Page 7 of Omega Untamed
Kee banged his palm hard against one bar, and swore. Out the corner of my eye, he spun and hugged his hand to his chest. His jeans hugged tight at his hips, tugging against the two rips high on the backs of his thighs. The bare skin pressed against the material, smooth and hard, meant to draw the eye.
I glanced away. I’d held the guy over my shoulder. I’d felt his heat, his weight, and the firmness of his muscles on the backs of his legs. I’d already touched that skin—on his arms and chest—and knew it to be silken. But seeing those cuts in the jeans fabric made him seem suddenly vulnerable. Or cute. Or something I couldn’t allow my mind to focus on.
I made a deep sound, low in my throat. If I’d been an animal it would have been a growl. Well, maybe it still was a growl. It managed to intimidate a lot of people, but mainly it was a habitual reaction for when I was annoyed, miserable, or unhappy. It wasn’t about anyone but me. My own personal criticism of my current life.
More grumbles from the cell.
“Am I supposed to use this toilet? Really? Without any privacy? And there’s no food. Is food being brought at any time soon? What about water? Am I to drink from the sink?”
I said nothing.
“Who the fuck does this anyway? Puts someone in a cage like this? I haven’t done anything! I don’t owe anyone a thing! What? Does he have a kink or something for this? Is your boss wanting to fuck me in a prison cell? Is that it?”
“Yes. Well. We’ll just wait and see, won’t we?” When I spoke, I didn’t look at him. But I saw movement, Kee beginning to pace the length of his confinement.
“Wait? How long?” His breaths came out like hisses.
I reached out to the end table and grabbed the remote, turning on the TV. I didn’t care what came on, just as long as it was noise.
Kee paced. He kept calling out to me.
“Hey!”
“Bast!”
I ignored him.
After a while I got up and glanced at the clock over the stove. I noted two hours had passed since I’d brought Kee here. Had I napped that long?
After a while, I got up and went to the fridge at the far end of the suite, out of sight of Kee. I didn’t drink on duty, so ignored the cold beers in favor of a sugared cola.
The fridge was well-stocked with drinks and sandwich makings.
Myre had been clear that I wasn’t to give Kee food or water. But he had to be thirsty. All the drinks he’d had served to him, gifts from various bar customers looking to get lucky, had to have taken a toll. And he’d had drugs in his pockets, which Stone had emptied in the alley trash before we’d wrestled him into the car. I wasn’t sure he was on anything right now, but if he was coming down, it might be uncomfortable.
Well, Myre had said no water. He hadn’t said no soda.
I grabbed a plastic cup from the cupboard, took another cola from the fridge and poured it into the cup.
When I came into the main room with the drinks and saw Kee looking at me, then glancing at the drinks in my hand, I realized I was letting empathy intrude with my job.
Yes, I had empathy. But on the job I tried to curb it.
Kee licked his lips. “I’m thirsty.” He flattened his lips and glared.
I stopped about six feet away from the bars.
“If you were truly thirsty, you could do as you suggested earlier and drink from the sink faucet.”
He turned his head away from me, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn’t have to do that if you’d just let me out of here.”
“No.”
“If your boss wants a word with me, I’ll cooperate. Like normal. We sit face to face and we talk.”
That would never happen. Myre was a paranoid fuck.
I closed my eyes, then opened them slowly, suppressing a sigh.
