Page 50 of Kidnapped By the Beast (Beasts of the Kindred #11)

LEXI

The first thing Lexi did when she got home was check her bank account.

All thirty-six thousand dollars were there. Neat, black numbers glowing on the little screen.

It felt like blood money. She had earned it with emotional pain and torment and she felt hollow inside, just looking at the numbers on the screen. What did any of it matter when her heart was shattered and there was no repairing it?

Still…Uncle Herbert was safe now. That was something.

That first night back, after Aunt Helen had gone to bed, she found her uncle in the living room, slouched in his recliner with the TV buzzing low.

“I’ve got it,” she told him. Her throat was tight, but she forced herself to hold out her tablet so he could see the number glowing on the screen. “The money. All of it. I already transferred twenty thousand into your account. You can pay Butcher off.”

Uncle Herbert sat up straighter, his eyes going wide behind his glasses.

“But, Lexi-girl—how did you ever earn all this in a week?”

Her heart squeezed.

What would he say if I told him the truth?

Well, Uncle Herbert, I went to an alien planet—Bio-Terius Centra—and let a Beast Kindred scientist hook me to a milking machine and fuck me with an alien dildo until my breasts squirted nectar.

Then, after I fell in love with him, he dropped me like a sack of garbage. That’s how I earned it.

But she couldn’t tell him that. The very thought made her squirm inside.

Instead, she forced a smile that felt brittle on her lips.

“I did some work for the Kindred while I was visiting Natalie. You know how well they pay. So don’t worry—it’s fine. I told you I’d get the money and I did. Now just hurry and pay off that horrible Butcher guy and never, ever borrow money from him again.”

His eyes shone with sudden tears. He got up and hugged her, his arms trembling around her shoulders.

“Thank you, Lexi-girl. You saved me and your aunt both—and the house. I’ve got a meeting with Butcher Friday night. I’ll pay him everything I owe him then.”

Lexi hugged him back, guilt clawing at her throat. She’d saved her uncle and aunt and their house, but who was going to save her from the aching pain still filling her?

No one, that was who. She was just going to have to get over it. And in the meantime, it was back to work.

Spring Break was over, and reality crashed back over her like a tidal wave.

The middle school hallways where she taught smelled of bleach and cafeteria pizza. Sneakers squeaked on the floors and lockers slamming filled her ears. Her classroom was the same—rows of scratched desks, curling posters on the walls—but Lexi wasn’t.

She felt dead inside.

The trip to Bio-Terius Centra already seemed like a fever dream.

The lavender-scented air…the four-eyed merchants…

the humiliation and the aching sweetness of letting herself be milked…

it seemed impossible that it had all been real.

And of course Brandt—the big Kindred was the most improbable part of the whole experience.

His golden eyes when they darkened with need…

the way his deep voice rumbled through her when he called her little Lexi…

the feeling of his big hands on her body when he touched her and tasted her and made her come for him…

Lexi dreamed of him every night. In her dreams he was always bent over his workbench, shoulders hunched, his face bleak and sad. He never spoke, never turned toward her, but she knew—she knew—he was as lonely as she was. She woke crying, aching for him, miserable and depressed.

And her students just made everything worse.

Before, teaching had been bearable. Sometimes even rewarding. But now the kids seemed louder, rowdier, and more impossible to deal with than ever.

“Skibidi Toilet!” they shouted in unison, bursting into laughter, when she tried to quiet them down.

“Settle down!” she snapped, her voice sharper than she meant it to be. But they wouldn’t be still. They screeched and laughed and howled like lunatics, shredding her nerves until she thought she was going insane!

Her head throbbed and her chest felt like it was splintering apart.

I can’t do this anymore, she thought, pressing her fingers to her temples. Not after everything. Not after him. How can I go back to a normal life after everything we went through together?

But she had no choice. This was her life—her paycheck…

her bills…Aunt Helen and Uncle Herbert were depending on her.

She had the extra sixteen thousand in the bank, but that was marked for paying off her student debt and starting her PhD.

She didn’t want to touch it if she could help it.

She would just have to keep soldiering on, trying to keep going until she could forget the big Kindred who had shattered her heart.

But as bad as things were now, Lexi had no idea how much worse her life was about to get…