“Nine, where is she?”
A small, black curl fell onto her forehead. “She’s in her room, sir.”
He inhaled and pulled on his tie. As it slipped off, he tossed it onto the bed. “Send her up.”
It was his cock talking, not his brain, but he did nothing to silence it. It’d been a long day and it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in his gift… of course, he was going to have to seduce said gift into doing anything. Kade knew she wasn’t going to be impressed with him, not in the slightest.
“Yes, Master Kade,” she said and her white tunic flicked out behind her as she whirled on her heel and hurried off.
To take the edge off, Kade waltzed over to his desk and poured himself a small glass of whiskey. Instead of sipping at it, Kade flicked it with his wrist and watched as the honey coloured liquid swirled in the glass. As he sipped at it and the cool, smooth liquid rolled down his throat, he closed his eyes. The whiskey tickled his lips and the aroma wafted up his nostrils. Before Nine showed up, the smell of whiskey was his favourite scent. He didn’t even want to admit to himself what it was now. Lowering his glass, Kade sauntered around his desk and dropped into his chair. Barely three minutes later, Nine strolled into his room and shut the door behind her. She’d changed from her blue and white dress. The one she wore now was a light pink and tied up on the shoulder. Kade noticed immediately that she looked different—fiercer, less naïve. He liked it.
She eyed him at his computer, looking suspiciously tense, and he took note of it. “You all right, Nine?”
Her features narrow. Beautiful, but stupid. “I’m Nine again, am I?”
She folded her arms—another forbidden gesture in the presence of a Fortunate, another thing she isn’t going to care about when he called her out for it.
“We’re alone,” he stated obviously. “So, yes, you’re Nine again.”
She surged forward, hurt glistening in her eyes. “You didn’t have to send me away,” she proclaimed as she stepped around the corner of his desk, stopping once her hips bumped into the wood.
“Vince was here. I most certainly had to.”
She frowned. “You don’t care that you hurt my feelings?”
Kade didn’t like the tone in her voice—the demanding, the authority. Her tiny body jumped as he slammed his palms down on the smooth wood. An itchy burn crepitated over the surface and he pushed himself to his feet. “You forget your place, Unfortunate!” Nine’s face fell as regret leaked over her features, but it did nothing to deter his anger. “You have no claim on me. I don’t owe you anything.”
He glanced at the clock on the bottom left corner of his screen. His father would be returning to his room to prepare for dinner any minute now. How one man changed his clothes so often in a day was beyond him. He softened his tone. “If we want to kill Michael, we have to act now. If we pull this off… then I owe you something, but don’t think for a second that I answer to you. You are the one who refers to Fortunates as Master, Ma’am, or Miss, and you are the one who was born beneath everyone else.” His tongue kept moving, spitting out words he didn’t want to say, but knew she needed to hear. “What I take from you is what you owe me. What I give to you in return is a gift.”
Her stare dropped to the table as she absorbed his words. To his surprise, she was being extremely placid. Perhaps he’d hurt her too much for her to want to fight back.
“I can’t save you from this world,” he muttered, dragging the tip of his index finger along the desk. “Even though I offered you freedom, you know it doesn’t exist, right?”
She nodded and a strand of her long, auburn hair fell into her face.
“I’m skating on thin ice,” he continued. “Just like you. Beyond Fortunate and Unfortunate we can never be anything else.”
“But do you want to be?” she asked, her voice small and hesitant.
“What?”
“Not being allowed to do something means nothing to me. Rules and regulations, that’s not what I want to hear.” She cleared her throat nervously, her cheeks flushing a light pink. “Last night was beyond being a Fortunate and Unfortunate. You cared…you held me and made sure I was comfortable. If we could, would you want to be more than what we are?”
Kade huffed. He tried to let her down easy, he did, but she was basically begging for him to tear her heart right out of her chest. He was aware how much he meant to her… over the past few weeks, since he saved her, he saw the way she regarded him and how it had changed from scared and curious to excited and adoring. In her eyes, he was her protector—her saviour. No longer had he held the title of her tormentor. That changed the second she ground her hips into his and made him come in his pants. Her attitude was so like a Fortunate that every sliver of power he gave her, she absorbed like water to a sponge and wanted more.