Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Except they wouldn’t budge, and all I did was end up flopping around like a fish while the chains groaned from my movements.
Chapter 10
I hate being sexy, but I’m a bearded man. I can’t help it.
-T-shirt
Lenore
“Easy, baby,” he soothed, reaching forward and helping me remove my feet from their leather prisons.
“Don’t move. He can’t see in here,” he soothed.
Except my mind wasn’t really into being ‘calm.’
It was working myself into a tizzy.
“W-who is it?” I hissed as I felt around the floor with my hands to find my shirt.
I found my shorts first and forced them on, shoving my feet roughly into the holes, which incidentally ripped them from my hands.
I moaned in frustration and bent at the waist to pick them up from the floor, earning a smack on the ass from Griffin.
“I said calm down,” he urged. “It’s one of the boys from the club. Notice he’s not beating down the walls? That’s because he only wanted to announce his presence,” Griffin explained.
That didn’t make me feel better.
In fact, it made me feel worse.
At least, before, I thought they probably wouldn’t know what we were doing in here. But now, I knew for a fact that whomever was outside knew what we were doing.
Why else wouldn’t he want to bother us, but also let us know he was there?
I finally managed to yank my shorts up my legs and button them.
Griffin offered me my shirt, and I realized he was fully dressed.
“How’d you get dressed so fast?” I asked accusingly.
He laughed.
“I wasn’t too busy freaking out. I also leave them like most fireman leave their bunker gear. All I had to do was slip my feet into them and I was done,” he explained.
Well…that was…smart.
I pulled my shirt over my head, very aware that I was braless, and moved to the counter where I was fairly certain I’d last seen my flip flops.
I found them on the floor behind the counter, one resting upright next to the wall, and the other upside down partially underneath the counter.
I slipped them on, and headed to the front door where Griffin was already swinging the door open wide for his friends.
“What’s up?” Griffin asked the two men.
I couldn’t see them very well.
Their backs were to the outdoor lights, so all they really looked were glowing shadows.
“You need to get to the clubhouse…now,” the one on the left said.
“Okay,” Griffin said.
That was it.
There were no ‘why’s’ or ‘what for’s?’ Only, ‘okay,’ from Griffin.
“Bring your girl,” the one on the right said this time.
My brows rose to about fifteen feet past my hairline.
I wasn’t theirs to command.
I was my own person, and I was the one who made the decision about where I would be going.
But, apparently, I was Griffin’s to command.
Something I found out only moments later.
“Let’s go,” he growled, pulling me along.
I didn’t get my purse.
Nor my phone.
It all sat on the counter next to my computer that was still on.
I hadn’t emptied the till.
I hadn’t turned out the lights hanging over the dildos.
Nothing.
All I got was a yank on the arm and I was made to follow Griffin and the two men.
A twenty-minute ride later did nothing to improve my mood. I held onto Griffin’s body, reluctantly, as we made the last turn into the ‘clubhouse.’
And I hated it instantly.
I could smell the water of Caddo Lake.
I could practically feel the slithery, slimy things trying to get to me.
The dark night air pressed on my body like a second skin, and I wanted to cry.
I really, really hated the lake.
Had I mentioned that?
No, hate wasn’t a strong enough word for the revulsion I felt when it came to that particular body of water.
I detested the lake.
When I was fifteen, my father and I used to go on regular runs to the Lake and the bayou.
We’d fish.
We’d laugh.
We’d have fun.
But one day on a particular fishing excursion, it hadn’t been our usual.
That day wasn’t the nicest.
It was dark.
Really dark.
And I’d been reluctant to go out with my father, but I hadn’t wanted him to go alone.
So I’d gone with him.
My father had an old boat.
It wasn’t the prettiest, but it ran like a top…until it didn’t.
We’d gotten out on the lake, about four miles out from our truck, and the boat had started that puttering sound.
You know the sound.
All vehicles make that sound when they aren’t working correctly, and my father’s boat was not an exception.
So there we were, four miles out, when the sky opened up.
It was raining terribly, and the water in the boat was filling up fast.
My heart had started pounding as I used the lid of my dad’s tackle box to start bailing out water.
It did no good.
Within less than thirty minutes, the boat was so filled with water that we had no other recourse but to get out and swim.
“Get off, Queenie,” Griffin rumbled, startling me out of my personal hell.
I tried to shake off the past, but I was still scared as hell.
I hadn’t been this close to the lake for nearly ten years.
In fact, since that day, which also happened to be the eve of my fifteenth birthday.
And my birthday was five days away.
It was too close for comfort for me.
I held onto Griffin’s arm tightly, unintentionally digging my nails into his skin. When he tried to remove his wrist from my grip, I started to hyperventilate.
“Your girl’s about to run,” one men who’d driven beside us the entire way here, said.
I was beyond caring at that point, though.
Mostly because I could hear the soft swells of the water lapping against the shore getting closer and closer, and I was fairly sure I was about to have a full on panic attack any second.
Griffin, of course, misunderstood my fear.
He thought I was scared because I was at his clubhouse.
And he was getting pissed.
“Would I ever fuckin’ hurt you, Lenore?” He growled, pulling me closer.
I couldn’t see him.
My eyes blurred with my tears.
My breathing became choppy, and my face was now slicked with a thin layer of sweat.