Page 131 of Lawless God

“Give me a price to fuck him over and send him straight back to prison.”

My heart stops for a second.

“You…” I try to catch my breath. “You don’t want to do business with him?”

He cackles behind me, slapping my ass in the process and making me want to vomit the wine I drank.

“Want? No. You can’t survive doing business with an unpredictable psycho. But if you want to work on the East Coast, you have to pick some mobster to work with, and when Nathan White offers you a contract, you don’t refuse. We were all safer when he was away. So tell me. How much?”

He pinches my hips and drags my underwear to my knees.

“S-stop.” Panic overtakes me, making my ears ring. “I won’t tell you any fucking price if you touch me.”

I won’t tell him shit, but I need to delay this until Nate comes back.

“Or…you could make it a very, very nice price, and I won’t hurt you.” I hear some disgusting, wet sound behind me, and I understand he licked his hand when he presses two fingers between my legs.

A broken gasp cracks through my throat. My eyes squeeze shut, and my entire body stiffens.

Fight back, Kayla!

This is the first time in my life that my fight-or-flight response dysfunctions. The first experience of not being able to grab fury from deep inside me and throw it into someone’s face to hurt them. I just freeze.

He presses against my entrance, making me feel like he’s ripping through my dry skin.

“Please…” I whimper. I fucking hate that whimper.

“How much to have you set him up and sent back to prison? Answer, trashy whore!”

“Oh, she already tried that, Jerome. It didn’t work quite like she expected.”

Nate’s completely dull voice is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. My muscles relax instantly.

“Now why don’t you step away from my wife?”

Wynne’s hands are off me in a split second.

“Nathan,” he blurts out, suddenly so far away from me I don’t even know how he moved that quickly.

Strengthless, I drop to my knees the second Wynne isn’t holding me up anymore. Two hands catch me at the waist, and Nate is already bringing me back up.

He observes the thong around my knees clinically. His eyebrows pinch in the slightest way possible, barely a line showing between them, but I notice it.

Softly, he helps me lean against the shelves. He releases me, his hands hovering around my waist until he makes sure I can stand on my own, and then he drops to his haunches.

“Nathan.” Wynne’s terrified, and it brings me happiness. I’m dizzy, unsure what is really going on, but the terror is clear, and I like that.

Nate raises a hand, cutting him off with a simple gesture. “The contract is on the table. Sign it.”

He doesn’t even turn around to check if Wynne is listening. He knows he will, and I can testify to that as he grabs a pen from his breast pocket and takes the contract with trembling hands.

Maybe he thinks if Nate still wants to do business with him, he’s not that angry.

But I can feel it in the way he delicately drags the thong back up my legs, the way he caresses my hips as he settles it there… I can sense in the way he looks up at me, his gaze empty, his face completely blank… I know it in the way he slowly stands back up, puts a hand on my cheek and observes my face...

That this is complete, barely restrained, fury.

“Go sit down over there, little sunflower.” He points to a sofa in the corner of the room. “I’ll be just a minute.”

---