Page 32 of Savage Stalkers
“Preston was... he wouldn’t stop touching me. I asked him to stop.”
“That’s something to discuss privately, not something that warrants this kind of spectacle.” My stepfather’s expression doesn’t change.“Mr. Thorne, I suggest you clean yourself up and rejoin the party. We’ll speak later about this.”
Preston scurries away, leaving me alone with Alexander, my mother, and my three masked men.
“You’ve made your point,” Alexander says to them. “Now leave before this becomes a legal matter.”
“We’re not leaving without her,” Zay says.
“Then you’re not leaving.”
I can hear voices getting closer, guests coming to see what the commotion is. In seconds, this will become a scandal I will never live down.
“Go,” I whisper to them. “Please. Just go.”
“This isn’t over,” Silas snaps.
“It is,” Alexander says. “And if I see any of you near my stepdaughter again, you’ll regret it.”
The first guests come around the corner, and Mom immediately goes into damage control mode. “Nothing to worry about. Just a small misunderstanding. Please return to the party. The champagne fountain is being lit.”
As the guests are moved away by my mother, Alexander’s hand clamps around my upper arm. I notice Silas’s hands ball into fists and his jaw clamps shut tight.
“We’ll discuss this in my office,” Alexander says. “And Skye? This little rebellion act of yours? It ends tonight.”
Kain lunges and expertly removes Alexander’s grip on my arm, then he lifts me and throws me over his shoulder. I squeak at the sudden movement, but I don’t protest being carried away. There is no way in hell I want to hear a lecture right now about ruining a potential match and embarrassing the family name.
Chapter Thirteen
Silas
My hands won’t stop fucking shaking. Though I clench them into fists and press them hard against my thighs, the tremors keep coming. The image of that asshole’s hands on Skye—touching what’s mine, claiming what he has no right to even look at—burns behind my eyelids every time I blink.
I can still feel the satisfying give of his throat under my palm, and I replay the way his eyes widened with shock when he realized he’d fucked with the wrong person. Part of me wishes I hadn’t pulled away, and that same part wanted to keep squeezing until his entitled smirk was permanently wiped from his face.
“Breathe, Si.” Zay’s voice cuts through the chaos in my head. He’s twisted around in the passenger seat, looking at me with concern. “You’re spiraling.”
I force air into my lungs, but it’s as if I’m breathing through cotton. My chest is too tight, and the car feels smaller than it should.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. None of it was supposed to happen like this.
Skye sits pressed against the opposite door, as far from me as she can get. Her eyes are wide, shifting warily between the three of us. Her dress has ridden up slightly, exposing her thighs, and I have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from reaching for her. She knows. She fucking knows who we are, and everything is ruined.
“This is kidnapping,” she says calmly. “You can’t just?—”
“Funny,” Zay interrupts her, “I seem to remember you specifically requesting kidnapping fantasies alongside your stalker ones. And judging by the way you’re pressing your thighs together, I’d say this is making you wet rather than scared.”
Her cheeks flush pink, and she shifts in her seat.
The movement sends a bolt of electricity straight through me. Even now, when everything has gone to shit, my body responds to her like she’s a fucking drug I can’t get enough of.
“That was different—that was fantasy,” she snaps. “This is...”
“Real?” Kain offers. “From where I was standing, you looked pretty relieved when we showed up.”
I watch her throat as she swallows; she’s trying to process what happens now that the masks are gone.
“You’ve been lying to me,” she whispers. “All of you. This whole time.”
