Page 63 of Virgin Sacrifice

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I shot back, not bothering to hide my defensiveness. He had thrown me over his shoulder and dragged me into an abandoned classroom; I was entitled to defend myself, secrets or not.

“Luz Amelia Torres, born 2004, Almeda, Texas, to one Sofia Torres, no father listed on the birth certificate. Until the fourth grade you lived in Houston, after which you began moving around approximately 1.27 times a year for the next nine years, up until the death of your mother last September . . .”

My stomach turned as he continued rattling off the half facts of my life story as though they were common knowledge.

“Despite this, you maintained a 4.3 weighted GPA, speak four languages fluently, and spent extensive time volunteering at the closest local retirement home, well beyond what your average high achiever would need to polish up their college resume.

“You have extremely limited social media, although you do have a burner account that you use to follow your friend Autumn Morgan on TikTok, along with some other more well-known fashion influencers.

“Your actual social life is even more pathetic if the words of your former classmates are to be believed. By all accounts, the Morgan girl might be your first ever real friend, although, by the waves you made at the party at the beginning of the year, it’s not entirely surprising. You don’t seem to suffer from the same pointless desire to be liked that everyone else does. Yet you allow the Croft boy and that sniveling blonde to continue to hang around when you so clearly dislike them.”

I kept my spine straight as he continued to monotonously deliver a horrifying amount of knowledge and introspection into my life. I knew that the twins had been stalking me, but I had no idea the breadth of knowledge Alister Blackwell had managed to collect on me. If this was what he knew now, it was only a matter of time before he started uncovering my past, if he hadn’t already.

“I know that you are at the top of all your classes, except Macro Economics where you’re only in the top ten percent, due in part to my cousin’s entirely unprofessional obsession with you . . .”

He finally paused, letting a heavy exhale out through his nose as his eyes crinkled in a rare expression of emotion from the taciturn twin, although what precisely he was feeling was indecipherable.

“Nothing about you is remarkable, Luz Torres, not based on the facts available. You’re intelligent, physically attractive, and disciplined, I suppose, but so are many people. So, what is it about you . . .” he said, stepping closer to block me in. “What is about you, petite diablesse, that chaos and death follow so faithfully in your wake?”

Chapter twenty-nine

Alister

I watched with satisfaction as her pupils dilated, blotting out her amber irises like an eclipse. Her lips were slightly parted, to accommodate the increasingly deep breaths she was trying not to take. The dim light of the room made it difficult to see, but I was certain that if I were to wrap my hands around the soft flesh of her thighs, I would be rewarded with the pebbled sensation of goosebumps on her supple skin.

Her fear was absolutely captivating. Combined with her fiery determination not to give in, it was intoxicating and I found myself less and less interested in trying to maintain my objectivity around her.

I wanted to drink in her terror like a fine wine, and if it helped me get the answers I was looking for as well, even better.

“Va te faire foutre!” she snapped at me, and I suppressed the urge to smirk at her bravado. “Like I’ve already told you, your psychotic brother, your dickhole of cousin, the police, and everyone else, I don’t know why someone is stalking me. More to the point, I still don’t see why it’s any of your business.”

She didn’t have any of the traditional tells that most people did. Her breathing and pulse remained relatively even (though she had been attempting to regulate her breath for a while now), and her eyes remained steady, earnest even. Still, I knew, in the way I just did, that she was lying to me right now.

She’d told us before that she didn’t know why she was being targeted, and at that time it was the truth. Now it wasn’t. Something had changed, and I was excited to have a targeted secret to extract from her.

It wouldn’t be easy. Particularly given what a skilled little storyteller she was. Few people took to lying that easily without some sort of underlying psychopathy. Which meant that either she was hiding darker secrets than I had imagined, or that someone had coached her on how to lie convincingly under pressure. Both were enticing possibilities. Either way, she represented a challenge.

I stepped forward into her space, unapologetically wedging myself in between her legs, deftly moving the crutches out of her reach. She wore those flimsy cotton spandex shorts wrapped around her like a second skin, and the warmth of her pussy was unmistakable even against the thick denim of my jeans.

She was cursing me out, again, this time in German.

“When did you learn to speak French?” I interrupted her without a second thought.

“Wh—what?” she stuttered, finally giving me an honest reaction.

I slipped my hand around the base of her neck, wrapping my fingers around her back and caressing my thumb along the length of her collarbone where I could lightly feel the thrumming of her pulse under her skin.

“You’re fluent in Spanish and German, but you favor French. You studied German in high school, and your mother taught you Spanish based on your accent and the colloquialisms you favor. How did you learn French?”

“A family friend,” she said defiantly, telling me nothing.

I counted the steady beats of her heart. One . . . two . . . three . . . before murmuring, “Not a lie,” more to provoke her than anything.

She snorted at me as she rolled her eyes, and my already rock-hard cock twitched uncomfortably in my pants. “Is this supposed to be some sort of interrogation?”

That was Locke’s forte, although I was skilled at it myself. I shrugged. I wasn’t the one giving answers today.

“Then what the hell do you want—‍”

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