After she’s finished, she pushes away her plate and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Something about the simple action thickens my dick, but considering what she’s been through, and the fact that her eyes follow me cagily, it will be a while before I can touch her. Not that it matters. She’s mine for life. I can wait a few weeks to gain her trust. Starting with telling her everything about her journey from the safety of her own apartment to ending up in the middle of nowhere with me.
“Firstly,” I begin. “I fully expect you to try to escape the minute my back is turned. However, there are some things you should know before you try it. One, there is nothing else within a twenty-five-mile radius other than mountainous terrain and ravines that, if you fell into, you’d never be able to claw your way out of. Two, bears, mountain lions, and wolves freely roam these parts, and I don’t advise getting in their way. And three, I am the best tracker there is. I will find you, and when I do, you won’t like the consequences. Do we understand each other?”
She nods and pinches the skin of her throat, her teeth gnawing at that plump bottom lip I’m desperate to suck.
“Good. Now that you know the risks, if you still want to go for it, be my guest. The door isn’t locked, and I don’t plan to chain you up. You’re free to roam around the house and step outside for some fresh air.” I gently touch her arm and take a little comfort when she doesn’t recoil away from me. “You’re not a prisoner here, Calla.”
“Aren’t I?” she asks, nibbling on the side of her thumbnail.
“No. If I hadn’t rescued you, then you’d have been a prisoner.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You rescued me? Don’t you mean you abducted me?”
My jaw works, but I keep my expression open and nonthreatening. “I wasn’t the one who took you.”
Although I planned to. But not like this. Not to have her subjected to what Typhon will have put her through.
It’s a testament to her resilience that she isn’t a quivering wreck, and if one of the other trainers had picked her, she might have passed their tests after all. I don’t know whether to be relieved or sorry about that. Relieved because this way I get to keep her. Sorry because no one deserves what Typhon does to the girls.
“Then who did?”
I lean back in my chair and shift my body to the side. She follows the move, her eyes raking over me, and desire feasts on my insides. She really is exquisite.
I’m taking a risk by telling her everything, but if I’m to make her mine, then showing her I trust her is the beginning of that journey.
“The organization is called The Elite. It’s run by a group of very powerful men who traffic women for their sexual gratification. Those who pass the tests like the ones you went through last night are ensconced into a club where they enjoy enormous privileges, and in return, they are matched with two or three men whom they service. It’s a good life. Far better than the alternative.”
“The alternative was to leave them where they were. With family, friends, people who love them.”
It’s interesting she mentions friends and family, considering she’s an orphan who, until recently, lived in a foster home in Utah. Once she turned eighteen, she left and moved to Denver, possibly as a way of starting a new life and leaving the old one behind. Some foster homes are great, but others, not so much. My guess is Calla wasn’t exactly showered with love in hers. Hence, she left as soon as she graduated high school.
From my diligent investigations and the hours I’ve spent trailing her, she doesn’t appear to have any friends yet, either. I don’t pull her up on it, though. I’m her family now, and I’m all she needs, even if she doesn’t yet realize it.
“Maybe,” I say. “But once they’re targeted and taken, out of the two possible futures, one is significantly better than the other.”
She glances around at my log cabin, taking it all in. “I take it I failed,” she states baldly. “And this is my punishment.”
“Yes, you failed, but no, this isn’t your punishment. Like I said, I rescued you. If I hadn’t, right now you’d be living in a brothel, servicing ten, fifteen, twenty men a day.”
She pales and starts plucking at the skin of her throat once more as the enormity of what could have been her fate hits her right between the eyes. Maybe I should have sugarcoated it a little more, but I find that bluntness saves the meandering, and both end up at the same destination anyway, so what’s the point in delaying the inevitable?
“So, who are you?” she whispers.
I lean back in my chair and cross an ankle over my knee. “I work for The Elite. I’m a tracker. My job is to source appropriate, innocent women who the trainers then put through the tests.”
“So you did take me?” she hisses, venom pouring from her ice-blue eyes.
I like this side of her. It shows passion. Passion is good. Especially between the sheets.
“No, I didn’t. Someone else did. And he paid the price for it.”
“How?”
I lock my gaze on hers. “I killed him.”
Her mouth falls open, and she gasps. “You killed him? Why? How?”
“Why? Because he took you when you were mine. And how?” I shrug. “I stabbed him. I find a knife far more personal than a gun.”
Her eyes dart about wildly as she processes my frank admission. “But how can I be yours? I don’t even
