I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two Knight, Natasha (top 10 most read books in the world txt) 📖

Felix shifts his gaze to David only momentarily. “Are you hurt, Cousin?” he asks as he comes closer.

Without waiting for my reply, he takes my jaw in one hand and tilts my face up to his before brushing hair back from my forehead.

“Some bruising,” he comments. “It’ll take the price down, of course. Damaged goods.”

I tug my face out of his hands. “Don’t touch me.”

He grins, grips my jaw again, tighter this time. “Does she have all her teeth?” he asks and gestures to David with a nod of his head. David takes hold of both sides of my head while Felix pries my mouth open. I’d bite off his fingers if I could, but I can’t at the angle they’re holding me.

He makes a satisfied sound.

“Not a virgin though,” he says, still peering inside my mouth like I’m some animal. “Virgins bring in more money.”

“That’s on your father-in-law,” David says. “Nothing I can do about that.”

“Sick man,” Felix comments casually. Did everyone know what Uncle Jacob had done to me? Did they just stand back and let it happen?

“Anal virgin?” he asks, releasing my mouth, pulling his fingers away before my teeth snap shut.

I tug at my bound arm but of course it’s no use so I draw my head back as he starts to discuss the possibilities of selling that particular part of my anatomy, and spit in his face.

He stops talking, that smug grin instantly wiped away.

My heart races even as I try for a victorious smile.

David mutters a curse. Felix first uses the back of his hand to wipe off my spit on his right cheekbone, then backhands me so hard with that same hand that I fall back on the bed. My head crashes against the wall, then the metal railing, the blow stunning me.

I feel the warmth of blood rolling down my cheek.

He straightens, adjusts his jacket over his shoulder, his expression of rage morphing back into a false smile. For a single instant I see the real Felix Pérez. And it terrifies me.

“Apologize!” David orders me.

Felix raises a hand. “No need,” he says. “I expect no less from a De La Cruz. They’re animals. I’d pour the contents of that bucket over your head but then I’d have to smell you.” He checks his watch. “Speaking of, we’re on a tight schedule.”

“We have a deal?” David asks.

“What deal?” I ask.

They both ignore me. Felix punches some numbers into his phone and turns it around to show David, who nods.

Felix calls to one of the men at the door, the one with the keys. He undoes my cuff from the rung of the headboard and re-cuffs my arms behind my back. He lifts me to stand, almost making me knock the bucket over as I do.

“Where are we going?” I ask Felix or David or anyone who will answer. I’m marched out of the room, noticing the apartment we’re in, where two more men sit in the kitchen eating hamburgers. The TV playing in the background is in a language I don’t understand. Sounds like German.

I’m taken down the stairs, the man simply dragging me along when I trip or don’t move fast enough, before we’re outside.

It’s noisy beyond the alley where an SUV is waiting. It blocks my view of the street, of the people walking and the cars driving by, oblivious to what’s happening here in this dark corner of their world.

The windows of the SUV are tinted an opaque black. I can’t even make out how many people are inside.

I’m barefoot. I hadn’t really thought about it when I’d been in that room but the puddles of water on the street chill me as one of the doors is opened. I’m lifted up and placed in the back seat.

Felix climbs into the passenger seat and turns around as I’m strapped in by a woman who looks a lot like the one Marcus employed to prepare me for our wedding. She’s sitting between me and one other passenger. A girl.

He glances at me, then over to her. “I’m sorry she smells, sweetheart. She wasn’t bathed, I’m sure. You know those thugs.”

I look at the girl in the shadowy car, the red lights blinking illuminating her only momentarily. She has long blonde hair, I see that. And huge crystal blue eyes. She leans around the woman to peer at me but doesn’t speak and her expression doesn’t change. Just huge, frightened eyes on me.

“She doesn’t smell so bad,” the girl says flatly, her accent American.

“You’re too sweet, my little doll,” Felix says, reaching his arm back to caress her face.

She shrinks back a little, but one cluck of his tongue and she leans her face into his hand. She’s young. I see it now when the light from the street shines on her face. Fifteen or sixteen maybe and small.

I want to slap his hand away. I want to make him stop touching her.

“I’ll miss you,” he says to her.

She turns her head to look out the window.

“What do you say, Lizzie?” he asks.

Lizzie?

I peer more closely.

She turns back to him, same huge eyes a little shinier in the light. “I’ll miss you too,” she whispers but inside that whisper, I hear a hint of steel. Just a hint.

Felix smiles then as quickly as he’d struck me, he shifts his grip to twist a fistful of her hair painfully pulling her toward him.

The girl makes a sound but nothing else.

“Again,” he commands.

“I’ll miss you too, Felix. Very much.” No steel this time. It’s melted away. I guess ten years will do that to you.

“Good girl,” he says, releasing her.

She looks down at her fisted hands in her lap. The woman between us unhooks something from her belt, unravels it. It’s a leather strap, about six inches long. She raises it, crashes it down over the girl’s hands.

I gasp, shocked.

The girl makes a sound but catches herself, swallows it down and releases her fists, laying them flat on her lap.