Page 6 of Protected By Saint

Instead he drapes his jacket over me, covering my shoulders and arms and pulling it closed over my front before moving away. I immediately miss his nearness, and when I finally open my eyes, he’s on the other side of the room unbuttoning his cufflinks. He pockets them before rolling the sleeves up his muscular forearms to reveal a series of tattoos that disappear under his shirt.

“What’s your name?” he asks as he yanks off his tie and tosses it away before tugging at the first few buttons of his shirt, and I catch yet another peek of tattoos that disappear into his chest. I find myself gawking at the man, seemingly lost in the sea of muscles bulging with every move, and it’s not until he looks up that I am reminded that he asked me a question.

Shit, he wants my name!

Do I tell him? What happens if I lie and he finds out? Maybe this is a test to see if I’ll be honest. Will he hurt me, use the gun on me if I fail or…do something worse?

“J-Jade Purdy,” I whisper shakily, my knees nearly bucking with fear.

“It suits you, Jade. Like the color of your eyes. I’m Saint,” he says, finally pulling out his gun and turning toward the door. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

I blink at him, and for a solid couple of seconds, I’m convinced I heard the man wrong. There is no way he is rescuing me, right? Unless…

Oh God, is he trying to break me out of this place so he can take me somewhere worse? I don’t believe anywhere is worse than here, but God, the thought of leaving one prison for another sends fear rocking through my system.

“I…I can’t,” I whisper, shaking my head fiercely, fighting tears, but I can feel whatever is left of my resolve slowly crumble to debris. “W–whatever you want to do. d-do it here.”

Saint turns, releasing the doorknob as he does so. “You want to stay here?”

Well, I would love to get on the first bus out of this city and board a flight out of the country entirely, but that isn’t exactly the option he’s giving me, now is it? No, instead, he wants me to follow him—the giant of a man with the gun. The same man who just spent one million dollars to have me for a night. Has he decided his money is worth more than a single night? Excuse me if I am not jumping with joy at the idea of following him blindly into whatever he has planned for me.

“Do it here,” I whisper, slowly tugging the jacket off my shoulders. My hands are trembling as I slowly place them on the bed, careful not to wrinkle it in case that sets him off.

Saint raises an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“What you paid for. I don’t know what those men will do to me, but I know better than to let you take me to a second location,” I blurt out before I can stop myself, but Saint’s eyes unexpectedly soften and his lips curl in a hint of smile, and my eyes immediately drop to those firm lips and that chiseled jaw.

“It seems that I am doing a piss poor job of assuring you that I will not hurt you,” he says, sliding the gun back into the holster attached to waistband of his pants. “I’m not taking you to a second location to hurt you, Jade. I’m getting you out of here, taking you somewhere safe.”

“Why? You don’t know me.”

“Because it’s clear that you’ve been forced into this against your will and no one deserves that.”

“You bid on me,” I whisper, finding a hole in his logic. If he truly wanted to help me, then he should have called the cops. Is he really expecting me to believe that he wasted one million dollars just to rescue me?

I’ve been fooled twice already tonight—once by someone I thought I knew and trusted—and I am unwilling to make that mistake again. I don’t care that the man before me is the hottest I’ve ever seen, I’m still not going to drop my guard around him.

“I’m not leaving,” I insist, shaking my head for good measure.

Saint takes a step forward, those blues locked on mine as he moves. “You do realize that I am supposed to have sex with you in this disgusting place, right? That they expect me to force you.” I suck in a shallow breath when he stops only a foot away from me, and there’s that scent again. Stronger on him than on the jacket I’d had draped over me. It takes everything in me not to lean forward and bury my face against his chest just to breathe him in.

Snap out of it, Jade!

What the hell am I even thinking? Why am I dropping my guard like this? Haven’t I learned anything from this horrible experience?

“W-what are you doing?” I breathe when he takes yet another step forward and raises his hand.

“Don’t you want to leave this fucking place?” he asks, bringing his hand to my cheek, and unlike the case with Buck, I let this man touch me, which proves to be a terrible mistake. A shudder rolls through my body when his finger grazes my skin and my lips part on a gasp. “I know it’s hard to trust me, sweetheart, but you need to let me help you,” he rasps, those eyes burning into mine with their intensity. “Don’t you understand what they’ll do once I leave?”

“T-they’ll let me go. Buck promised they’d let me go.”

“Surely you don’t believe that.”

I want to.

“Can’t you just call the police?”

He chuckles without mirth. “The same police that work for a man who bid fifty thousand dollars for you?”

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