Page 14 of Worth

“Fuck you!” Blake screams. “Get off of me, you motherfucker!”

Aiden just chuckles, ripping the elastic off the end of her braid and putting the showerhead against her scalp. Her hair plasters against her back and shoulders as it soaks up the water as she struggles, but Aiden has her locked down, his arm tight enough around her neck to keep her in place.

I slink back out of the room and lean against the opposite wall to wait for Aiden. I don’t have to wait long. He comes hauling ass out of the room, slamming it shut behind him. Almost immediately, Blake starts beating on the door. Aiden watches it for a moment, then shrugs and braces an arm against the frame, one hand going to his dick.

“I’m so hard right now,” he mumbles, squeezing himself.

I snort. “Aiden, I’m pretty sure that girl will bite your dick off if you try anything with her.”

He grins at me. “I know,” he groans, rubbing himself through his jeans. I shake my head at him with a grimace. Aiden always has liked the ones too crazy and violent. With one last squeeze of his dick, he straightens. “Now, be a good Kitten and I’ll get you some clothes to change into,” Aiden says sternly.

She shouts a new string of expletives through the door at him, the door rattling with the ferocity of her attack.

“Bad Kitten!” he says through the door, which only serves to make Blake shriek something that doesn’t even sound like English.

“Aiden, you know she isn’t a cat, right?” I deadpan.

He shrugs, ignoring the rattling door. “She likes me to call her that.”

I watch as he disappears down the hall, likely to where we store the extra clothing we keep on hand for Skins we catch. I should feel some guilt for the way we’re keeping Blake here, but I can’t find it in myself to care. She’ll be fed and clothed and, for the time being, not have to fuck anyone. She can work on earning her freedom once I find out if she has any information about Vetella.

If Damien is a sick bastard, Vetella is a thousand times worse. I’ll sacrifice a hundred Skins if it means we can bring that motherfucker down.

The pounding on the door ceases just about the time Aiden ambles back, holding several articles of clothing. Tentatively and quietly he turns the lock, shoves the door open and chucks the clothes in, then slams and locks the door just as fast.

“Try those on,” he encourages. “I can get something different if they don’t fit or you don’t like them. I’ll even give you ice cream if you keep being good.”

I fight the little smile that tries to come to my mouth. Aiden is like a child in many ways. From the first day I met him, when I pulled him from the burning house where our master kept and left us to die in the blaze, we had been like brothers. Maybe closer. Fuck knows, my own biological brother and I weren’t close. That bastard was the one who sold me when our parents died. Since he was eighteen at the time, he was old enough to avoid the system as an Orphan and should have taken on the responsibility of ten-year-old me.

Instead, he profited on my sale and never looked back.

But Aiden—Aiden and I are bonded in a way that few others understood. We had both endured, separately, a similar kind of torture to what Blake had. It probably made itmorewrong that we were holding her hostage. In time, though, she would see that we weren’t the enemy—that we were just like her, and we were her ticket to freedom.

Aiden taps on the door where there’s no sound. “Kitten,” he says, his voice soothing. “Do you want some ice cream?”

There’s still no response from Blake, but she’s also not trying to tear the door down, so there’s that. But then...

“What kind of ice cream?” she asks, her voice almost too quiet to hear.

Aiden’s grin could eclipse the sun. “Chocolate.”

I hear a soft groan and a thud on the door. “Fine,” she says, a little louder. “I’ll try these on.”

“That’s my girl,” Aiden praises.

I stiffen, watching him as he bounces down the stairs and toward the kitchen. Fuck. Aidenwaslike a child. In some ways, it was cute; endearing even. But with the good comes the bad, and it could also be in all the worst ways.

Aiden didn’t share his things and fucking prepare yourself if you decided to try to take something that was his. Imagine a three-year-old having a destructive temper tantrum—now give that three-year-old a cherried out 1967 Ford Mustang convertible, a gun, and a few mental health disorders brought on by trauma. I had reminded him that Blake wasn’t his for this very reason. Because when Blake leaves—and she will leave—Aiden will crack.

And I’ll be left to pick up the pieces once more.

There’s a soft knock on from Blake’s side of the door after a few minutes. “Aiden?” she calls. She pauses. “Aiden, these fit for the most part.”

Irrational anger surges in me at the sound of her soft voice. She is going to ruin my friend—my brother. She’s going to wreck him, and I’ll have to bring him back from the brink of total insanityagain.

I march over to the door, twisting the lock and shoving it open. Unprepared for me, the door crashes into Blake and sends her stumbling backwards. She catches herself before she falls, but not before she slams her thigh into the bedpost. She grimaces, rubbing at the spot through black cargo pants that hug her frame, then straightens and glares at me.

Instinctually, I take a step back. Blake is clean, the blood totally gone from her skin, and has slipped into the cargo pants, a lacy black bra that looks a bit too small, and a white tank top. In the dress she’d arrived in, she’d looked too young—even though I know she’s almost nineteen years old. But in this outfit, her wet hair braided once more and draped over her shoulder, she looks like one of us. And it’s sexy as fucking hell.

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