Yooko had horrible taste in style. For reasons unknown, he liked to wear sarongs with touristy shirts. Maybe they were cheap, maybe they were all he could find that fit him, maybe he had a fetish about wearing them. I didn’t knowand I didn’t care. Tonight, though, he was butt-fucking-naked. No doubt he’d been partaking in what his employees had to offer.
I’d seen a lot of dicks in my time. Didn’t grow up around Aloiki, who despised clothing like he was allergic to it, without getting used to being around other naked men. Honestly, I didn’t care. I wasn’t attracted to men, but I’d been involved in directing enough porn shoots to have grown an appreciation for the male form.
Still had no intention of ever fucking one or getting fucked by one. Nor was I particularly thrilled to be forced to stare at Yooko’s naked ass, which was probably double the size of my own.
He made a sharp turn and pushed open his office door. A woman jumped up from where she had been sitting on the edge of his desk. I’d been in this office numerous times, but certainly never like this.
Yooko didn’t acknowledge the woman in any way, which was very unlike him. He just dragged me forward and gave my back a solid push. As I stumbled inside, he barked, “Do the world a favor and get yourself fucking laid.”
And then he closed the door.
I stumbled into my room.Lu had been having trouble sleeping recently, so Aloiki had decreed that all motorcycles would be left at the barn after dark. I seconded it, because I didn’t want any loud or startling noises to disturb Caroline and Samantha either. Yet, at three in the morning when we all made the long trek back to Bacon’s house, I was regretting not having thought of a shuttle or some other way to prevent us from having to hoof the mile-plus.
Then again, it was no less than I deserved.
I could still smell her on me. My shirt was somewhere unknown, likely ripped and torn in the corner of Yooko’s office. I gripped my cut in my hand, my back still stinging from her claw-like nails.
Yooko’s plan had failed. My headspace was no better off now than it had been when he’d shoved me into his office. If anything, it was worse.
I needed to shower, but I didn’t want to put my dirty clothes back on, and I couldn’t walk back into my room naked. The plan was to sneak inside, grab a clean pair of shorts, and then slip out to the shower. I’d already warned the others not to use the bathroom.
Everything hurt, and yet I needed it to hurt more. Physical pain I could take. It was the emotional pain I couldn’t stomach. I’d done nothing wrong, so why did I feel like I had? Why did I feel like my insides were acid and my heart was hollow?
The light by the couch was on the lowest setting. Despite me telling her not to numerous times, Caroline always left it on for me when she knew I was going to be late. It was sweet, but I didn’t like the idea that the lamp might disturb her. Samantha was a little burrower, sleeping like the dead with her head under the pillow and blankets. It scared the crap out of me at first, because I didn’t know if she could breathe under all that.
In a way, though, I guess it was a child’s version of a defense. They hid under the blankets when they thought they were in trouble or if there was a fire or from the monster under their bed. Samantha would soon learn that her monster was dead, and no one else would ever harm her.
I wouldn’t let them.
What I did not expect to find was Caroline slumbering at the end of the couch, her small body curled into a ball over the arm. I froze, the light from the hallway behind me shining a path through the dark room directly to her. She was so small and childlike, completely innocent.
I closed my eyes, turning my face away. What the fuck was I doing? What the fuck was wrong with me? What was I deluding myself into believing? That I could help raise her, heal her, and then the second she turned eighteen, she would fall into my open arms and we’d live happily ever after?
That wasn’t reality; that was the plot to a piss-poor porn shoot. Even Aloiki wouldn’t stoop so low. And yet I had.
I kept telling myself that I would get over whatever this was. But it had been over a month since she and Samantha had come home with me, and my feelings were only getting stronger. I refused to even contemplate the L-word. It felt too fucking perverted.
But maybe I needed to call it what it was, whatIwas. I was lusting after, and growing feelings for, a seventeen-year-old single mother and sex trafficking victim. Iwasperverted. How was I any different from the pedophiles I’d killed, from the men who twisted and deluded their perversions, making excuses to justify their sick actions?
How was I any better than Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV?
I opened my eyes, and met a pair of sea-green ones staring directly at me. She hadn’t moved. Didn’t stand or make a gesture of greeting. Just stared across the room at me, like she’d been awake the entire time.
I wanted to toss my cut aside, storm over to her, and claim her. Kiss her within an inch of her life, take her down to the couch, and make her mine.
My guts twisted so hard I felt nauseous. I’d just fucked another woman, a woman whose name I didn’t even know,twicein Yooko’s office. I still had her nail marks on my back and her teeth marks on my neck. I smelled like her, could still taste her on my tongue. And here I stood in the doorway of my bedroom staring at my seventeen-year-old charge and fantasizing about fucking her too.
No, it was worse: I wanted to make love to her.
She was so fucking young. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a virgin. She’d had far too many choices taken away from her in her life. She deserved better than me. I wasn’t her guardian. I wasn’t her protector.
Because there was no one in this world who would protect her fromme.
“I’m going to go sleep in the barn.” I couldn’t even just walk out. I had to tell her where I was going. Was that some subconscious ploy to see if she would follow me?
“Wait!” Caroline’s voice was as soft as mine, neither of us wanting to rouse the tiny bundle slumbering in the bed behind the couch. She sat upright, untangling herself from the pretzel pose she’d been in.
The door was halfway closed, and fuck me up the ass with a traffic cone, because I stopped at her command. Even if she only meant for it to be a request, my body treated it like an order. Was there anything I wouldn’t do for this woman? Fuck—girl!