Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Air rips from my lungs when movement sounds behind me. Before I can turn, a hand fists my hair, shoving me toward the wall.
I grip at the wrist holding me, scratching and clawing while I squirm. I try to wriggle free, my mind going blank.
“Predators look for women wearing their hair down, Princess,” Tyler growls in my ear. My phone is wrenched from my hand and tossed to the concrete. Yanking my head back, he glowers down at me. “Gives us something to grab.” I blink up at him.
“I came to you, Ty.” I wince. “Alone. Let me go.”
“I let you go once. I’ll not make that mistake again.” His face contorts just before he shoves my head into the wall, stealing my sight, sound…consciousness.
A dull thud pounds across my skull. Blood stuck to my eyelashes congeals at the corner of my eyes as I peel them open.
Tyler.
It takes me a few seconds to remember what happened. I jerk forward, panic seizing my thoughts.
No. No. No.
I can’t move. Bindings bite into my wrists. My arms are pulled taunt behind me, and my ankles sting against the ropes keeping them strapped to the chair I’m sitting on.
Where are my pants—and shoes? The knife.
This can’t be happening. Callan is going to be so mad that I went to meet Tyler alone.
I yank at the ropes, trying to free myself. Dread creeps up my spine. “Tyler!” I scream out into a vast room. My voice bounces off the walls before dying.
Where the hell am I? The scent of damp mold prickles my nose. The patterned carpet at my feet is soaked from a crack in the ceiling a couple feet away. A pipe juts out of the crack, dripping a slow drizzle. Grand light fixtures that might have once been beautiful hang broken from their cables. The lights flicker on and off, buzzing with a dim orange glow.
“Tyler!” I shout again, searching the room for him.
Stacks of chairs stand abandoned along a partitioned wall. An overturned blackjack table with a leg missing is pushed up to a set of glass doors.
A crashing sound cracks through the air like a gunshot. My gaze dashes to the source. The door Tyler came through has serrated shards of glass for a window. “Where am I, Ty?” I seethe, jerking in my seat.
“You were too young to ever see this place.” He holds his hands out, turning a full circle with a wildness in his eyes. “My old man had big plans for our club. This casino was going to be the first of many.”
Casino. I look around with new sight. A circle bar to the right, stripped back to its wood structure. I wonder what it looked like before it was left to ruin.
“Where are my pants?” I growl as he gets closer.
He tsks, jabbing a finger toward me. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”
“What should I be asking?”
Moving behind me, he brushes my hair from my shoulders, and my spine goes ramrod straight. His nose burrows into my neck as he murmurs, “I’ve missed your skin, Rogue. Do you know you have this really faint birthmark on the back of your neck?” His skin on mine feels wrong. A betrayal to Callan. To me.
His tongue glides across my skin like a slug, and then a sharp jolt of pain courses through me as his teeth bare down, piercing my neck.
“I love how you taste.”
“Why am I tied to a damn chair? I came to you, Ty.” I force as much calm into my voice as I can muster.
A snarl rumbles up his chest as he shoves the chair and moves around to face me. “Because I don’t fucking trust you.” He grabs my face, squeezing my jaw until I whimper in pain. “How could you leave me, Princess?” His fingers leave my chin and whip across my cheek, whirling my head to the side. A throb pounds across my cheekbone. “How could you betray me after everything we’ve been through? You belong to me!” Trailing his hand from my jaw to my throat, he breathes in sharply through his nose. “I claimed you long before you even knew what your body could do to the men around you.”
I gasp and sputter, trying to suck oxygen into my lungs as his fist tightens. “I love the sound you make when I wrap my fingers around your throat, Princess. It’s the same sound you make when you come.”
Air floods in as he releases me, burning my lungs. I heave, welcoming the rush. I need to steer him away from the topic of us. The bulge in his pants coils my muscles, igniting a blaze of disgust through me.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were with Harley the night she died?” I wheeze.
Tyler paces the floor, the carpet squelching beneath his boots. He rolls his neck and places his entwined hands behind his head with his elbows jutting out. “It’s because of that stupid bitch that we’re in this shit.”