First Debt by Pepper Winters, now you can read online.
IF I HAD known my life would change so drastically, I might have planned a little better. Strategized a little smarter, researched a little deeper.
One moment I was the Darling of Milan, the next I was a Weaver Whore.
But despite my lack of skills and weapons, I wasn’t ready to go down without a fight.
In fact, I prospered into a woman I’d always been too afraid to find.
I became more than Nila Weaver.
More than daughter, twin-sister, and seamstress.
I became the woman who would bring down a family’s legacy.
I evolved into the woman who captured a Hawk.
I STALKED TOWARD the stables and the very lodgings Nila had inhabited the night before.
The image of her bounding away—pristine naked skin glowing in the sunshine and long hair flowing like black silk—played on a loop inside my head.
Everything I’d been prepared for—every argument, every hardship I’d been drilled to expect—hadn’t prepared me for the complication that was Nila Weaver. How could I understand and keep my bearings when the bloody woman had more personalities than a Picasso painting?
Sometimes naïve. Sometimes coy. Smart, fearful, proud, gullible.
And above all, evolving.
And rapidly.
I wasn’t used to…mess. The chaos of a human psyche or the disgusting pull of emotions was not permitted in my world. In the short time I’d known her, she’d successfully made me feel something I had no fucking right to feel.
Don’t admit it.
I balled my hands. No, I wouldn’t admit it. I would never verbalize the slow burn of possession in my gut or the confusion in my mind when it came to understanding her.
Run, Nila. Run.
And she had.
Despite her nakedness, lack of sustenance, and the fact that my family had just finished abusing her, she’d glared into my eyes and bounded away like a deer bolting from a gun. A flash of vulnerability glowed on her face before she was swallowed by the forest.
I expected her to faint with her ridiculous condition—an experiment, as it were, to see what she would do when I pretended to give her what she wanted.
Run?
I never for a fucking moment thought she’d do it.
I expected her to cower. To beg. To cry for the men in her life who had let her down. But she’d done none of those things. I’d known her only briefly, yet she’d demanded more of me than any other woman ever had.
It wasn’t permitted, and now that she’d run, she’d given away more of the disarray inside her. I’d glimpsed the perplexing woman who’d become my charge, prisoner, and plaything.
Someone who had successfully confused the shit out of me.
As much as you don’t understand her, you want her. She came on your tongue, for fuck’s sake.
I stopped in my tracks. She’d fought me on every turn, yet the moment I’d claimed her in front of my brothers, she’d given me ultimate control.
She’d spread her legs and forced her hips into my mouth, giving complete authority for me to lick and nibble and drive her high until she shattered, regardless if she meant to do it or not, she’d used me for pleasure.
She’d gotten off on me fingering her.