“Damn. I was sure you looked like a ballet girl.”
I roll my eyes at her judgment. “Okay.”
She laughs. “All right, all right, I know, that was bad. Okay, how about hip-hop?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Jazz?”
Shake.
She raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “…stripper?”
I gulp, my lips curling under my teeth. I nod.
“Damn!” She laughs. “Little preppy princess is a stripper. I mean, I see it. You got that whole my son’s girlfriend thing going on.”
I glare at her.
She chuckles again. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a filter.”
Clearly.
“Well, how long have you been here for?”
I bring my finger to the ground and write twenty-two. “Twenty-two girls later…”
“And they’ve all left?” she asks, fear glassing over her eyes briefly.
With good reason.
I offer her a sympathetic smile. “They just disappeared. I don’t know where to. I never spoke to any of them like I am you.”
“To where?” Roses whispers.
Heavy boots slap against the ground as metal keys clink together, interrupting my answer.
“Twenty-two!” one of them hollers, a skull bandana covering the lower half of their faces.
Four of them. The same four who always come to collect. They’re all heavily garmented in black clothes. Black jeans, shirt, hoodie, and black beanie. It’s obvious they’re hiding their identity. Since the night that one of them took me, I’ve not seen anything of what they look like. I wince internally from the memories of the intruder, the stranger in the neon mask. Was it one of the four? But even as I think it, my eyes falling over their bodies, I know that all four of them are too tall, too large. The rapist—because that’s exactly what he is—was skinny. Too short.
I relax. For now.
Reaching for Rose, I catch onto her arm. I don’t want them to take her. I like Rose for some reason, and I don’t like anyone. Something inside of me has latched itself to her. My soul recognized hers like an old friend, as if they’d been friends for lifetimes before ours.
One of the guys snorts, tilting his head back to look at the other, who is watching me carefully. His dark green eyes peer into mine. He’s death draped in sin, tormenting me to come out and meet my maker.
I blink, breaking the eye contact. They never speak much. Silence, like the calm that washes over an angry sky just before it opens up and rains down on you.
Two step inside of the room this time.
Something is wrong. It’s usually only one who comes in while the others wait outside. The one with devil eyes comes closer to me. I crawl backward until my back clashes with the cold wall, drawing my knees to my chest. The glistening chandelier that hangs from the room swings like a timer, counting down the days, the hours to my death. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
He begins to kneel in front of me, and Rose’s cries die out behind me as I get lost in the trance of his eyes. The world is sucked into a dark vortex, and I’m surrounded by just him.
And those eyes.
They drop to my mouth and then come back to mine. I can see up close that he’s young. The skin beneath his eyes is smooth, his eyelashes thick, fanning out every time he blinks.
His hand comes to my arm, and he yanks me up to my feet. His eyes stay on mine as his hand curls around my upper thigh, beneath the short skirt that I’m still wearing from the night I was taken. Short skirt and fishnet tights.
All class.
Someone laughs behind him.
I momentarily falter. Will he try to rape me, too?
He sinks back down in front of me as his eyes focus on mine. My heart thunders in my chest, thrashing around like an angry ocean. His rough palm glides down the back of my thigh and then calf, setting off electricity with every touch. I don’t mind his touch; it feels familiar. My eyes flutter closed; my chest heavy as I suck in each breath. His skin against mine is surreal, like a blue flame pirouetting around a mold of snow. Everything is quiet. Why is everything quiet?
The sound of metal falling against the ground shakes me back into real time, and I know that he has unlocked the final shackle that was around my ankle from the night they took me. I flinch, opening my eyes to find another man dressed in the same attire standing beside the one who grabbed Rose. Rose is smirking at me, one perfectly arched eyebrow cocked.
My cheeks flare to life, embarrassed by how effortless this stranger could stimulate my emotions.
In an instant, he’s standing back in front me, leaning forward until I smell his inimitable cologne—leather and cigarette doused in honey and then set alight to burn. “That’ll be the only time I ever get on my knees for you, Little Dove.”
His voice is like silk, soft enough to coax, but strong enough to wrap around my throat and choke me. Before I can think of anything else, his grip around my arm tightens, and he yanks me forward, out toward the open cell door. The four men who are with him quiet, all watching carefully, while we pass them. The one who has Rose, shoulder barges the man who has me in his grip. “You spoke!”
The one with his hand around my arm glares at him as we all start walking down the long corridor. Room after room. Opulent marble flooring against vicious combat boots. With each step we take, the smell of saltwater becomes aggressively stronger. Some rooms have people in them, not just girls, guys too, and some are empty. Before I can map any of them to memory, we’ve reached the end, and the guy with me yanks open a heavy metal door. Another long corridor, only this one is narrow and lined with multiple hanging light bulbs, all surging as we reach the end. I can smell mildew vaporizing off the walls, the dampness manifesting from the affluent rooms I came from. We push through yet another door, this corridor shorter.
Cold.
I’m so cold.
I shiver. It seems to drop in temperature the deeper we go. He yanks open another door, and instantly, we’re in the middle of a large room. Engines are firing furiously, the glacial temperature now doing a complete 180, hitting scorching heights as sweat throbs from my flesh. It’s then that the smell hits me. Fish mixed with oil. Then the ground starts to swerve more.
“I don’t remember coming onto a boat…” Rose murmurs underneath her breath. I want to agree with her. I don’t remember this either. I don’t remember getting onto the boat, only waking here.
Rose’s question falls on deaf ears as they continue to lead us forward, up metal steps and onto the main platform. I freeze when the wind whips across my face, my teeth chattering. The vast size of the ocean stretches wide around the large yacht, rocking in the middle of the ocean.
My eyes travel up to my captor and then to Rose.
Just as Rose is about to open her mouth, the loud sound of helicopter blades cutting through the air interrupts her.
“What’s going on?” Rose yells. The chopper begins to slowly lower to the helipad on the front of the yacht, the wind rushing around us in a frenzy. There’s a black seven-point star that’s on the helipad, with lights flashing on every point.
I slowly step back, just as the doors open. I watch as all of them, one by one, remove their bandanas.
Four guys.
Four very young guys, probably around my age—maybe a bit older. I scan them closely.
The edgy one who has taken it upon himself to attach himself to me has thick brown hair that looks naturally ruffled, as if he doesn’t give a shit what it looks like. His eyes are as green as tainted jade and his skin is so annoyingly flawless that it bothers me. His shoulders and arms are a vivid display of how hard he trains at the gym, and he must stand at least a foot taller than my five-foot-four inches. I’ve decided I’ll call him One until I know his name. Two, who I gather is the big mouth in the group, judging by his smirking face pointed directly at One, has dark brown messy hair and bright blue eyes that dance in mischief. His eyes remind me of Atlantic ice. I’m not sure how to take him for now, but I shall call him Two. The third, now named Three, has black hair, is brooding, and looks almost bored with everyone’s existence. Like us breathing the same air as he is, is an insult. He has a sharp jaw, a straight nose, and a little cleft that’s indented into his chin. The final boy is glaring right at me. His eyes are like whiskey, and every girl is probably parched. He has a square jaw and larger lips, with tattoos sneaking out from beneath his collar and up his neck. It’s obvious that he’s beautiful, they all are, especially One. One pushes buttons inside of me that I didn’t know I had. Without saying a word, he’s saying a lot.