Page 9 of Sadist (The Triarchy Collection #1)

OCTAVIA

T he low ringing in my ears hadn’t stopped since Theo’s fingers had wrapped around my throat.

Or maybe that was screaming? Was I screaming?

In a daze, I brushed my fingers across my lips to be sure, relieved to find that I was in fact not in full gay panic and losing all of my faculties. Some of them, definitely.

Because what the hell, Octavia?

I took a sip of coffee, letting the aromatic liquid fill my senses, and tried to ignore the low ache between my thighs as I watched my abductor waltz over to her weights like she hadn’t just manhandled me into a malfunctioning mess.

I took a larger sip as she lifted those things like they were feathers, the muscles of her arms flexing as she did.

I nearly choked as my gaze slid to the mirrored wall beyond her, and she winked at me in the reflection.

Turning my back on her as my face flared with heat, I stared at my cup, focusing on the tendril of steam dancing from it.

“How will this work?” I asked over my shoulder. “You’ll just let me go? I have trouble believing that.”

“That’s exactly how it will go,” Theo replied, grunting softly, and I risked a quick glance to see her lift the weights over her head. “As long as my employers get what they want, you will be returned to the Vanguard estate.”

“No,” I blurted, turning to see Theo regarding me with curiosity. “Just let me leave, and I will choose where I go.”

“Back to the quaint little hotel I found you at?” she asked after a moment. “I didn’t take you for a fool, Sweets.”

I scoffed. “It was a stop on the way to another destination. That’s all.”

“Oh?” She raised a brow as irritation began to simmer in me. I don’t know why she irked me so badly.

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” I snapped.

“You don’t owe me anything,” she agreed. “But what if I am curious?”

“So you can abduct me again when you want your next paycheck?”

She let out a soft laugh and bent to grasp the handle of another machine, aligning herself with it before pulling the long cord out, her shoulder bunching and flexing as she did.

“Octavia,” she scolded. “I already have you. If I wanted to keep you, I would. I’ll have no need to come searching for you again once your father has fixed his mistakes.”

Why, the fuck did that sting? I might need to check myself straight into a psych ward after this. Full grippy sock holiday. I was too busy being outraged with myself for a moment to catch what she had said.

Fix his mistakes.

This wasn’t a cash grab. He had done something, and I was the leverage to manipulate him into fixing it. My mind raced as I tried to come up with something to fill the silence, but Theo spoke before I could come up with anything.

“So, what did Daddy do to make you despise him so much? Got you the wrong color Bentley for your sweet sixteenth?”

“Who said I despise him?” I asked carefully.

“Your face,” she huffed.

“What did your father do to turn you into a criminal?” I shot back.

She didn’t even falter in her movements, that lopsided smirk that showed the tip of her canine making me shift against the ache that just would not leave me alone.

“I never knew my father,” she said.

“That comes as no surprise,” I muttered.

“But my grandfather,” she continued, “I have never met a better man. Don’t blame my questionable life choices on him, Sweets. This is all me.” She dropped the handle, letting it clatter back into the machine, and rolled her shoulders.

“So.” Theo wandered back toward me, and my heart seemed to pick up speed with every step. “What did he do?”

I tilted my head so I could look up at her.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She leaned down, and god, it was the first time I had looked into her eyes at this distance.

Central heterochromia. I had read about eyes like these and had laughed to myself at the characters in my silly romance books swooning over them.

And here I was in manual breathing mode. For fuck’s sake .

“He was never made to be a father,” I replied quietly, attempting to hide how flustered she made me. “I learned I was better off without him years ago. That’s it.”

She hummed noncommittally, her eyes narrowing on me. There were two small scars on her face. One at the bridge of her nose, the other to the side of her brow. Invisible at a distance, but this close, I could just make out the faint silver line marring her skin.

“Do you realize,” she said after a long moment, “that every thought you have dances across your face, Octavia?”

I glared at her, schooling my features into what I hoped was a Fort Knox level of impenetrable to observative assholes.

“Good. Would you like to decipher what it’s saying right now and get out of my space?”

A slow smile spread across her face.

“Octavia, if I were to do what your body is telling me you want right now, I would be so very much more… inside your space.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” I choked out.

Heat. There was heat everywhere. My face. My chest. Even the air burned. Get a grip, Octavia.

“No?” She lowered her gaze to my lap. “So, if I were to slip my hand down between those thighs of yours, you wouldn’t be soaking through your panties? Aching for me to run my finger through the mess you are becoming and take a little pressure off?

I dropped the mug, and it shattered in a splash of coffee on the floor, but neither of us moved to do anything about it.

Fort Knox. Nailed it.

“See,” she murmured. “Your expression is begging me to touch you, Sweets. And telling me everything your lips aren’t.”

“Don’t you dare,” I croaked, while my traitorous body hummed with need.

“It would be incredibly unethical of me,” she whispered. “And you have no idea the devil you dance with.”

I reared back. “Oh, so that’s the moral line you are drawing? Good to know they exi—” An alarm sounded across the room and Theo glanced over at the computer monitors, a crease forming between her brows momentarily before it was gone.

Her absence when she crossed to her desk felt visceral, as if the oxygen had been sucked from the room, leaving me floundering and definitely not turned on . At all.

An irritated grunt from where she was peering at one of the screens drew my attention, and she pulled out her phone, doing something on it for a moment before casting an eye over me.

“If you want a shower, have one now,” she said, the sultry note gone from her voice.

I nodded. It was the only thing I was still capable of doing, so I fled to the sanctity of the shower area, the flimsy protection of the curtain giving me at least the illusion of privacy to gather myself.

Theo was moving around in the living area.

I faintly heard the clink of the mug being swept up, and the sounds of things being moved into place, as I stepped under the stream of water, sighing as the heat of it soothed my tense muscles.

The longer I was in that cell, the worse it was getting.

There was relief in this space. A semblance of freedom that made me eager to stay out here.

I had just lathered my hair when I caught the sound of the main door beeping, so I stuck my head out from under the jet of water, straining to hear.

Theo’s low voice murmured something, and another feminine voice replied.

I hurried through rinsing the suds out, cut the water, and grabbed a towel from the neat stack in the corner.

“I do not appreciate being blindsided, Theodora,” the unfamiliar woman said reproachfully.

Theodora? I bit my lip to smother the laugh that almost slipped out.

“You have always trusted me to get the job done. This doesn’t work if I have to clear everything with you first. We already know this,” Theo said, sounding unfazed.

“And shall we discuss this?” There was a meaningful silence after the woman’s comment, which I assumed came with a pointed finger in my direction.

Theo’s reply was too low to catch, and I leaned closer to the curtain to try to make out their words as both women’s voices lowered. There was a cold laugh, and then a, “Don’t be ridiculous,” from the unknown woman.

“Oh, and I want Zichen off the job,” Theo said, as they moved through the room.

“Pardon?”

“Well, I assume this proverbial wrist slap is because he raised concerns about my capabilities to the Chairs,” Theo said. “There’s no other reason for you to be here, is there?”

There was a hint of coldness to Theo’s voice I hadn’t heard yet. Not even toward the two men who had been here for the recording. There was no reply from the other woman, and a pause that lasted a little too long.

“I have no time for insecure men. Replace him,” Theo said evenly. “If you insist on giving me a team, at least make it one that isn’t mutinous.”

“As you wish,” the woman said. “I’ll have a replacement linked in by tomorrow.”

The rest of the conversation was lost as the two women moved further away, and I carefully picked my way back over to my clothes and toweled my hair, running my fingers through it, then coiling the long, wet strands into a bun. The door beeped again as the woman left.

I stepped out of the shower to see Theo sitting in front of her screens, multiple windows pulled up as she typed.

“So…what am I meant to do now?” I asked.

“Make yourself comfortable, Sweets,” she replied, distracted with whatever she was doing. “Unless you feel like making me breakfast.”

She turned to look at me when my confused silence stretched on for too long. She looked…irritated. Thrown off, maybe? And I guessed it was from whoever was just here.

“What?” she asked.

“Make you breakfast?” I clarified, feeling like I was missing the point where I had become some sort of weird house guest.

“I like my toast on the rare side. Warm bread with lots of butter,” she said, spinning her chair around to look me up and down. “Unless you would prefer climbing up on the table over there and opening those pretty legs for me. I’m famished.”

“What is wrong with you?” I tried to block the images that had just slammed into my mind, making everything clench. Fuck.