Page 50 of Their Princess

Did Rafe see it all and decide this wasn’t for him? What was happening here in this biker club was not what la Famiglia had signed up for.

I needed a better escape plan. My cell phone was still in that bedroom. If my father’s men wouldn’t come and get me to save me from this shitshow, I could call a limo and put some distance between me and this sex club.

Heading back inside, I ran headfirst into a hard chest and stumbled, half dazed.

“How did you get out?” came a gruff voice at the same time strong hands latched onto my upper arms.

I stilled, my breath caught in my chest, then lifted my face to look up.

Way up.

Sas scowled down, towering over me with his impossible height. Honestly, it should’ve been illegal to be so fucking tall. It must’ve been awkward to have to crouch through every single door he met.

I frowned up at him. “You saw me outside. Or were you too engrossed in that skanky piece of ass to notice your future wife?”

He snarled and his hands tightened on my arms. “That didn’t answer my question. How the fuck did you get out of your room?”

I wasn’t answering. The last thing I wanted was him boarding up the small window.

Instead, I shoved my chin up another inch. “How was your fight? Looks like you got a few shiners there.” I reached up to touch the bruise on his cheek.

Before my hand met his skin, he released my upper arm and caught me by the wrist, preventing my touch. “Your uncle is a better fighter than he lets on.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I know better than to get into fights with him.”

Something sparked to life in Sas’s eye. “Whatdoyou get into with him?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to wrench my hand away.

His grip made the bones in my wrist grind. “Bullshit.”

“You infernal ass,” I said, refusing to show that he was actually hurting me. I hoped there wouldn’t be bruises later. “I barely saw my uncle after he turned eighteen and joined the Marines. Barely talked to him. But now we’re both stuck in this mess. Congratulations to us.”

I wouldn’t reveal to Sas that Rafe had come back from his time in the desert a different man than when he’d left. Sometimes shadows crossed his eyes, and he often paused in the middle of conversations, something torturing him from theinside out. Sas didn’t need to know that Papà had assigned him to Catalina and me as a bodyguard, or that I suspected Rafe needed more kindness in his life than he would ever let on.

Sas scrutinized me under his heavy brow bone. A muscle jumped in his chiseled jaw, and his eyes bored into me. An interesting caramel color, so warm I could almost smell the sugar.

Gulping, I put that thought away. My future husband really was a neanderthal, and I couldn’t entertain any kind of thought that might make him seem real. Or human. Or—No! I couldn’t go there.

With a flip of his wrists, he let me out of the vice grips that were his hands. It was almost as though he threw me away from him, and a pressure settled down in my chest. At least he didn’t drag me back to my locked bedroom. I sidestepped him but stopped short when I saw Graff lingering a few steps away, his ass on the table behind a couch in the small seating area and a sketchbook and pencil in his hand.

Had he been here the whole time, and I just hadn’t noticed?

Graff flicked his eyes up to meet mine then cast them downward, a pink tinge to his cheeks. He wouldn’t even look at me now. Why?

“I thought you were coming back for the music,” I said to Graff, trying to ignore how badly I had wanted him to return. Not to mention how alone I had felt out there.

Sas twisted around to face Graff too. “You knew she was out of her room?”

I whipped my head around to glare at him. “You fucking knew it too!”

Sas studiously ignored me.

Graff shrugged and turned the page on a sketch pad. “I left her to tend the music.”

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