Chapter 23
NOVA
It became abundantly clear that these men were merely Roman’s henchmen, bidding for him by proxy.
None of them touched me. In fact, now that they had me, they hardly even looked at me.
Upstairs, we reached a hall in the left wing with a golden rope divider and three security personnel. They nodded to the men and let us through.
Two girls squealed and bounded down the hallway, stopping abruptly when they saw us. Their mouths clamped shut, but mine fell open.
They were the young pregnant women, dressed in flowy white dresses with big, blooming flower crowns in their long hair.
They stared at me for two long seconds before exchanging a cryptic look. The men wordlessly parted for them to pass. I stood in the center of the hall, too stunned to move. They walked past me, one on either side, laughing.
After they were out of earshot, I turned toward the rabbit man. “I don’t want to sound like a puritan or anything, but should they really be here?”
The rabbit snorted, but he didn’t answer. None of them did.
I didn’t care if it was judgmental or sex-negative or whatever. Call me old-fashioned, but a kink dungeon did not seem like the best place for pregnant women.
And everything about those two women screamed cult, more than about anything else in The Circle. The white dresses, the long hair, the flower crowns, their concerningly young features. Did this mean the fathers were here in the VIP section? And who were they?
We entered a large room, where more men who looked like wax statues mingled with beautiful, young, mostly women. I spotted the caviar immediately, along with exotic fruit and other small, luxurious foods.
“Let’s go somewhere more private and discuss,” a man to my left said to a small blonde woman.
She nodded demurely, at least twenty years his junior, with a hand on his arm.
The golden masked men waited for me in the center of the room. I scanned the space. No Lorelei. Could she be in a private room?
She had to fucking be here. This couldn’t have all been for nothing.
Why wouldn’t she be here? The wealth, the glamor, the weird spiritual undertones—this was everything Lorelei loved, everything Lorelei wanted for herself.
Her PicWave trail was clear: she was a member of The Circle. But where was she?
I ignored the stares in my direction. After one more scan, I gave up, and I followed the men into a connected bedroom. A few men and women left the space, leaving only Roman behind, sitting in a tall leather chair by a fireplace. He was no longer wearing a mask.
The door closed behind me before I could flee.
I was alone. With Roman Graves. After he just paid six million dollars for an hour of my time.
“I am not going to sleep with you,” I blurted.
Roman grinned. “I’m not going to sleep with you either.”
“That is how consent works,” I hissed, unmoving from my place a few feet in front of the door.
Roman’s eyes sparkled. He stood and approached me, his gaze raking over my body. “Turn.”
I didn’t move.
He tsked disapprovingly at my disobedience, circling me like I was an object in need of careful inspection. “Tell me, Nova, are you wet?”
I stammered, quickly spinning so he was back in my line of sight. “Excuse me?”
Roman’s lazy smile didn’t falter, as if nothing in the world could dim the confidence and power he’d inherited.
His dark hair was slightly tousled, only adding to his unbothered charm. He was attractive, unlike his reptilian brethren in the main room. He didn’t need to buy unwilling entertainment.
I had a feeling he only did so because it was more thrilling than the thousands of women who would fall to their knees before him if given a chance.
“What has been your favorite activity this evening?” he tried again, undeterred by my uncooperativeness.
“Being fed chocolate,” I answered honestly.
Roman laughed, like I was being funny. His eyes darkened. “By whom?”
I tensed. “None of your business.”
A muscle in his jaw feathered. “Obstinance won’t get you what you want, angel,” he said with a sigh.
“Oh, and what is it that I want?”
Roman sat back down in his leather chair, lightly swirling his whiskey glass before taking a small sip. “Sit down.”
I didn’t move.
“Please,” he added with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “My lap would be preferable, but—”
I sat down in the chair across from him, the farthest I could be.
“Very well.” He considered me thoughtfully. The darkness in his features gave way to humor, like he was laughing internally at a joke he hadn’t vocalized. “You want to be owned.”
The place between my thighs came back to life with a sudden pulse. I didn’t dare move, but it was like Roman could feel the change.
He inhaled deeply. “Twenty-five is too old to still be hung-up on Mommy and Daddy’s lack of love and attention, Nova.”
I bristled. “You don’t know shit about me. Or my family.”
Did he? His dad owned my entire digital landscape. But there was no way…
“Trust me, I’ve already watched this play out once before,” he continued. “You either deal with your shit like an adult, or you let your trauma burn your life to the ground.”
The way he said trauma, with a heavy dose of mocking condescension, stoked my growing anger.
“You’re wet now, aren’t you?” he asked.
My fists clenched in my lap. I refused to shift, to feel the tiny spot of wetness that had formed in my panties. Not from Roman himself, but from his declaration I wanted to be owned.
He laughed. “Yes, I’m sure your redneck town and its backwoods church was very cruel to sensitive little dreamer Nova.
” He jutted out his bottom lip. “But you’re not there anymore.
You’re here, in the greatest city in the world—where you could be anything and anyone—yet instead you’re still wearing chains you should’ve removed from yourself years ago.
” He leaned forward. “And they’re not the chains you’d rather be wearing, are they, angel? ”
I knew he was manipulating me, and yet, a familiar exhaustion took hold. Like the denial that had once fit me so snugly now only weighed me down, clunky and ill-fitting.
They all made it sound easy. Wes, Jayne, Archer, and Roman. And maybe it could be, if I just let go.
But not with Roman. Not with a man whose eyes held no empathy, no light. Only bottomless hunger—the kind that could never be satisfied, exactly as Wes had warned me.
“Such an expressive face you have,” he said. “I have an idea.”
He was cut off by a low buzzing noise, which I realized was a cell phone. Because of course that rule didn’t apply to him either.
“Hello, father dearest,” he answered.
My stomach turned over.
“Working, of course,” Roman said, answering a question I couldn’t hear with an obvious lie. “On something of extreme interest to you, rest assured.” Roman’s eyes flashed with excitement, though his lips had formed a small frown. “I’d rather keep it a surprise.”
After another pause, the frown grew.
“I am aware. It will be worth it, I assure you. I—” He cut off. A drop of anger colored his light brown eyes. “Okay.” He swallowed. “Byyye.”
He slipped his phone back inside his pocket, releasing a long breath and shaking his head slightly, as if he were a robot in need of a reboot.
“Right, where were we?” He steepled his fingers at his lips. “Oh yes, we were going to do a bit of show and tell.”
He stood and walked back to the door. “I’ll be back shortly. Stay.”
At the command that resembled how one would speak to a dog, my teeth ground together. I glanced at the clock. I estimated that fifteen minutes had passed, which meant at 1 a.m., I was free to go.
When Roman reentered the room, he wasn’t alone. He’d brought in another brunette with dark eyes and curly hair, though her skin was a few shades darker than mine.
I gasped when Roman twisted my chair around with me still in it, forcing me to face them where they stood in the center of the room, just before the bed.
“Kneel,” he commanded.
The girl knelt immediately.
“Good girl,” Roman praised, stroking her hair while he stared at me.
I could leave. I didn’t have to watch this.
“Kiss the floor in front of my feet,” Roman said.
The girl immediately lowered her face to the ground, kissing the carpet. I didn’t move, a confusing mix of shame and lust burning through my core.
“Good. Enough.”
She straightened back up.
“Let’s play a game of fetch,” Roman said with a sinister grin. From his opposite pocket to where he’d placed the contraband phone, he withdrew a pocketknife.
My blood ran cold. The girl’s eyes locked on the weapon, and she bowed her head.
He crouched in front of the brunette, cutting right through the straps of her thong before tearing the fabric from her body. He tossed the panties across the room. “Fetch. Without the use of your hands.”
The woman crawled on all fours toward her underwear, still not making a single sound.
Roman studied my face, my body, with careful precision. “Oh, how I wish you could see what I saw right now,” he said, low and gravelly. “You’re going to leave the most delicious wet spot on my chair, aren’t you, angel?”
The woman returned with her panties in her mouth.
“That’s a good little mindless slut,” Roman said, sugar-coated sadism oozing from every word. He took back her panties. “Open.”
He shoved them deep inside her mouth until she gagged. He grinned, delighting in the sound. A bulge developed in his black pants. I quickly looked anywhere but there.
Roman shoved the girl to the ground and took out the knife once more. I swore I could see his demented mind churning, deliberating, an unfathomable thirst burning in his dark eyes. He looked from me to the knife to the woman beneath him.
He shook his head again, ever-so-slightly, as if reining in some dark urge.
A breath hissed through his powerful, clenched jaw.
He dragged the handle across the girl’s folds, and I held my breath when his fingers encircled the part of the wooden base closest to the blade and he shoved the lower part of the handle inside her pussy.
“Roman,” I breathed in horror. I rose to my feet.
“Sit. Down,” he snapped at me.
The girl moaned, looking down at what was happening with wide eyes and a rapidly panting chest.
He carefully eased the wooden handle in and out of her, stopping at the base of his fingers. I sat back in the chair. I couldn’t leave her with him, and I couldn’t—God, I couldn’t look away.
I hated Roman. I hated him for getting exactly what he wanted out of me, just how I assumed he got everything else in this world. I was hyperaware of my own slick heat, the darkness inside of me at a breaking point of raw desire.
But not for him. Not for Roman.
For the power exchange—the same I witnessed between the woman bound to the ceiling and her Dom.
Roman removed the knife from the woman, securing the blade back in the handle and then inside his pocket.
“You may leave,” he said to her, his eyes never leaving mine.
The door clicked shut behind her.
“Not every man is deserving of your submission, angel. I may be a monster, but at least I’m an honest monster,” he said, lips curving.
Was he talking about Wes? Did he know something I didn’t?
When his phone buzzed again, irritation colored his features.
“What?” he answered. The person on the other end of the line spoke. He rolled his eyes. He pressed the mute button. “Goodbye, Nova. I’ll see you soon.”
I balked at him. I’d never had a more severe case of whiplash. My face burned with shame and anger as I rose from the chair. I didn’t dare look down to see the wet spot I’d left.
I only knew of it from Roman’s victorious chuckle.
As I exited the room, I heard him tell the person on the phone he’d be done soon.
The heat on my flesh only multiplied when the VIP section tracked my quick exit. Several men looked me up and down with a smile, as if guessing what I’d done with Roman Graves.
I guaranteed none were guessing correctly.
The hallway was empty, but I heard moans coming from rooms deeper down the hall. I should’ve searched them for Lorelei.
But I didn’t. I knew she wasn’t here. Because if she was, she would’ve heard about me or seen me at the auction.
Something wasn’t adding up about any of this. About Lorelei and her PicWave trail, about Roman and his billionaire friends, even about Wes himself. It was like I was only seeing half the game board, a lowly pawn amid cunning kings and queens.
I was trapped in a maze, running from predators I couldn’t see.
The moment I crossed the golden rope, strong hands gripped my body and shoved me against a wall. A hand protected the back of my head from impact, and dark, stormy eyes locked on mine.
Wes.