A few women were gathered in front of the mirrors, checking their make-up and gossiping, but I ignored them to wet some paper towel and hold it to the back of my neck in a foolhardy attempt to calm myself.
I wanted to run. Out the door of the theatre, out of the city and straight to the imposing grounds of Pearl Hall where we could lock the gates against intruders from the past. Where Alexander could protect me from men even more evil than himself as he had before.
My back ached with phantom pain as I thought about those twenty-five lashes he’d taken for me, as I thought about the blood and the sacrifice of that moment.
I’d thought Alexander would do anything to protect me. Cazzo, he’d even married me to do so.
But he wasn’t here.
He couldn’t be, and he didn’t want to be.
It was just me.
So I stared at my ashen face in the mirror, blinked my fake lashes hard over my frightened eyes, and filled them with determination instead.
If I was being hunted, I would fight.
I didn’t need Alexander or Dante or Salvatore to protect me.
I could damn well do it myself.
With a bracing inhale, I bent to part the high slit in my gown even further and took the SOG Salute mini folding knife from my garter belt to palm it in my hand. It had been a gift from Dante, engraved with a quote from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a book he had forced on me when I first moved to New York.
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
He wanted me to be prepared even though I’d teased him for being paranoid. For once, Dante hadn’t found me amusing.
I was grateful then for his overprotectiveness because if I was going to face a man I’d believed to be dead for the past four years, I wanted to be armed and ready.
He wasn’t waiting for me in the hallway when I emerged from the bathroom, and I wondered if he’d even spotted me in the crowded theatre.
I shouldn’t have wondered.
The disciples of the Order of Dionysus were sharks. They could smell blood in the water.
Sharp pain burst through the back of my skull as a hand reached out and yanked brutally on the strands so that I went reeling backward.
Hot breath fanned across my face as I was turned and then slammed against the wall with a hot body pressed chest to thighs to mine.
Lord Ashcroft’s floppy sand-coloured hair hung in his sneering face. He was shorter, my height, so we were eye to eye, mouth hovering so close to mouth.
“No Thornton to save you now, pet,” he taunted me, pulling on my hair so tightly that tears sprang to my eyes unbidden and sluiced down my cheeks. “No one to tell me I can’t take what I want.”
“You want the woman who got you strapped to a chair made of iron spikes? The one who got you bludgeoned over the head during The Hunt?” I snapped back.
The weight of my little knife was cold and heavy in the palm I had caught between our bodies. I tried to wiggle it free, and he pinned me with his hips.
“Such a little slut, trying to get at my cock already.” He dipped his head and ran his nose along my throat before tracing the same path with his tongue. “I’ve thought about taking you countless times over the years, but I never thought I would be so lucky as to bump into you right here in London. What a silly little chit you are to come back into the lion’s den.”
“Are you really going to rape me against the wall at Royal Albert Hall?” I asked before turning my head sharply, ignoring the flash of pain at the back of my head, so I could bite savagely into his earlobe.
He cursed viciously and slammed a knee up against my groin so hard, I doubled over into him.
“You have no idea how much I would love to do just that. I dream about the memory of your sweet, filthy mouth around my cock, and I cannot wait to test out your cunt. But I have all the time in the world to use you up, pet. Do you know why?” he whispered into my ear as he nuzzled my hair.
“Vaffanculo!” I spat at him.
Fuck you!
He laughed and ground himself against my thigh. “You will, you impatient minx. You will beg me to fuck you because if you don’t, I’ll sell footage of you and your precious ex-Master fucking on the floor of Pearl Hall’s ballroom.” He snickered as I froze against him. “Oh, didn’t you know? Every brother of the Order is made to film the first time he breaks and takes his slave. We have a little friendly contest each year to see who can take them the most viciously.”