Page 10 of Stolen

I gave him a little smirk. It didn’t matter what I said or did now because I was probably as good as dead. Surprisingly, he actually smiled back, but his words were ice cold.

“I certainly hope so,” he said dangerously, bearing down on me.

“Yeah, yeah,fuck you,” I told him, not giving a shit. I probably should have cared, but knowing I stabbed a guard, beat the shit out of two more, and attempted to escape, I might as well go out with a bang.

“That can be arranged,” he said darkly, and my heart skipped a beat.

Just then, the men I had attacked slumped up behind me.

“Sorry, sir, she just attacked out of nowhere. We just—”

“Save it,” the owner said, holding up his hand. “Get her up and bring her to my room.”

Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck.

The two guards reached down and picked me up from the floor. Binding my hands in front of me this time with another set of zip ties, they pulled them so tight I could feel them nearly cutting off circulation.

Good,I thought.The tighter, the better.

They then practically dragged me down the hall back into the asshole’s office. I didn’t see Jared leave the medical room so I must have really done a number on him with the switchblade. I hoped the fucker bled out, but I doubted I struck that deep.

We caught up to the owner as he unlocked a door near the corner of the office; a door I had apparently missed earlier. Following through, the guards shoved me in and locked the door behind me, leaving me alone withhim.

The heat was officially on.

A quick glance gave me the impression of a guest bedroom, but the assessment was lost the moment the owner snatched my attention as he removed his jacket and tossed it on the dresser next to him.

“Day one, not more than fifteen minutes after having the rules explained to you, and you’re already breaking all of them. That’s quite the record here, Miss Wilder,” the asshole finally said, his voice deep with aggression and warning as he turned toward me. I glimpsed down, noticing he still had the switchblade in his hand covered in Jared’s blood.

“Breaking them all?” I stalled. “I thought there was only one.”

He didn’t seem amused. “One express rule. The rest are implied.”

I shrugged as I slowly maneuvered through the room, my eyes watching his every move. “Ah, silly me. You should clarify that next time. We could have avoided this whole thing.”

“Who said we wanted to avoid it?”

I caught the glint of challenge in his eyes as I narrowed my own at him. “So you prefer troublemakers then?”

A shark-like grin curved the corners of his mouth, the evil smirk revealing more than he probably intended to. “We prefervariety. A diverse selection of troublemakers is far more enticing than just one flavor, don’t you think?”

I grimaced in disgust. “A brilliant business strategy, I’m sure, but not one I’m looking to participate in.”

“And your alternatives to that are what exactly?” he asked, amused.

If I was being honest with myself, I was surprised he allowed this pointless banter to go on for as long as it was. I figured he was more of the type to execute quickly and move on to the next target of the day, but evidently, I was wrong. He clearly enjoyed playing with his food.

“I figured that was implied,” I answered before I closed my teeth around the end of the zip ties to pull them even tighter until they cut into my skin.

A ghost of a smile snuck into the corner of his lips as he watched me.

“Then let’s see how that works out for you.” And then he took a hard step forward.

Jolting to the side, I raised my bound hands up high over my head and slammed them down hard against my abdomen. With enough tension and force, the zip ties broke apart and released my hands, causing the owner to stop in his tracks and regard me closely.

“Very clever,” he taunted as he played with the knife in his hand. “I hope there’s more where that came from. This might actually be enjoyable.”

I scoffed. “Don’t get too excited. We wouldn’t want you to blow your load too early.”

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