“Easy krasivaya,” he said.
A muscle ticked in my jaw as he called her beautiful. She was my pet. If anyone were to give her a special name in Russian or any other fucking language, it would be me.
“I see you when you return.” He closed the door and moved away from the car.
No, you won’t. I put the car in reverse and backed away from the house. Lucius stood in one of the downstairs windows and watched us leave. Actually, he didn’t watch us, his gaze was fixed on Stella.
“He creeps me out.” Her eyes were trained on the same window.
“Don’t talk about my brother like that.” He was blood. She was an Acquisition. Even if I wanted to beat the desirous look out of his eyes until all I saw was gore, some bonds were unbreakable.
“Fine.” She sank bank in the seat as far as she could and stared out the window. I glanced at her, taking in her stunning profile. Creamy, smooth skin, delicate nose, sumptuous pout… Her lips were painted a blood red, the perfect complement to the emeralds at her throat.
I wore classic black tie. I didn’t need to stand out. I was nothing more than background noise. Stella was the attraction, the star.
We fell into an uncomfortable silence as I cycled the gears, sped through the estate, and maneuvered out onto the road. The ball was held at the Oakman estate, and had been for as long as anyone cared to remember. This year’s affair promised to be even more extravagant than previous years, given that Cal Oakman was the current Sovereign.
The bastard was revered throughout our community. His winning Acquisition ten years ago had cemented him at the top of Louisiana society. I hadn’t attended that ball, despite the engraved platinum invitation. Now I wished I had. At least I would know more of what to expect. Hopefully my mother’s recollections of her Acquisition Ball twenty years would still hold true. They should. Tradition and ritual were the bedrock principles beneath the entire system.
“What’s going to happen?”
I ignored her question. If I described what I expected to go on at the ball, she might put up enough fight to be a problem. I needed her just as she was, a perfectly tantalizing morsel, wide-eyed and beautiful. I needed her eventual downfall to be spectacular. I needed to win.
Twilight fell as we sped along country roads, past vast estates hidden behind walls of trees and dark bayous.
“I won’t run.” Her voice was quiet, but resolute.
“What?” I downshifted as we came closer to the Oakman gate.
“If you tell me what’s going to happen, I won’t run. I know there’s nowhere to go and you’ll hurt my father if I do. So, just tell me.”
I pulled the car over so quickly she yelped. The freshly fallen leaves crunched under the tires as we skidded to a halt.
“You want to know what the most powerful people in the South, maybe the entire fucking country, are going to do to you tonight?”
She winced and then turned her wide, angry eyes to me. “Yes.”
“Remember how I said I would hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight, I won’t be the only one inflicting the pain. That’s all you need to know.”
I wanted to be the only one to hurt her, the only one to make her cry or bleed or scream. Instead, Cal fucking Oakman would be sharing the duties, and for an audience. She was mine—not because I cared about her, but because I owned her.
I hit the steering wheel and turned to her, pinching her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “You just have to get through it. No matter what happens.”
Her breaths came faster and she leaned toward me, her cloak falling to the side and revealing the swells of her breasts. “But you’ll be there? With me?”
She was drawing me toward her somehow until my lips were only a whisper away from hers. She smelled like rosewater and honey, a scent I’d chosen for her for the evening. It was meant to be intoxicating, to draw people in, but it wasn’t supposed to work against me like this. Her eyes closed, her lips in full bloom and ready for a kiss.
Once again, I was letting my family down. She was property. I needed to stop acting like she was anything more than that. But she didn’t make it easy. The day before when she’d lain on her bed and stroked herself, making quiet cries and grinding her hips against her hand, it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to burst into her room and fuck her until she screamed my name. The memory went straight to my dick, making a bad situation even worse.
Her question came back to me. Would I be there with her? Yes. Would she be happy about it? No. Definitely not. Her lips begged for solace I could not and would not give. I pulled away and made a show of wiping my fingers on my handkerchief.