“Are you going to sell me?” she blurted.
No accent, he noted. Her English was clear, but that didn’t mean anything. Not all kidnapped girls were foreign.
“I don’t sell people,” he said evenly.
She licked her lips and he was momentarily distracted by the wet sheen across the plump curve. It took him a second to realize she was speaking once more.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
He regarded her calmly, taking in her hollow cheeks, the darkness beneath her eyes and the exhausted slump in her too thin shoulders. She had the look of someone who had once been healthy, but unavoidable circumstances had sucked the life from her body. He wasn’t overly picky about the physical appearance of his women. Big or small, they served the same purpose. But this girl … there was something in her eyes that made him want to stuff her full of food.
He derailed that thought before it could grow roots. For all her big, doe eyes, she wasn’t his problem. He refused to make her his problem. He would drive her to the bus station, buy a one way ticket to wherever the hell she wanted to go and never think of her again. That was the plan.
“Are you going to give me a reason to?” he said at last with an almost challenging quirk of his dark eyebrow.
He wouldn’t. He’d never hurt a woman in his life. But she didn’t need to know that. Maintaining order sometimes required fear, a subtle reminder that he was in control.
She shook her head a little too quickly, sending loose tendrils of hair swinging wildly around her ashen face. “I won’t. I promise.”
He motioned her forward with a sweeping brush of his hand. “Then we shouldn’t have any problems.”
With a reluctant jerk of her head in a nod, she started for the gaping hole waiting for her to climb into. Around her legs, her skirt twisted with the breeze. It lifted her hair around her face in a tangle. Her knees shuddered visibly with every step. But she made it to the door when Marco stepped forward. Killian had been expecting it. The girl had not.
She jumped and scrambled back away from him.
“I just want your purse,” he told her in an almost gentle murmur.
Rather than abide, her gaze shot to Killian’s. “Why do you need my purse?” she asked. “I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t want your money,” he told her. “It’s merely a precaution.”
She hesitated a full second longer before gingerly unhooking the strap off her shoulder and passing it over. Marco wasted no time tearing it open and rifling around inside. Killian had a suspicion there wouldn’t be much in there, especially not a gun. Somehow he doubted Arlo armed his whores. But he had learned from experience to never trust a pretty face.
As he expected, the purse was returned to her.
“Against the car, please,” Marco said, motioning with his chin towards the side of the limo.
“Seriously?” Juliette blurted, horrified. Her wide eyes jumped back to Killian. “I’m not carrying.”
“Precaution,” he said again.
Visibly biting back the retort he could see shining in her eyes, she moved to where Marco pointed and set her purse down on the ground. Then she planted both palms on the hood, smudging the spotless black paint with sweat. But even while she braced herself for his hands, she jumped when they lightly brushed her shoulders and started down her sides. Her eyes squeezed shut tight when they moved along her hips and down her legs. Then back up the inside to her thighs. Marco was quick. It ended reasonably fast and she jerked away the moment Marco stepped back. She snatched up her purse, her face bright with the first sign of color Killian had seen on her.
She glared at Killian. “I don’t like guns,” she told him sharply. “I’m not a threat.”
Unconsciously, the word threat drew his eyes to her mouth and he almost snorted at her outright lie. Everything about her was a threat and made even more dangerous by the fact that she clearly didn’t realize it.
“Precaution,” he said yet again, oddly fascinated by the fire reflecting in her eyes. He found he preferred it to the fear and emptiness he’d seen there so far. “You can never be too careful.”
Her gaze slanted to where his men still stood, silent and watchful. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and nibbled anxiously before returning her attention to Killian. Lips he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of opened only to be snapped shut by the resounding bang of metal that split the evening silence. The explosion sent a flurry of chaos into motion. Killian leapt into action without even pausing to consider.
He grabbed the girl. His bruising hands cut strips into her skin as he jerked her forward into his chest. One arm closed firmly about her middle as the other lifted to thread rough fingers through her hair and cup the base of her skull. Her face was shoved into the soft fabric of his dress shirt even as he whipped them around in a fluid and powerful twist of his body. Her back slammed up against the side of the limo and held there by the solid length of him as he tried to shield her from whatever was happening in the background.
“Whoa! Easy. It’s just me!” someone shouted into the chaos they’d created.
Killian pulled back from the girl just enough for a quick once over to make sure she was all right. He was met with those big eyes of hers and parted lips. Even with heels, she barely came to his shoulders and the slightness of her affected him far more than he was comfortable admitting. But it was the feel of the rest of her that had him jerking away. It was the graze of her taut little nipples through both their clothes that temporarily made him forget why he didn’t pick girls like her. He tried not to let himself look, knowing full well that it would end with her flat on her back across the limo floor and him tearing at her clothes like some starved animal.
Christ, what was wrong with him? Sure it had been a while since he’d been with a woman, but it hadn’t been that long.
He turned away, quickly and struggled to assess the situation. His men stood in a half circle around him and the girl, guns drawn and aimed at a kid barely eighteen, waving a white envelope in the air.
“Arlo wanted me to give this to her.”
He gestured at the girl. Her eyes flicked towards Killian, uncertain and dark. He stepped aside and let her accept the envelope the boy handed to Dominic, who passed it to her. She took it with a quiet murmur of thanks and frowned. Her gaze shot up to the boy, questioningly.
“Boss said to hang on to this,” the boy answered with an airy shrug.
It was clear from the bemused line crinkling the place between her brows that she had not expected the gesture. She turned it over in her hand and froze. Killian couldn’t see what she’d spotted, but whatever it was had her head jerking up and her eyes going as round as the O shape of her mouth in surprise. She forgot the boy and turned her attention towards Killian. Part of him wanted to ask, while the other determined they’d been in that driveway long enough and his skin was beginning to itch.
“Get in the car,” he told her, his hand already on her elbow, propelling her.
She didn’t fight him. She let him nudge her into the leather seat. Killian followed her as she abandoned the bench and moved to the one adjacent. The harsh halo of light spilling over them from the single bulb overhead shimmered through her unbound hair and illuminated the bleakness of her face. It intensified the rings beneath her eyes and the smudge of dried blood still staining her lip from her earlier nibbling. She wedged herself into the seat, perching rigidly on the edge with her purse stuffed into her lap and her back unnaturally stiff. She watched him the way most people watched a chainsaw wielding maniac.
Not far off, the voice in his head said dryly, and was ignored.
The door was shut behind them and they were alone in the semi silence. Somewhere ahead, he could just hear Marco and Frank climbing into their seats in front.
“What’s your name?” he asked as the car started its smooth departure.