The room at the end of the hallway is roughly 1,000 square feet in size, with shiny hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling mirrors all along one wall, and no windows. The pristine condition of the room that is nothing like any of the other dusty, shit-smelling rooms in the stables isn’t what keeps my feet glued to the floor in the doorway and my eyes bugging out of my head. It’s also not the reason my dick is stirring to life in my pants and my palms are starting to sweat.
Right smack in the middle of the room, with her back to me and bent at the waist with her perfect ass in the air, is Shelby. Her body flies back upright and she twirls around the room, her hips moving erotically to the beat of the music while she spins, leaps, and dances like a goddamn angel. A hot, sexy angel in a pair of the smallest black shorts I’ve ever seen, a white sports bra, and bare feet, her body glistening with a thin sheen of sweat and pieces of her long, wavy hair sticking to her cheeks and her chest as she whips her head around to the music. She combines moves that would make a stripper proud with steps that would make a ballerina bow at her feet, her left leg extending above her head as smooth and easily as one would throw their arm up to wave at someone.
She’s beautiful.
She’s breathtaking.
And she sure as shit isn’t a little girl anymore.
The music comes to a stop and so does Shelby, poised with her arms draped over the top of her head, breathing heavily. Her chin comes up and her eyes meet mine in the mirror before I can back out of the room and pretend like I was never here.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
Her green eyes are filled with fire as she whirls her body around and presses her hands to her hips.
“How did you get in here? That door was locked.”
Forcefully moving my eyes up from her tits straining against the thin cotton material of her top, I give her a smirk and lean casually against the doorjamb, pretending like I see shit like her standing in front of me half-dressed every day and it has no effect on me at all. She doesn’t need to know that I’m suddenly feeling the four-year absence of her from my life like a punch to the gut, because I feel like I missed out on so much. She also doesn’t need to know the memory of that kiss she gave me the night of her high school graduation is suddenly flashing through my mind, wreaking all sorts of havoc in my head. Soft lips, bold tongue, the smell of peaches filling my nose as I fought the war raging inside me to push her away when all I wanted to do was strip her naked and fuck some sense into her.
“Shelby Eubanks, all grown up, a fancy college graduate and a dancer to boot. How ’bout that?”
She rolls her eyes at me, her bare feet moving her across the room toward me. Right when I think she’s going to hug me in greeting, she turns and grabs a towel from the small wooden table right inside the door.
“You’re not supposed to be in here. No one is allowed in here,” she tells me irritably, dabbing the fluffy white towel against her cheeks.
“Nice to see you, too, Legs.”
She presses the towel to her chest and raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
“Really?”
“I’m sure all those college boys you hung around for four years showered you with plenty of compliments on those long legs of yours,” I tell her with another sarcastic smirk, ignoring the jealousy coursing through my body at the idea that any guy got close enough to those gorgeous fucking legs and the hot body attached to them. “How come I never knew this room existed? Or that you could dance like that?”
Shelby tosses the towel onto the table and mirrors my casual pose, crossing her arms in front of her.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Eli James. I’m not a stupid little girl anymore and I’m not going to fall at your feet, so you can go ahead and wipe that smirk off your face.”
Four years in New York City didn’t diminish the Southern twang in her voice, and if anything, her annoyance with me brings it out even more. At least one thing is still the same in this fucked-up scenario where the tables have turned and she seems to want nothing to do with me.
I open my mouth to ask about the room again, when suddenly, I feel something drip down the side of my face. Bringing my hand up, I swipe my fingers against my cheek, holding them in front of me to find them covered in blood. Pain explodes through my head and I cry out, my hands clutching on to handfuls of hair.
Shelby calls to me, but her soft Southern voice speaks in a foreign language. One that churns my stomach with nausea and fear and hate. I cry out again when my stomach explodes with pain, like someone just punched me right in the gut. Bending at the waist, I drop my body forward and feel my mouth filling with the salty, bitter taste of blood. I spit it out onto the floor, noticing I’m no longer standing on shiny hardwood, but roughly packed dirt. My head whips up when a burst of searing pain explodes through my ribs, catching my reflection in the mirror across the room. My face is filled with bruises and cuts, the blood dripping down from my head making bright red rivers trickle through the mud and dirt caked on my face.
I open my mouth and scream at the man in the mirror. The broken, dirty, ruined man staring back at me with so much pain on his face that it hurts to look at him.
“Eli, wake up!”
I close my eyes, refusing to look at the ugliness in the mirror and scream louder.
“ELI! WAKE UP!”
My eyes fly open and I jerk myself upright, my arms and my fists swinging as I go.
“ELI! IT’S ME! IT’S ME, IT’S OKAY!”
My fist pauses in midair when I realize where I am, and that it’s been three months since I was rescued. I’m holding my hand an inch away from the woman sitting on the edge of the bed next to me, her eyes the same chocolate brown as mine, her tangled mess of hair from being woken up in the middle of the night, once the same shade of dark brown as mine, but now filled with fancy blond streaks, her face as white as the sheet tangled around my sweaty body, and probably the same hue as my own face after that fucking dream.
I pull my knees up under the sheet and rest my elbows on them, dropping my head in my hands.
“Jesus, Kat, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whisper softly, trying to get my heart rate back to normal and slow my breathing as the pain in my heart and the guilt swarming through my head amplify, hating myself for what I’m putting my family through.