Page 11 of Tangled Lies

Goosebumps chased along my arms, and it wasn’t just because of the man in front of me. Someone came up behind me. I couldn’t see him, but his presence couldn’t be ignored.

“So, Ronnie, do we have a fifth?”

I didn’t mean for my breath to shudder, but the guy at my back, the way his hand slid over the skin around my shoulders and slid down to my hip finding the peekaboo slits around my waist? What the hell was this? Lust. It was lust. The way guy A’s bedroom voice had a hold on my heartbeat and the strange effect guy B had just by a simple touch? My uncle's little bargaining chip was about ready to corrupt her value and happily.

“A fifth?”

My mind had an imagination that my touch-starved body was on board with as I had a pretty vivid thought about being bent over one of those poker tables and letting each of the four very alpha males show me what the hell my life was missing.

“You’re the one called Mara?” said the guy who had been paying us. The one that seemed to be in charge. Maybe, his name was Ronnie? The way he said my name though? It was like he mocked me. Like he knew it wasn’t really who I was.

I blinked myself out of that little fantasy that had no place in reality.

He slid his finger up my neck to my chin.

“What is going through that head of yours, little bird?”

It was all I needed to be back in the moment. I looked up beneath my lashes, liking the way I swore his eyes were a bit darker than they had been moments ago.

I wanted to touch him. I wanted that fantasy. Pushing aside all the grooming my uncle had tried to beat into me ever since my parents had been killed, I ran my fingers under his tie, up the length of it and stopped at the knot.

“I can be whoever you want me to be as long as I like the price.”

His eyes bore into mine. Neither of us looked away.

The heat of a foreign voice brushed over my neck.

“Oh, pretty girl, you don’t want to know the price he’d ask. Me? Much cheaper. I can promise–”

I reached my free hand up to the guy now at my side and blindly ran a finger over his face until I found his lips.

“Shh. I want to hear his answer. Besides, who’s saying I’m not willing to pay both?”

A loud laugh burst from the area of the tables.

“Sounds like she’s game. Bring her pretty little ass down here.” I couldn’t be sure which of them was speaking. I didn’t really know any of them well enough to know much of anything.

It was a different voice. One I’d heard joking all night, and I could picture the five o’clock shadow that almost acted like a mask for the bottom half of his face, but I didn’t look.

“Fifth what?” I finally asked. “I could really use the money, so I’ll do whatever you need.”

That might have been the wrong answer, or maybe it was right because the two men near me both moved as if they were so used to each other their actions were almost choreographed.

The guy in front of me, I guess Ronnie, was he the scariest of them at the moment, he was the one to reach for me, and pick me up, stopping just short of throwing me over his shoulder.

I screamed a little too loud as I tried to keep the already too short dress down over my ass.

“I already said I would do whatever. Put me down.”

Lucky for me we were just heading to the poker tables. I watched over my shoulder as one of the four grabbed a fifth chair and put it at their table.

“You did, but this was the quickest way to get to our first request. You are our fifth.”

He flopped me into the plushy chair, and I grabbed my dress.

“Stop manhandling me; this dress isn’t made for anything but looking cute.”

I squirmed as all four pairs of eyes looked at me, trailing up my body.