Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Which meant that since they didn’t know when I’d reopen, they’d have to go to someone else.
Sure, some would come back, but I’d definitely lose even more clients. And I’d already lost quite a few to this situation.
Mig stepped in to my line of sight, and I tilted my head back to pin him with a glare.
“What do you want?” I snapped.
He grinned.
“You.”
“Well, you can’t have me. I’m going to have to take a pass on your dick for awhile,” I told him honestly. “It muddles my thoughts, clouds my brain, and then I starting thinking things are better than they really are.”
“Wow,” he said, walking around the chair. “I had no idea my dick was that powerful, baby. I mean, yeah he’s a big guy and works all kinds of magic, but you make it sound like he’s the leader of a cult or something.”
I flipped him off, and he laughed as he sat down in between my legs.
His big body forced my legs open wider, and I only let that happen because he would have just sat on them if I didn’t.
And I didn’t think my legs could handle his bony butt.
He made himself comfortable, turning to face the ocean, as he leaned back against my chest.
When I went to move, he grabbed my flailing arms and wrapped them around his neck.
I wasn’t uncomfortable, per se, but I also wasn’t comfortable, either, with all of Mig’s considerable bulk pressed against me.
“On the back of my neck,” he said.
Then he took my hand and moved it until my fingers brushed over a small, puckered scar.
“What’s that from?” I asked, no longer wanting to move now that I realized he wanted to talk.
I massaged the spot as he started to talk.
“When I was ten, my dad started my training. That first year he also started entering me into cage fighting matches to test my skills and identify my weaknesses,” he said. “I was paired up with kids between five and ten years older than me whose parents also wanted them to learn these same sets of skills.”
I blinked.
“Same sets of skills?” I asked carefully.
He nodded.
“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe the kind of attention rich kids get. Blackmail, extortion. Not to mention that they’re more likely to be targeted for a kidnap and ransom,” he said. “Some parents believed, like my dad did, that if they trained their kids to protect themselves, they’d at least be able to fight back if necessary if there ever came a time that they were taken.”
“That’s…that’s insane,” I finally decided on.
Mig snorted.
“That was my reality. And every summer and Christmas break, until I was eighteen, was spent training with my father,” he sighed. “It was the summer of my fourteenth year that my father decided that maybe I wasn’t as good as he had hoped I would be, and he decided to plant a tracking device in my neck during one of the times that I’d been knocked unconscious.”
I froze with my thumb covering the scar.
“Is it…is it…” I couldn’t finish.
What kind of parent would do that?
Then my gut reaction was just that…to protect.
Vitaly was scared his son would be taken.
So he’d done the unthinkable.
And tagged his son like he was a dog.
“Yeah,” he said.
I blinked.
“It is?” I gasped.
He nodded. “Yeah. I found out about it when I went into the Air Force. He came to my boot camp graduation, told me about it when he took me out to dinner…then asked me to leave it in for his peace of mind.”
I was silent.
“I went down when I was flying during a training exercise. Fished out of the ocean by a Russian ship, no less,” he said. “And held for ransom.”
I stayed silent still, waiting for him to continue as my heart started to race.
“They knew my general location, but the Russians were what you would call modern day pirates,” he said. “They requested money in exchange for me. And you know the US Government doesn’t deal with terrorists.”
No, I didn’t know that.
“My dad found out, even though to this day I don’t know how. The Air Force wouldn’t have told him anything. They don’t usually tell the family unless there’s a body, or that I’m alive and recuperating in a hospital.”
I didn’t know that either.
“I was too banged up to save myself. I had two broken arms, a broken collarbone, and two sprained ankles from the fall into the ocean. I’d deployed my parachute too late; let’s just say it’s not fun to hit the ocean at the speed I’d been going.”
“So your dad saved you?” I guessed.
He nodded.
“And he was disappointed in me,” he confirmed.
I blinked.
“For what?” I practically barked.
“For not being able to save myself, I’d guess,” he surmised.
I didn’t think that was it.
Not at all.
But I would save that conversation for later.
Right now, Mig needed me.