Free Shadow Bound (Unbound) by Rachel Vincent Page A

said, but I took the bottle with me when I stood. Never let it be said that I turned down good vodka. The shit under my bed at Kenley’s would take paint off a car.
“Are you ready to rejoin the party?” Jake said, as Holt finished his drink, still seated, and evidently unhurried.
Holt set his glass down, the remaining ice cubes small enough to swallow now. “Actually I’m kind of tired from my flight. I think I’m going to call it a night.”
Jake nodded. “Kori will drive you to your hotel. But I’m sure Nina and Julia would like to say goodbye before you go.” He stepped out of the doorway to let Holt pass, and when I started to follow, Tower blocked the doorway with his arm. “Korinne will meet you at the front door.”
Holt glanced at me, then nodded and headed down the hall.
Jake closed the door behind him, and my hand clenched around the neck of the bottle I still held. “Explain,” he ordered.
“You said to do whatever it takes.”
“And recruiting Holt required Scotch from my personal liquor cabinet, in the off-limits portion of my home?”
I shrugged. “He has good taste.”
“Shall I assume the privacy helped you get to know each other?” he asked, and I nodded. “And does he like you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he want you?”
“I don’t—” I started, and Jake frowned. “Yeah, I think he does.” There’d been this look in his eyes a few minutes ago… “But it’s not personal. Anyone will do. We could send one of the girls to the hotel with him—”
Jake shook his head. “He rented a seventy-five-thousand-dollar car and drank my fifty-year-old Scotch. He’s either putting on airs or living beyond his means, but either way, he doesn’t want a common whore, Korinne. He wants something worth more. Someone with a little class. So dig deep and scrounge some up.”
I didn’t give a damn about the insult. I’d been called much worse than classless. But Holt had already seen me barefoot, drinking straight from the bottle. If classy was what he wanted, I wouldn’t be able to fool him. But I couldn’t tell Jake that, because if he thought I was worthless, I was as good as dead.
“Drive him to his hotel and walk him up to his room. Eat a breath mint, say please and thank you, and don’t trip over the damn heels,” he said, running one finger over the toes of the shoes I still held in my left hand. “Act like you’re worth something, and he might just believe it. And Korinne?”
“Yeah?” My cheeks were flaming now. I could feel it.
“If you ever come upstairs in this house again without my permission, I’ll put you back in the basement and let the guards draw straws. David’s eager to pay you back for the broken nose.”
It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep my hands from shaking. To pretend nothing he said could scare me. Jake didn’t buy it, but that didn’t matter.
What matters is the face you show the world, not the quaking mess behind it.
* * *
     
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the entrance of the Westmark Hotel and shifted into Park. The valet was waiting when I stepped out and handed the key to him, and the doorman had Holt’s luggage out of the trunk before I’d even rounded the car. He followed us inside with the bags while I led Holt to the elevator. I’d checked him in and picked up his key cards that afternoon.
Tower had reserved a three-room suite for him. It was nice enough to tell Holt he was valued, but not nice enough to inflate his ego. The suite said “we want you, but not as much as you think we want you.” And that might have worked, if I hadn’t already told him that he could pretty much get whatever he wanted in exchange for his signature—my little fuck-you to the puppet master pulling my own strings. Jake would get Holt in the end, but he would pay out the ass for him, if I had anything to say about it.
On the twenty-third floor, I tipped the bellhop, then closed the door behind him and made a mental note of all the rugs