Page 94 of Locke

Dino went quiet for a moment. He didn’t even deny it.

“However,” he suddenly said, and that however made me look back at him with renewed focus. “On paper, I can have you appear to be let go, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still employ you.”

I continued to stare at him, waiting. I kept my face flat, kept my hope very little because Dino was not the kind of man who made concessions. He only made a deal when he felt like he was walking away with the better end of one.

“What do you want?” I asked, cutting straight to the chase.

He levelled me with a solemn look, which just looked fucking stupid in his costume. “You’re clearly in deep shit with Locke. You can run from him, but I doubt you’ll get far. I can offer you board and food in my basement suite, and when he comes back around, I’ll tell him I let you go, and that you left in peace.” He even threw up the peace sign in his clown, white glove, and it was like reliving Derek’s peace sign all over again.

Still, I kept looking at him, waiting, repeating once more, “What do you want, Dino?”

“Can’t a man like me make such an offer without expectations?”

I just blinked in response, waiting.

Then his eyes ran over me, and I felt my stomach flip. “You’re very beautiful. It’s why I hired you, you know. You’re very exotic to me, Kelly.”

“Why are you looking at me like this, Dino?”

“Because I’m a desirable man sitting before a beautiful woman, asking her to want me, too.”

My breaths picked up. “You’re married,” I whispered now, disgusted.

“That prude bitch complains about a migraine every day of the week, and clean whores are expensive.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Now he smiled at me, and fuck, he looked creepy. “Who would you rather? Get fucked by that freak? You know, I hear he has sick fetishes. He’ll probably gut you while he fucks you just to bathe in your blood. Probably learned it off those nasty fucks that raped him in that hole when he was a weak little shit.”

My breath thinned in horror. My palms broke out in sweat, and I knew straightaway that I needed to leave. Fuck Dino, what a rancid fuck.

“At least I’m offering you this opportunity,” he continued, arrogantly. “He would just take it from you.”

Thing was, Dino wasn’t wrong.

I felt a cold blast tear through my gut, and my anxiety intensified.

Was I disgusted by Dino because he was a sleazy slob that was dressed as a clown? If it were Locke making this offer, would I have agreed?

But I shook my head quickly. Locke did something to me. It wasn’t about his beauty—it was about his aura. It reacted to mine, entwined in it, and made me yearn for his touch.

It was still wrong.

I stood up, getting ready to flee.

“Kelly,” he called out to me as I hurried to my desk and picked up my bag. I heard his movements, heard his heavy breaths as he came to me quickly, a look of panic in his clown expression. “I did not dismiss you, stop!”

I stopped, staring up at him now as he stood before my desk and leaned over, placing his slick palms on it. “It’s a hard no,” I told him, unable to shake the disgust from my voice. “And fuck you for offering, Dino.”

“But it wasn’t an offer,” he said next, that creepy clown smile spreading. “You’re not leaving just yet, Kelly.”

“My name is Kali,” I retorted. “And I am, Dino.”

But the second I started to leave, he was onto me, his slimy arms crowding my body, forcing me into his chest. My vision instantly swam with fear. It wasn’t the same fear as when Locke had forced me against the brick wall last night; because on a deeper level, I did not feel Locke would actually hurt me. That was just our dynamic.

This fear ran deeper, made me feel helpless in a way I’d truly never felt before. I began to panic. Here was a man easily over 300 pounds gripping me like a snake, and there I was, more than half his size, physically incapable of fighting him off.

And unlike before with Locke, I was able to scream.

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