Captive by Natasha Thomas Read Free Book Online

another fucking job for a week Adelyn.”
     
    He would think that, especially when I look so much like a princess that would do that kind of stuff to begin with. You’re more likely to find me having my finger nails ripped out one-by-one than find me in a day spa having facials and pedicures. It’s a waste of hard earned money of which I don’t have a lot of, and also wouldn’t spend on that sort of thing if I did. I knew the importance of having a nest egg, if it wasn’t for me bailing out Amy I would have a sizeable one, but for the time being I would have to work doubly as hard to build it back up. I needed it, it was my security blanket for just in case I had to leave in a hurry.
     
    “Actually I do. I have rent and utilities to pay and at some point in the week I’d like to eat, so yes Max, I do need to get work.” I tell him shaking my head side to side.
     
    Max growls at me and stalks to the door. Before he leaves he spits,
    “You work for me at Skin Fusion, don’t do anything to embarrass my shop and I won’t give a fuck what you do.”
     
    Walking out the door to my bedroom I listen as he makes his was down the hall. I listen as exits through the front door slamming it harder than necessary. I listen as he starts his bike up, the machine growling like the man before it purrs taking off down my gravel driveway. I listen until there is no sound to listen to anymore.
     
    Then, and only then, do I let myself cry the tears that have built up over the last ten minutes. They spill down over my cheeks, my neck and onto the sheet still clutched tightly against my chest. That’s how I fall asleep after I’ve sunk down into the safety of the depths of my quilt, with tears streaming down my face, my heart aching, and my soul captive in a box that will never be opened if I have anything to say in it.
     
    It isn’t until the morning I realise my mistake. I should have gotten up last night, stripped my bed, and showered, scrubbing my body raw because in the morning I wake up to the smell of Max everywhere. On my skin, my sheets, my pillows, he’s all around me, all it serves to do is bring the reality of what happened between us last night crashing in. And with it shame, humiliation, self-disgust invaded every thought. It took three days to dull the memory enough that it wasn’t consuming my every thought whether I was awake or asleep. I didn’t spend that time idle though. No, I drove to Clearwater and got myself tested for everything known to man-kind, that way Max couldn’t find anything to complain about when I took him the results. Given that my bank balance was borderline emaciated I decided on the drive back from Clearwater it was a good a time as any to go to Kitty Kat’s and enquire about a job.

CHAPTER FOUR
Adelyn
     
    Closing Time - Semisonic
     
    Interviewing with Marlene at Kitty Kat’s was something else altogether. She’s the manager, human lie detector, (she seriously is because I’m not lying when I say she can spot one a mile off, so much so it’s uncanny), seamstress of all things sequin, and occasional security guard, (not really, but she has had to step in a time or two when things have gotten hairy). Marlene is one of the most brash, energetic people I’ve met, and she’d have to be if she has to keep up with that workload every day.
     
    In her early forties with brassy red naturally curly hair, eye opening eclectic fashion sense, and when I say that I mean she wears hippie skirts that flow to her ankles with boob tubes, row and rows of bracelets almost up to her elbows, lace chokers, and strange flip flops with huge hibiscus flowers on the toe straps. With her John Lennon style reading glasses perched on the end of her nose she makes quite the picture, it’s everything I can do not to laugh at the woman who I’ve been told is more intimidating than any of the men in the MC. However, less than fifteen minutes into my interview I realised that I’d been wrong and they’d been