Chapter 25 Rae
RAE
SILVER HILL HOSPITAL - PATIENT INTAKE
Patient: [REDACTED]
Admitting Diagnosis: Acute PTSD, Dissociative Episodes
Incident Report Summary: "Patient found unresponsive after encounter with [REDACTED]. Severe psychological trauma. Patient unable to speak coherently about events. Repeated phrases: 'He wouldn't stop' and 'I said no.'"
Paying Party: Howell Technologies (NDA attached)
Length of Stay: 191 days (ongoing)
Lukas tows me down a side corridor. When he shuts a door behind us, the noise of the ballroom fades.
Even in this little service hallway, the opulence is insane. Crystal sconces line the walls, casting pools of warm light on the marble floor, which is laced with gold grouting.
I yank my hand free of his. It’s successful, which is how I know that he let me do it.
Because if Lukas Lazarev didn’t want to let me go, he simply wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t have any say in the matter.
“What the hell was that?” I screech.
My voice clangs off the walls, loud and shrill. Lukas stops walking and turns to face me. His emotionless scowl doesn’t change.
“That,” he says, “was a charity auction.”
I jab a finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare play dumb with me. You just paid five million dollars to humiliate me in front of everyone!”
“I donated five million dollars to a youth mentorship program,” he intones. “You should be thanking me.”
I laugh hysterically, right in his face. “What part of ‘auctioning me off like livestock’ deserves gratitude?! You dressed me up in this, this… thing, and paraded me around, and let a horde of people flap money at me for shits and giggles! What is that if not a humiliation ritual?”
“I outbid them.”
“That’s not the damn point!”
He takes a step closer. I hold my ground. “Then what is the point, Ms. Everett?”
I know what he’s getting at, and I know that he wants me to say it. So, with a shuddering inhale, I say, “Kir…”
I feel tears spring to my eyes and I’m not quite sure why. Sorrow for Kir, maybe.
Something he said earlier tonight stuck with me.
“Must’ve been hard.”
“It was what it was.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because he expects it.”
I turn my gaze up to meet Lukas’s. “Why did you do that to him?”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. “That’s what this is about? My son?”
“He looked destroyed, Lukas. You embarrassed him in front of everyone he knows.”
“He’ll survive.”
“That’s not—” I shake my head. “Why? What did he do that was so terrible? He was being nice to me. He danced with me. That’s it.”
Lukas’s eyes narrow. “He was putting his hands on something that doesn’t belong to him.”
I recoil at once. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“As of tonight, you do.” He reaches out. His fingers brush a strand of hair from my face. The touch is surprisingly gentle, but there’s nothing soft about the look in his eyes. “I paid for you. That makes you mine.”
I slap his hand away. “This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t just buy people.”
“Watch me.”
We stand there in the cavernous hallway. My chest is heaving. His is perfectly still.
“Your son cares about what you think,” I say helplessly. “God knows why, but he does. And you just crushed him in front of everyone. For what? To prove a point? To show everyone who’s in charge? You’re the Big, Bad Wolf, huh?”
Lukas doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me with those unreadable gray eyes.
Then he says, “My son needed to remember his place.”
“His place?”
“Yes.” He ventures closer and I retreat, until my back hits the wall and there’s nowhere else to go. “And so did you.”
“What place is that?” I demand. I’m trembling—my fingers, my voice—but I don’t look away. “On my knees at your feet? Is that what this is? You want me to grovel?”
“You tell me, Ms. Everett. Is that where you want to be?”
“Right now, I want to be anywhere but here.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true at all.” Lukas chuckles mirthlessly. His rough finger touches the underside of my chin. “I think you’re exactly where you want to be.”
I want to deny it, but my pulse is selling me out. It hammers against my throat, broadcasting every shameful thing I’m feeling to the man who’s putting those feelings there.
Because here’s the horrible truth: I am exactly where I want to be.
Pinned against a wall by a man who just spent five million dollars to claim me, and I’m loving it.
Cowering before a man who terrifies me, and I’m flushed with heat and hunger.
Owned by a man who makes my blood sing and my skin prickle and my core clench with something I’ve never felt before…
… and I want it all so bad I can hardly breathe.
I hate myself for that. All the little things happening in my body, I hate each and every one of them.
I despise how my breath comes in shallow gasps.
My nipples have hardened against the silk of this godforsaken dress, and I want to rip them off and throw them away forever.
This liquid warmth seeping through my limbs like honey, pooling between my thighs, heating my lower belly into something molten and alive? It’s awful, awful, awful.
Lukas watches me struggle. His gray eyes track every micro-expression that passes across my face. There’s nothing he doesn’t see. Nor does he have to ask what’s causing it all.
He knows.
He is.
He looks supremely satisfied with that. Not smug—that would require human emotion. No, this is something far colder and more ancient. Bloodless, really. Like a scientist observing a hypothesis confirmed.
His thumb strokes along my jawline. “Your body knows what you want,” he murmurs. “Even if your pride won’t admit it.”
“My body doesn’t know anything,” I whisper.
It’s a pathetic lie, delivered pathetically. I might as well have said, Yes, Daddy, whatever you want.
“No?” He turns his palm to rest against my neck so he can feel my pulse. “Then why is your heart racing?”
“Because I’m angry.”
Lukas shakes his head. “I have another word for it.”
I bet he does. The one he’s thinking of probably matches the flurry of words flying through my head right now.
Desire.
Fear.
Confusion.
Want.
Want, want, want.
Lukas watches me flounder. His face doesn’t move an inch, but something surges in his eyes. A rare flare of heat beneath all that ice. Fire in the tundra.
“I want you to understand something, Rae.” He leans in closer, almost nose-to-nose. “I didn’t just pay five million dollars so I could own you. I paid it so no one else could.”
If it weren’t for him holding me up by my throat, I might’ve melted to the floor. “Wh-what?” I whimper.
Lukas’s lip curls. “For instance, do you know what kind of man Preston Howell is? Do you know what he does to women who catch his eye?”
“I…”
“He uses them and discards them.” His hand curls into a fist against the marble wall. “There’s a trail of gibbering, broken girls in psychiatric hospitals across the country, courtesy of him.”
I swallow hard. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. You don’t know anything about this world.” His breath is warm and fragrant against my face. “You walked in here tonight in a dress that screams ‘take me’ and you have no idea what kind of predators are circling.”
“I didn’t pick the dress,” I snap. “You did!”
His mouth twists to the side. Is that regret I see? No. It can’t be. That doesn’t make any sense.
“Yes,” he admits. “I did.”
“So what does that make you? Another predator?”
Lukas doesn’t answer at first. His eyes search my face like he’s looking for something. I don’t know what.
“Maybe,” he concedes finally. “But whatever you want to call it, you should be afraid of me.”
“Believe me, I am.”
“Good.” He pushes off the wall and steps back. The sudden distance leaves me cold. “Then maybe you’ll listen when I tell you to stay away from my son.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Kir is the only person in your company who’s been decent to me.”
“Kir is playing a game. You’re too naive to see it.”
I shake my head. “What game? He apologized for coming onto me. He introduced me to people tonight. He made me feel like I actually belonged here.”
“He was using you to get to me.”
“Not everything is about you, Lukas!”
“With Kir, it is,” he growls. “Everything he does is calculated to provoke me. Every woman he chases, every deal he makes—all of it designed to prove he’s the better man.”
“Maybe he just wants your approval.”
The look Lukas gives me is almost pitying. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your concern.” He turns away. “Tonight is over. I’ll have a car take you home.”
I push off the wall. “That’s it? You drag me off the stage, trap me in a hallway, and now, you’re just going to dismiss me?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t look back. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He storms away down the hall. After a minute of indecision and a longing glance back at the door we came through, I follow him.
I emerge outside into the frigid night. The chauffeur from earlier is waiting at a side entrance, his car purring behind him. Lukas stands at the rear door, holding it open in a mockery of chivalry.
I don’t look at him as I clamber into the backseat. Even though the heat in the car is blasting.
Lukas doesn’t get in. He leans down, one hand braced on the roof of the car, and his head dips into the open door. He grabs my wrist so I can’t scoot away. His face is inches from mine.
“One more thing,” he says.
I hold my breath.
His lips brush the shell of my ear. The contact sends a jolt straight down my spine.
“I noticed you didn’t wear the lingerie that S?sha sent over.”
My blood freezes. How does he—?
“Next time you receive instructions from me,” he continues, his voice a husky rumble against my skin, “you will follow them to the letter… or you might find yourself on stage at the next gala, wearing nothing at all.” His breath is warm, but his words are ice. “Am I clear?”
He reaches down to the hip slit of my dress and pulls it aside just far enough to reveal the plain white edge of my panties. His fingers in such an intimate place make me feel hot and frozen all at once.
His face twists in irritable disgust when he sees proof of my defiance.
Then his hand retracts. Lukas straightens up. He looks at the driver and gives a single nod.
He shuts the door, and just like that, the strangest night of my life comes to a swift and merciless end.