Page 34 of The Alpha King's Curse: Part One

As she lathered her skin and felt the soreness in her body, her mind wandered back to how it had all started. She was going insane. Even now, her head was still a little hazy, but the urge to touch him had been like a compulsion. She’d wanted him to make love to her. She was twenty-one and had willingly had unprotected sex with someone she had just met, someone she didn’t like at all. That was insane. It was like her mind had been switched with somebody else's. He had been right; she’d been thinking of jumping him since she’d seen him. But she had self-control; she would never have gone through with it.

When she walked out of the shower, she saw her pile of clothes on the floor and the knife she had swiped from the table on top of it. Jackson had obviously seen it, but once again, he wasn’t worried that she had a weapon.

She was obviously dealing with a high-level criminal gang, so sure of themselves that she wasn’t a threat to them. But she hadn’t survived this long without picking up a trick or two. The streets had raised her; she knew how to escape sticky situations.

She pulled some clean underwear from her bag and pulled her clothes back on, ignoring the wardrobe Jackson had said was at her disposal. And then she went to the sofa and waited. She would play the obedient prisoner until she could contact Brit. Her plan wouldn’t change just because she’d had unprotected sex with Jackson. The deal was off.

The key in her door rattled, and the door swung open slowly. A young girl walked in that reminded her of the ones she had seen downstairs when she’d gone for breakfast.

A pretty thing. Short, petite, perfect skin and not a blonde hair out of place. She didn’t look much older than Brit. The girl sniffed the air and then looked at her with the same cold gaze.

“You, come with me.”

“Excuse me?”

Jackson had said someone would bring her food, not that she had to leave her room. As angry as she was with him and disgusted with herself for letting him touch her, better the devil she knew. She didn’t want to go out there alone when she didn’t know the lay of the land yet.

“Your food is downstairs. Or you can just stay here and starve. I don’t give a shit.”

The girl then turned to leave and left the door wide open. She stood slowly and eyed it for a moment. Had Jackson changed her mind about keeping her locked in?

She put the knife back in her waistband and felt for the pocket knife she had swiped first before walking to the door and peeking into the hallway.

There was no one else there, but something wasn’t right. She could feel it in her bones the same way she could feel that Jackson was bad news.

“Are you coming or not?”

What if following the girl was the only chance she would get to explore before she made her escape? She took a breath and then stepped out of her room.

Chapter 19

Something wasn’t right.

The place was too quiet. Layla didn’t know if this was a boarding house of sorts or a hotel, but she had seen more people around when she had been downstairs the first time. Now all she could hear was the sound of her beating heart.

She walked down the last flight of stairs and eyed the front door. She knew she wouldn’t get far because of the distance to the front gate and hadn’t figured out what sort of security was around.

“This way.”

The girl walked towards a different hallway to the one she had gone down that morning. Okay, this definitely had horror movie vibes. It wasn’t happening. She stopped in her tracks and turned to walk back to the staircase. She might have been stupid with Jackson, but she wasn’t falling for this trick, no matter how much she wanted to get out of this place.

She took only a few steps when someone grabbed her hair from behind.

“What the hell?” she shouted as she fell backwards.

Pain stung her scalp as they dragged her backwards. She had to grab onto the hand that had twisted in her hair to stop the person from ripping her hair out. It couldn’t be that little girl who’d lured her from her room. Whoever it was was insanely strong. They used only one hand to pull her body weight and moved quickly.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed.

She used the back of her heels to dig into the floor to slow the person down, but it made no difference. Even thrashing around and clawing at the hand dragging her made no difference. She heard the clang of metal and knew she had lost the knife in her waistband.

“Let me go!” she screamed.

“Shut up, you bitch!” a voice hissed.

It was the girl! She had assumed one of the overly muscular men had ambushed her, not a girl who looked like she would fall over if a strong wind blew.

She opened her mouth to shout again, but something heavy hit her across the side of her face. The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes in a dark, dank room. She blinked repeatedly to focus and realised she was in a basement. The girl who’d gotten her out of her room stood with two girls in a corner.

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