Page 49 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

Am I imagining it?

What the fuck is going on?

She grabs the leather belt from the loops of his pants and snaps it until it makes the cracking sound.

“Sophia?”

Gasping, her head snaps up and around the way a pointer dog’s does when they catch the scent of their prey. Her long blonde hair throws me off, but her dark eyes meet mine and draw me back in. “Fuck. Jay?”

Trenton Neal’s instincts kick in a moment too late. He reaches to his hip for his gun, but his pants are around his ankles. My Glock is cocked and loaded and pointing directly at Trenton’s forehead, but my heart gives a painful splat when Trenton stands and attempts to throw Soph away.

Agile as always, feathers plume from her outfit as she swings her arm around his throat the way a child might go for a piggy-back ride. Before either Trenton or I realize what’s going on, she has the leather belt fastened around his neck and cinched in until his eyes bulge. Her legs wrap around his broad hips; the end of the belt in her left hand, and a blade similar to mine, to Kane’s, in her right presses against his jugular. “Goddammit, Jay! Why the hell did you follow me here?”

“Follow you? What?”

Trenton’s face turns from pink to dark red in the space of a few breaths. He tries to pull the dancer off his back; he tries to yank her hair, but all he gets is a handful of blonde wig and a trickle of blood sliding over his throat when she digs the blade in. “Keep still, Neal, and answer a few questions.”

“Fuck you, whore!”

I don’t know what the fuck to do. Who to help. Who to point my gun at. So I stand at the door like a redundant dummy with a loaded gun in my hand and no fucking clue what my job is.

“No, fuck you,” she hisses in his ear. “My name is Sophia Asa Solomon, and you’ve become the next target on my mission to make things right. You buy girls. You sell them. I need to know who sends you the texts.”

“Sophia!”

Her furious eyes come back to mine. “Shut. Up. Jay. Fuck! Sit down if you’ve gotta sit, just shut up for a sec before this asshole dies from lack of oxygen and we get no answers.”

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now!”

“I told you to stay home! I told you to stop and take a breath. I warned you!”

“You warned me, what?” I surge forward until I stand five feet from a naked Soph while she piggy-back rides a pants-less thug. “That you’re a stripper? That you like to choke men during sex? Is that a fetish? Is that what is happening right now?”

“You’re so stupid sometimes, I swear.” Still on Neal’s back, she shakes her head and comes in close enough it almost looks like she’s going to nibble on the skin behind his ear. “I was going to do this much kinder. You’d still die, but it would be a smoother transition. Now Jay’s here, and he ruined my intro.”

“Sophia!”

“Here.” She tosses a phone across the dark room until it slams against my chest, and I’m forced to catch. “Put that in your pocket. I’ll check when we get home. Wait. Actually.” She pulls Neal’s belt tighter. “What’s the code to get into your phone?”

“Fuck you, mongrel whore.” His words are choked, broken, and despite my confusion, piss me off enough that I step closer and bring my gun up.

“Call her a whore again, motherfucker. I dare you.”

With a knife to his throat, a gun pointed at his chest, and his pants around his ankles, he can’t do anything but stand in place and try to breathe. “I’m not saying shit.”

“It’ll take me three seconds to get into your phone once I get home,” Soph says. “It won’t hurt me to put that three seconds in, but you could secure yourself an easier death if you cooperate.”

“I’m not doing shit.” He spits in an attempt to look bad, but it pathetically lands on his own chest and makes me feel sorry for the asshole. “I don’t know who you think you are, but my men are outside that door. One peep, and they’ll siege this room and end your miserable lives.”

“My life ain’t miserable.” Shrugging, Soph looks up at me with a lifted brow. “I got laid today. He ate my pussy and made me come three times before he took his own.”

I flash an arrogant grin and nod. “Yeah I did.”

“And his life ain’t miserable either, because he just got answers to questions he didn’t even know he had.”

“Well, I still don’t know shit, actually. But I got laid today, so…”

Yanking the belt tighter with a grunt, Soph secures the pin so it doesn’t loosen. Trenton’s eyes bulge red. He wants to act like he’s in charge, but his body knows better, and his chest is starting to spasm. “You have about thirty seconds left. I don’tneedyou to speak, but if you do, I’ll go easier on you.”

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