Page 11 of Tangled Fates

“You know my partner Merrick needed my help again with some treasure he found,” he said, walking to the boxes.

“Uh, huh,” I laughed. “Can’t resist some treasure in the form of women.”

“Arrrgh, of course not!” He laughed and so did I.

“That was awful,” I grinned.

“Anything to make you laugh, Ria.” He grew serious. “How’s it been?”

“I need to know something,” I said, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake. “Last shipment we were missing some items and our buyer insisted it was our mistake. I always double check my count and maybe I’ll be off by one or two, but to be missing a big amount of the vials didn’t sound plausible. Do you think one of the guys could have stolen them and then blamed us?”

My heart thundered in my ears, hoping I wasn’t wrong about Tay. For all I knew he or his men were the ones who had been stealing, but my gut told me I could trust him.

“How much was missing?” He furrowed his brows. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”

I pursed my lips looking for any sign of dishonesty on his face.

“More than half of the usual shipment,” I said, only seeing the truth in his eyes.

“I want to immediately say no, but honestly, I don’t know.” He looked pensive. “I’ll keep an eye out tonight to see how things go.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a little bit of tension leaving me.

“She didn’t punish you, did she?” he snapped.

“No, but next time I’m sure she won’t hesitate,” I said, leaving out her threat.

He took a deep breath as he looked at my face. It was his turn to search for the honesty in my words and while we never really talked about my situation, I was pretty sure he knew more than he led on.

“Fine, but you didn’t answer my question. How are you doing?”

Tay was the only person in years that had talked to me and gave me a sense of normalcy. He was also the man I lost my virginity to after those men who broke into our old home said my virgin body was worth a lot of money.

There was no way in hell I was going to let them take anything from me. So as soon as we were settled here, Tay started showing up and well, let’s just say I was a little more calculated than I should have been. While Tay appreciated my lack of clothing when he came for the boxes one day, he told me to think about it and if I really wanted it the next time, he would help me out with my dilemma.

I didn’t think I’d ever considered my virginity a dilemma, but my innocence could always be used against me and I couldn’t be that weak again.

If he hadn’t been so sweet about it, I would have cornered him to just sleep with me, but I thought about it and the time only cemented my thoughts. I would not let a man use me. I had to take control of my life because I was the only one who could save myself. As much as Mother looked after me, the only one I could rely on was me.

It was an awful first time, no matter how much of it I had planned. Neither one of us ended up finishing, because we thought we heard Mother come up the stairs. Tay had his pants halfway down tripping, hitting his head on the table, while I tried not to die from laughter when I realized it was Loki who we had heard.

I smiled at the memory thinking there were worse men to lose my innocence to.

“I’ve been ok, my birthday is coming up,” I said, feeling self-conscious about bringing up my birthday, but dammit, two hundred years old felt like a big milestone.

“You don’t look a day over twenty-five,” he chuckled, stepping towards me sliding an arm around my waist. “I got you something.”

“Taylin,” I said, smirking when he grimaced at his full name. “If you say your dick, I’m gonna be disappointed.”

Tay laughed, shaking his head.

“That thought did pass through my head, but no, I might have gotten something better,” he said, kissing my nose. I expected a kiss but he pulled away showing me a rectangular device that was the size of my palm.

“What is this?” I grabbed it while he still held onto it.

I turned it around until the screen glowed on the entire front end.

“It’s a cell phone,” he said, as I turned around leaning my back against his front so I could look at the device a little better. “It doesn’t have service, but I downloaded about a thousand songs onto it as well as a few books and audiobooks from those W girls you like so much.”

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