Page 4 of Escape From Me

I nodded before he turned and yanked me forward.

“Where exactly are we going?”

My impractical heels with their slick bottoms slipped as he pulled me along the fancy tiles of a pretentious hall. But before I could fall, he pulled my hand and I was falling against his other arm, missing the ground.

“We are going where there are no cameras. This would work much better if you could refrain from making a scene.”

My mouth gaped. He did not just say that.

“I… what? I was not making a scene; I slipped.”

The man in front of me was as annoying as he was handsome, but his hands had no problem fitting around my waist and righting me.

“Well, then refrain from slipping. This way. There are no cameras this way.”

He was already pulling me with him as he seemed to be talking to no one, but at the same time he was talking to me.

“Okay. How do you even know that?”

No one was paying us much attention as he pulled me into an unmarked door that went into the kitchens for catering. I let him guide me as I looked around. How had I never known this was here? I’d been dragged to this stupid auction thing for the better part of six years. Paraded around as Mommy and Daddy’s doting daughter. But now I saw it for what it was. Advertisement.

There were plenty of people in and out of the kitchen, both with empty and filled trays. The place was busy and noisy, and not a single person cared that I was being dragged through there.

Something metal clanged against more metal, making me jump.

“Please keep up. Something tells me that whoever was looking for you isn’t going to be happy when you aren’t in the bathroom,” he said over his shoulder, pulling me a little closer,and this time he was nearly pushing me as he spun me in front of him.

“I can walk, thank you very much.”

I said that, but damn did this man’s touch do something entirely foreign to my body. I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be running back into my corner and praying no one noticed me, not running away with a guy that very clearly wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the rest of these pretty flowers with hidden thorns. The thing was, I wouldn’t call him the weed here.

Why did that touch send a strange sense of life through the nerves that his hand caressed?

And why did this all feel wrong and yet oh so right?

I nearly toppled as my heel slid out from under me, but my masked stranger grabbed me around my hips and those fingers bit into my skin, but instead of wincing, a heat shot straight between my legs.

I let a giggle escape my lips for no good reason.

“Princess, what’s so funny?”

The whisper of his breath over the shell of my ear sent a fire raging through me and I forgot how to breathe.

“This.” I couldn’t seem to form any thoughts and I didn’t need to, because his arm slid around my waist and, before I could protest, he tossed me over his shoulder.

“You are slowing me down, little dove. So excuse me, but if you want to come with me, I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

His hand grabbed my ass. I’d missed just how large his hands were, or maybe it was just how it felt through the thin fabric of my dress, but fucking hell if I didn’t almost moan against the way he squeezed and kept walking.

It wasn’t long before a ding and the swish of elevator doors broke me from my girly fantasy.

“Last chance, princess. Once I get into the elevator, we aren’t going back.”

I briefly glanced back through the hair that had fallen over my face as he manhandled me.

What was back there? An empty marriage at best. An abusive relationship? Probably. Meaningless life? That was certain.

“Take me away, my dark prince.”

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