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“Why would I want to oversell my shitty life, asshole?” I won’t raise my voice. Won’t let him think he’s gotten to me. He hasn’t. “Only thing I tried to do is get you to open up too. To talk to me instead of staring for hours. But no. You gave me nothing. You are nothing, you boring motherfucker. Why I ever asked you to put your miserable dick in me is beyond me.”

He lifts his hand again.

James is quick to grab his wrist.

“I said”—he stares his son down—“we don’t hit them.”

The underlying threat is palpable.

“Fine, fine.” Topher shrugs him off, his hand pressing to my thigh. Pulling it aside. “She’s not getting out of this without a punishment, though.”

James’s glare is aimed at his son’s free hand as it slides up my body. Topher grabs my waist, and a thunderstorm flashes over James’s face.

“Let her go.” He doesn’t wait for Topher to obey, grasping his other wrist and forcing his hand off me. His fingertips graze my skin. It’s an effort to silence the moan in my throat. “You’ll leave marks.”

He sounds as detached and impersonal as he was last night. His gaze though, is on fire. When he blinks, the flames are gone.

James releases him, staying close.

Topher laughs. “There are punishments that won’t leave marks.”

The nerve of him. “I’m being auctioned against my fucking will.” I dart my furious glare between the two men. “Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“Being sacrificed as part of our tradition isn’t a punishment.” God, I would pay anything to kick my ex in the balls. Not even twice. Once. That’s it. “Humiliating you is.”

Humiliation.

Heat flares like wildfire from my chest to my neck to my cheeks.

Last night was more humiliating than anything Topher might have in store for me. I was James’s plaything. I came on his fingers. I longed for his touch.

I shouldn’t take more. I can’t take more of this.

No more body betrayal or begging the wrong man for the freedom he’ll never grant me.

Then again…maybe I’m not in a weak position after all.

I could use it against them.

My eyes snap to James. I could rat him out to Topher. Tell his son how, while he was sound asleep in his bed, his dad was with me in the cell. Defiling me. Touching me. Tucking me in.

Topher has no love for me, but this will definitely be a blow to his inflated ego.

They might fight and?—

A subtle, swift shake of James’s head stops me in my tracks.

There’s a worse threat than Topher’s promise to punish me in his eyes.

He’ll kill me if I say anything. He won’t do it slowly, either.

He makes me feel like a child. He makes me feel hot all over.

By hinting that he might kill me.

What the fuck.

“Just get it over with.” I sigh, turning my gaze to Topher. It hurts less to focus on him. “Whatever it is, do it already and go away.”