Chapter 18 #2
Silence met him, but he saw a couple of the men turn to look over their shoulders and assumed they were looking to their boss to see how he wanted them to respond. In his mind, there hadn't really been any chance that these people were random villagers, but this confirmed it anyway.
“You stole something from me, and I want it back,” Koa Rolland said, the short, round little man appearing beside one of the others.
“Actually,” Mateo drawled, “you took something from me that wasn't yours to take.”
“I bought her,” Rolland insisted.
“She wasn't supposed to be for sale.” Mateo had no idea how he was going to play this, but he’d better come up with something quick.
Azure knew that Ally had been his beforehand, so he may as well stick with that.
There was likely nothing he could do to talk his way out of this, but he was going to have to try, because his comms unit was in his pack up the top.
Without it, he couldn’t call in his backup, which couldn’t be more than a mile or two away.
“Get up here, now,” Rolland yelled, with all the authority of a man who was used to getting his own way.
Well, the man had better get used to losing, because there was no way Mateo was handing over Ally without a fight.
“Don’t follow orders from you, Rolland,” he called back, but he swam himself and Ally over toward the rocks that made a slippery path up through the vegetation.
“Remember what you're supposed to do. Eyes down, don’t speak unless told to, do anything I ask of you without complaint. I won't let him take you away from me.”
“I'd rather die, Mateo, than be trapped here with him again,” she whispered, and he heard the certainty in those words. She wasn't making a wild statement out of fear, she was stating a fact.
“Won't come to that. If nothing else, Trigger and the guys will know something’s wrong when we don’t show up, and they’ll go back to the mansion looking for us when they don’t find us here. You do whatever you need to do to survive until they get you out, no matter what.”
“Don’t say things like that, because it makes it sound like you don’t intend to survive.”
“You over me, every single time, little mouse.”
Grabbing her hand, he kept her slightly behind him as he helped her climb up the rocks to the top of the small incline.
When he got them there, he didn't cower, didn't back down, didn't act like there were half a dozen weapons aimed at him. Undercover, the only thing that kept you alive was embracing the possibility of death. Ally’s death was unacceptable, but from the way Rolland was looking at her, there was no way he was going to order his men to shoot.
Worst-case scenario, he was shot and left to bleed out on the jungle floor, and Ally was taken back to the mansion, where she’d remain for a few hours until the Delta Force team got her out again.
So long as she went home alive, he’d consider that a win.
“Azure never should have taken her,” he said, keeping his focus on Koa Rolland and not his minions. They had no power here, they’d simply follow whatever orders their boss gave them.
“How do you know about Azure?” Rolland demanded, suddenly uncertain if the way his eyebrows knit together was anything to go by.
“I am Azure. I work for them and pretending I didn't care when they took my girl and threw her in a cage with all the others was hell. I already put in months of work training her to be just the kind of woman I wanted. I don’t go for chained women, but I like them submissive. This one will do anything I ask, and she’ll do it with a smile on her face, happily, because she lives to serve me. ”
Because he knew he needed to put on a show if he wanted Koa Rolland to understand that death was the only thing that would get him away from Ally, Mateo grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her down onto her knees before him.
They’d already played this game in the ballroom tonight, and he knew Ally understood the stakes, so he tried not to feel too guilty as he looked at her.
Keeping his expression cold and indifferent almost killed him, but he didn't have a choice.
“Show them how eager you are to please me, little mouse,” he ordered.
There was fear in the blue eyes that looked up at him, but determination there, too. He knew she didn't like anything about this, but he also knew she’d do it, because she’d already made the decision to do whatever she had to do to survive, and then deal with the fallout when she got home.
With hands that shook only a little, Ally reached into his pants and freed him, stroking him with a fist a few times before taking him into her mouth. Her gaze never wavered, never left his, and he knew she was using him as her anchor.
Which made pushing her further that much worse.
“Touch yourself, little mouse. Show them how much you enjoy pleasuring your master.”
Her brows rose a little, and for a second she choked on him, but then she did as he told her to, and kept one hand on him, while her other slipped inside her pants.
There was no denying the arousal spinning around them. All nine gazes were locked firmly on the beautiful redhead on her knees before him, and Mateo knew every single one of them would swap places with him in a heartbeat.
“She’s mine, and I won't give her up,” he said, looking away from Ally to Koa Rolland. “You paid for a woman from Azure, you pick another one. I’ll pay for this one for myself. She belongs to me, and I don’t share.”
“You could just choose another, train them,” Rolland said, his heated gaze dropping to Ally’s lips wrapped around him, and then her hand inside her pants.
“No. This one was mine first. I found her, I chose her, and I already trained her just the way I want her. Another one won't satisfy me the same way. I’d already planned on buying her from Azure, but they sold her off before I got the money together.”
“If you can't afford her, that’s not my problem,” Rolland scoffed.
“Let me put it this way,” he said as pleasure began to build inside him, and Ally’s breathing grew ragged. “I'm not giving her up. You can kill me, sure, take her back with you, but my girl won't live without me. She knew I was coming for her, and that’s the only reason she didn't do it already.”
“Do what?” Rolland asked.
“Take her own life. That’s what will happen if you take her back by force. So why waste your money? Azure won't give you a refund for that or allow you to choose another woman. So you may as well send us back home and allow Azure to offer you up someone else of your choosing.”
That plan would only buy him so much time, because he’d still have to figure out a way to convince Griffin to let him buy Ally for himself, and would have to rely on the fact that Prey would buy her freedom for him.
But as Ally cried out as pleasure rippled through her, and he followed quickly after her, he knew there was no other choice. He wasn't losing this woman, not to anyone. Otherwise, it wouldn't be Ally contemplating ending things, it would be him.
Because he couldn’t live without this woman.
He didn’t want to.