And now we were about to tear this life away from all of them. We were about to tear away a world where they’d grown comfortable with their brain-washing men and send them into a world full of therapists and agents in the hopes they would one day live the normal lives they always should’ve had.
Looking at the hundreds of women filling the hall, it terrified me to know that some of them would never adjust—to know that most of them didn’t want to get out of this world—to know that being freed from these disturbed men would be harder for them than being torn from their homes had been.
I’d already been queasy before the event had begun, but my nausea had worsened since we’d arrived a couple hours before, and I felt close to fainting as I stood in the sea of lost women.
Lucas murmured a low curse under his breath, and I lifted my heavy head to look in the direction he was facing.
A couple of men and their women were walking in our direction and I instinctively backed up against Lucas’s side when I noticed who one of the men was.
I didn’t know his name, and I didn’t want to. All that mattered was that when I looked at him, I remembered Lucas’s words from my first weeks with him, and I understood just how badly this all could’ve gone for me when I was first sold at the auction.
“It’s possible that if you’d been bought by someone else then you would have ended up as a sex slave.”
This is what Lucas had meant that day. He was one of two men I’d seen at the celebration like this—and he made my already weak stomach churn until it felt like I would lose the remaining contents right there on the floor. I felt sick as I watched the man approach us, and I suddenly couldn’t swallow anymore. My tongue felt too thick, my mouth too dry. I needed to get out of there.
The man was tall with a large, drooping belly. And in one of his meaty hands, he held the ends to leashes. Leashes that were attached to his women. Women who were crawling after him on the floor like they were dogs.
Lucas flinched away from me so quickly that I stumbled toward him, only catching myself when he gripped my upper arm and made me face him.
“Sorry,” I whispered automatically. I knew I couldn’t touch him. I hadn’t meant to; I’d just wanted to get away from what I was seeing.
Lucas’s head dropped so he was eye-level with me, and he pinned me with a cold stare. His lip curled into a sneer, completing the expression, and not matching his breathless words. “I’ve got you. You can do this.”
To anyone watching, he was a man disgusted with the way his woman had just acted, and was giving her quiet commands. To us, he was steadying and comforting me the only way he could while he played his part.
“Remember that we’re taking them all down. Remember that we’re freeing the women,” he whispered then released me roughly, straightening just in time to greet the men as they approached us.
By the time I turned toward them and lifted my head, every emotion was locked up tight inside me—betraying nothing of what I felt. None of the fatigue or nausea from what was happening inside me. None of the revulsion or horror from what I was seeing in this massive hall. None of the anticipation or eagerness of what was to come before the night ended.
None of it.
For all they knew, I was a woman who had just been scolded in public by the man who owned her, and I was trying not to show that I was embarrassed.
“Lucas Holt,” the man with the leashes called out. “I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you. It has been going around how well you have done with your first.”
Now that he was closer, I could see him more clearly. He was sweating profusely, forcing his sex slaves to crawl through what was dripping from him onto the floor.
Bile rose in my throat, and I tried to force it back.
His eyes slowly raked over me, and I lost my hold on my neutral appearance when he licked his teeth and said, “And might I say, she is lovely.”
I dropped my head and saw Lucas stiffen from the corner of my eye before his hands slipped into his pants pockets. I knew who was now facing those disgusting men, and I knew what he was imagining doing to them.
And for once it didn’t scare me. I wanted it.
The floor swayed below my feet, and I squeezed my eyes tight as I blew out a slow breath, trying to calm my stomach. But my head felt light—too light.
I swallowed thickly and tried to open my eyes, but shut them again when it felt like the entire room was spinning around me.
When my devil spoke, none of the wrath I knew he was feeling could be heard. Only that unnerving calm, with the slightest hint of arrogance. “She was a challenge at first, but I found her out soon enough, and then she was easily broken.”
The sweating man laughed loudly, and another man on my left spoke up, making me feel even more off balance. “You should buy tonight, Lucas. It’s not often we find one who will do what we need them to so quickly, so you should take advantage and start on your second.”
“I
plan to,” Lucas responded coolly.
“Would you look at that,” the sweating man said with a snarl. “Your first can’t even stand the thought of it. Jealous bitches they are in the beginning.”