“What? Did you just ask me to strip and lay down the bed?” Ryley couldn’t believe his ears.
He stomped forward and yanked the man’s arm, looking furious.
“I don’t have the time to deal with your sick joke! Do you think you can toy with me like I’m some kind of a whore?! Where’s that boy!?!!” He yelled, sinking his sharp claws into the man’s hard flesh.
Clyde’s face turned grim in an instant.
He was trying to be nice to him but this pretty face couldn’t even shut up about someone else when they were together.
He wanted to shout back at the blond, and forced him to tell why he cared this much for the brat who almost killed them both.
But he didn’t want to waste his time bickering with Ryley, so he pulled his hand and tossed him on the king size bed.
The man climbed on top of Ryley fast, locking him under his looming figure.
Then he placed his palm on top of the handsome model’s chest and lightly pressed it.
“I told you the guards will come if your heartbeat keeps increasing.”
“How the hell am I supposed to relax if you keep—Ah!” Ryley tried to rebel, but Clyde pushed him again and leaned closer.
“Don’t make it hard for me, I won’t do anything weird to you,” the Alpha said, though only partially true.
He actually had a hard time holding back.
Then he moved away and took the small can he brought from outside, showing it to Ryley.
“Aren’t you bothered by those bruises on your skin? This will help,” he said as he opened the lid.
“What is that?” The blond said after he got up and drew some distance from the man.
He sat at the corner of the bed but the chamomile scent coming out the small can still reached his nose.
“I asked Adrian to prepare this ointment for you,” he said then scooted closer to Ryley.
“If you refuse, I won’t let you meet that brat. Or worse, he might never see tomorrow again.”
Hearing the threat, Ryley crumpled the white sheet below him in annoyance.
His brown eyes scanned the room for a way to escape, but then he realized that the door had a fingerprint lock on it and that he wouldn’t be able to get far even if he managed to come out.
The blond could only suppress his anger as he glared at the smirking face looking down on him.
“How could I know it won’t cause anything to my skin afterwards?” He asked in an aggressive tone.
The man actually forced his friend to make the ointment a few hours ago, right after he smelled the cold teacup inside Ryley’s room.
Adrian really felt like smashing his phone to the ground when Clyde suddenly demanded him to make it, much less with a chamomile scent.
“Don’t worry, this is similar to the one I used for the wound around your collarbone. You don’t seem to have any allergies so it’s completely fine,” he said after finally finding the right answer.
Ryley frowned as he stared intently at the stuff in the Alpha’s palm.
“I will do it by myself!” He shouted as he tried to snatch it away from Clyde, but the man caught his hand and warned him in a firm tone, “Strip down and don’t waste my time.”
“That brat hasn’t eaten or drunk anything since my guards brought him from the woods. If you don’t hurry up, his death will be yours,” he added before he let go of Ryley’s wrist.
Ryley’s brown eyes widened in shock at the man’s words.
How many days had it been?
Did this guy seriously starve that boy?
No, there’s no way he only starved him.
Thinking that he didn’t have much choice, Ryley stood up from the bed.
He bowed his head throughout the process, his brown eyes shot a knife-sharp gaze towards the man from behind the row of his golden strands.
His heart never stopped cursing the tanned devil in front of him.
Such a disgraceful act was a grave insult and humiliation that not even his worst enemies in the industry could do to him.
Ryley almost tore the skin on his lower lip and made it bleed when his teeth sharply gritted its surface from trying to hold his patience together.
There’s only one thing that kept him going— the fire inside his heart.
And sometimes, he needed to sacrifice in order to keep his flame alive.
Clyde couldn’t take his eyes off the blond as he took off his clothes one by one, and gulped hard when he caught Ryley climb the bed only with a black boxer shorts tightly covering his lower half.
The sight of a slender back wrapped in smooth skin and a pair of long legs stretched on top of the bed that supported them nearly made him drool.
If Clyde was smart enough, he wouldn’t be so careless as to think that the handsome model was too weak to do something that he’d plotted inside his beautiful head.
***
Meanwhile, inside a deluxe room of the Grand Falcon Hotel, Martin was seen pacing back and forth anxiously, as if he couldn’t decide what he should do with Ryley’s requests.
First, the blond asked him to investigate everything about the cursed hotel that nearly became the tomb of his career, starting from its history and the people who currently ran it.
He wanted everything about Scott Morrison and the rest in charge of Falcon Group in details.
“Shit… This doesn’t look good…”
Martin could only find a sparse information about Scott Morrison and a few other names that were listed as having the same position.
And when he delved further into Scott’s family, he found a very familiar picture of a woman.
“Oh God… Does that brat even realize who he’s going to fight?! No wonder she has the same last name as that old man!”
Martin fumbled through the messy desk and grabbed his phone.
He dialed Ryley’s number but the blond didn’t answer.
The manager felt like crushing his smartphone in his palm.
Just where had Ryley gone to that he couldn’t pick up his call?
Did he not understand that his situation was way more serious than he thought?
He rose to his feet in annoyance, his palm slapped his own forehead in frustration as he’s getting more and more worried of Ryley’s safety.
Martin then decided to go outside for a walk and a breath of fresh air, but when he headed for the elevator, he accidentally heard two men talking in a foreign language at the end of the corridor.
He didn’t expose his whereabouts and waited behind the wall.
Martin couldn’t exactly get what they talked about but he was pretty convinced that they had an ill intention.
He came to learn it when he peeked and saw one of them put a gun with a silencer under his waitress suit.
The manager had a really wild idea of who the two might target in this building since Ryley told him to go and persuade his sister, but who would’ve thought that his fear really came true when one of them repeatedly mentioned Rachel’s name with their thick German accent.
He walked back fast, trying to get out of there and ran to get some help.
But he bumped into someone instead.
“Mr. Flescher? What’s wrong?”