by Tessa Bailey
He carries me upstairs, cradled in his arms like I’m something special. I know that I’m only here because he bid one million dollars. I know that he didn’t come inside me only so that I would remain a virgin. Somehow I still feel safe in his arms, as if the pure force of his will can keep reality at bay. We’re wrapped in something soft and pale, hidden from the world as he draws a bath and helps me inside. When I reach for the soap, he puts my hands on the curved edge of the tub. It’s his square-tipped fingers and calloused palms that cover my body with soap. He cleans every part of me, soothing the abraded skin of my nipples, slipping between the slick folds of my sex. My eyes are only half-open. I’m still lost in that place he sent me when I climaxed, a place of pleasure, of peace.
When he’s done, he helps me step out of the tub. A thick white towel dries me off while I stare at myself in the mirror. How many times have I showered before? How many times have the damp ends of my hair curled against my wet skin? Hundreds, thousands, and yet I look different. Still a virgin—by his definition. Different, though. A woman.
When he places me on the cool lavender sheets, I turn my face into the pillow and close my eyes. I’m expecting him to leave like he did last night.
The bed dips. He comes behind me, his arm slung over my waist, his legs tangling with mine. The heavy down comforter covers us both, and I can’t help the sigh of gratitude.
“Go to sleep,” he says, his voice low.
Something about the way he says it, I know he isn’t going to sleep. So what is he doing here? Holding me? This isn’t part of paid-for sex. It isn’t revenge. Something else has his arm tightening around me, his face pressed into my half-damp hair.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He stiffens behind me. “Why would you say that?”
“It didn’t hurt.” More than that, it felt amazing. Soul restoring. After months of watching my life crumble around me, he built me back up. If only for a few minutes.
“Christ,” he mutters, his hand clenching and releasing on my arm. “You deserve more than not hurting. Don’t you get that? You deserve more than this.”
I’m not sure I deserved to be sold like cattle, but I didn’t deserve the fancy clothes, the best schools either. Life isn’t about what you deserve, it’s about making the best of what you have. And what I have is a strong, warm man holding me. “Then let me go.”
He laughs softly. “I never claimed to do the right thing.”
Maybe not right. That money would save me, though. Enough to save my father’s house, to pay for his care after this month is over. Maybe enough to send me to college again. Did he think of all that when he spoke his bid aloud? Or had he only been concerned with winning? I’m not sure the distinction even matters, only the result.
I nestle deeper into his arms. “What did your father do? Besides make moonshine?”
“You mean petroleum? I can’t believe you drank that stuff.”
A flush comes to my cheeks as I remember the wild feeling of being drunk. “Was it like one hundred percent alcohol?”
“It was one hundred percent reckless,” he mutters. “You need to keep your defenses up with someone like me. That means staying sober, for starters. Sleeping with a knife under your pillow won’t hurt.”
I remember Candy’s warning. Your mind. Your soul. That’s your leverage.
Of course I hadn’t asked—leverage against what? Maybe she just meant keeping my sanity, my dignity in the face of the auction. That’s what I’d been worried about. Shame. Humiliation. But maybe she meant something worse. Something more treacherous. As if I should be on my guard. As if I’m in danger.
“You put me to bed,” I reminded him. He’d had the perfect chance to hurt me then, when I would have been helpless to fight him, but he hadn’t.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. “He was a liar. A thief.”
I blink, realizing that he’s telling me something true. Something precious enough that he wouldn’t normally share it. “You hated him.”
“I looked up to him, which was fucking stupid.”
Every little boy looks up to his father. Little girls, too.
“You were a kid,” I say, somewhat offended by his judgment of himself. I realize that there’s a parallel between him and myself, but I choose not to follow that line of thinking.
“He never said anything that was true, almost as a matter of principle. He just conned as many people as he could meet, trying to get money so my mother could snort it, shoot it, drink it.”
My stomach clenches. “She was an addict?”
“If you could get addicted, it was her favorite thing.”
I swallow hard, glad he can’t see the sympathy on my face. Harper’s mother is an addict too. Most of the time she refuses to talk about it, but a few times, at night in our room at college, she would whisper in the dark about the fear, the dread. Hiding under the blankets at night while her mother was on a rampage, throwing everything in the house.
“I’m sorry for drinking your father’s last moonshine,” I say. “And if it bothered you to see me like that.”
“I don’t keep it to drink,” he says gruffly. “I keep it to remember him. To remember what not to be.”
A liar. A cheat. “That’s why it bothers you so much when someone steals from you.”
The reason he ruined my father. It wasn’t only about setting an example for the rest of the criminal underworld. It was about setting an example for himself. About fighting back for every time his own father must have told him a lie.
It’s King Minos who puts his bastard child into the Labyrinth. Not to kill him but to keep him locked away. The maze that Gabriel walks isn’t a physical one, despite the large manor that he lives in. It’s the emotional walls, the ones that make him strike out at people who get too close.
“And you’re the furthest thing from an addict I’ve ever seen,” he whispers.
The whole room seems to hold its breath with me. The thick carved bedposts, the sunny yellow stripes on the wall. Everything waiting. “What am I then?”
“You’re innocent. And I’m going to ruin you.” The certainty in his voice chills me.
Like he did my father. Except he stripped my father of his wealth, his power. And with this auction, Gabriel Miller is giving it back—to me.
In return he’s going to take my virginity. Not tonight or the next night. Sometime in the next thirty days. And he believes it will be bad enough to ruin me. Worse than being penniless, worse than being shunned. Whatever he’ll do to my body will be enough to break me.
You can have my body, I think. But you can’t touch my heart.
Chapter Twenty
When I wake up, I’m alone.
I know it before I open my eyes, before I run my hand over the cool sheets behind me. It’s in the air, a stillness. A loneliness that I was so used to it barely registered. Daddy tried to make space for me, but I still spent most of my time alone. And then after he was attacked, after I had to sell all the furniture, the house was achingly empty.
Even then I wouldn’t have complained. It helped to smile when he was awake, to say that everything would be okay. Maybe I’d gotten so good at lying I was able to lie to myself, telling myself that I didn’t really mind. That things would get better.
I could have kept on believing it except for those brief moments in Gabriel Miller’s arms, those short and unexplainable moments when he’d held me.
No sex. No ulterior motives.
Not even money bound us together then. We were two people clinging together on a raft, the entire ocean spanning in every direction.
Then he woke up and left the raft, leaving me here.
I ignore the sense of disappointment, of loss, and step out of bed. The weather turned crisp in the past few weeks, but the floors of his house are heated. I curl my cold toes against the hand-scraped wood, seeking warmth. Always seeking warmth.
I don’t bother to shower or tame my hair. I only throw on a shirt and some y
oga pants, a complete morning mess. This is what he made me. And I have this urgent need to see him, to confirm that last night wasn’t only a dream.
He’s sitting at a desk, as if this is an ordinary morning. As if my axis didn’t shift last night. As if his hands and his mouth and his cock didn’t make me a woman.
He looks through papers on his desk despite the fact that I’m standing on the other side. Do people like him even have papers? My father used his printer quite a bit—his old eyesight never could get used to the screen. But Gabriel is younger than him, sharp enough to be fluent with technology. The file folder feels like a ruse.
“Gabriel.”
He looks up briefly, his golden eyes merely a flicker of flame before he looks back down. “Yes, Ms. James.”
Something inside me turns small and cold. I want him to call me Avery. I want him to call me little virgin again. “You left.”
“I have work to do.”
Present tense. It’s not only an explanation as to why he left. It’s a dismissal. Except that in yoga pants or a two-thousand-dollar Versace skirt, I’m Avery James. I was born and bred and goddamn raised to demand attention. I may not have deserved any of that privilege, but I don’t deserve his scorn. “Can you at least look at me after I sucked your dick?”
That gets his attention. His gaze snaps to mine. He narrows his eyes, though I can’t say he looks displeased. No, he looks hungry. Predatorial. He stands, and I take a step back.
“Yes, Avery. I tasted your pretty virgin cunt. You came against my fingers. Less than…”—he pretends to count—“twelve hours ago. Do you think I forgot?”
My chin lifts higher even as I take another step back. “You’re acting like you did.”
His steps are slow and graceful as he rounds the desk. “I’m acting like a man who got what he paid for. Excellent service. Would you like a review on Yelp? Five stars.”
I flinch. “Fine, push me away. Because you’re scared of what happened.”
“Scared?” he says, tasting the word. “I was taking it slow for you, little virgin. But if you’re ready for more, I’ll be sure to show you what scary things are waiting for you.”
“Not sex. The way you held me after.”
“You were shaking,” he says, his voice almost soft.
“Have it your way,” I say, my teeth gritted. “It’s only sex between us.”
“No, little virgin. It’s only money between us.” He reaches back to pick up the file folder. After a considering glance, he hands it to me.
It’s like he’s offering me a coiled snake, and I have to take it. I have to take it or I have to admit that I want there to be more between us than sex, than money. Of course I don’t. Not with him. He ruined my father. He’s a criminal. He goes against everything I believe in, but it would have been nice to have affection between us for the thirty days I’m here. Twenty-eight days, now.
I open the file folder, blinking at the stream of small black-and-white numbers. I’ve learned to be somewhat literate with investment accounts and bank statements since my father’s attack. Lord knows I’ve learned how to read a bill. But I’m not sure what this is.
“An escrow account,” he supplies. “It contains your percentage of the money from the auction.”
My heart clenches. I stare at the paper as if I’m reading it, but I can’t see anything. This is how I felt when the verdict came back guilty, when the call came from the cops about Daddy. When I sold the beautiful silver pendant with my mother’s birthstone. An emerald. Daddy gave it to her the birthday before she died.
The file folder is clenched so tightly in my hand I’m surprised I’m not crushing it. Somehow I manage to close it and hold it at my side. My voice sounds hollow. “Thank you.”
He said there’s only money between us, but he’s a fucking liar. In the air there’s rage and revenge, betrayal and lust. I may be innocent, as he called me, but I know what I feel.
“You’re excused,” he says, his voice hard. “I’ll call for you when I want you.”
Like I’m some kind of servant. Like I’m a maid, brought in to clean whenever he makes a mess. Like I’m a maid for his cock, barely a warm body to wipe himself.
Chapter Twenty-One
It’s fine, I tell myself. It’s better this way.
Because if I don’t have my lies, what will I have left? Gabriel reminded me where I stand with him. Someone to serve him, something he purchased. I can keep him at a distance regardless of what he does to my body, as long as he doesn’t cradle me close like I’m something worthwhile again.
I should be focused on Daddy, anyway. He’s the reason I’m doing this. I call Mr. Stewart at the nursing home using his personal cell phone. He assures me that my father is in excellent health, which seems like it must be a lie until he conferences in the day nurse.
“Hello, pumpkin.” My father’s voice sounds rusty, tired, but undeniably aware.
“Daddy? Are you okay?”
“I’m working on getting better.” He gives a hoarse laugh. “They’ve got some good meds hooked up. And there’s this devil of a physical therapist coming every day now. I’ve called him every name in the book, but I managed to sit up on my own yesterday.”
My breath catches. “Are you serious?”
“Don’t you worry about me. You focus on your studies.”
With a sinking heart I realize he thinks I’m at school. “Oh. Right.”
When Mr. Stewart comes on, I can’t help the strange sadness that creeps into my voice. “He sounds great.”
“It’s very common,” he says, his voice sympathetic. “We see it all the time. Family wants to tend to their own, but it’s a huge burden, a constant stress, and all without the necessary training. Our nutritional counselor has worked with a private chef to develop meals that are best for him. And the physical therapist is our very best.”
Somehow that makes me feel worse, even though I know that doesn’t make sense. I was killing myself making sure my father’s meds were right, that his IV was right, that he was comfortable and clean. And it had all been making him worse because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. These trained people know what they’re doing. And the only way I can afford them is by fucking Gabriel Miller.
Only after I hang up do I see the string of increasingly urgent texts from Harper.
It’s me. What’s going on??
Justin just called me. He might have cried. He’s very drunk. CALL ME.
Were you in an auction? Type OMFG for yes or n for no.
Pigeons. Flags. Letter in a bottle. All acceptable forms of communication in this FUCKING EMERGENCY.
I have to laugh at the last text, because it’s so perfectly Harper. And it’s a laugh-or-cry situation, realizing that Justin found out exactly what I’ve done.
And apparently he’s sharing the news.
I’m ruined in Tanglewood. Of course I knew that from the moment I accepted Damon Scott’s proposition. Even if somehow the auction remains a dirty little secret, I can’t face the wealthy upper crust of the city ever again.
But I hoped it would be contained. Like a tiny explosion under a metal dome in a cartoon. Boom! And all that’s left is scorch marks in the shape of a circle.
Except if Justin knows, if Harper knows, then the circle is spreading. I don’t think Harper is going to gossip about me, but shit like this is wildfire. All it has to do is spark to the next tree to keep going.
She answers on the first ring. “Tell me everything, starting from the very beginning.”
Debt. Bills. An auction and a million dollars in escrow. I tell her everything, because I’m desperate for some advice here. “So that’s the story of how I became Smith College’s first hooker.”
She snorts. “You’re definitely not the first, but that’s a story for another day. Now you need to tell me about this Gabriel Miller motherfucker. Is he old? Mean? Has a gold tooth?”
I smile. “Not exactly. He’s actually…”
I’m not sur
e how to describe his golden eyes, how they can pierce me from across the room. How can I explain the way his broad shoulders and large hands make me feel delicate? “He looks okay. That’s not the problem.”
“Uh-oh,” she says. “Angry wife?”
“God, you are the most jaded. No, he’s not married.” At least I don’t think he is. “He’s the man who turned my father in. Who gave all the evidence to the attorney general so they could prosecute.”
“Oh my God. A do-gooder?”
“It was a revenge thing. My father cheated him.”
“Thank God,” she says, sounding relieved.
“No, we’re not thanking God. Because he hates me.”
“He hates your dad.”
“He hates my family. And he’s already ruined my dad. Money. Reputation. Even physically. In every way possible my father has lost everything.”
“Except his beautiful daughter.”
I wince. “Something like that.”
“And you think he just bought you to get back at your dad.”
My fingers trace lavender flowers carved into the bedpost. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. Is buying me revenge enough or does he have something worse planned?”
“Worse, like…sex. The auction was two days ago, right?”
“Right, but he hasn’t done that yet.”
“He hasn’t touched you?” She sounds incredulous.
“He’s touched me.” I feel my cheeks flame with the memory of his touch, the memory of his tongue. “But he hasn’t taken my virginity. And the way he talks about it…it scares me. Like he’s planning to make it awful. Is that crazy?”
I want her to tell me that’s crazy, that a man like Gabriel Miller wouldn’t resort to that. That it would be too cruel, too kinky, too something to be real.
“It makes sense,” she says, musing. “How much did your dad steal from him?”
“I don’t know.” A lot. More than I can ever repay, even with the money from the auction—which came from him, anyway. “And it’s more the principle of it. He has a thing about people who lie.”