Page 17 of Grabbed By the Guard

I roll my eyes. “It’s an expression. Never mind. It’s not worth it. But, listen… calling me ‘female’ or ‘mortal’ or… or ‘human’… that’s degrading, okay? It’s like calling you ‘demon’. Would you like that?”

“You may call me anything you wish so long as it’s yours.” A touch of sudden humor… and maybe lust… softens his harsh features. “Your mate. Your male.” Oh, yeah. That’s definitely lust now as he just about purrs, “Your lover.”

“I’ll stick with Glaine, thanks.”

Hey. It’s better than calling him my kidnapper.

“As you wish.”

I roll my eyes, letting what he told me about the essence-thing mull around my head for a second.

I’m pretty sure the duke took pity on me and spoke in English. And while I’m curious and want to know how the rule of this demon world learned a human language, that’s on the back burner for now. My big concern is that no one else seems to know it. I’m surrounded by a world full of giant demons who can all talk about me, chained to the one who abducted me because ‘fate told him to’ or some nonsense like that, and I have to rely on him translation Sombran to English for me—plus trust that he’s not making it up if it’s something I wouldn’t like to hear.

I could let him give me his essence. His soul. I’d know everything about him, including… and if that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it most likely is.

“What’s the fine print?”

Like every other time I say something that might not have a direction translation in his language, Glaine furrows his brow, making his ridges stand-out. “I do not understand.”

I figured. “The fine print is kind of like a small warning that’s not as obvious from the beginning. Like, I say that I’ll accept your essence, but there’s something I don’t know about how that’ll affect me unless I look for the fine print, or I ask.”

I’m in business. Sierra’s lawyers are essential to making sure she gets a fair deal on every one of her contracts, but I don’t let Charlotte and her team go through them until I’ve read the mumbo jumbo and the legalese first.

Glaine thinks it over for a moment, then admits, “I have your essence. If you accept mine from me, that is the first step to finalizing our mate bond.”

Right. This mate bond that he’s certain exists, but that I’m having a hard time buying. He really wants me to believe that demons get a fated mate, just one, and that he’s so sure that I’m his, he’s willing to do the demon version of marriage with me? And, unless I’ve gotten it wrong, there’s no way out. No divorces. No annulments. It’s a true ‘til death do we part’ situation, only how does that work when demons are immortal?

I shake my head. Logically, I can’t except that I’m fated to be mystically bonded to a demon from another realm. I can’t. Not even if, the more I’m looking at him, the more… human it seems to me. He’s not just a demon. He’s Glaine, my kidnapper, and the big guy who willingly offered to join me in the cell so I wouldn’t be alone.

Not that his motives are entirely altruistic. Whether I am his mate or not, that doesn’t change the fact that he believes I am. Having me chained to him puts me right where he wants me: with him. It’ll be a lot easier for him to go ahead with his demon courtship if I’m here instead of back on Earth or wandering by myself in the demon world.

“That’s never going to happen,” I tell him bluntly.

He seems to disagree.

“I will do whatever I must to show you that I will be a good and honorable and devoted mate to you. Ask for anything in my power, female, and it is yours.”

There’s such a weight to his promise that I immediately feel buckled beneath it. I want to shrug it off, push past it, but the fact that it makes me so uncomfortable just slams home the realization that I’m in a dungeon with a seven-foot-tall demon, wearing little more than a skimpy red dress and my underwear, my feet are filthy, I’m feeling the effects from the coffee I downed and the no sleep I’ve gotten, and somewhere in a world out of my reach, Sierra is probably waking up, wondering where the hell I am.

Oh, and I don’t have my phone. I’ve never felt so goddamn naked and unprepared in my life as I do in this situation, and my determination that there isn’t anything I can’t do if I put my mind to it is really beginning to waver right about now.

“I told you,” I mutter. “My name is Billie.”

“Billie,” he says solemnly. “Tell me. I will do it.”

He wants to know? Fine.

“Help me get out of here. Help me get home.”

When he doesn’t respond to my conditions, I snort.

That’s what I thought.

Do you know how hard it is to ignore someone when you’re chained to them?

The answer is: very.

Glaine is so big that he takes up half the cell just by himself. And maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He’s definitely gotta be pushing seven-feet—maybe more if you count the horns—and he’s two, maybe three times as wide as me. It doesn’t matter that he’s crouching low to the hard, chilled floor, leaving the narrow cot for me. He looms, even with his back to me, and his silence is suffocating.

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