Page 24 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
Melwas’s hand comes up around my throat and his other hand slides across the silk to my stomach, going down to cup my pubic bone. His grip is hard, painful, and I can’t help the hot flush of shame and fear that stabs through me, the tears that spring to my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this.
Eyes, groin, head, the Queen in my mind reminds me. Wait for it.
But waiting is the worst thing I can imagine, standing still as Melwas murmurs things into my ear that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind, these disgusting lies that are no less insidious for how disgusting they are. That I want this, that he’s doing me a favor by giving it to me, that women like me—women who like surrendering control—welcome being taken by force.
I hate it, I hate it all so much, I hate the lies, I hate the hard, hurting hand that kneads my unwilling flesh as he says it. I hate the way his lies connect to my darkest fears, like confirmation that there is something wrong with me and the way I want sex.
But I know they’re lies. The very way my body reacts right now—with terror and revulsion—is evidence of that. And that certainty gives me the patience to wait just a moment longer, until his grip has loosened and the hand at my genitals drops back to fumble with his belt.
Now.
I prepare to spin, pressing my fingertips together so they all meet in one concentrated point, and I’m ready to drive those points right into his flat acorn eyes when there’s a knock at the door.
Melwas groans and snaps out something in Ukrainian.
Not-Daryl responds through the door, sounding both apologetic and urgent.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Melwas echoes, his hand moving away from my throat. He walks back toward the door and I turn to follow him with my eyes, my body still tensed and my hands still formed into beak-shaped weapons.
Melwas conferences with Not-Daryl for a few minutes, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes, and then seems to come to a decision. “I am very sorry,” he says, “but I must cut our evening short. Some business awaits me and I must tend to it personally.” He reaches out to stroke my hair and I pull back on instinct. I hear Not-Daryl make a noise in the doorway.
Melwas frowns. “Perhaps it would be good for you to consider the things we’ve talked about tonight.” He nods at Not-Daryl and two other men in the doorway, and before I can stop it, I’m being gagged and bound and tossed carelessly on the bed.
“I won’t blindfold you,” Melwas says kindly, in one of his lightning-mood shifts. “I’ll turn off the lights so you can see the stars through the window. They are quite lovely in the mountains.” And he runs a hand up my stomach to palm my breast. “I hope to be back tonight. But if not, we shall continue tomorrow.”
And then he and the men leave me alone, locked in from the outside, and I finally let myself cry.
11
Embry
after
I watch Melwas fist a large hand in Greer’s hair and yank her head back, exposing the pale column of her throat, and I leap to my feet, a growl building in my chest.
Wu pulls me down with a hiss. “Stay down or we’ll be seen.”
I squat back down with Wu and Gareth, my blood hot and boiling. I raise the binoculars to my face and aim them at the window of the lodge again. I see her sweet mouth part in a pained cry as he pulls her hair again, and then I feel Wu’s fingers digging into my arm.
“Wait,” Wu says, but I don’t want to wait. It was hard enough to sit still on the plane to Poland, hard enough to keep myself sane on the drive into Carpathia—all hills and horse tracks in the Jeep we’d rented, to avoid Carpathia’s fledgling and as yet ineffectual border control. It was hard to take the time to survey the lodge, hard to pick our way though the steep rocks and thick trees to scale the first fence, hard to stop and wait every time the drones flew overhead. And the very minute we were able to surveil the lodge itself, I see Greer being manhandled by that monster?
I don’t have very much wait left in me.
Thankfully, Melwas releases Greer, and I can breathe again, think again.
“There
’s a service entrance on the bottom level, on the side closest to us,” Gareth says. “Just a lock, no guard.”
“There might be cameras or motion sensors,” Wu says.
“So we go when something else is moving up there,” I say, swinging my binoculars down to the road. “The break-in at his house should be happening any moment.” Gareth had arranged the ruse on our way here, a decoy burglary at his presidential palace in the Carpathian capital, a couple hours’ drive from here. We hoped it would be enough to lure Melwas away, or at least some of his security team.
A noise from Gareth has me pointing my binoculars back at the house, and I see the light to a room downstairs flip on. Melwas and Greer are alone, and he’s stripping off his jacket.
“Bastard,” I swear. I’ll kill him, I swear I’ll kill him if he actually attempts to rape her.
