Page 84 of Savage Don

“Because all you men are the same. I should have known better than to trust you.”

“Who said you can’t trust me?” Ray asks.

Either I’m going crazy, or I sense a bit of hurt in his rhetorical question.

Who the hell is this guy?

“I’m saying that,” I spit. “You’ve already said that. This was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. But now I find out that you want me to be your breeding slave? That’s fucking horrifying! Surely, even you must know how crazy that fucking sounds.”

Wiping away the hot tears trickling down my cheeks, Ray comes back into focus again. He’s shaking his head.

“You were never meant to be my breeding slave,” he says, the morbid playfulness singed from his voice. “You’re more than that to me.”

“Bullshit,” I rasp back at him. “You tricked me. I let you fuck me, take my virginity. And how do you repay me? By throwing out the only thing keeping me from becoming attached to you forever?”

Part of me wants to tell him that I took Plan B. Throw it in his face. But then what would happen?

A shiver skates up my spine as I think about how defenceless I am against this man. He could do whatever he wanted to me.

I’ve gotten myself trapped again. This time, though, it’s with a man who has no responsibility to keep me alive.

At least I’m my father’s daughter. Who am I to Ray Byrne?

“You seemed to enjoy what we did last night,” Ray says, turning his chin up at me.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“How bad could it be to commit yourself to that forever?”

A dull ache fogs my mind as I remember how good last night felt. The naughty pleasure is so clear that it forms like a fist in my core.

“That’s for me to decide,” I whisper, shaking myself out of that fog. “The second you take that decision away from me is when it becomes a punishment.”

“I can make you enjoy getting punished,” Ray smirks.

But that charm that I once fell so easily for has been corrupted in my eyes. This isn’t some golden-hearted monster. This is the devil.

And he doesn’t even seem to realize just how cold and evil he really is.

“I want to go home,” I hear myself mumble.

Crossing my arms, I fight off a chill. Even against the heated bathroom tiles, the world has gone cold.

It was foolish of me to ever hold out hope that Ray might be different than what I knew of this dark world. Even if he showed me a new side of it last night, that doesn’t mean I’m not still trapped beneath everything else.

“You’ve always been allowed to leave,” Ray says.

The unexpected response makes me squint as I stare up at him.

“I can go?” It feels like a trick.

To my surprise, Ray nods. “In fact, I insist that you do.”

But his response does little to reassure me. How could I trust him anymore? And even if he is letting me go, that just means I’m being taken back to the prison run by my father.

“Why?” I rasp, my heart pounding like a jungle drum behind my chest.

“Do you remember when I told you that slaves don’t ask questions?” Ray says, a true smirk lifting his chiselled cheekbones.