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“Threat?” He scoffed. “Nah, apparently I’m just a piece of meat they’d like to sell.”

“Unlikely.” Gabriel’s voice was a monotone. “I looked you up. You have a thriving career. You’d be missed. Most of the models here are struggling. In fact, I’m rather surprised you’re here at all.”

I winced as the ‘struggling’ barb hit home.

“I invited myself,” Elijah said. “Or, rather, I pressured my agent into doing it for me.”

Gabriel frowned. “Why?” he asked, sounding bewildered.

“To keep an eye on me,” I said miserably.

The alpha looked between us. After a moment, he softened. “I see.”

I tried to un-mire my brain from the quicksand of approaching heat. “So, if we sign these contracts, then you’ll have bought us? And you’ll get us off this boat with you?”

“Essentially, yes,” Gabriel said in a cautious tone. “Obviously, I’ll release both of you from this sham of a legal agreement immediately afterward. Not that it would stand up in the courts of any civilized country to start with.”

I turned to Elijah. “I think we should do it. Uncle Tommy won’t go after you if you’re already bought and paid for.”

He scowled. “He won’t go afterme? What about going afteryou?”

I lifted a listless shoulder and let it drop.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “If he was the one who lured you here, it seems likely that this is the punishment he intended for you. Sexual slavery, with the added degradation of being in a vulnerable state as an omega in heat.”

My gorge rose. I swallowed the bile back down.

Elijah shot out of his chair and started pacing. “This is crazy.”

“I think we should do it,” I said again, my voice a hoarse rasp.

Running a hand through his messy hair, Elijah gave a jerky nod of his head. “Okay. Okay, if it gets you off this yacht, I guess that’s the most important thing right now.” He rounded on Gabriel and pointed at him accusingly. “Donotmake me regret this, Moneybags.”

Gabriel only raised an eyebrow.

Ted Casick showed up in person the following morning with the contracts. I’d swung back to the desperately horny end of the spectrum overnight, but where Gabriel’s presence made me want to crawl into his lap and lick him, Casick’s made me want to vomit.

His cologne gave me a headache, the cloying scent mixing with the room’s comforting atmosphere of roses and the deep woods after a thunderstorm, souring it. His open curiosity and the way he kept sniffing the air in my direction had me wanting to scream and dig a hole straight through the deck plating so I could disappear.

Gabriel hid it well, but I thought I could sense his displeasure every time Casick glanced my way. Elijah just looked terrified.

“Here we are.” Casick set down two manilla folders on the desk. “If you could both initial and sign in the yellow highlighted areas...”

“I’m not comfortable signing this without knowing what it says,” Elijah said quickly.

This part had been scripted, so that Gabriel could get a chance to read the contract in detail—and it was all the more effective since Elijah’s reticence was unfeigned.

“It will be written in lawyer-speak,” Gabriel said, with the air of someone comforting a highly strung pet dog. “I’ll look it over for you if you like.”

Elijah hesitated before nodding... also scripted. “Okay.”

I kept silent but gave a similar nod.

“Not a very talkative one, are you?” Casick asked me with a smarmy smile.

Gabriel gave him an unblinking stare that apparently reminded him of whose property he was currently ogling, because Casick coughed, his cheeks coloring.

“Yes,” he blustered. “The contract. Here you are, though I assure you it’s all perfectly straightforward and aboveboard.”