Page 17 of Firedrake Betrayal
I want it open.
If I could break a chain which had trapped Dominik for twenty years, then surely a door is nothing.
Something tickles the back of my right hand. I look down and bite off a scream as I stumble back, away from whatever the thing is, landing heavily on my ass.
The thing follows.
A bluish, almost translucent ribbon slowly circles my wrist, passing through the mounds of gold I’m sitting on.
“Are you spirit?” I whisper as I stare at it, willing myself to touch it.
I’m getting ready to prod it when a lock clicks. I scramble to my feet.
The door swings open, and Dominik fills the doorway, smiling. “Have you picked something to wear tonight?”
“You let me out early.” I’d thought he would leave me in here for the full two hours he said he would.
He lifts a brow. “Early? You’ve been in here for three hours.” He steps aside. “Come. I have an outfit for you.”
I look down, too surprised to argue. The blue ribbon circling my wrist is gone.
“What is it?” Dominik asks.
I bend over and grab a gaudy ruby and gold necklace from the floor. “This is what I want.”
It isn’t. I just don’t want him to know I called spirit. It was a mistake running for the elevator before. When I break myself out of here, he won’t see it coming.
His bright green eyes probe mine, corners creasing in suspicion. “That?”
My fingers clench around the necklace as I stalk toward him. “Yes, this.”
“Thatis ugly,” he tells me. “There’s a reason it’s on the floor and not on the wall.”
“Well, I want it to remember what an ugly day this is,” I mutter.
As I walk out of the door, his fingers circle my wrist. “You will learn to be happy.”
Tilting my head back, I meet his eyes. “I’ve learned I need to do something about my too trusting nature, and one of those things is to never trust a single word you say.”
He releases me with a smile. “We will have to agree to disagree about that. Let me show you the dress for this evening.”
Dominik arranged a fancy dinner at the restaurant near his apartment building.
He also had the concierge of this fancy penthouse apartment go pick up a dress for this dinner.
Vera Wang.
A sleek, fitted black floor length dress with off the shoulder sleeves that hugs my curves, that made Dominik stare at me for a good three seconds when I stepped out of the bedroom in it.
I hadn’t wanted to wear it at all, but I’d done a lot of thinking in the shower. Namely, how I might use this dinner he wants to take me out on as the perfect opportunity to run.
Like he said, there are two ways to escape his apartment: the roof and the elevator.
The elevator it is.
Getting from Manhattan to a tiny Oklahoma town isn’t going to be straightforward. That’s a problem to resolve once I’m out of Dominik’s apartment and away from him. If I have to walk there, then I’ll walk.
He pulled a small silver key from his black pants pocket when we stepped into the elevator, inserted it into a slot just below the ground floor button, and the door slid shut. When he caught me watching him, he raised a brow.
