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  I knew it was him. By his scent. His breaths. The rhythm of his feet across the carpet.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes closed as he headed over to the still open window and pulled it closed with a thud.

  “You should be sleeping,” he said, and I knew my act was pointless.

  “I was,” I said. “I just needed a drink.”

  He didn’t turn to face me. His silhouette against the dawn outside was rigid as he surveyed the landscape.

  “A drink and an eavesdrop it would seem,” he commented, and I felt the burn of embarrassment.

  “I was watching the sunrise.”

  “With the window open?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I assured him.

  He laughed that evil laugh of his. “That’s just as well, sweetheart. Hearing my business wouldn’t be any good for that pretty head of yours. It’s barely any good for mine.”

  I hated how my body was buzzing with the thrill of having him back in the room with me. How I was coming to respond instinctively to his presence, regardless of what my thoughts had to say about it.

  I hated the devil inside me that wanted so much of him.

  It was just as I was thinking so that he turned to face me. I’m sure he saw my scowl, directed at myself but seemingly anything but. He stepped forward, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets and a scowl on his face to match right back.

  “I mean it,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to hear anything about my conversation outside. Ignorance is bliss.”

  “Ignorance never means bliss,” I said, and meant it. “Ignorance means surprises. Surprises are terrible. Always.”

  He tipped his head. “Maybe these surprises will be better unknown until they are upon you.”

  “So I can’t dread what’s coming?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  I dropped my eyes from him, staring at the bedcovers to my side. “I accept what’s coming,” I told him. “I heard a lot about Rebecca Lane. I heard a lot about what to expect in this place.”

  “Nobody knows what to expect in this place,” he said. “Every experience is different. Yours will be very different from hers.”

  “As long as I walk away at the end of it with enough money to help my sister, I don’t care what I experience in this place.” I was still tired, but it was more than tired. It was deeper than that. Darker than that. Still tinged with a filthy fascination for this man that kept my heart thumping.

  He dropped onto the bed, leaning closer. “You’ll really give all of yourself for the sake of your drug addict sister? No matter what?” He didn’t even give me a chance to answer before he continued. “That’s very noble, and exceptionally naive. I can assure you a girl like your sister wouldn’t give all of herself for you.”

  His words stung. Like papercuts on my fingertips when I was a little girl. Sharp and savage little gashes on the tender parts.

  “I love my sister very much,” I said. “And she loves me. Love is the most important thing there is.”

  That vile laugh again. “Love. Yes.” I could feel the burn of his eyes. “So tell me, little girl. You think if I offered your sister a decent pay day on the one condition she didn’t speak a word to you ever again, she’d turn it down?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’d turn it down…”

  His laugh this time was far more free. “Naivety is cute on such a pretty thing. Cute but crippling. Losing your optimism would see you a lot more successful in this lifetime.”

  I forced myself up on an elbow. “It’s not naivety,” I argued. “Without love there really is nothing that matters in this world. My sister knows that too.”

  “Your sister knows that money buys a drug induced high. I doubt anything else really matters to her in this world.”

  “It will when I’ve earned enough to put her through rehab and she’s found herself again,” I countered, but his laugh kept on coming.

  “Tell me, Miss Emmerson, and tell me honestly. How much time has your sister found for you these past few years since she’s been chasing down the highs?” He paused, but not long enough for an answer. “I’ll bet you it’s whenever she needed you to bail her out of a crisis and rarely ever besides.”

  He was right. Of course he was. But even as my heart pained at the reality of his words, my mouth was answering him back.

  “I came here for her as soon as I could. I came here to help her. I knew she was in a mess… she doesn’t have any time for much else…”

  “Really? No time to see how you are doing in this whole new world? No time to seek out some chat and laughter with her sister on a day she isn’t pleading you to pull her out of shit creek?”

  I wished I hadn’t woken up. I preferred him dishing out pain and punishment on a physical level than digging in to the hard truths of my world with Phoebe.

  “She will,” I maintained. “Once she’s up on her feet, she will.”

  He leaned further across my side of the bed. “Money is what matters to people. Money is what makes the world go round. Love comes down the queue of priorities, below money, greed and selfishness. It always will.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. If that’s really the case, then what’s the point of existing at all?”

  His smile was jaded below the arrogance. I caught a whiff of that deep rooted pain in him all over again. “Money, greed and selfishness. They are the point of existing at all.”

  I forced a smile of my own. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe one day you’ll find a love that makes you think again.”

  I saw it then. A flash of something. A flash of condemnation of the past. Hurt. Hurt and pessimism and a whole host more negativity besides.

  He’d lost someone.

  Someone. Somehow.

  His hurt resonated with my own pain in his words about Phoebe.

  That knowledge that someone is way more important to you than you are to them. Betrayal. Disappointment. Even if you don’t want to accept it. Even if you want to believe that somehow it will all come good for both of you.

  Even if you want to chase a happily ever after you can cling hold of for the rest of your whole entire life. I was still chasing mine. Still hoping for mine.

  His was long gone, I was sure of that.

  “Maybe one day you’ll find that money makes you think again. Preferably before you hand the lot of it over to your poor excuse of a sister.”

  “Just so long as I can hand it over to my poor excuse of a sister,” I whispered. “I’m so worried about her…”

  And that’s when our conversation was over. Just like that. He raised himself back to sitting and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Sleep now,” he said. “Or you’ll regret it when it’s wake up time.”

  At least we could agree on something.

  It took everything I had not to touch his body with mine when he climbed naked under the bed covers, but I managed it.

  Hell knows how, since my skin was screaming for his with every breath in me.

  Maybe just because my soul was too busy screaming for Phoebe to care.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brandon

  She went back to sleep far more easily than I’d ever seen anyone fall asleep in my presence, even when exhausted. I watched her as the sun rose, rolling to face her in order to stop a shaft of light from the window disturbing her slumber.

  Once again, my common sense choices were evading me. I could’ve easily closed the curtains and plunged us both back into darkness. If I really wanted to indulge the fascination with the girl beside me, I could have woken her with the press of my body to hers and demanded another practice round of pain.

  I could’ve done all manner of things in the quietness. Typically, the only thing it would appear I couldn’t do that morning was find the peace of slumber myself.

  She shifted under the covers as I moved away from her to light a cigarette by the window. She shuffled closer to my empty side of the bed, burrowing into my abandoned pil
low unconsciously, as though her delicate little frame was searching for my heat somehow.

  I hated how my frame called for hers right back.

  I settled for the fine rush of tobacco and a crisp morning breeze on my face from the open window. It was cold outside, my skin prickling all over as I smoked two in a row. Thinking. Staring at the skyline as the day came to life outside. Hating Henry Drake with a newfound flare of passion at his imbecilic interfering in my Paige Emmerson masterpiece.

  I knew what should be coming without question. Oil barons, politicians, royalty… they were all much of a muchness where their filthy dark web cash transfers were concerned. I should be darkly excited by the promise of a fresh ocean of cash for the exploit of one little slut. I should be on a mission to ensure she was as broken in by me as possible before the tide of abuse had her regretting she’d ever fired off an application to my online profile in the first place.

  I’d have to break her in. Thoroughly. I’d have to use every sorry little scrap of experience the years in this business had granted me to ensure she was as primed as possible to deal with the onslaught. Either that or let her go, set her on her way with the same overly generous cash reserves I’d bestowed on Annabelle Fisher.

  But no. Not this time. Even my somewhat erratic common sense hadn’t bailed quite that far. Plus there was more to the picture this time around. I couldn’t let such a pretty little doll go free with so many bids at stake and risk the Drake war reaching new heights before I knew what forces I was truly up against.

  I’d been a mouthy prick on the phone but still wasn’t blind enough to think I could take him down straight off in a battle of wills. Still I’d rattled my mouth off, telling him he was an interfering cunt who had no business in the sign-up process. I’d barked at him to steer well clear of my performances and leave well alone. But no. Hating Drake’s input or not, I couldn’t cancel sixty days with this magical little minx and humiliate the hell out of this whole enterprise.

  I struggled to find solace in my smoke as I replayed the Drake conversation in my mind. He’d been quiet. Worryingly fucking quiet for a piece of shit like him. Festering on some deeper plan of action he had no intention of revealing in that conversation. My hackles bristled as I took a final drag and tossed my second cigarette butt out of the window.

  Even if I did want to turn down the bulk of the client bids, Edward McMillan fucking York would be a virtually impossible client to sidestep or rein in on his sadistic requirements. He would be a virtually impossible bidder to turn down on the offers front. Too well connected to refuse, no matter what vile atrocities he was planning the poor little slut be subjected to. Paige Emmerson was a nothing as far as he would be concerned. Permanent damage to her would mean nothing. Additional compensatory pay if he pushed it too far would mean nothing. Hell, even permanently silencing a girl like her would mean nothing. Not to him. Certainly not with Drake onside.

  My temples were pounding hard as I took a deep breath of cold air before pulling the window closed. The pain didn’t surprise me. Life had felt like a whirlwind of crazy bullshit ever since Miss Emmerson’s first desperate ping came through. I didn’t feel like myself standing there in my nakedness that morning. My concrete footing on reality felt strangely brittle in her sleeping presence, and her words rattled around my brain soon after Drake’s finished replaying. Over and over and fucking over.

  Her love is everything mentality was sickening to the pits of me. Her sweet naivety should have made me laugh out loud, not churn in the gut. Telling her to shut up and lose her idiocy should have been number one on my list of wants, not finding sleep next to her with her dainty little limbs tangled in mine.

  Because I did want that.

  I did want to shut myself off from my swirling fucking head and find some kind of peace beside her, past giving two fucks for the seedy dollars she was set to generate these coming weeks. Past anything but shutting myself down for one paltry fucking day and enjoying something. Anything. Because when was the last time I’d truly enjoyed anything that didn’t involve my dick at full hardness?

  More specifically, when was the last time I’d truly enjoyed being close to anyone full stop? But it was bullshit. Utter fucking bullshit. Nothing but a risk to the spine in a world determined to buckle and break you.

  I told myself to write off every word that had sounded loud from those sweet lips. She knew nothing. Fuck all. Nothing about this sordid world and what really makes it turn on its perverted axis. Nothing about what makes people click and tick and go for gold in life.

  Maybe one day you’ll find a love that makes you think again.

  Stupidly naive words from a stupidly naive girl. There was no love in this world that would make me think again. Not a single strain of love in this world that could ever counter humanity’s selfish hunger for money at the right price. I’d learned that the hard way a long time ago. Pity for her, but I was sure Miss Emmerson would learn it for herself soon enough.

  I dug out my phone from my jacket pocket to check the latest status update on her dregs of a sister and found nothing but a simple ‘doing ok’ waiting for me. So she should be doing fucking ok. Sending her to rehab was costing a damn sight more than ‘doing ok’. I demanded to know more by return, sending off a ping with a fresh bout of venom before tossing my phone aside on the windowsill.

  And then Miss Naive stirred. Her eyes blinked open once, twice and stayed on me.

  “Am I late? What time is it?” she mumbled and stretched her arms.

  “Remember your manners,” I said, and her eyes focused harder as she got my drift.

  “Sorry, sir. Am I late, sir?”

  “No,” I told her. “Believe me, I’ll ensure you’re ready for business when the time comes.”

  Her smile was guarded. “Thank you, sir. Can I stay here? Sleeping?”

  I should say no. I should tell her to get out of bed and prepare for another full day in the dungeon room with a hundred pairs of webcam eyes feasting all over her. I didn’t respond to her question directly. Instead I went to the bathroom and took a piss with an open doorway between us, knowing full well her attention would be right on me all the while.

  I wondered if she realised there would come a time when she’d be intensely familiar with the most intimate of my bodily functions, as well as plenty of other people’s. I wondered if she realised there would come a time when I’d be intensely familiar with hers in equal measure. I shot a glance back over my shoulder and sure enough my eyes landed hard on hers.

  I fought back the urge to call her over on her knees to gauge the full extent of her commitment to submission right then. Her pretty mouth would look delicious with such a gag reflex as she choked on my bodily waste.

  But cameras.

  There would be no fucking cameras.

  “I’ll get breakfast sent up to you,” I told her as I finished up in the bathroom. “Remember that you’ll eat whatever you’re given and be grateful for it.”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir. Breakfast sounds good, sir. Thank you.”

  I pulled some trousers on and reached into my wardrobe for a fresh shirt. The dynamic between us after a sleeping interlude was better in terms of the submission tick boxes. She was different. Behaving as an obedient little slut girl in the daylight as opposed to her arguing the toss for love philosophically in the half light.

  It felt distinctly more familiar, but distinctly less engaging, which was another interesting but frustrating observation on my part, and one that I handled by vacating the room without so much as another word.

  I locked the door behind me and headed down to the kitchen. I had staff for this shit, but it seemed after the bid celebrations with Eric last night that most paid for staff had bailed for the daytime. I could have made her wait for food until I had some paid hands to rustle it up for her, but I didn’t. I took it upon myself to fire up the kitchen and cook up a full English, remembering in my own little childhood haze how to juggle the timings to make it top notch on the
palate.

  It had been quite some time since I’d cooked for another person. Quite some time since I’d done anything mundanely helpful for another person, in fact.

  I kept hers warm while I ate mine up, then plated hers up neatly and took it back up to her like a gift from some chef below and not from me.

  She tucked in like a starving child, chowing down bacon and eggs like it was the first full English she’d ever tasted.

  “Well?” I asked. “How are you rating it?”

  Her nod spoke volumes. “Amazing, sir, thank you. Please tell the cook they did a great job.”

  I shouldn’t have been even vaguely moved by the praise, but there it was, that ridiculous fucking pang of pride.

  She polished off everything and glugged back the pint of organic milk I’d presented alongside the plate on the tray. I couldn’t stop myself staring at the smile on her face as she propped herself up on some pillows and rubbed her belly.

  It was swollen. Like a tiny baby bump, but not. This was a food baby, purely a bloated food baby. Something it seemed her body wasn’t entirely used to – a decent morning breakfast.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it, bare above the covers draped over her legs. The idea of her swollen with actual human life made me feel strange. The idea of her swollen with someone else’s actual human life made me feel stranger.

  “You did well at chomping that down,” I told her, and moved the tray to the dresser.

  She nodded. “Because the cook really did do a great job, sir.” She sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of us moving a muscle in the strange stillness. It was her who broke the moment with a meek little request. She may as well have put a hand in the air as though she was asking in high school. “Please may I use the bathroom, sir?”

  I tipped my head at the toilet. “Go for it. Just no closed doors. Never any closed doors.”

  She didn’t argue, just slipped from the bed with the care of someone who’s taken a decent battering and began her way across the room. She shied away just a breath as she passed my body with hers. I felt the heat from her, the nerves from her, the fucking everything from her. She was unnatural in her magnetic meek femininity. A siren with a soft smile and wide eyes, grateful for the most pathetic little morsels life had to offer her.