Page 107 of Morally Gray Daddies

No. That would be beyond insanity. That would mean he’d actually cared about how I felt when he was doing those things to me. ‘I’m here to do a job.’ That was what he’d said. To him, all of this was just… business, right?

He made you come.

Arrgh! Stop! Why the hell did my brain seem fixated on that? So, he’d made me come. Big deal. It was probably just a way for him to stroke his ego. ‘Hey, look at me, I can make the little girl with Daddy issues come…’

I wanted to scream, but the sound of his voice stopped me, and I opened my eyes.

“Aubrey.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Oh, Jesus Christ, Aubrey, why don’t you just give him a handjob while you’re at it!

“I want you to understand that where I’m taking you… you won’t be hurt. At first it may not feel that way, but in the end, once you’ve become acclimated… well, you’ll understand then.”

I stared at the SUV’s dash. “You make it sound like I’m Katniss being offered up as tribute.”

“Katniss?”

“Yeah.” I glanced at him, catching the confused scrunch of his brows. “C’mon, seriously? Katniss? The Hunger Games?”

He shrugged. “Forgive me, I’m old.”

“Oh, please.” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “You’re not that old.”

“I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I really doubt that. You sure don’t look old enough to be my father.”

He glanced over. “Is that… flattery, Ms. Taryn?”

“I’m just saying,” I replied, spreading my hands.

“Clever girl.”

My mouth came open. Did he just… was that Jurassic…

The corners of his mouth quirked upwards. “See, I can make movie references, too.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Oh my God. That was…”

“What?”

“Terrible.”

He shrugged, but his smile didn’t go away. “Perhaps.”

We’d made it up out of the canyon, topping out at the summit of the pass. A few miles later, the SUV slowed, and he steered it off the freeway at an exit that said ‘Bishop—Adelanto—395.’ We drove onto a two-lane highway, passing through a series of dusty, windblown communities, mile after mile of tract homes on either side for LA commuters who couldn’t afford to live in the heart of the metropolis. Eventually, even those faded behind us, and we headed into a bleak, austere landscape of sand, sage, and dull tan hills, the veil of smog from Southern California slowly disappearing to reveal a cloudless sky.

Traffic became sparse. Signs of human development did, too, revealing only a panorama of desolation. A place where a person—a body—might disappear, never to be found. I scanned left and right ahead of us, and though far off in the distance was an occasional trace of a habitat of some sort, there was far more emptiness in between that would easily hide a thousand twenty-four-year-old women.

“You look nervous.”

His voice startled me out of my reverie. “I… I am nervous.”

“Why?”

“Where are you taking me?”

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