Chapter 8 – EMMA
EMMA
The silence is the worst part. I’ve got no phone, no clock, and no concept of what time it is.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, but my tears have dried and left my cheeks feeling tight and sticky. The room is dark now, with just the faint glow of moonlight filtering through the window, casting shadows across the expensive furniture like prison bars.
Which I suppose this place is, at least for me.
My eyes feel raw from crying, my knuckles aching from banging on the door. All that energy wasted and what did it get me? Absolutely nothing except a pounding headache and wounded pride.
I press my forehead against my knees and try to breathe through the panic that keeps threatening to claw its way up my chest. Four days.
I have four days until Saturday, until some monster pays for the privilege of owning me, and there’s not a single thing I can do about it.
My thoughts turn to Jake, and I hope he’s figured out how futile it is and just runs, because the last thing I want is Kozlov making an example of him too.
One of us dying is bad enough.
A floorboard creaks in the hallway outside.
My head snaps up, heart hammering against my ribs, as I scramble backward on my hands, putting distance between myself and the door. The handle doesn’t move, but I can hear breathing now, slow and steady, just on the other side of the wood.
“Who’s there?” My voice comes out rough, barely above a whisper, and I hate how scared I sound.
A pause. Then, low and familiar, “It’s me.”
Bodhi.
The relief that floods through me is completely irrational, given that he’s one of my captors, but my shoulders sag anyway, the tension draining out of me. It’s him. Not Kozlov, and not Piotr, with his wandering eyes and crude suggestions.
Just him.
He doesn’t move, but the shadow from his boots is visible under the door.
“What do you want?” I ask, and even though I’m trying to sound hostile, it comes out more tired than anything else.
“Nothing.” There’s a soft thud as he leans against the door from the other side. “I’m posted here for the night.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’m so tired, bone-deep exhausted in a way that goes beyond just needing sleep, that I can’t seem to summon the energy to think.
“You should try to get some rest,” he says, his voice muffled by the door between us.
A bitter laugh escapes me. “Just like that? In a strange house, full of strange men. One of which has a key to my room.”
“No.” A pause. “But you’re not going to help yourself by staying awake all night. Sleep while you can. I won’t let anyone in.”
I want to argue, but he’s right. As much as I hate to admit it, running on empty isn’t going to help me think clearly, and if I’m going to find a way out of this, I need my wits about me.
“Fine,” I mutter, more to myself than him.
Pushing myself up off the floor, I really look around the room, like the massive bed that looks soft and inviting, but I still can’t bring myself to climb into it.
That feels too much like accepting my fate.
So instead, I grab the pillow and a duvet off the bed and toss them down on the floor inside the door.
If anyone tries to come in during the night, they’ll wake me up.
It’s not much of a defence, but it’s something.
“What are you doing?” Bodhi’s voice comes through the door, and I realize he must have heard me rustling.
“Sleeping on the floor.” I plump up the pillow and slide one arm underneath it before curling up on my side, back pressed to the wood.
“Emma. There’s a perfectly good bed right there.” His tone is grumpy. “I already said I won’t let anyone get past me.”
In the darkness, I roll my eyes. Someone’s used to people taking his word for it.
“I know.” I reach for the duvet and arrange it into a makeshift nest, glad for something to fend off the chill on my shoulders. “Maybe it’s you I’m worried about.”
The quiet hangs between us, long enough that I think he’s not going to respond. Then, finally, “No one’s coming through this door tonight. I promise.”
Something about the way he says it, low, fierce, and absolutely certain, makes my eyes sting with emotion. I’ve got no reason to trust him, but there’s something in his voice that sounds almost as if he means it.
I twist toward his voice, pulling the duvet tighter around me until only my face is exposed, then stare at the sliver of light that’s visible under the door, watching his shadow move occasionally. It’s strangely comforting, knowing he’s there.
“Bodhi?” I whisper, not sure if he can even hear me through the door.
He does. And I see his boots crease through the narrow gap as he squats down, getting closer to the source of my voice. “Yeah?”
I want to thank him, but the words die in my mouth. Gratitude directed at a man who helped kidnap me sticks in my throat, but they’re true.
He waits, then finally a long pause, so quiet, I almost miss it. “Get some sleep, Emma.”
I close my eyes and try to do what he says, but sleep doesn’t come easily. My mind keeps circling back to everything that’s happened, playing it over and over, like a movie I can’t turn off.
The Club. Kozlov’s cold eyes as he announced my fate. Piotr warning me that I won’t be able to keep my new owner happy without learning some new skills.
And then, everything after…
The ghost of Bodhi’s touch lingers, the tingles from the slow, deliberate stroke of his thumb along the inside of my leg as he removed my shoe.
Blinking hard, I turn over in my makeshift bed and grip the blanket tighter, trying to push him out of my mind, but it’s no good. The second I close my eyes, Bodhi’s back, apparently all my tired brain wants to think about. Every time I start to drift off, another memory surfaces to torment me.
His huge body looming over me. The hard press of him against my stomach. That groan when I bit him, and the dark rasp of his voice.
I might just bite you back.
I squeeze my thighs together harder, trying to relieve the ache, but it only makes things worse. When I slide my hand down my stomach, dipping it between my thighs, I find myself wet. Wet and aroused by a man who helped kidnap me.
Any normal person would be terrified of him, not imagining him inside me, stretching me in ways I’ve never experienced.
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it.
Maybe I’m losing my mind. Maybe the stress of the past few days has finally broken something in my brain, rewiring my survival instincts until I can’t tell the difference between fear and attraction anymore.
Cursing, I remove my fingers from my soaked underwear and take slow, deep breaths, trying to calm my racing pulse and ignore the tension building low in my belly. I need to think. I need to focus on survival.
Saturday. Only four days now until the auction, until I’m no longer off-limits, and my life is in the hands of some faceless buyer.
A thought crystallizes slowly.
I can’t escape, and I can’t fight. But if I want to get my revenge, if I want to sabotage their disgusting plans, I can make myself less valuable.
Kozlov wants me because I’m a virgin. That’s my worth to him.
So… what if I took that away?
The idea is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
If I’m not a virgin anymore, maybe I won’t be worth selling at the auction.
Maybe they’ll just send me to the brothel, where I have some hope of escape.
Or maybe they’ll kill me, but I’m dead anyway.
This way, I choose to fight back with the only weapon I have at my disposal. I refuse to go quietly.
At the very least, it’ll ruin his day.
A devious grin forms on my lips as I consider whether I’m seriously thinking of doing this, planning to lose my virginity as an act of rebellion. If anyone had told me a week ago that this is where I’d end up, I would have laughed in their face.
But now that the idea has taken root, I can’t let it go.
The question is with who.
The driver with the scarred face and flat eyes? Absolutely not. He’s too strait-laced. He’d report me to Kozlov the minute I tried anything.
Piotr? I shudder at the thought. If I let him touch me, I’d be trading one nightmare for another.
My eyes drift to the bottom of the door. That leaves Bodhi, the giant standing guard outside my door right now.
Despite being a dangerous criminal, he does something for me that I never knew about before tonight.
I want a woman who knows what she’s doing.
The memory of his words stings, but then I remember what came after.
His body told me enough to know I can break that stoic, professional facade and make him want me, maybe even badly enough to his baser instincts.
Fuck it. I have to do something.
So, it’s decided. I’m not going to that auction as a virgin.
A strange calm settles over me now that I have a plan. A crazy, reckless, probably-going-to-backfire-spectacularly plan, but it’s all I’ve got.
I just have to be bold enough to follow through.