Page 2 of Prodigy & Tybalt
There was another man in my buyer’s airy hallway, even taller than the first, bigger but without the defined strength of the other’s biceps and shoulders. Shades of sunlight turned his brown skin to pure gold, making his eyes glow a rich caramel shade as they met mine and—filled with horror. He backed up a step, a hand coming up as if to ward me away, to push me back.
I flinched, my soul recoiling so hard it would bruise if that were possible.Again: what the fuck?
“No,” he growled, rattling and deep. But nothing could stop my heart beating harder, faster. He was my mate, and he’d come to save me.
I was surprised to find my voice tighter when I spoke, surprised to find a tear sliding down my cheek. “How did you find me? Mum always said you would, but how?”
He backed up again, and this time it hit me like a slap. Like… rejection. I shook my head, holding myself tighter. I hadn’t just gone through weeks of abduction, auctions, and captivity to be rejected by the one person on this goddamn planet who was supposed to put me above everyone else.
Whatever dreamy hope had taken hold when his scent met my lungs began to crumble, to curl and blacken like burned paper, to incinerate to ash.
The bastard whose scent told me he was mine, my future, my happiness couldn’t even look me in the eye. “I didn’t find you,” he said in a low half-growl, shifting his weight on his feet. “Someone reported screaming.”
“Good.” It gave me fierce pleasure to know my yelling and pummelling the door hadn’t been for nothing. “I screamed this fucking house down. And it—” I sighed. “It doesn’t matter how you found me.”
Whether he could look at me or not, whether he wanted anything to do with me, it didn’t matter as much as the fact he was biologically hard-wired to protect me, which meant I wasgetting out of here. It meant my buyer didn’t get to stroke his hands over me again, beat me again, burn the skin off my lips with his horrid fucking kisses again.
“You’re notlistening,”he snapped. That was the only word for it—snap. Like the crack of teeth coming together. Like a bone breaking. Like whatever horrid pain struck me, deep inside my chest.
I straightened, gripping my white shirt tighter, my knuckles pale.
“Sweetie,” the big guy warned, stepping between us. I didn’t like the mix of confusion, understanding, and pity in his gaze when he looked at me. I wanted to give him the middle finger, but I just dug my fingernails into the starched cotton shirt, not wanting to piss off my rescuers.
And if they turned out to not be rescuers after all, I’d been growing my fingernails long these few weeks, been biting them into sharp points. I’d stab them into the big guy’s throat and—
Run, just like my mate was running. I ground my jaw to push back the hot, prickly tears building in my eyes, the tingling in my nose, the horrid quiver in my bottom lip. And I watched the one man who was biologically required to protect merun away,leaving me to the mercy of the other gym bro.
“What the fuck,” I hissed under my breath, pulling in a tight, painful breath. It felt like glass had shattered inside me; every inhale made the shards shift around, opening lacerations on my already-bruised soul.
“It’s… complicated,” the big guy said.Hehadn’t run off and left me. I wondered if he was in the market for a mate, because apparently I had an opening.
That thought made my throat close up, and a traitorous tear escaped. My mate had taken one look at me and run. Why? Was I so repugnant? Did the sight of me repulse him so much that he couldn’t stand to be in the same damn hallway as me?I screamed at myself thatI didn’t care,that he was nothing, nobody, a complete stranger. But the dreamer in me was howling, wailing, sobbing.
My mate didn’t want me. It made nosense.Fate and biology and the universe itself had sewn us together, our souls a woven net that would always tie us together. But the way he looked at me, he clearly saw that bond as handcuffs, restrictive and fatal, a death sentence. Instead of the blessing it was.
My stomach knotted, roiled, revolted, but I clenched my jaw, hardened my expression, and took off down the hallway. I’d been kidnapped and beaten, and this motherfucker didn’t get to reject me. No fucking way. I’d been through too much; the universe owed me something good, something sweet.
“Wait,” the big guy blurted, rushing in front of me and cutting off my path. I glared through my tears. “Let me explain everything to you before you rightly confront Sweetie.”
“That’s his name?”
He nodded, his black gaze beseeching and absolutely wasted on me. I was too angry and brittle to care about his kind, pleading eyes. “We’re part of a motorcycle club who take down abusive assholes and give their victims a safe place,” he said, then swore soundly as I ducked around him and continued down the hallway, faster, my bare feet slamming the carpet.
“He’s been through a lot lately, and it makes all this messy and delicate. Three of our people were taken, and put through hell. Let me explain it before you go in there.”
“No.”
He hurried to keep pace with me, this giant of a man struggling to keep up with my furious strides. “You have a place with us no matter what happens, but if you have any expectations of Sweetie, we need to talk about them now, because there are things you should know.”
My chest felt like a wrecking ball had driven through it covered in spikes like a flail, messing up all my insides until I was functioning with mangled organs and shattered instincts. I hurried my steps, a little frantic, a whole lot… hurt. I didn’t like the feeling. Corrosive to my stomach, it burned.
The big guy had clearly run out of patience, or grown desperate, because he reached for my arm, lightly clasping his fingers around my bicep.
“Get thefuckoff me,” I hissed, ripping my arm free and stumbling into the too clean, too perfect living room. Not that there was much living done in this room; the white and black decor was cold and uninviting. Nothing like my home. I wanted to go home. But first— “I want to know why my mate just ran off like a fucking coward.”
My voice cracked through the room like thunder, startling the men crowded into the hollow room, their black leather and dark clothes a stain upon the pristine white furniture and rugs. I hoped they’d tracked mud across my buyer’s perfect fucking home. I hoped they burned it to the ground when they left.
For a moment, everyone seemed to pause, including my mate where he’d run into the arms of a purple-haired beauty also decked out in leather. Among them, she looked like the goddess of bikers and thieves.
