounds the choices she's made. Can she take what she needs from Mick and also secure her mother's life? Or will the truth she has weaved between the lies doom them both?

THE TOKEN

A Token Series Novella

New York Times
Bestselling author

MARATA EROS

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