Page 36 of Pretty Little Prey
A creak came from inside the room. She needed to leave before they discovered her. On her next step, the floorboard beneath her creaked as well. The men’s conversation inside the office stopped.
All of them seemed to wait for another noise.
“She’s locked in her room,” Nikolai said. “It’s just the old cabin making noises.”
I know how to pick locks, bloodsucker. Luna flipped off the closed office door, her barely visible middle finger raised to the ceiling in the darkness.
A sigh came from someone through the door. Deep and aggravated. Bastille. “Kidnapped and locked up in one day. She really is helpless, isn’t she? A Duttur prey.”
Helpless?
She flashed her second middle finger to the door as she moonwalked smoothly across the hardwood floors down the hallway.
They thought she did not know how to do anything for herself just because she was a prey? Bastille had mocked her when Kobe made her dinner, acting as if she wouldn’t know how to make a bowl of cereal. Like she was pampered her whole life.Not even close, buddy!
A part of her wanted to see Bastille’s face when he realized she had broken out of the room and escaped the four alphas.He thinks I’m just a weak, meek prey who is incapable of taking care of herself.She wanted to revel in his disbelief and regret when he found out she had been on the run, scrubbing bathrooms and living off noodles, and sleeping only four hours each night on an air mattress in a closet.
Too bad, she would be long gone before any of them noticed.
With aching slowness and special attention to every creaky floorboard, Luna moved to the doorway in the kitchen.Almost there. She would leave this place, skip town, and never see the predators again.
Skip town with what money?
She bit her lip and glanced behind her. If she could leave with the basilisk briefcase of cash she had gotten from the dragon, she could disappear. Safety ensured for at least a year of hiding. She could treat herself to more than microwavable ramen each day.
She wanted that money.
Dammit. Just before she escaped through the side door of the cabin, she turned around. The briefcase had to be in Bastille’s room. It was clear that he was the leader. He was most likely to have the case.
She tiptoed back, passing the closed office door where the men spoke, and approached the bedrooms toward the back of the cabin. Bastille would have the largest room. Possibly black walls.He seems like a man with a mirror on his ceiling. Someone who knew how perfect he looked. Someone who preferred to watch his own face during sex instead of a partner’s.Stop thinking about Bastille’s sex life, she chastised herself. It was just his potent alpha pheromones messing with her mind.
She paused in front of the bedroom door at the very back of the cabin before slipping through the doorway.
Black silk sheets on a king-sized bed.
A bookshelf of only dark-colored, leather-bound books.
A long mirror on the freaking ceiling perfectly reflected the entire bed, proving her assumption true.
The room smelled like him; like sunlight basking over pine trees and earth. Like baked nature. Luna used to roll her eyes at the way women described the perfect man smelling like sandalwood but now she understood. Bastille smelled like sex in the woods. Rough, hot, dangerous… A fantasy.
The basilisk case sat on a dark wood dresser beside the closet.
Yes.
She grabbed it and started for the door, but her heart stopped as she heard heavy footsteps trotting down the hall. Walking toward her.
Damn it. Could she not catch a break?
The footsteps did nothing but grow louder as she glanced around and assessed her situation.
Closet. Hiding spot.Run.
By the time Bastille strode into his bedroom, she was hidden in the darkness behind his various coats and shirts. The closet door was still slightly ajar—just open enough for her to peek through and see when he left again.
Please let him leave the room before he catches me.
Please have him only come in to grab something and go.
