seem surprised to realize Asia was there. In fact, she didn’t even look up to acknowledge her. However, Asia knew she had heard her because she’d gone very still. She was a very pretty young woman, a redhead with a braid of hair that hung in a thick rope down to just below her bottom. She was slim in some places, but busty and lushly curved over her hips. She certainly wasn’t shaped like so many of the perfect-sized women Julian had taken back to his apartment night after night. She hadn’t thought him capable of being anything other than too shallow to appreciate a woman shaped in some other fashion.
Then again, she was standing in his kitchen looking very domesticated. She was probably his wife. She certainly looked miserable and beaten down enough to find herself married to a beautiful man who did nothing but run around on her night after night, even going so far as to bring one home with him. Probably more than one. Maybe even fourteen. The little fool probably loved him to death and would likely tolerate anything he said or did just to stay close to him. The very idea made Asia ill.
The bang of a serving ladle joining the pot in the basin drew her attention back up sharply to the woman in question, who rounded on her with obvious anger in her eyes.
“You know nothing!” she spat, her accent far heavier than Julian’s. “You appreciate nothing! You make to judge me? After you rob me of my life?”
There was a certain sharp, ringing sound that always seemed to occur when a knife was drawn in a kitchen. Ariel grabbed what was obviously a blade from the countertop nearest her and Asia was instantly on guard, holding out a hand.
“Whoa! I didn’t do anything!” Asia instantly measured the space of the flooring, the distance to dangerous points like the knife and the fire pit. “You can keep your life just how you like it, whatever it is. Just show me the door and I am out of here.”
Ariel curled a lip in derision so obvious and so harsh that, for the first time, Asia took note that her ears were…weird. The lobes were actually pointed, or rather came to a point. They seemed just as soft as anyone’s, as the gems she wore through them made them wobble a little when fury shook her entire frame.
Then she seemed to stop, her emotional display calming considerably as a smile ripped through half her mouth. Asia couldn’t call it a friendly expression.
“The door is just behind you,” she invited in an almost silky tone.
Asia wasn’t an idiot. Had the girl denied her access or barred her aggressively, she would have wanted out more than anything, but this nicety in the aftermath of such a bold flare of hostility made her hesitate as she looked over her shoulder. The door was like the door to a vault, the hard, gunmetal gray steel locked with a central wheel. Like a pressure door on a submarine, when the wheel turned it sent bolts sliding into the steel frame around it that had been securely riveted, woven, and wholly integrated into the materials of the walls.
The wheel lock was on the inside.
A strange thing if someone was trying to keep prisoners in. Ominous if they were trying to keep others or help out. The feel of being in a carefully, if oddly, constructed fort began to settle over her. But here was the question. Would the door open?
It meant turning her back on Ariel, but the other woman had tossed the knife in the basin with the rest of the dishes and gone back to her angry, sniffly process of ignoring Asia’s presence.
“What the hell,” she muttered with a shrug. She wasn’t going to fall for the old “don’t step over this line!” command some kidnapping monster laid out for her. She owed it not only to herself to get the heck out of there, but she owed it to Kenya. He might have been lying about her being alive and nearby just to get her to comply, but she needed to believe that he hadn’t.
Asia crossed to the door in just a few strides, grabbed the wheel, and turned hard. The bolts retracted sharply, the vibration pounding up her arms through the metal she touched. She was actually surprised it hadn’t been locked. Not one to look at a gift horse like a dentist, she yanked the door open and immediately rushed outside.
She half expected Julian to be there waiting to stop her, but she had hoped to get a few useful screams out to draw attention or something.
Well, Julian wasn’t there…
But she sure did scream.
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