Page 11 of For a Price

I can’t help the way panic shoots through me. It explodes the second I’m able to speak again without being silenced.

“PLEASE! SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE! PLEASE HELP ME, PLEASE!”

The Russianslapsme.

Not hard. More like a love tap. An admonishment as I scream hysterically and his palm connects with my cheek to bring me to my senses. He covers my mouth again with a grin stretched onto his own.

“Bad girl,” he taunts. “Didn’t I tell you to behave yourself? Should I punish you now?”

I never get the chance to answer.

There’re footsteps outside the front door. Someone’s voice that sounds too muffled to place at first, but then, as the person drawers closer, I gasp against the Russian’s hand.

Finch!

He’s outside!

“HELP!” I try screaming again.

The Russian slaps me again on the cheek. This time slightly rougher. A light sting prickles the side of my face. He presses his hand down on my mouth more firmly, any trace of humor gone from his chiseled, bearded face.

“Disobey, devochka, and I will kill you,” he promises. “You are to do as I say.”

He wrenches me to my feet as Finch is on the other side of the door twisting a key in the lock.

I’m dragged into the bedroom and then the closet. On the other side of the apartment, Finch enters while on the phone with someone, talking obnoxiously loudly, clueless to his surroundings.

“Shhh,” the Russian growls into my ear. We’re standing in the pitch dark of the closet, tucked away among racks of clothes and stacks of boxes. His grip on me is ironclad and unbreakable.His lips graze the shell of my ear and I feel the muscles in his body flex against my softer form. “You say a word, you scream for help,” he says, “you die. So does he.”

* Bednaya malen’kaya devochka -poor little girl

CHAPTER 6

Katerina

It feelslike an eternity that I’m trapped in the closet with Roman Volkova, swallowed up by deep shadows and clenched in his bruising grip. He seems to be enjoying himself. He nuzzles the side of my face and drags his lips along the curve of my ear.

His fingers dig into the flesh of my upper arm and he presses me into him as if he’s truly indulging in how soft I feel against him.

I know, because at one point, I feelsomethingin his pants jerk.

…was that his…?

It was! It was his dick!

I want to scream. I want to thrash against him. Knee him in the balls or head butt him.

As his large hand wraps around my throat from behind and his fingers travel up to feel the curve of my bottom lip, I want to bite them off.

He’s lucky I have an aversion to blood. It wouldn’t be the first time a stray like me resorted to such survival tactics—Rosita told me a story from when she was fourteen and one of her johns tried to get too rough with her. She bit half of his pinky finger off.

No question the Russian Bear would deserve it if I did.

Sure, me, JC, and the others kidnapped him. But that was technically his own fault. He didn’t have to involve himself in our scheme; he wasn’t even who we were after!

We remain camped out in secrecy inside the closet as Finch takes his damn time in the living room. He’s still talking loudly, telling whoever he’s on the phone with about the botched mission that was carried out.

I roll my eyes listening to his criticisms.

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