In the end, K Diamond turned to glare at me…then he stepped aside.
That was all the warning I got before the Fae King stepped forward and told me in mildly accented English, “I paid your debt. This means you belong to me now.”
3
HAN
“You paid my debt? Why?” The woman Han had just paid a substantial sum of money to “purchase” blinked at him. “Why would you do that?”
Taking time to answer that question would be unwise. Han didn’t know why he’d felt compelled to step in himself. Yes, he knew where the deal Kuang Jr. was about to make with her would lead, but it wasn’t as if he’d made a habit of protecting women from this fate. So he was just as baffled by his intervention as her.
But none of their questions mattered right now. He could feel Kuang Jr.’s glare on his back, waiting for any excuse to renege on the terms they’d set. Their deal was done, but it wasn’t finished. Not yet. Which is why Han needed her to cooperate.
Han kept his expression neutral as he held out his hand to her. “Come. We will talk in the VIP Champagne Room.”
She’d looked interested in him earlier, scanning him as Han scanned her. Checking him out, as he once learned to say in the dating chapter of a textbook for one of his ESL classes. Han could tell she would’ve found him appealing as most women did if they had met under different circumstances. So perhaps she would come with him quietly, then Han could—
“You must be out of your mind if you think I’m going anywhere with you. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.”
This woman appeared to have what his fellow Dragon Phantom called too much personality when he really meant a perspective bed partner was too crazy to bother with for a one-night stand.
Behind him, Kuang Jr. and his crew fell out laughing. “Hope she was worth the money!” the snakehead called to Han in Cantonese.
Han gritted his jaw. For the second time that night, he was in severe danger of losing face.
He would not allow that to happen, so new plan.
He gave up reasoning with her and simply picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, banging her fists into his back.
As small as she appeared, she was surprisingly heavy. And her round bottom was packed tight with muscle, not plastic surgery as Han might have assumed before he pressed the hand against it to anchor her to his shoulder.
Han could see now how she’d sent Kuang Jr. stumbling, and he imagined if she weren’t hanging upside down, her fist would pack quite a punch.
She cursed at him all the way to the VIP Champagne room, which was located down two hallways at the far back of the club. It was well-outfitted with a wraparound vinyl couch, a large flat screen tv on one wall, and a dance floor in the middle of the room with a couple of stripper poles on each side of it.
His purchase didn’t waste any time looking around, though. She charged at him like a hellcat as soon as he set her on her feet.
Han grabbed her by both wrists and pulled them to his chest before she could carry through with her attempt to scratch off his face.
“Calm down,” Han growled at her.
“If you think you can force me to have sex without a fight—”
Her words enraged him more than her futile attacks ever could. “I would never force you or any other woman!”
She blinked at his burst of anger but quickly reset. “Why would I believe you? I don’t know you from Adam!”
“I don’t know who this Adam is,” Han answered. “And maybe you do not know me, but I know bosses like K Diamond. His tactics are ones used in clubs the world over. Boss creates a debt—in this case, the interest your father owes. Girl agrees to pay it on his terms. Then boss does anything to keep girl under his thumb—offers her drugs, beats her, whatever it takes. Eventually, after a few months of mind games and cultivation, girl doesn’t know which way is up or down, and guy can do whatever he wants with her—use her however he wants.”
She was no longer struggling to free her wrists by the time Han got to this point. Instead, her eyes widened, and her full lips fell open in an “o” of shock.
But Han didn’t end the story there. No, he made it hers so that she could fully understand. “And when the boss tires of you, he’ll sell you into another club—somewhere far away from your family or anyone else who could help you. You would overdose in some country where you didn’t know the language, unable to say for sure how you got there.”
