Page 18 of Born for Lace

Uninterested, he grabs the handle and pulls. I fly across the room and slam my back to the door. Literally using my small body to block his exit. Between him and the door—I regret it immediately.

My heart thunders in my veins as I peer up at the huge male looming over me like a great forest tree over a single flower in a field.

His growl cuts the thick air, and I lift the hacksaw higher. Warning him. “What is a Shadow baby?” I demand, my voice trembling along each word, but my chin refuses to lower. “I won’t just go away. What is wrong with Maple’s baby? Why can’t The Trade find him?”

He snatches my throat before I can finish. Lifting me until my body dangles and my feet scrape the floor, he leans the rest of the distance. His lips meet my ear. “Listen closely, little Lace Girl. You keep that nail file.”

I gasp for air and desperately try to flatten my feet to the ground.

Lagos presses his chest to the serrated edge of the saw and rubs up and down until the blades shred a line through his black shirt but barely graze the tattooed skin beneath it. “Hold it nice and tight.” Hot breath hits me, and I swallow in his fist. “Because you’re going to need to use it one day, especially if you plan on trading your body to a fucking Endigo again.”

A distorted memory comes back. The sight of harrowing slashes of crimson. The crack of broken bones still echoing from the blood-stained walls to the blood-coated ceiling. Lagos didn’t just kill the man—he ripped him apart.

The Endigo man was a mutant, sure. A distorted byproduct of the Gene Age, but he was alive. A living, breathing thing, but apparently no more than an annoying insect, insignificant and grotesque, to Lagos, who, even with his leer and dark presence, is undoubtedly handsome.

I try to breathe and be strong, forcing the words through a squeezed voice box. “What. Did. You. Do to him?”

He chuckles cruelly. A throaty sound that presses on my lungs. “I pulled his spine from his back while he pressed his cock between your thighs,” he hisses the words, hatred deepening his voice, and I recoil. “You’re welcome, little Lace Girl.”

“Lagos,” Tomar’s voice comes from behind me. A knock beats at my spine, snapping the heavy tension between us.

Lagos lifts his head while lowering me to the floor, and when he releases my throat, I grasp it in both hands, feeling the slim column, soothing it.

I gasp for air.

“Move,” Lagos growls, jerking away from me as if he’d rather fling himself off a cliff than be that close to me.

I know I lied and stole their services—their help—without offering an exchange or trade, but… His hatred and rage run deeper than makes sense.

Does he think I stole Maple’s baby? How does he even know her?

Was he intimate with her?

No way. I am confident Maple was loyal to her Ward, and I can’t imagine Lagos having a shred of softness to offer a woman. I can’t visualise him pressing his rough lips to hers, or pulling her small body against his, or running his huge hands up her thighs and squeezing— I need air. My lips part as my head spins, and the lowest part of my stomach clenches.

Right, I’ve decided. I donotlike him. And it’s a contradiction, hating a man who saved me from whatever the Endigo man was going to do, because I did regret it. I did want to run. I’m glad I am not alone in that room with him, but Lagos doesn’t need to be cold and monstrous.

He is a murderer, and he clearly has no respect for life.

Adding space for the door to open, I move to the side, expecting Tomar to step in, but he doesn’t. Lagos strides from the room and slams the door in my face.

My eyes widen. Then I hear the door lock from the other side.

ChapterSix

Dahlia

I don’t know how much time passes as I beat on the door, screaming Lagos’ name but it suddenly opens, and Tomar strides in with Spero in his arms.

Relief floods me. “Spero.”

I reach for my tiny burden, and Tomar allows me to take the infant. I hold him close. Protective.

I scrutinise his chubby body, checking him over, moving the shirt he’s swaddled in. He looks fine and settled, but that doesn’t stop the anxious words that gather along my tongue. Then I remember I lied to them and need answers, so I don’t spit the nasty thoughts out.

“It’s him,” Tomar says as Lagos follows him inside, forcing me back a few steps.

He shuts the door, closing the four of us in. I thought that maybe Lagos was alone in locking me in this room and that Tomar would swing open the door and let me leave.

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