Page 70 of Born for Lace

“Wait here with me.” Tomar’s voice comes from beside me.

Lowering my mask to the crook of my neck, I shake my hair loose, the red ribbons cascading around me.

And the air thickens.

Several eyes snap in my direction. All from large Xin De men spread out across the room.

“Take her to the back,” Lagos orders Tomar, returning to our side with a large rusty key. His onyx eyes hit me. “You stay in the fucking room, little flower.”

A man with his back to us, sitting further down the bar, suddenly slams his drink on the wooden top. “I can smell her from here, Lagos! What the hell are you doing with a Lace Girl in my house?”

Lagos keeps his back to the man, eyes sliding across my face. “She's not a Lace Girl.” He brushes my hair over my shoulder, such a gentle, uncharacteristic show of affection. My knees buckle. “Not anymore.”

“Who is she, then?” One of the girls poses, tone tight.

A brunette leans backward on the bar, facing us. “You used to be a Lace Girl? I never understood that Trade. The point of it, that is.”

Another girl with too-blonde hair positions herself next to her, and I glance over at them, readying myself for the usual disdain.

“Tell me, Lace Girl, because I have always wondered,” the blonde starts. “When you wake up from being drugged and fucked, and his cum is leaking from between your thighs, do you feel pure and wholesome then?" Her blonde eyebrow cocks in a display as provocative as her words.

Past me would have tried to be friendly, even worked to change her opinion of me and my Trade. What is the point? I would have once felt sorry for her, but I’m wary of the perpetual tolerance that conditioned my Trade.

“That has never happened to me,” I state, straight-faced.

She scoffs, and it’s angry—bitter. “Ugh. Of course. He cleans you up.” Her hands clap in a sloppy way. “Well fucking done. What a fucking gentleman.”

Lagos is striding toward them, face tight with barely controlled rage. Before I can stop him, he is grabbing each girl by the throat and lifting them from the ground. Unfathomable fury ripples the muscles beneath his shirt.

“Lagos, no!” I step forward, reaching for him, but Tomar catches my elbow, stopping my hand in the air.

Lagos goes very still.

The girls claw his forearms, chins to the ceiling, mouths open in choked screams.

I cup the back of Spero’s head and circle my fingertips against his crown to counter the rapid rate of my heart. “Lagos.”

Lagos glares at them as the brunette slowly turns grey, and the blonde has a wet patch spreading out between her legs. “Don’t say my name like that.”

What?I swallow over my fear for them. “Like what?”

“Like I care what you think.”Lagos’ voice is cold and detached. “With that long, pleading tone. It won’t work on me, Lace Girl.”

I panic, my heart beats between my ears and with nothing better to say, nothing more convincing, only another, “Lagos…”

“Fuck!” A low, inhuman growl breaks from him. When he opens his fists, the girls drop to the floor.

The blonde gasps for air, palming her neck, while the brunette crawls away on her hands and knees.

My body twitches to go to her and help her to her feet. Check her over and apologise, but I find loyalty rooting me to the ground. Loyalty to Lagos.

That thought shakes me.

I clutch my heart, inhaling hard. I don’t know what that was about or why he reacted so viciously to mere words. I am used to the scornful ways of House Girls. Or was it their interruption that bothered him, not the words they said?

It doesn’t matter.

I don’t need to agree with his ways, having already accepted that we are very different, but it doesn’t feel right questioning him in front of others. In private, maybe.

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