Johanna
Iawokewith a start to the sound of my bedroom door banging open. I gasped, yanking the covers up to my chin at the dark shape that lurched towards me.
“Well, well, well, if it ain’t my newest little filly.”
Mr. Pike.
I gasped again, scooting to the far side of the bed as he staggered towards me. I’d gone to bed in just a pair of panties, and I shivered as my eyes dropped to the bottle in his hand that he slammed down on the bedside table with a thud. Moonlight shone through the windows, glinting off his wicked smile.
“You know,” he slurred. “Some lucky prick is gonna have arealfine time breaking you in. I bet those lips of yours weremadefor suckin’ cock, now weren’t they?”
I shivered, eyeing him and holding the covers tightly in my fists.
“Answer the fucking question,” he snarled. “Or else maybe I need to get that pretty mouth of yours over here and get a sample myself,huh?”
He started to lurch towards my far side of the bed, when two figures came crashing through the doorway.
“Mr.Pike,” Roman hissed, his shoulders bunched and his fists actually raised in front of him. Colt shook his head quietly and pushed his friends raised hands down as Mr. Pike turned.
“The fuck do you two idiots want? I’m busy in here.”
I could see both of the cowboys’ eyes flare as they darted to me, shying away on the bed, and Mr. Pike, looming over me with his hand on his belt.
“There’s a matter that needs your attention in C-block,” Colt said icily, his jaw clenched.
“Well what is it?”
“Dunno boss, we got sent to get you. Urgent business or something.”
Mr. Pike swore. “Fuckin’, what the fuck do Ipaypeople for around here?” He glanced back at me and sneered. “I’ll be back for you, little filly.” He grabbed his bottle off the bedside table, shouldered past Colt and Roman, and stumbled out the door.
The two of them were instantly by my side.
“Thefuckdid he do?” Roman hissed.
“Nothing, it’s fine.”
It didn’tfeelfine. In fact, I was shaking.
“Johanna—”
“Why do you work for him?”
The words I’d been wondering ever since I realized the two men I couldn’t stop thinking about werepartof Mr. Pike’s whole horrible operation came tumbling out before I could stop them. Colt and Roman glanced at each other.
“I mean, you—”
I wanted to tell them they weren’t bad, and that something about them made me feel good, and that they didn’t seem like the type to work for a place like this and man like that. I just didn’t know how to tell them all that without spilling what I was feeling for them.
...Because what I was feeling for them was silly, and I knew that. It was silly to think that way about two men like this, who worked for a man like Mr. Pike.
“You want to know why we’re here.”
I looked up and my eyes caught Colt’s. I nodded.
“It’s not willingly,” Roman growled. “We work for him because we owe some very bad people a lot of money, and those people have a business arrangement with Jeb Pike.”
“Sorry.” I glanced at the two of them, almost wanting to ask more about what would possibly force them to work for a man like Mr. Pike, but also knowing it wasn’t for me to pry.