“You know, it's almost a six hour flight back to my home from where we were, and you only managed to use up thirty minutes in the shower. How many times do you think you'd be able to read that page in that amount of time?” His dry, amused tone grated against my nerves, and the fingers of my free hand curled into a fist while I envisioned smacking the amusement clean off his handsome face. Asshole.
“You must be hungry… I can't imagine the slave traders had made it their top priority to feed you while in captivity,” he mused, inspecting my body as though I should be totally emaciated with ribs sticking out. Damn him for speaking my language, though; I was starving, and my stomach echoed that sentiment by growling loudly. He smirked at the sound, and I gritted my teeth in an effort not to punch him in the mouth. As tempting as it was, it would only cause more problems for me while in midair.
“I’ll tell you what,” he purred, a sly grin across his face. “I will provide a meal if you answer all of my questions while you eat.” My glare narrowed at him.
Surely he hadn't spent three point five million dollars for the scintillating pleasure of my conversation?
My mind was made up for me, though, when the same hostess appeared as if from thin air, carrying a tray which smelled like the most heavenly creation in the world, and my belly cramped painfully.
“Fine,” I ground out from behind clenched teeth, then needed to force myself not to snatch the food as the hostess slowly unfolded a table from my armrest and placed the tray down in front of me. Holy fucking shit, steak!
I stifled a groan as the smell of it reached my nose and tried to calmly pick up my cutlery and eat with a little dignity, while on the inside my belly wanted to tear into the food like some sort of rabid animal. “I presume I guessed correctly that you're a carnivore then?” my companion commented, his heavy stare making me think there was subtext to that statement that my poor food-deprived brain wasn't computing.
Ignoring him, I placed a huge forkful of food in my mouth. As awful as airline food generally was, this was definitely the exception to the rule, and I struggled not to cram it in any faster. Logic told me that if it had truly been a long time since I had eaten, then I needed to take this slowly or I'd be decorating the carpet soon.
“So, tell me drag?, how did you end up in the Onyx Auction?” The psychotic man across from me was wasting no time getting his questions started, although that wasn't exactly what I had expected. I wasn't entirely sure what I had expected, to be honest, but it wasn't that.
“That's what you want to know?” I asked suspiciously in between mouthfuls.
“For now,” he replied, relaxing back into his seat.
I pursed my lips, thinking about what harm there could be in answering honestly. “I was kidnapped, like I keep telling you.”
“Obviously.” He rolled his eyes. “Elaborate, please.”
I sighed, too tired to play games. “I was kidnapped from my home in Washington. Some asshole that I had run into a couple of times before came out of nowhere and chloroformed me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in an underground cell, then drugged and sold on a stage in some dodgy looking strip club.” I glared at him. “Where you paid a small fortune to buy me rather than letting that disgusting old pedophile win the auction.” At this, his left eyebrow arched in curiosity.
“You knew him? The man bidding against me?” He seemed genuinely surprised at this, and I was relieved to see they weren't working together in some way.
“That was the first time I had seen him in a long time. Almost six years. It honestly never occurred to me that he might have had a hand in my abduction.” I dodged his eye contact, not willing to give away any more information on that subject. I knew my eyes would give away more than I was comfortable with while I desperately shoved the memories back in their little locked box.
“Interesting…” he murmured. “So you are from Washington? That's a big city, is it not?”
“No.” I shook my head, grateful for the safe subject. “State, not DC. Opposite sides of the country. And I'm not technically from there; I was just going to school there.”
“So you were kidnapped from your school? You seem a little old… no offense.” He smiled at me congenially, and I snorted at the normal conversation I was having with someone who’d just blown a man's brains out in front of me not an hour ago. I really am a magnet for crazies and trouble after all.
“Ah yeah, I am. But I had just graduated,” I said, not offering anything extra.
“I see. So what were you doing that allowed you to be surprised by a man with chloroform?” he pressed, and for some reason the words just kept rolling off my tongue.
“I was at paintball.” He frowned in confusion, “You know, where you shoot the other team with bullets made of paint?” He hummed and nodded his understanding, then gestured for me to continue. “I was there with some friends, and when I was walking back to the starting point, Sergei just popped out of nowhere.”
“And where were these friends of yours while you were being kidnapped? They just let this happen?” He scowled, and I felt a strong surge of protectiveness for my guys.
“No they did not just let it happen,” I snapped. “They were already back at the starting point. They would never, ever, have let Sergei get away with it had they been anywhere nearby.”
He sat back in his seat, silent and watching me for a minute while I used the break to stuff more of the buttery steak into my mouth. I was careful to chew slowly before swallowing in order to give my stomach time to adjust.
“Tell me about these friends of yours,” he ordered, surprising me with the segue.
“Why do you want to know about my friends?” I asked hesitantly. While I didn't care much about telling my story—given I was already up shit creek—I wasn't so free to speak about them.
“Humor me.” He grinned like a crocodile, a curious glint in his granite gray eyes.
I frowned, intending to say nothing, but couldn't seem to filter my thoughts before the words began tumbling out once more. “What do you want to know about them? I met them recently, and they saved my life a couple of times, and now I'm sort of living with them. Or at least I was until all of this happened. They're probably really worried about me right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tracked me down and caused all sorts of trouble for you. You should probably just send me home and save yourself the bother.”