Page 8 of Skin Trade

“Not your problem anymore,” she said to no one.

The bathroom had another door on the other side of the divider. Biting her lip, she poised her hand on the doorknob and gave it a little twist. Seth's scent blasted out the second the door was opened an inch. She closed it, giving a little gasp as she did. "Oh, no. Not happening." He'd left the key in the lock inside the bathroom. She gave it a quick twist and then angled it the way she'd learnt at Creven's to stop anyone poking something in it to knock out the key.

She'd learnt that trick early enough too, and she'd passed it on to the other young girls like a rite of passage. Nothing angered Creven more than to find one of his girls had come into their blood. She still bore the scar herself, across her inner thigh.

She realised she didn’t have a window. There were curtains, long and draping on the floor, and there was even a lace curtain behind it. When the lights shone through, she made the mistake of thinking it was the outside, but she pushed the lace back and found the window was a door.

A balcony—big enough to sit out on. Big enough for two, for a table … for god knows what else. She pushed open the doors and the waft of noise burst in and slammed her against the chest, but it was filtered noise. She stepped to the edge of her balcony and leant against the white railing. Lights hung down like a wash of stars inside a building. Above and all around her, all the rooms created a square, and they all had their own balconies, just like hers. Some of them were occupied, some of them were dark, but all of them peered down to the same spot, Skin Trade.

And there he was, standing with another man, another vampire, and talking whatever business it was they were dealing with. Seth had his arms folded across his chest, one leg out, hip jutting, and everything about his posture screamed at her. He moved only to drag a hand through his dark hair, which fell back down at either side of his temples the way it had been before.

Payton gripped the edge of the rail. Before she could move back, Seth flicked that perfect gaze at her. Even from there, his eyes shone with the blue tinge around the edges. She leapt back, but not before catching the way he cocked one brow, and the corner of his mouth rose at one side.

“Shit.”

No, no, no. She slammed the doors shut and yanked the curtains back into place, then stood, frozen, as if he would fly up to her because he’d caught her watching. That was all she needed.

The phone on the desk rang. She yelped. Heart hammering, she still answered it, ready … knowing damn well who it was.

“Miss me already?”

“No,” she said. She leant into the edge of the curtains, using them to shield her as she peeked out through the side. He was standing farther back than he had been before, mobile phone to his ear. “I was wondering if there was a way to get out of here. Possibly considering leaping to my death. My room is high enough.”

“Are you a danger to yourself, Payton?”

"No. I was simply stating a fact." Below, from the minimal view she had, she could only see the dancers now. The crowd had moved to where Seth had stood just a moment before, and she pushed her face into the gap for a better view. A second later, the handle on her door jerked, and the door banged against the back of the chair.

“Open the door,” he said, both through the phone and through the small gap in the door at the same time, then he hung up.

Chapter Seven

Payton put the phone back in its cradle and then stood still in the middle of the room, frozen like a bloody deer trapt in the headlights of a hunter. Yet it wasn’t fear in her belly, or even the need to run. No. It was the image of him in her head, Seth, staring up at her from below with eyes that seemed to locate her with ease … predatory ease. Yes, that’s what he had.

The very idea of it, created a delicious contraction of her stomach muscles and she put her hand just under her rib cage as if she could somehow stop it.

“Let me in, Payton,” he called through the door. She could imagine him standing out there, hand on the handle. This was a man who was used to getting his own way.

“It’s late. I want to sleep.” Lies … all damn lies. He’d got into her head already, too much … too fast … and she needed some time to herself to get him out of there, to get her mental shields back in place. So much as she wouldn’t admit it, even this short space of time with him, it had done something to her, done something inside her. He was a familiar stranger. Someone she knew, even though she really didn’t.

He pulled the door closed again, and that was fine. She waited. He was a vampire, no footsteps for her to listen to unless he wanted her to, no sounds at all really, but she could count and wait, and count some more.

A second later, the inner bathroom door rattled. Shit. She darted to her door. She could lock her own bathroom door, trap him in there. Not that he’d be stuck for long.

“Come on, Payton. Unlock the door,” he called through the door, rattling it. She shook her head, backed away.

“Let me go to sleep.”

He said nothing, and the silence made her think maybe he'd gone back to whatever he was doing. Unless he was going to go balcony hopping, she was safe, for now. Except … an instant later, the wood in the bathroom cracked, and she peered in just in time to see the lock break and spin in its wooden frame. Seth opened the door.

“Why do you have locks, if you can just bust them open,” she said, not keeping the snip out of her words.

The lock had truly come out of its holder, and it spun where it was and slumped at an odd angle. Seth gripped the edge of the wood with one hand and pulled the lock with the other. It came free after little resistance. “Because,” he said, “it stops all the girls I buy thinking they can lock themselves in.”

All the girls? No. That comment wasn’t lost on her. It made her step back from him, arms crossing her chest again, thighs together. “You buy your sex often then.”

That quirky fucking brow again, going up, a dark arch framing just above his eye giving him a look that spelt trouble and an invite she knew she’d have a problem turning down. His eyes were brighter too. He’d fed. The blue in them was so bright it was almost white around the edges. In the middle, jet black pupils that were fixed right on her.

“I don’t buy sex,” he said. “Women give that to me for free.”

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