by Amelia Wilde
The admission startles me, raising the hairs on the back of my arms like he’s whispered it to me in a dark wood. It’s a confession. “Here?”
“Where the fuck else?” His eyes meet mine again and it’s all there, at the surface, visible. All the grief and horror and pain. “I was going to leave. With her. My father found out somehow. Or my sister did.”
“Your sister?”
“I only left her alone for an hour.” He sounds wretched, wrecked. “And when I found her again she was already dead. I—couldn’t stay, but I know the way a person looks when they’ve been poisoned. I know how they taste.”
“You kissed me that day.”
“Yes.”
“You kissed her, too.”
“Yes.”
“You thought I would die.”
“No.” A deep breath, one that seems to revive him, but only a little. “There wasn’t enough. It was a miscalculation on Savannah’s part. There was a chance, but—” His arms flex again. “I have a plan in place now. I have many plans in place. And yes, Brigit, I feel fucking responsible for what happened to Katie. And that makes me responsible for everyone else who comes here looking for a way out of their life. I owe it to her to make this a—a safe haven.”
I would never have called it that, but he is right—I’m naive.
So naive.
I came here looking for a way out, too. And I got one.
“This place is my penance,” he says. “It will bleed me dry until there’s nothing left to give. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t care about me.”
“It means I can’t.” He straightens up, tugging his shirt into place, and the new distance between us breaks my heart. “I won’t give you to the chief of police, who bid highest for you. But I can’t be with you. I can never be with you. You don’t want my love, sweetheart. It would destroy you.”
He says the last part with his hands in his pockets, in the same tone he would use for any other member of his staff. As if I mean nothing to him. Chills run over my skin, because despite everything I thought I knew, it feels real. And final.
“What if—” I feel like a child, grasping for a fairy tale. “What if you didn’t say that? What if you just said that you love me. Or that you like me. Or that you wanted me, at all.”
Zeus doesn’t move. His expression is what pushes me away, farther and farther until I’m almost certain I can’t reach him. “You’ll stay here,” he continues, as if I haven’t said anything. “You’ll stay here for your own safety, but I won’t fuck you, and no one else is allowed to fuck you, either. That’s the only thing I can offer you.”
I’m stunned into silence, and he nods as if we’ve completed a business deal and turns away. One step. Two. Three.
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
He pauses at the door, and I’m looking at a stranger. A complete stranger. I’ve never seen this man before. Or—I have, on the very first night I came to the whorehouse. I saw him then, in the moments before he noticed me. “Prepare yourself for the evening and meet me in my office. We’ll discuss compensation.”
“You washed my hair,” I call after him. All I can see is the sleeve of his shirt. “You care about me. I know you do… You love me.”
“I’d have done it for anyone,” he answers. “It’s part of my duty. Part of my penance.” And then he leaves me alone without another word.
11
Zeus
It takes Brigit forty-five minutes to get ready for the evening, and I spend all of it in my office, Savannah pretending not to watch me while I sit at my desk.
Fuck me.
My face still burns from telling her about Katie, and now the memory of that night hovers close again. It’s a palpable presence, always behind me, always out of view. Close, it says. You got so close. Didn’t you want to play like that?
“No,” I answer.
Savannah shifts on the round couch. Even if she were able to unchain herself, it would be an embarrassing trip out the front door. I only allow her one article of clothing at a time. Today I’ve allowed her a bra. “Were you talking to me?”
I glare at her until she looks away. “If you want to visit with clients tonight, I suggest keeping your mouth shut.”
She snaps her lips together and draws her knees up to her chest.
There’s movement at the door.
I’ve never seen this woman before, the one standing there, framed in light from the hall and from my office. Then she smiles and is transformed, back into Brigit.
A version of Brigit I have never seen before.
Not after they finished with her in the spa. Never. Her makeup is flawless, making her eyes look huge, the green glittering and precious. I want the precise pink shade of her cheeks in a painting. I would reach for my phone and tell James to find the painter I use most frequently, but I can’t look away from her. If I do, my heart will stop.
The gown she wears—sheer and pink, to match her cheeks—is the most tantalizing thing I have ever witnessed on a person. There’s an opaque layer beneath, so I can’t see most of her skin. It’s an invitation.
An invitation from a siren.
“Come here,” I tell her, but she’s already on her way. Her eyes dart to where Savannah sits frozen in her bra.
I’m proud of how little pain Brigit shows. A blink, a curve of her lip, and then her expression is placid again. The click of her heels on the floor fills my brain, but the sound is overtaken by the sight of her lowering herself gracefully into a chair across from me and folding her hands on her lap. “I know you’re busy,” she says. “I won’t take up much of your time. And I need to get to the ballroom.”
“You’re not going to be fucking anyone tonight, Bright.”
A concerned frown. “I don’t want to take your money for no work. It doesn’t seem right.”
“I’ll determine what’s right.” Brigit looks at me from under her eyelashes. “You’re being compensated for your presence, not for your work with clients.”
Savannah has been shifting subtly all this time so that the lamp on my desk catches in her eyes. She is the picture of jealousy, a sick, twisting jealousy. My hands feel the same way. They’re jealous of Brigit’s dress and the panties she’s undoubtedly wearing underneath.
That’s to say nothing of my cock, which has none of my patience. It also has no regard for my pants.
It’s a mindset issue, really, but one I don’t think I can overcome with Brigit sitting there.
“I have a proposition.” She lifts her chin. What happened to her in the last forty-five minutes? When she arrived back at the whorehouse she was a broken mess.
And then I broke her again.
This is Brigit folding all that hurt away and turning it to something far more dangerous than tears and begging.
Fuck.
“You can’t proposition me. We’ve had this discussion.”
“I want to work for my pay.” She rises, and so do I. If I have to chain her to another one of my couches, I will. She is not going to fuck some random client tonight. If she does, it will be over my still-warm corpse. But Brigit doesn’t move toward the door. She moves toward me. And my mind won’t process what she’s doing, not fully, until she’s already sinking to her knees in front of me.
“No.”
I am nearly undone, seeing her from this angle, her face tilted toward mine. Green eyes surrounded by lashes that I want to see streaked with white pearls of cum. “This is nothing we haven’t done before,” she points out, and reaches for my belt. “Savannah can even stay and watch.”
It’s a twisted pleasure, hearing her say it. Savannah deserves to see this without question. That’s what I tell myself. This is a favor to Brigit. A way to take back some power over Savannah. If it makes her feel better to suck me off, then who am I to prevent her?
“Fine.” I infuse the word with boredom. “But make it quick. There are clients waiting.”
I name an amount that’s absurdly high. Savannah covers her mouth with one hand, trying unsuccessfully to hide a gasp. Brigit pulls me out of my pants, and she takes her eyes off my face to consider the task in front of her.
And then, without another moment’s hesitation, she sticks out her perfect pink tongue and gives it a long, searching lick, as if it’s a lollipop and this is the first time she’s ever tasted sugar.
I have made one miscalculation.
Brigit puts one small hand around my base and presses forward, her tongue slick on sensitive flesh. There is no denying that I’m about to black out from the pleasure of this alone. I thread my fingers through her hair for balance. She makes a little noise of protest—she’s done up her hair, I see—but mussed hair is a hazard of the profession. She can deal with it when I’m finished. What’s most important is that the sound travels all the way to the base of my spine.
Fuck.
“Reya,” I call. Though she has her lips wrapped firmly around me, Brigit shows no sign of embarrassment at the approaching footsteps. Reya pauses in the open doorway, takes in the scene, and frowns. I don’t give a fuck about her frowning right now. She can have her opinions about my choices, but at the end of the day she works for me, and I have given her a pleasant life, and it doesn’t matter, because Brigit has just licked down the full length of me, root to tip, and followed it up with taking me deep, to the back of her throat. “Take her away.”
“Of course.” She comes to unchain Savannah from her spot and leads her to the spa on the end of her leash.
“Thank you,” Savannah says.
“It’s not me,” Reya answers, and then they’re out the door. Reya reaches back to pull it closed behind her.
Brigit giggles. My toes curl.
And then, experimentally, her big eyes on mine, she swallows.
12
Brigit
Something happened to me when Zeus left the room.
I realized, sitting there on his bed, that I have nothing left to lose. And if he can treat me like a whore, then I can act like one. Two of us can play this game. I am, after all, the same woman who defied him on my first night in the whorehouse, the same one who refused to cry and panic. I kissed him then.
I can refuse to let him break me now.
So I unfolded myself from the bed and padded down to the spa in nothing but his t-shirt and bare feet and told the women there that it was an emergency. That I needed to look my best.
The blush pink dress is alluring, but that’s not what Zeus is focused on now, with the head of his cock butting against the back of my throat. They gave me tips for this, in the spa. He made me a shameless slut. I was within my rights to ask for pointers, and I got them. Breathe through your nose. Swallow against the gag reflex. Let him see you cry.
He can’t see me right now. Zeus’s head is tipped back like he’s seeing god.
Maybe he is. And I’m giving a god a blowjob. It’s enough to make anyone find religion, honestly.
Zeus makes a wordless noise in the back of his throat. The echo causes an answering pulse between my legs, and damn it, if he asked me to fuck him right now I would consider it. I wouldn’t do it, because this is the opening move of a new game we’re playing, but I wish I could.
I’m wet enough already, a fact that he doesn’t need to know.
He never needs to know how much I want this.
I press my thighs together, trying to get relief in friction, while I turn my attention to drawing that sound out of him again. He likes it when I dig my nails into his thighs through his pants. But he loves it when I pull him in as far as he can go and then flatten my tongue on the sensitive underside of his dick. And when I curve my tongue—
That. He makes the sound again and pulls my hair hard enough that tears sting my eyes.
I don’t blink them away.
I increase the pressure, the rhythm, and Zeus falls into it like he’s been waiting all his life for someone to catch him. My knees hurt on the hard floor but it’s a good pain, the kind of pain that tells you you’re doing something dirty and delicious. No—no. I shouldn’t let myself feel that. He broke my heart, he hurt me, and I can’t want more of him. I can’t revel in the groan that tears out of him or feel pride in the way his hands clench and release in my hair.
Can I?
He pulls me in close and I relax on instinct, swallowing, swallowing. “Fuck, Brigit,” he says, and warmth spreads out through my body. All of me. Down to the ends of the curls in my hair. You’re playing a game. I have to remember that. This isn’t an intimate act. It’s an act of subterfuge. He wants to tell me we can’t be together, then fine. But he’s not going to forget me. He’ll never forget me.
He’ll never forget this.
Zeus fucks my face with abandon, and it’s so different from the way it first happened that my heart races. That’s not just from the limited oxygen, either, it’s because I’ve never seen him like this. There is nothing calculated in the way his hips rock, no facade in the way he holds my head like he owns me.
Like he wants very much to own me.
Another groan, and this one almost tears me in two. Swallow, swallow. He sucks in a short, sharp breath.
If he was telling the truth about that woman—about Katie—and meant it when he said this was a safe haven, then he hasn’t been doing this. Not nearly as often as the girls made it seem. He would never allow himself to be with them this way.
It’s only for me.
I steady myself against his thighs and he shoves in hard, deeper than before, and the old me would have struggled. The old me would have tried to push him away, desperate for air and life.
This version of me would rather die than put space between us.
Zeus pulls out of my mouth so abruptly that I’m left with my jaw hanging open. He forces my head up.
Our eyes meet.
He’s breathing hard, on the verge of panting. Darkness has taken up residence in his eyes. An inner battle. My own breathing is ragged. The last time I was on my knees in front of him—
He came in Savannah’s mouth instead.
“I don’t care if you love me. But at least admit that I’ve earned this.”
I let him see my face.
The tears on my cheeks.
Everything.
A growl wrenches itself out of him and he uses one hand to open my jaw wider, a thumb running over the hinge there with a softness that’s totally at odds with the way he takes my throat again. Fast. Viscous. Like he wants it to hurt me. Like he knows he can hurt me and I’ll still survive. Like he’s intimately acquainted with how strong I’ve become.
Hands back in my hair, he pulls me onto his cock again and again and again, my body moving only for him. On the last stroke he shoves in as far as he can, so far that I choke this time, and then I’m drowning in the salty taste of him.
His release goes on and on and on.
Zeus strokes my hair while he comes.
Then he lets me go and shudders. A full-body shake. The kind of shiver you only see from a lover.
He offers me a hand up off the floor, and when I’m on my feet he reaches up with a thumb to wipe something from the corner of my mouth. “Stay out of trouble,” he says. “You are under my protection now. Not everyone will know that.”
I make a show of swallowing one last time.
A smile.
A wave.
And then I leave him standing there.
13
Brigit
Outside the ballroom I pause by an alcove that contains a floor-to-ceiling mirror—Zeus thought of every detail in this place, and it’s obvious—and take a series of calming breaths.
I’m not going to fall over, or swoon, or cry. I’m not going to run up to the small room next to his. Now that I think of it, the guest suite might have made this easier. Reya informed me of his decision while I was in a stylist’s chair with two women’s hands
in my face, transforming me into the fresh, irresistible girl I needed to be tonight.
“Why can’t I stay with everyone else?” I asked, stealing glances at myself in the mirror. “Or in the attic.”
She patted my hand and I couldn’t be angry at her. Of all the people in this place, she’s probably the one who understands best what it is to be constantly shoved in and out of Zeus’s orbit. Reya is the person who spends the most time with him under normal circumstances. Now that balance has been upset.
By me.
And I’d imagine chaining Savannah to a piece of furniture in his office tips the scales too.
“It’s for safety,” Reya told me, and my heart squeezed again. I wanted to play the cool, aloof woman who walked in here prepared to kiss anyone and sell anything. Sometimes I am that woman. And other times I’m feeling the weight of him on the bed, seeing the searing pain in his eyes, hearing guilt rough his voice.
There was a time I thought this was the easier decision, coming here. Easier than going to Hades’ mountain or marrying my uncle. Oh—oh no. I leaned forward in the chair, upsetting the women working on my makeup.
The counter. The mirror. Even the chair.
One of them pushed me back. “Stay still, honey.”
I stayed still while I tried to forget the press of another countertop on my cheek. My head rhythmically hitting glass.
I’m still now, not moving a muscle, and when I catch sight of myself in the mirror I’m looking at a terrified girl and not the jezebel vision in blush pink who finally got a small piece of what she wanted.
If I squeeze my eyes shut and think of the sounds Zeus made while he was down my throat, it’s better.