Vipers and Virtuosos (Monsters & Muses, #2)(24)

I should just let her, especially since I’m sure my own freedom is coming to an end. It probably won’t be long before one of the bodyguards following us tonight makes himself known and escorts me back to the penthouse. Back to reality.

But for some reason, I don’t want to go back yet.

I cup her cheeks, trying to lean in for a kiss, but then she’s tearing out of my grasp and darting from the tattoo station. She barely has time to remember to grab her purse on the way out, and she’s bolting past the front desk and out the door before I can say anything else.





11





The trip back to my hotel is a blur, and my phone rings incessantly the entire way.

My teeth chatter as I stand on the corner of East Fifty-Ninth and Second Avenue, struggling to catch my breath. I sprinted out of the tattoo parlor and didn’t stop until I was swallowed up by the crowd, safe from Aiden’s intensity.

By the time I manage to hail a cab, I turn my cell off completely and pull my hood up, trying to block out the sounds of the city.

It doesn’t do anything, though; pressing my hands to my ears just amplifies everything, and I buckle forward, shoving my head between my knees the way my therapist used to tell me to.

God, I can smell him on me.

What he did to me.

What I let him do.

Bile burns the back of my throat, and it feels like I’ve swallowed a razor blade. My palms slide around to my face, fingers trembling violently against heated skin as I try to focus on getting air to my lungs.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

“Hey, you can’t puke in here, girly.” The driver’s voice barely penetrates, his harsh tone not loud enough to cover the way my brain screams at me.

Stupid. I’m so fucking stupid.

Every wall I’ve built over the last few years is nothing but rubble now, and I’m left standing, wondering how I’m supposed to pick up the pieces.

Disgust crawls over me like thousands of little bugs, and I scratch desperately at my skin, trying to eliminate the itch. The longer I sit, the worse it gets, until it feels like I’ve been buried alive and left as worm food.

I can feel layers of my flesh breaking away as my scratching becomes ferocious, and I’m sure the driver thinks I’m tweaking right now. He curses under his breath, something about junkies in the city, but I don’t really hear it when my mother’s voice echoes in the recesses of my mind.

Easy. Slut. Whore.

Insults she used to hurl at me, even though there was no merit behind them.

I’ve never even been on a date, much less let anyone have their way with me.

Until now, that is.

Now I’ve gone and proved her right. Eviscerated every principle, every amount of work I’ve done over the last few years. I can feel my progress unraveling, disintegrating as her accusations become my reality.

All because a gray-eyed man made me feel special.

Bursting from the cab as soon as we’re within a hundred feet of the hotel, I toss a wad of cash up front and bolt to the front doors. My chest is tight, and my throat feels like it might be on the verge of closing permanently, but I jog past the concierge and into the elevator anyway.

Once the metal doors slide shut, I collapse against the wall, forcing a strangled gasp from my lungs. It tears up my esophagus, wheezing as it squeaks out, but at least I’m breathing.

That’s what I try to focus on as the elevator comes to a stop, and I make my way across the hall to our hotel suite. I’m already looking forward to wrapping myself in the plush white bedding in my room, hiding out until we leave for the airport in the morning.

I stop dead in my tracks when I swipe my key card, push open the door, and find Mellie and Aurora lounging on the couch, watching a scary movie. They’re wearing matching white silk robes, and an open bottle of red wine resting on the sofa between them.

It looks as if they’ve been here for a while.

Swallowing, I let the door swing shut behind me, blinking rapidly as though that might change the scene before me.

Mellie glances up first, and she grins, giving a little wave. Her platinum hair is pushed back by a rainbow headband, her almond-shaped eyes wide as they take me in.

“Well, that’s definitely not what we sent you out in,” she says, wiggling her dark brows. “Someone had a good night.”

Aurora turns her head, tapping the mouth of the wine bottle. “Jeez, Riley. And here we were thinking you wouldn’t be into the whole live auction scene.”

She pauses, and a practiced cruelty tugs at her sharp features. “Given your familial history, though, I guess it wasn’t so foreign to you, huh?”

My lips part, a retort materializing on the back of my tongue. There’s no telling which part of my history, exactly, she’s talking about—my mother’s aptitude for whoring herself, or my brother’s affiliation with the Mafia and their connections to the slave trade.

Though, I suppose the specifics don’t really matter. They don’t change the fact that she clearly equates my worth as a person with my unfortunate heritage, and I doubt there’s any way I could convince her otherwise.

Once you accept something as garbage, it’s very difficult to polish it afterward.

So, instead, I bite the inside of my cheek and swallow the reply. Walking over to the sink, I wash my hands, trying to scrub the feel of Aiden James out from under my fingertips.