AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You want me to bleed out on the floor?” I yelled again.
More silence.
Infuriating silence.
“You need to keep me alive, so I suggest someone comes in here and helps.”
The sound of a bolt being drawn back echoed through the room, and I retreated a few steps. The door opened, but instead of a guard, Aisling King entered the room.
The door remained open, a couple of guards standing at the ready.
Aisling’s clear green eyes traveled around my pitiful, shivering, wet body before locking onto my bleeding hand. “Trying to win the sympathy vote?” She made a sound low in her throat that sounded like a scoff. “You won’t be getting any sympathy from me.” Without taking her eyes off me, she called, “James?”
One of the guards walked into the room. “Miss?” he asked. She scowled at him, and he quickly corrected, “Chief?”
“Bring the first aid kit. We can’t have our guest bleeding to death, can we?”
James disappeared out the door without another word.
I called after him, “A blanket wouldn’t go astray, either!” then returned my attention to Aisling. I licked my lips, wondering how in the hell this was going to play out. “Why am I here?”
One of her perfectly groomed brows rose. “Why?” Aisling asked in that throaty purr she had. As she approached, I caught a whiff of cigarettes and knew that the sexy timbre was from nicotine rather than genetics. “Because you’re the thorn in my side. Everything was going according to plan until you showed up.”
I nodded. “Finnan was supposed to marry you.”
“And in doing so, merge our two great clans and create a power base for me to rule from.”
I hated to break it to her, but if she married Finnan, she wouldn’t be ruling over anything. “I think you’re overestimating your appeal and Finnan’s tolerance for anyone else’s ego.”
She narrowed her green eyes at me. “I don’t overestimate anything. The deal had been made, and Finnan broke it.”
My brows rose. “You think Iwantedto be sold in a flesh auction then abducted and taken to another country? You think I’m here by choice?”
“I don’t give a shit about what you want or what happened to you,” Aisling hissed, stepping a little closer. “All I care about is having the empire I was promised.”
“Even if that means tying yourself to a man who promised I’d become the clan whore if I didn’t toe the line?”
Aisling’s eyes flared. “Finnan is ruthless.”
“He’s a psychopath, but I can see how you can confuse the two.”
James came back into the room, first-aid kit in hand. He tried to hand it to Aisling, but she only stared at the proffered pouch with disdain.
“I’m not gettingherblood on my dress,” she told him.
I let James bandage my wound, which he did with the efficiency of an army medic who had to work quickly in the field. This wasn’t a war zone, but it could so easily be.
Aisling watched the whole process, arms folded, mouth thinned.
“What’s going to happen to me? You want me alive. Clearly.”
“For now.” She tapped her manicured fingers on her bare forearm. “But things change, Sloane, so very quickly.”
When James began packing up the kit, he and Aisling left, locking the door behind them. Shoving the debris of the wound clean off the edge of the foam pad, I curled onto my side to try to conserve warmth and attempted to get some rest.
* * *
Still curled in a ball,I woke up shivering, with my bare legs tucked up tight to my body. The room was freezing without any rugs on the wooden floor, but at least I had dried off a little. I was about to demand they turn up the heat when the bolt slid across, and the door opened. James was there again, carrying a tray of food. A bowl of what smelled like soup, a bottle of water, and a slice of bread. No utensils, lest I stab someone to death with them. I eyed James’s body as he walked, pinpointing where his guns were stashed. He was packing some heat—one on his hip, two in the over-the-shoulder holster, and judging by the bulge on his left ankle, one also near his foot.
