Page 26 of Wild Ride

“You one of them? Wouldn’t think less of you if you were,” I murmur.

Her eyes widen, and her hand flies to her mouth. She shakes her head from side to side. Then she stands and rushes away from me toward the bathroom. That’s when I hear it. She pukes. A better man would go and hold her hair or some shit, but I’m not that.

I hear the toilet flush, then the water run, and what sounds like a toothbrush. Then she spits and walks back into the room. Her eyes are watery, and her face is flushed. She shakes her head, finally finding her voice as she speaks.

“I wouldn’t imagine that you could possibly think less of me anyway, but no, I wasn’t one of them. I was a virgin when I left Willamette Haven.”

Hearing that she was a virgin when she left that shithole should not make my cock twitch, but it does. My lips twitch, too,but I clear my throat and attempt to go back to being serious. And stop thinking about her virginity.

“Okay, well, what about the others? Were there a lot of young women?”

She presses her lips together. I don’t know if she’s thinking back or trying to decide how much she wants to truly tell me. Maybe she’s in denial because this is taking a hell of a lot longer to go over than I imagined.

“I didn’t necessarily see hundreds of girls, but there were always more women than men. I thought that was normal.”

I have a feeling that the asshole in charge kept his personal life and business separate. Which shouldn’t surprise me, but I didn’t think he was that smart. I figured they all lived together and had orgies every night with these girls. It seems as though we may have to do a bit more recon than I anticipated.

Good news is we know some seriously amazing security companies that have the best goddamn equipment that fall off a truck.Mytruck. And I’m not afraid of a little work, especially when it comes to taking down the scum of the fucking earth.

And this guy is scum.

Whole otherworldly fucking scum.

“I knew everyone by name, Bullet, and I don’t think any of them were there by force, but there were a lot of papers that I filed in the office. A lot. And they all had names on them. Men’s names, women’s names, and there were receipts. But I didn’t know what it was all for, and I was a teenager. I don’t remember everything.”

I open my mouth and start to say something, but she continues, so I slam my lips closed and listen for once. I don’t just sit back and listen very often, but I’m trying to get to the bottom of this shit. So that’s what I do. Dakota lifts her hand to her damp hair and combs her fingers through before she speaks.

“He had my birth certificate in one of those file folders. I never understood why. I never looked for any others, but now I wonder who else he had on file and what he was using them for or keeping them for.”

“He ever touch you?” I ask.

I have to know. I tell myself that it’s because I need to know everything this asshole was capable of, but that’s not it at all. I need to know if this shit with him is going to be personal because this bitch is about to be mine.

All mine.

“No,” Dakota exhales. “My mother tried to get me to hook up with some of the others when I got older. Never the leader, though. I didn’t do anything with any of them. There was never a desire, and honestly, I was raised with them as uncles, so it all felt weird to me. After she died, the whole commune started to pressure me, and that’s when I left and went to Briana’s.”

“I’d like to say that it’s going to help his case, but it’s not. That fucker is still going to have a long and painful death once I get to the bottom of all this.”

“Why?” she asks.

I’m not sure that the words I’ve just said have actually registered. The fact that I’m going to kill that fucker, and enjoy it, but instead of pointing that out and going into detail, I continue.

“Why?”

I watch as she chews on her bottom lip. She looks up at me through her lashes. Goddamn, she’s sexy as fuck. I want to be inside of her right this second. She has no fucking clue, fuck me—not a single one. This woman isn’t just innocent. She’s also clueless about life. Completely fucking clueless.

That should not be a turn-on, but right now, I’m thinking about all the ways I can teach her about life, and that is indeed a whole fucking turn-on.

“Because I’m not someone who can sit back and sleep at night knowing that some fucker is out there selling little girls for sexual enjoyment. I’m not fucking okay with that, and honest to fuck, I want to watch everyone involved in it that thinks it’s okay burn alive.”

“But you don’t know any of them,” she whispers. “The girls. You want to defend them, but you don’t even know them.”

I grunt and move toward her. I cup her jaw, sliding my thumb across her bottom lip.

“I get you think I’m an asshole, but, babe, swear to fuck, there is a moral compass inside of me. I cannot sit back and know that shit is happening, where it’s happening, and who is doing it and do nothing about it. Besides, Shade would have my balls from the grave over it.”

“My father wouldn’t like it,” she exhales. It’s not a question, it’s a statement, but I know she needs me to confirm that shit. So I do just that.

---