Page 10 of Creeping Beautiful

She always picks ‘now’. Never wants to get out of the tub until I make her.

I wish we had gotten her earlier. Before she was ten. I’d like to have known her from the beginning. I like her all the ways she is, but I still find myself wishing for those first ten years of her life that I missed.

A lot happened in those ten years and I just… wish I was there. Not that I could’ve changed anything. I don’t wield that kind of power. But at least I would know things. At least I’d know what really happened to her before Adam took her away from all that.

Our relationship is weird. I get that. Donovan has told me so many times in so many ways that nothing about us is normal and there’s no way to make it right. And I never needed him to tell me that. I knew it. We all knew what we were doing with her—to her—it was always wrong. So I really do get it. And once Donovan finds out she’s here with me he’ll be knocking on my door so fast my head will spin.

But I just don’t fucking care anymore.

You can’t help who you love and I love this girl more than life itself. I will do anything to make her happy. Anything. Even go along with this new plan she’s cooking up for Adam.

Because I hate that I helped shape her into this broken little thang and there’s a part of me that wants to take it all back.

But here’s the real truth.

And I’m not sure I’d admit it to anyone but myself, but…

There’s an even bigger part of me that wants to do it all again.

CHAPTER TWO - ADAM

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

Les Fleurs Island isn’t a place to vacation. There are no long stretches of white-sand beach. There are no thatched-roof huts along the shoreline. There are no six-star accommodations.

All of that is located thirty miles south east on L’Île de Beauté.

No. Les Fleurs is a six-hundred-acre tip of an oceanic mountain covered in jungle and ferns. It has only one purpose.

Well, two, I guess. If you count the zoo.

It holds a collection of exotic animals. Big cats, small cats, snakes, giant tortoises, wild goats, gators… that’s about all I’ve seen so far but I hear on the north side there’s a small herd of zebra and mustangs, two elephants, and a few giraffes.

I’ve also heard there’s a bunkhouse for the employees, but I’ve never personally seen it.

There is quite a nice marina though. And, of course, the reception area where I am now. It’s really more of a pavilion draped in long gauzy curtains that billow and blow in the ocean wind. The roof is metal, the floor is concrete, and there are about a hundred folding metal chairs facing the auctioneer’s block.

Definitely not six-star accommodations, but we won’t be here long, so no point in dressing it up too much.

Along the perimeter there are two bar stations and about twenty waiters carry trays of champagne flutes back and forth. There are no women here. Just men. All ages. Some young, like me, some old enough to be my great-grandfather—if I had one of those—and every age in between.

We are all here for the auction. Only twenty-seven girls are up for sale tonight but most of the men under this pavilion aren’t here to buy. Just watch.

The whole thing is an act. A show. A production. An annual event.

These girls won’t be paraded onto a stage and made to turn in circles like a nice piece of horseflesh. Oh, they will be well groomed, and pretty, and mostly clean. They will start that way, at least. They will wear white, like virgins. Though it’s highly unlikely they’re still virgins.

But they will be scared. They will be surrounded by animals that want to eat them. They will probably be crying. Some might even be hysterical.

They will beg.

To be set free, or to be bought, or sometimes to be killed.

And we, the men who hold their futures in their hands, we will be taken into the jungle, inside the zoo where the animals roam freely in large enclosures, and we will meet each girl through the bars of a cage.

Because they are pets.

We are here to buy pets.