Page 41 of Convict's Game

“Why not just use Esther to get to Jacobs? She could’ve gone into the game.”

She took another bite and chewed for a minute, thinking. “When I went to her, I said I wanted to see Jacobs specifically, and it took some hours before I got an answer. When she called me, she said I’d only meet the organiser on the night the auction took place, and Salter would handle the preliminaries. She then made a comment that stuck in my head. She said I was exactly the clean type they wanted. When contestants apply to your game, are there specific criteria?”

“There are, including medical.”

“Salter’s people took my blood. I figured it was to do with the auction, but it must’ve been for your people. Maybe Esther wouldn’t have passed that test.”

A wave of protectiveness came over me. She’d been manipulated like a chess piece. Salter had sniffed out anopportunity, which meant he’d wanted Jacobs for something as well.

“Why exactly do you need Rhys Jacobs?” I asked. “I take it he’s into some shady shit if the auctions were his idea but now Salter is running them.”

She didn’t give an answer right away, finishing her food then drinking from the water bottle beside my bed. When she was done, she offered it to me. I took it and drank, liking the little spark of intimacy at our sharing.

If she agreed to be with me, this would be my world for the next month. Sharing everything with her. Having someone of my own. If she turned me down, I’d have nothing.

Then Mila spoke, and my world faded to her.

“I first heard of Rhys Jacobs when I was fourteen. He’d gone to the same school as me but was older and had already left. The girls whispered rumours that he could hook them up with rich businessmen who would pay a lot of money for sex. No one used the term ‘virginity auction’ then, but that’s what it was. Esther is a couple of years older than me, and she put herself into it and made a bundle. She never spoke about the experience, but I know she recruited other girls. I didn’t stay at the school so lost touch with her, but she was easy to find again when I needed a last resort to get to Jacobs.”

“Suggesting you exhausted all other avenues.” I mapped that to the man I’d seen in the interview. “He’s running scared of something. I met him, and his interest was in the skeleton crew’s protection, which is probably why you couldn’t reach him.”

She pursed her lips, her food finished along with her sharing. I took the wrappers and binned them, resuming my sprawl. We were in a strange kind of holding pattern. I was already obeying the rules. I wouldn’t leave her again. At the same point, I had to resist the urge to go to her and curl around her on the bed.

The same instincts that had battered me earlier returned in force, and my body warmed.

Mila gazed at me. “Why were you watching the auction place?”

“Tyler suspected Salter of being a trafficker. Jury’s still out on that.”

She tilted her head. “Help me out with this. Are you the good guys or the bad guys? Would a rival trafficker be taking business from you?”

“Fuck, no. We stop people like that.” I spread out my arms to gesture to the warehouse around us. “A lot of women work in this building on their backs. None of them are made to do it, and no one takes a cut of their pay. Arran set up this place to protect women. His mother was forced into the trade.”

I blinked at the explanation that had so easily popped into my mind. I knew my friend’s history better than I did my own.

Mila’s eyebrows rose, her pretty expression registering her surprise. “Good guys after all. Except when you chain me up.”

My focus slid down the shirt she still wore. It was open enough to expose her collarbone, and that glimpse was one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen. “I’m not all that good.”

“You say that, but aside from a few shifty things, you’ve done nothing but good for me. I was thinking about it when you were gone. You didn’t need to go into the game to pull me out. I reacted badly, but without you, I’d be in the hands of some stranger. Someone who probably wouldn’t want to help. Or that I found…interesting.”

Lust shot through me in a powerful wave. Of two things, I was certain. Mila wanted me. I’d caught her attention, either with my climbing in her window, my honesty in how I reacted to her, or with the darker side of chasing her down in the basement. If I could shake her out of her reserve, she might take what she needed.

My second surety was that if she agreed to the rules, Mila wouldn’t stay with me after the thirty days were up. If I was lucky, she’d be mine for a month but then she’d walk away.

Which meant we couldn’t miss a minute.

Jumping to my feet, I locked the door then approached her on the bed. She sat up in alarm, but I caught the flash of something hot in her eyes.

Game on, little gangster.

Chapter 16

Mila

Convict lurched over me, capturing my wrist. My heart thumped, and my body loosened in a predator-prey surrender response.

Except all he did was brush a kiss to my pulse point then boost himself to sit against the pillows beside me.