Her legs went on for miles in that tight little black dress. She was wearing very high heels and she had a smokin’ body. The temperature in the room
rose a little as we sized one another up. I undid my top shirt button and moistened my lips.
“What’s going on here is this.” I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my thighs and looking up at her face, “Your father owed my father something and he’s paid that debt off using you as currency.” That was all I knew, although I did plan to get to the bottom of it.
“Why would anyone pay a debt with a person? And I’m not my father’s property so he had no right to agree to those terms.”
I liked how she was looking me right in the eye. I smiled at her.
“So, your father arranged a marriage?” she continued, “And even more strange, you agreed. And my father agreed to this as well?”
I mulled the question over for a moment, “Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?” she had an edge to her voice. She was on the verge of losing her temper. I wanted that. I wanted her to lose her temper so I could bring her in line. I could barely stand waiting for that moment of realization --- that moment when she got an inkling of what she was in for.
“We’ve had no real resistance from your father. He handed you over willingly, knowing you might be married into my family and that you might not be. Even said it was a bit of a relief. My father would like to see me married before he retires and hands over the helm of the family business. I haven’t agreed to anything. He’s given you to me as an option.”
“What if I refuse? Wait, what do you mean a relief?”
“This isn’t up to you,” I answered.
She winced, “Um, yeah, it is. You can’t force someone to marry you.”
“Can’t I?” I gave her a smile.
She frowned.
“Then what if you don’t take that option?”
I tapped my index finger on my lips for a moment, assessing her body language. She shuffled uncomfortably, no doubt dying to get out of those heels and away from me. I didn’t want her out of the shoes. I wanted her in them, them and nothing else. I wanted those heels up behind my ears.
“Then I’d get to decide what happens to you instead.”
She let out a slow breath, “And what would that be?”
I smiled, “Could be any number of things.”
“Like?”
I snickered. Her face turned red, she was having trouble hiding how uncomfortable she was. She was trying to mask her anger and her fear. I liked it.
“Could I be… killed?” She asked me.
I raised my brows, “Or worse.”
Confusion swept over her face. She didn’t know what I meant. She doesn’t know that there are things worse than death. She doesn’t know that many women sold into slavery wished for death because of the hell that was their existence.
“So you’re having trouble finding someone to marry?” She eyed me up and down as if I was something she scraped off her shoe, “That’s why you’re doing this?”
I snickered, “Not exactly.”
Tia
He was sitting on that couch staring at me like he wanted to have me for breakfast. Right now, to me, he looked like what a cunning devil might look like if he were disguised as a handsome man. Oozing with sex appeal and danger. And deception. And more danger. And arrogance.
He’d come into the ice cream parlor on my last day there and flirted with me. Today he looked like the same guy but acted different --- almost like he was the evil twin. His eyes and his overall demeanor were vastly different. The light and playfulness in his eyes wasn’t there. There was intensity instead, something I could only think to describe as a sort of darkness. Like evil or something.
His body was broad and muscular but not bulky. His arms thick, muscular, and because his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows I could see swirly tribal-looking tattoos on a forearm. His jaw was tight as he assessed me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t know if I should try to reason with him, to plead for him to let me go, or to sit there and shut up and wait see what his next move would be.