AVA
The man squeezes my upper arm as he lets out a low whistle. This close, I can’t miss the sound, or when he chuckles to himself as he says, “I fucking love it when the face looks as good as the ass. This must be my lucky night.”
I have no idea who he is. At least a head taller than me, with short black hair, a narrow face, dark eyes lit up with lust, and a crooked smile, he’s definitely not Link. He’s not as broad in the shoulder, or as muscular as Link is, though he’s a lot bigger than I am.
No wonder I can’t break free from his grip.
“Let go of me,” I tell him, twisting my arm beneath his fingers.
“No way, sweetheart. I paid for a room upstairs, and you’re just the girl I’m taking with me.”
What?
Oh my God. Oh my God. This creep thinks that I… he thinks that I work here, like some of the other girls in this place.
Suddenly, Heidi’s not-so-veiled comments about teachers not making enough money seems a whole lot clearer. I thought she meant that she was selling out, waitressing for a little extra cash. But that… that’s now what she meant, was it?
The women here just don’t sell liquor here. They sell themselves, and this guy thinks that I’m for sale.
I’m not going to judge them for what they do to survive. I’m not going to judge the women at Link’s club if they sleep with these assholes because they want the money. But that’s not my thing. Link’s different, because he’s Link, but I’m not going to let anyone else think that they can touch me like this.
I’m screwed, though. Glancing around, I see that Heidi is gone. She disappeared into the crowd, and I don’t see anyone else that I recognize. Considering what kind of place this is, I doubt anyone even realizes that I’m two seconds away from freaking out.
I don’t know what else to do. I think about screaming, but the music is loud, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself if I don’t have to. Link’s obviously not here yet, and I don’t want to cause him any more trouble than I already have.
This guy can be reasoned with, right? He’s not just going to pick a girl off of the dance floor and drag her upstairs without her going along with it… right?
“I think you got the wrong idea. I don’t work here.”
For a split second, I think it works. He lets go of my bicep—but before I can move away from him, he grabs my wrist instead. Flipping my arm over, he smirks triumphantly when he sees that my forearm is bare. He switches wrists, doing the same to the other.
“You don’t have Devil’s mark on you. In here, that means you’re up for grabs, baby, and you should’ve known that before you walked through the doors.”
I definitely didn’t.
“Besides, everyone has their price.” He tightens his hold on my right wrist, starting to drag me away from the center of the dance floor. “Let’s see how good you are, and we can talk about yours.”
No!
“You can’t do this,” I gasp out. “I’m married. Look. I’m married and my husband—”
Throwing up my left hand, I go to show him my ring, my stomach twisting when I see that the oversized wedding band that Link slipped on my hand is missing.
The man smirks over his shoulder at me as I stare in horror at my naked ring finger. “Nice try, sweetheart. Even if you were married, that doesn’t mean shit here. Half the guys banging the whores upstairs go home to their wives when they’re done.”
I’m barely listening to the sleaze in his tone. I’m too busy trying to figure out when and where the ring must have slipped off my finger. I had it this morning. I remember shoving it down to the webbing of my hand after I brushed my hair, and I swear I had it on when I talking to Heidi—
“Come on. Time’s ticking, and I plan on getting my money’s worth to— whoa.”
It all happens so fast. One second, he was pulling me toward the stairs that would lead to the second floor of Link’s club. The next? Someone has grabbed him by the collar, so strong that they manage to rip his hand away from my wrist.
He yelps, and I spin around, trying to see who my savior is.
Chest heaving, eyes wild and fierce, his big hand firm on the collar of the other guy’s shirt, is Link.
In the middle of the Devil’s Playground, he looks bigger. Stronger. Darker.
Murderous.
For the first time since I called Link for help, I’m meeting Devil—and I’m frozen in place as he glares as the man in his grasp.
“Devil,” he gasps.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Laying hands on my wife… do you want me to fucking kill you? Because I think I’m going ”
“She wasn’t marked,” the man starts to explain, voice frantic and high as he realizes that, when I said I was married, this is my husband. “I thought she was fair game.”
“Yeah?” Link twists his fist in the guy’s shirt, lifting him a good two inches off the ground. “You thought wrong.”
As my hands fly to my mouth, covering it as I watch in horror, Link takes a swing. The guy can’t avoid the punch, and his head snaps over his shoulder as Link’s fist connects with his face.
Blood sprays everywhere, but if I thought Link got his point across with one hit, I was wrong.
I’ve seen him fight before. It was how he made money for us when I was still scrimping and saving and trying to put myself through college, and I couldn’t accept money from him without being there, supporting him during his back alley fights, mopping him up when he was on the losing end of a brawl.
He was alway a hard hit. He didn’t often lose, and even when he did, the other guy looked nearly as bad as he did.
Tonight? It is no contest. Link isn’t fighting for the pot. He’s whaling on the other guy for honor or some shit like that, and all I can do is whimper into my palm as he hits him again and again until he’s hanging limply in his hold.
He’s not dead. That’s the only thing I can think of as Link drops him to the dance floor. The guy groans as he hits the ground, immediately trying to crawl away.
No one helps him. Whether it’s because they don’t want to get involved, or they know that Link is the Devil of Springfield and this is his place, I don’t know. But not one even offers to help the guy, and Link adds insult to injury by booting him one last time, getting him away from us.
And then he turns on me.
“Come here.” He holds out his hand. “Ava, now.”
I inch over to him, watching his hand move because it’s better than staring into the face of the brawler that just beat the shit out of a guy for touching me.
It’s dotted with blood. At first, I think it’s the guy on the floor’s blood, until Link gets antsy, flexing his fingers, gesturing for me to go to him and I see that his knuckles are split from the force of his hits. Some of the blood is his, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I do, however, go to put my hand in his.
I wasn’t thinking. Still shocked by the brutality Link just showed off, I definitely wasn’t thinking as I offer him my left hand.
Link snatches it, spreading my fingers apart so that it’s obvious he’s focusing on the fourth one.
His head snaps up, eyes locking on mine. “Where is it, Ava?”
He looks so angry, the words catch in my throat.
Thrusting my hand down, breaking the connection, Link looms in front of me. “You’re my wife. You’re mine. That ring proves it, and you took it off?”
“It fell off,” I begin at last, trying to defend myself.
Link isn’t having it. “You took it off, then you let some random fucker touch you.”
Let him? “I was trying to get away—”
“You shouldn’t have been here in the first place. You don’t belong here, Ava,” he tells me. No shit. His dark eyes are blazing at me, jaw clenched as he spits out, “If I wanted a whore for a wife, I would’ve married any of the waitresses Royce tried to hook me up with.”
I go up on my tiptoes, going nose to nose with Link. “Maybe you should have.”
He purses his lips. From the fury inherent in every line of his face, I know he’s dying to continue our argument, and the old Link would have.
But this isn’t the old Link I used to know. It isn’t my Link.
This is the Devil of Springfield, and when his voice goes icy cold, sending shivers up and down my spine, I remember that as he says, “We’ll discuss this later, pet.”
I open my mouth. Link shakes out his hand, turning away from me. “Chance.”
A guy materializes from out of the crowd. He’s a tall dark-haired guy in his late twenties, give or take thanks to his baby face, and hero worship in his big brown eyes as he steps in front of Link.
“Yes, boss?”
“Bring my wife back to the penthouse.” He pauses for a moment, and though I can’t see his face, I can only imagine the expression on it. “And don’t let her leave again.”
“Link—”
Without turning around, he walks away from me.
I almost follow him. The last time I let him go like that, that was the end of us. I don’t know what kind of ‘us’ we have now, but he seems determined to keep me—
“Come with me, Mrs. Crewes,” Chance says. “I’ll get you back to the boss’s house.”
—as a prisoner, just like I thought.
