Lupin’s hands grew more insistent in their quest and her dress tore, the sound echoing in the silence.
Astrid blinked away the tears gathering behind her eyes and grit her teeth. There had to be some way to get out. To get away. She searched the surrounding area for a weapon. Anything to use to her advantage.
But there was nothing.
His hands stroked the soft flesh of her inner thigh.
No. No. No.
“Oh, little butterfly, how I’m going to enjoy taking your virginity and making you into a being of my creation.” He gripped her chin tight in his hand and forced her to look at him. Her shame at him knowing her secret sent a hot flush creeping up her body.
How else would he know? Her father had to have told him she still had her virgin card.
“Stop…” She fought his hands, not giving up despite his order to submit. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
If she let her nails change all the way, she could rake him over the eyes and bolt. Fifty-fifty chance she made it out alive.
But then what?
Despair tugged her downward but she shook it off. No. She was not giving up. Fuck them all. If she had to run away, she would do it.
Astrid would go down fighting and she would leave marks. There was nothing else. She would use her own hands. A few more minutes and her bladder would decide things for her. She had to get out of here.
Wrenching her nails into full on claws, she scratched at his face, gouging deep.
“You bitch!” He shoved her back and slapped her, this time splitting her lip.
She tasted blood and spit it at him, baring her teeth.
“Your father is dead.”
“Don’t count on it.” She raised her chin and a burst of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Marcus. His cold, blue eyes assessing her. Judging her. Just like he’d been doing since she met him.
Astrid wanted to crawl under the rug and die.
“There you are, Astrid. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I promised to show you the boathouse, didn’t I?” Marcus approached, his features smoothing out into a carefree mask of indifference.
His father turned away, hiding his expression.
“Hey, Dad. They need you in the living room.”
Pale eyes pierced her darkness, taking in her torn dress and the tears on her face.
“Can’t you see I’m a little busy?” Mr. Lupin snapped, turning back toward his son with distinct irritation.
Marcus swept his hair off his forehead with an easy grace. “That’s cool of you to help my date to the bathroom.” Placing his body between them, he met the older man’s gaze for a moment, and then turned his attention to her. “Sorry I couldn’t take you myself, but I had some things I needed to take care of. Looks like you got through some of your book, though.” He held up the book she’d left in her haste to find the bathroom.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
He had been watching her. It wasn’t just in her mind.
“Your…date?”
“Yes. Come on, Astrid. How’s about we get on with our night?” Marcus moved closer and held out his hand.
Astrid took it like the lifeline it was and scuttled as far away from his father as quick as she could, her lips clenched tight.
He led her from beneath his father’s poisonous stare and out some sort of side door into the crisp night air.
“Follow me and don’t look back.” He let go of her hand and started following a manicured path into the darkness.
“Where are we going?”
Marcus paused, a strained smile tightening his lips. “You still need to go to the bathroom, right?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. But she didn’t miss the way his eyes traveled over her body and for the second time that night, she shivered. Only this time it wasn’t in fear.
God. Why did he always make her feel like she was on display?
“It’s this way.”
He led her to the boathouse and she paused as he opened the door, momentarily unsure.
Marcus wouldn’t bring her out here to hurt her. That much she knew. But the ugly thought was there and he caught her hesitation.
Astrid's fox scampered underneath her skin, her nerves frayed.
“It’s okay.” The hard lines of his face softened for the briefest moment and she found herself fidgeting beneath his scrutiny.
So, this was how it felt to be humiliated beyond all rational thought. And in front of him.
God. She wanted to die. If she waited much longer, her exploding bladder might just take care of it for her.
“The bathroom…” Her voice wavered, the shock of the night battling for precedence over her physical needs.
“Come on.”
She'd never been in a boathouse before. Expecting it to be nothing more than an overblown shed, Astrid was surprised to find what appeared to be a contemporary styled living room decked out with comfortable looking couches and a television. A small kitchenette was tucked in the back of the space. She scented the air. No one else was here.
“Here. It’s just off the main room.”
Marcus moved ahead of her, guiding her down a short hallway. They passed an open doorway with a rumpled bed and a desk where it appeared as if someone had been studying.
She wanted to pause but the urgency of her mission was becoming increasingly clear. When he pointed the way to a small bathroom, she hastily ducked inside.
Her immediate task completed, she sidled over to the sink. A few adjustments of her dress and her gaze focused in on the girl reflected in the mirror.
A pale face streaked with mascara and a bloody lip stared back. And then she saw the dress. The tear represented everything that had gone wrong with tonight.
Or with her life.
Her father had done this. Set her up with a monster to…
A sob radiated out from the deepest parts of her and she sank down against the wall.
“Astrid.”
Marcus’s quiet voice on the other side of the door spoke volumes.
“Yes?” Her voice was thick with tears but she didn’t care.
“Are you okay?”
Was she? She didn’t know.
“Astrid. I’m opening the door.” He knocked, and poked his head in, his relief at finding her presentable evident.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice wobbled and she wiped angrily at the tears spilling down her cheeks.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“I shouldn’t have come tonight. If I’d stayed home none of this would have happened.” The moment the words tumbled out, she knew they were a lie.
Of course, it would still have happened at some point, only maybe Marcus wouldn’t have been there to save her.
“Astrid.” He bent down, his serious eyes meeting hers. “It’s not your fault.”
“I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was a wet sounding croak.
“You go home.”
“How?” She demanded. “How do I even look at my father again? How can you stand to be in the same room as yours?”
Marcus gave a disgusted snort. “I’ve known for a long-time what kind of monster lives behind these walls.”
“It’s taking me a minute to absorb.”
“I expect it is.” He replied, a muscle in his jaw tightening. His eyes held the light of his wolf and, for a moment, she was mesmerized.
Then reality hit and a shudder slid through her. She was going to have to go home and face her father and she didn’t know how she could.
Another thought crashed through and she froze. Her brother. “What about my brother?”
“He’s fine.”
“If I didn’t pay off his debt…” She couldn’t bring herself to utter the words. She wasn’t the only one who had value to a disgruntled mafia boss.
“Don’t worry.”
“How can you say that?” Astrid struggled to climb to her feet and Marcus stepped back, givin
g her space. “He could have someone go after my brother next. How do I know he isn’t into boys, too?”
Her animal made a hissing sound and cocked her ears.
Marcus’s expression was grim. “Because now my father has a debt he has to pay. And I’m the one calling it in.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Something that might have passed for a smile flitted across his lips. “Now, let’s get you home. Give me your phone.”
“I… Okay.” She dug it out of her wristlet and handed it to him, wrapping her arms around the book in her hands like a lifeline.
He paused long enough to key something in and handed it back to her.
“What was that?”
“My number.” Marcus replied, his wolf in his eyes.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Astrid followed him from the boathouse to the street. Her father’s car was gone. A hollow feeling sank in her gut as he opened the passenger door of his car and she slid inside.
He shut the door and she watched him make his way around the back of the car, carefully assessing the street before he slipped behind the wheel.
The car smelled of him.
Her animal stilled, curling up in a ball and going to sleep. But she couldn’t relax quite so easily.
“He left me. My God. He really did.”
A thunderous expression moved over his features as he navigated the darkened streets. “Don’t think about it. Just go inside and lock your bedroom door.”
“Will he try it again?”
“If he does, call me.”
She nodded, afraid to speak.
“Your animal is a fox?”
“Yes.” She replied, not sure where he was going with this.
“If he comes for you, I want you to shift and run as fast as you can, through the smallest places you can, all the way back to the boathouse. Can you do that?”
“Um. Okay.”
“You have my number.”
In front of her house, he paused, his fathomless eyes piercing her soul. “If you need me, I’ll always come for you.”
Astrid hadn’t spoken to him since.
Her father didn’t come home for a week and when he did, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. There was no responding to a question she already knew the answer to.
He'd tried to sell her.
She was expendable, but for some reason she couldn’t make sense of, Marcus had saved her. But he couldn’t stop the nightmares and the feeling someone was still watching her. No one knew she’d pilfered one of her mother’s kitchen knives and hid it under her pillow at night.
A lock wasn’t enough. Not anymore. But if they tried to take her, she would be ready for them and she was going to keep her brother safe, too. Even if it killed her.
“Hello. Earth to Astrid? Where’s the orbit?”
“Shut up…”
“Are you going to stare into the crowd all night?”
Jane glared at her and Astrid willed herself not to lose her temper. Jane knew what kind of asshole Astrid's father was and if she didn’t keep Charlie on track he was going to end up on the exact same path. She couldn’t stomach it if that happened. Having one mobster prick in the family was enough.
Eyes watched her from across the room and a chill crept over her.
Not safe.
But just then she saw another familiar face. Marcus. And he was looking at her with angry eyes. Daring her to be here. But then they softened. Astrid's lips parted and she remembered what he'd told her.
“Don’t come to the club. He’ll find you there. Please. Listen to me.”
And, for once, she did what she was told and she ran, Jane cursing at her all the way home.
Chapter One
Present day
“The other kid is outside, Marcus.”
Marcus nodded. It was no surprise that the scared punk almost shitting himself in front of him hadn’t stolen from him of his own volition. The only question that remained unanswered was which of Marcus' enemies was fucking with him this week and who paid them to hack into his accounts.
Someone who obviously didn’t care if the kid lived or died.
Marcus' wolf licked his teeth at the thought.
“How much, Ambrose?” He kept his voice smooth and low, almost difficult to hear over the pulse of the music of the Torrid club. The fingers of his right hand tightened into a fist and he deliberately kept his left hand resting on the manila folder on the desk in front of him. If the kid tried anything, he’d be dead long before negotiations ever even started. And if they really went badly, he might even wish he was.
No one stole from Marcus without being made an example of.
Especially a fucking weasel.
Ambrose stepped forward. “Two million, five.” Jaw clenched, and eerily calm, his enforcer remained fully prepared to tear the kid a new asshole if Marcus so much as gave a nod. Older and an experienced ex-cop, Ambrose knew how to handle himself when things got rough.
Held in the room outside, the punk’s friends were being retained to use as collateral in case the little twerp needed an immediate push toward cooperating. Marcus also had his suspicions the kid wasn’t alone in this venture.
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow and moved his head only slightly. The hacker twitched, a green tint beginning to spread across his features. God, he couldn’t have been more than about fifteen.
He was scared. At least that was something. The stench of his fear made Marcus' animal smile. He wondered briefly what the young man would do if he shifted into his wolf. Would he do the same? Weasel against black wolf wasn’t exactly fair, but his give a fuck had already gotten up and left for the afternoon.
Fucking kids. Too much time on their hands and this was what they got into. Not that he could really talk. By the time Marcus was twenty, he was running his father’s business and had taken over the pack.
He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips into a thin line. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his hand on the dark wood. A leather couch against one wall, the desk, and two chairs made up the entire contents of the room. His people swept it before he entered but he couldn’t have cared less. He would get back what was his and if the cops were listening, let them take fucking notes. Marcus Lupin was not going to be played by a teenager with a knack for breaking into other people’s bank accounts.
“If you’re going to puke, I’ll kill you.” Nice wasn’t going to work. Not with a little piece of shit like that.
Marcus was ready to strangle the life out of him. All the people he’d hired to keep his accounts untraceable and this…this suburban white bread punk thought to play him like there were no consequences for his actions. How wrong he was. And Marcus had a feeling he wasn’t the only one.
His gaze never left the prick in front of him, not even when the little shit pissed himself, as evidenced by the pungent odor that wafted through the stale air.
It had taken his people a week to track him down, to make the seemingly unseen come to light. But they had. Ambrose and his army of invisible assets had ferreted each of them out and now here they were. But this one, the one they called The Crunch, was the one who had done it and he was going to pay.
They found him, a man-boy thrashing around the club like the tweaker he was, high as hell and about as coherent as a pet rock. Now, hours later with sweat covering all visible skin, the junkie stared at him with wide eyes, the hunted look of the downed weasel he was across his face.
Ambrose grabbed him by the shirt, his voice deepened by his beast. “Where did you put the money?”
“I…” His gaze darted all over the room, anywhere but at the man holding him or Marcus.
The kid had to be working for Lopez. No one else would dare fuck with Marcus. Not even Guevarra, the D.A. He stood abruptly and made his way over to the window. They knew he was the force behind his father’s brittle exterior. Since that fateful day when he’d caught him doing what he
’d always suspected.
Houston pulsed with life. Cars streamed by, people living their small lives. He’d been on the way to a show downtown in the Museum District, but instead had to put his plans on hold to deal with this. With him. His date sent away with hardly a second glance. None of them mattered. Not really. Because they weren’t her.
Astrid.
The fox who got away. It made him laugh, really. He could have had her the night he rescued her from his father but he was too busy trying not to kill the son of a bitch and keep her from falling apart. She was there, in his arms for a second and he couldn’t even keep her. The fucking irony killed him every time he thought about it.
Marcus knew she was meant for him the second he saw her. His wolf wanted to mark and mate her right then but the timing couldn’t have been worse.
She wasn’t of age. And he wasn’t his father.
For her own sake, he dropped her with a phone number in her phone and a promise of protection if she ever needed it. He hadn’t heard from her since.
One kindness Marcus lived to regret every day of his life. What else could he have done? Dating her would be a permanent sentence of always looking over her shoulder, waiting for his father to add her to the long list of underage girls he fucked and discarded like yesterday’s trash.
Not her.
Not ever. To save her, he would protect her, even from himself and the wolves that constituted the world he lived in.
But now his father was dead. Everyone believed he'd killed him. Only Ambrose and he knew the truth. The old bastard had one too many benders and drowned in a pool of his own drug induced vomit.
Of course, he might have had a little help.
Part of him wanted to rip the bastard’s throat out, but going out that way? It was a fitting end. And now it was Marcus’ empire, the lid of the coffin barely closed. Nothing had changed. A mere ripple in the pond, really. He had held the reins for years. It was just official. But that meant dealing with punks like this and that he knew only too well. Marcus opened a drawer and took out his Glock, setting it on the desk. It was time the kid understood Marcus' sense of humor had long since evaporated. Their eyes met and held and he let his animal show.
Tormenting Her Mate (My Wicked Mates Book 3) Page 2
