Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Absolutely.”
No one batted an eye at that, or the impatient way he delivered it.
When the server left, Mr. Delgado muttered, “Only one to treat your wife differently is you, am I right?”
“You know it,” Dare said, putting my napkin across my lap without revealing anything, but his eyes did meet mine for a beat and they flashed with what anyone would’ve thought was lust and promise. I gave him a small coy smile and batted my eyelashes.
Mr. Lucas cleared his throat and snickered, “Getting hot in here or is it just me?” He petted the head of his assigned slave and she obediently stayed in position.
“It’s quite hot in here,” Mr. Chen said, arriving at that moment, taking in the room and the people in it with a sly grin on his face.
We’d gotten through soup, salad, and halfway through our main course of surf and turf (which wasn’t being adequately shared with the slaves, of course). Mr. Chen was talking to Dare like he was an old friend. Dare would seem, to most observers, that he was behaving the same way, but even though we had only been together a few months, I could see that he was pretending. It was all on the surface.
His eyes were stone cold even when he was smiling or laughing at a joke. I’d seen him really smile, really laugh. This smiling was very different from that. These people would never get to see that side, the real side, of Dario Ferrano. My Dario.
My Dare made jokes, he teased the people he loved, he loved a heated debate on a hot topic, he was competitive in a fun and teasing way, and although he could be super angry and broody, he definitely was what Tia had confided in me she’d thought of as “angry-hot” from when she’d first met Dare.
Mr. Chen didn’t have a slave at his feet for the meal. At Mr. Delgado’s feet was a slave I’d never seen before. She was blonde, pixie pretty, tiny and perfectly obedient, getting hand-fed from his plate. Maybe she was my replacement.
I didn’t allow myself to dwell on that. I couldn’t or else I’d show emotion that I couldn’t afford to reveal. I had to continue to show the Kruna powers-that-be that they’d made the right decision in choosing me for Dare. If I didn’t, it’d put him in danger. And he needed to be seen by the leadership team to be completely suitable for that role.
The girl at Mr. Lucas’s feet was someone I was familiar with. Her name was Lulu. We weren’t really friends; most people avoided me to stay off Cleo’s bad side. Lulu and Truly were tight. She had been around longer than I had.
The meal moved at a snail’s pace, so I just did what I was supposed to do. I was dressed in a flowy ivory sundress with straps over my shoulders and crisscrossed on my back. It had some cleavage but not too much. I had on my three-strand necklace, my wedding rings, and my hair had been flat ironed straight, with an iron we bought for this trip. I hadn’t been flat ironing. Dare liked it curly. Dare and I had thrown my old iron down the garbage chute at home and I’d hated buying a new one. But my hair style definitely helped me blend in, seem like I used to seem – part of the furniture around here.
When the meal was over, Mr. Chen suggested that they move to a room for brandy and cigars. When we entered the Townsend room, I wanted to alert Dare that the Townsend room wasn’t a safe zone. It was often used for play, but I didn’t get a chance to find a way to subtly communicate that to him before we were inside.
Dare held my hand and the other slaves followed behind their sirs, their eyes downcast. I guess it was muscle memory or something because my eyes automatically went down to the carpet and I stared at my toes as we walked.
The Townsend room was a large library-like room done in dark woods with big burgundy and brown tufted leather club chairs as well as dark side tables with crystal lamps.
There was a semi-circle leather bar in the corner of the room that was manned by a server who would serve from selections of cigars or pipe tobacco with an assortment of fancy pipes. The server would also bring brandy, cognac, espresso, or fetch you some other drink.
Each time I had been in this room had been to serve. Each time I’d been in this room I’d been on the rug.
The men sat in an area with just four chairs so the two slaves moved to their feet and knelt.
Dare stopped and looked around. There were other chairs on the far end of the room.