Excellent.
“Just the bill,” I said, giving her a large smile.
Kya stormed away and I pulled out my phone to text the pilot.
Have the plane ready, we leave in two days.
I took a few minutes to email Jackson so everything would be ready when I brought my pet home, and then packed up my laptop. That was when Kya stormed back and slammed the bill down. I cocked a brow at the table, hand twitching at my side with the desire to correct her.
“Here you go,” she sang sweetly.
If we were back at the house, she’d already be choking on my cock.
I stood up, straightening my shoulders to pull my body to its full height. Kya immediately shrunk back. The girl wasn’t stupid. I was six foot five of solid muscle, and she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds soaking wet.
“You should watch how you talk to people.” I stepped into her space and glared down at her shocked expression. “You might get cut with your own sharp tongue.”
Her throat bobbed with a heavy swallow, causing my dick to twitch. Submission was a beautiful thing. It could save your life. Apparently, Kya’s mouth didn’t have the same self preservation instinct.
“I can say what I want,” she hissed, “Last I checked, it was a free country.”
Freedom. Is that what she thought she had?
“Freedom is merely an illusion.” I bent down, stealing a subtle sniff of her sweet scent, and softly growled in her ear, “True freedom belongs to the person holding the key to your cage.”
Her brows pulled together as she stepped back and tipped her chin at me. “That makes no sense.”
I lifted my hand, pulling my finger down the side of her face. Over the angles of her delicate cheekbones, and down to the soft skin under her bottom lip. A slow smile spread across my face when she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. Her teeth dug nervously in the supple flesh.
“Don’t worry, Pet,” I dropped my arm and turned to leave, “you’ll understand soon enough.”
Camouflage was as common a survival instinct as eating or breathing. Whether it was to set a trap for food, or to avoid becoming lunch, countless things in nature had this ability.
Predators didn’t look in the background. They didn’t care about the person shuffling past. Being invisible was safe. Unfortunately, there were some places where that wasn’t an option.
For me, that place was home.
I couldn’t blend into the peeling yellow siding of our trailer, like the Mediterranean octopus did the coral bed of the ocean floor. A leopard hid in the tall grass to stalk its prey.
The patches of grass scattered around our yard were browning, dry and brittle. And there was no rock for me to sit unnoticed on like the gray tree frog. Just an old cast iron bathtub and rusty transmission.
I twisted my neck and looked up at the moon, highlighting a sky full of stars. Bright spots in the dark, twinkling as if they were alive.
Could they sense the anxiety coursing through my veins? Did they know what would happen when I walked into our small trailer? Would that cloud of tobacco make them want to throw up too?
My cheeks puffed as I prepared for the acrid scent of stale beer to fill my lungs, and pulled open the screen door. I cringed at the quiet creak that announced my arrival to the man sitting in the recliner, watching TV.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Ralph rose from his seat and smashed his cigarette out, causing a few of the butts to trickle out of the overflowing ashtray.
I watched one fall off the dirty coffee table, feeling my stomach drop heavily with it. Down it went, bouncing hard against the ground next to an empty beer bottle. The clover leaf logo on the label glittered in the lamp light. Taunting me with three unspoken words.
Ralph’s been drinking.
He swiped his hand on his dirty white shirt and stalked forward. “You’re over an hour late.”
“Forty five minutes,” I muttered quietly.
If he was drunk, it wouldn’t matter what I said.
