“Juliette,” she whispered.
“Juliette what?”
“Romero.”
A dark eyebrow lifted. “Juliette Romero?”
She met his gaze with a warning he found immensely amusing. “My mom really liked Shakespeare.”
She seemed to think of something and quickly dropped her gaze. Her hands trembled as she stuffed the envelope into her purse.
“Where are you from?” he pressed.
She zipped the top of her bag before lifting her eyes to him. “Yorksten.”
Surprise flickered through him. “That’s only twenty minutes from here.”
Juliette nodded.
Clearly not kidnapped then, he thought, sitting back.
“How much are you in with Arlo?”
She blinked as though he’d caught her mid thought. “I’m sorry?”
“How much do you owe him,” he clarified.
Genuine offence pursed her brow. “Why does that matter?”
“Because I said so.”
She looked like she was ready to argue, but thought better of it. She grudgingly averted her eyes when she spoke.
“Hundred thousand.”
He knew to most people that would have been shocking; a hundred grand was a lot of money. But in his world, that barely sparked an ounce of surprise. The crackheads and dope fends ran that bill up easy.
“Drugs?”
Juliette shook her head. “It’s not my debt.”
Curiosity had his head tilting a notch to the side. “Whose is it?”
His question seemed to bother her. Her lashes lowered to her lap where her hands were twisting restlessly into the strap of her purse. Her teeth assaulted her already brutalized lip, uncaring that she was agitating the wound. She stayed that way for several long minutes. Killian waited, refusing to budge on the question.
“My father’s,” she murmured at last. “He got in deep after my mother passed away from cancer. He started playing the tables and the machines and…” she trailed off with a twist of her lips. “Anything that promised a big payout really.”
“He gambled,” he finished for her.
Juliette nodded. “And he drank heavily. I didn’t know about Arlo until he showed up at our house after my dad was shot during a drive by and demanded money or my sister.”
He said nothing for a damn long time. Instead he studied the woman across from him, traced the beaten lines of her body. She had a very nice body. He was certainly not immune to it. She had long legs and curvy hips. Truthfully, there was nothing about her he found remotely unattractive, nor could he deny his own body’s awareness of her.
He wanted her.
It was jarring because he didn’t normally find girls like her remotely appealing. The women he was used to were professionals, clean and carefully selected by him. They knew what he wanted. They knew the role. Girls like Juliette, girls who came off the streets and gave themselves to men for whatever little money they considered themselves worth, were a risk. They were dangerous.
“Are you lying?” He squinted at her through the shadows, scrutinizing her every movement carefully. “Because if I find out you’re lying…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. She struck him as a clever girl who would get his meaning without him needing to paint a picture.
Instead, she frowned at him like he just asked her to reenact Swan Lake.
“Why would I lie about having a sister?” she wondered with a hint of annoyance.
“You’d be surprised the things people lie about,” he stated evenly. “But I meant about why you owe Cruz. Is it drugs?”
Juliette shook her head. “I don’t do drugs and I’m not lying.”
It was impossible to tell if she was telling the truth or not. She didn’t falter or even bat an eyelash, yet something about her continued to nag at him. Something about her just didn’t fit everything he was seeing and it was pissing the fuck out of him.
Outside, city lights flared past the windows, coloring the glass the electric pink and blue of the neon signs. The weekend had the younger crowd haunting the busy streets, club hopping and living their carefree lives. Juliette’s attention was snapped away by a group of scantily clad women darting down the sidewalk, arm in arm, laughing and staggering drunkenly into each other. A taxi honked noisily when they bolted blindly across the intersection. They laughed riotously and disappeared down the block.
She continued to watch them long after they had vanished from sight and the longing in her eyes only intensified his curiosity. The shadows of sadness haunted the corners of her downward tilted mouth. Her teeth were back to nipping at her bottom lip and it took all his restraint not to reach over and pry it free, not to smooth his thumb over her self-inflicted injury. The leather beneath him rustled when the temptation had him shifting in his seat. The sound turned her focus back on him and their eyes met across the distance. Hers were so impossibly open. The vulnerability in them filled him with a frustration he had no idea what to do with, yet wanting to do something.
“Is your name really the Scarlet Wolf?” she asked quietly.
Despite the knot in his chest, Killian felt his mouth twitch.
“Killian,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “Why do they call you the Scarlet Wolf?”
It was his turn to shift his gaze to the window, away from the question and those damn eyes. The surreal sensation of being asked was a new one; no one had ever asked him before and he was ill prepared with a response.
She didn’t push.
“Thank you for not leaving me with Arlo,” she murmured. She dropped her chin to study the clasp on her purse. “I don’t know how to repay—”
“I don’t want repayment,” he cut in sharply, annoyed by the very idea. “And I didn’t do it for you.” And he hadn’t.
His reasons for not leaving her alone in that warehouse had nothing to do with him being a good guy. Honestly, he would have left her there without a thought if it weren’t for the fact that she reminded him of someone he had once loved. Maybe that made him an asshole, but there were hundreds of different groups of organized crime in the city. No way in hell was it possible to save every single victim. Juliette was no exception. It made no difference to him that his body was willing to overlook all his own rules for one night with her. He wouldn’t be who he was if he let his cock do all the thinking.
“How long have you been in the Dragon’s debt?” he cut into the awkward silence that had descended upon the car.
Juliette moistened her lips. “Seven years.”
Seven years to pay off a hundred grand made sense. She wasn’t paying the loan. She was paying the eighty percent interest and probably would be for the rest of her life. It was how loan sharks made a big chunk of their profits, by bullying and milking their victims for all they were worth. Odds were she would never be free of Arlo.
“So you’ve done this before then.”
“This?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Been with a man,” he clarified.
She hesitated a full heartbeat before answering, “Yes.”
Killian studied her. “How many?”
She shifted in her seat. “How many…?”
“Men.”
She licked her lips again. “I … I don’t know.”
Normally, he didn’t ask the woman he was planning on fucking for a number of past lovers. Most being escorts, he assumed had had plenty and that was how he preferred his women—experienced. Asking was just redundant. Virgins were messy and delicate and he wasn’t gentle. He didn’t possess the patience a virgin would require. But he sincerely wanted to know with Juliette. It was insane, but the thought of her having so many men she couldn’t possibly keep count annoyed him. While he was perfectly aware that it was the twenty first century and women were allowed to have as many lovers as they wanted—it was her body after all—the idea of any man touching her pricked him with an irrational sense of irritation.
“You don’t know?”
“I never thought to keep track,” she snapped, her cheeks a deep scarlet. “A few.”