by Cate Corvin
Rhett’s pause was telling, but he lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I haven’t.’
There was the slightest inflection on I.
“Have they?”
He shut me up with another bone-melting kiss. Twisted Jane was climbing out of her well again like it was The Ring in there.
“Don’t bother asking questions you won’t get the answer to,” he said against my mouth. My stomach twisted. That was as good as an admission, as far as I was concerned.
A second later, he’d stepped out of my grasp, leaving me cold against the wall. The absence of his warmth left behind a glacial freeze.
“We’re having dinner tonight,” he said, gathering his belongings like he hadn’t just been all over me two seconds ago.
“Good for you,” I muttered. I didn’t add I hope you choke on it, because I wasn’t that petty, and because… Twisted Jane didn’t want them to choke. I was still the stupid mouse courting the tasty cheese in the next trap.
“We. As in you and me. Meet me on the roof after your shift.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, holding a battlefield of conflicting emotions inside my ribcage. He wrung mind-blowing orgasms out of me, blackmailed me… asked me to dinner. No, ordered me.
“What if I’m busy tonight?” I asked quietly. Oh, look, there it was, the tiny bit of spine I had.
Rhett held all the cards. He didn’t care about my spine, or lack thereof, or any excuse I might have. He hadn’t asked me to dinner, he’d told me to be there.
Rule three: I existed at the beck and call of Professor Harlow & Co.
Rhett smiled at me. It was his old smile, a little crooked, a touch shy, nothing guileful or evil about it. “Then you won’t be here tomorrow, will you?”
The hall wasn’t empty when I left. Rachelle and Sean were lingering outside the library, and although Rachelle was talking a mile a minute about making a sculpture out of used gum and Victoria’s Secret panties as a commentary on slut-shaming, Sean’s narrowed eyes took in my flushed cheeks with a hint of suspicion.
“What’s going on with you, Jane?”
I bristled at the propriety in his question. There was a strange sense of ownership in it, like he was asking more than just how well I was doing.
“I’m not feeling great. Might be coming down with something.”
Rachelle blinked her black lids, but her thoughts were clearly a million miles away. “Take vitamin C. I’m thinking thongs for this project. Boy shorts don’t project the image of unapologetic female sexuality I’m looking for. Or are thongs too on-the-nose?”
“Definitely thongs,” I agreed, because Sean was still examining me, muddy brown eyes picking out the damning details: rumpled hair. Flushed cheeks. Swollen lips. “I’m going to go grab some coffee before my shift starts. See you guys tomorrow.”
I would see them tomorrow, because Rhett wasn’t going to scare me off with a dinner invitation.
Mrs. Clarke was subdued after she scared off Rachelle, whom she seemed to have a long-standing enmity with, allowing me to take over the operations while she buried her nose in a book. I had a feeling she was one of those relics that fancy institutions seemed to like having around; old-school alumni who functioned almost as living artifacts as a trophy of their own prestige.
It was almost pleasant, shelving while she read in the background. At one point she started reading select quotes aloud for me, and we’d both pause to bask in commiseration that true bookworms felt when they bonded over a love of the written word.
My shift flew by. Mrs. Clarke bookmarked her place and handed me the entire key ring. I tried not to let my eyes bug out of my head.
“You keep track of this from now on. Don’t lose it; that’s the original key and the historical curators might actually murder you in a rage of passion if you do. Lock up at eight,” she said, leaning heavily on a cane. It’d been decoupaged with old book pages. Fitting. “Make sure all the lights are out.”
“Sure,” I breathed. She’d entrusted me with the responsibility of a multi-million-dollar library’s safety for the foreseeable future. If I knew she wouldn’t disapprove, I would’ve fist-punched the air. “Good night, Mrs. Clarke.”
“Good night, Miss Fawkes. Don’t you show up tomorrow with blue hair.” She grumbled the last part, shutting the Tiffany doors behind her.
Fortunately for her, Rachelle had already cornered the blue-hair market in this neck of the woods. I texted Mom, fudging the truth just a little.
Jane: I’m going to stay late tonight for dinner with a few friends. Love you, don’t stay up too late, remember to take the blue pills with food
Mom: Good! Luv u too, honeybun
Mom: Lock up when u get home
With that taken care of, I packed my messenger bag, flipped off the lights, and locked up. The staircase to Bourdillon’s roof was tucked away in a dark corner between the Hall of Arts and the English wing. Four stories up was a metal access door. I pulled it, half-expecting it to be locked.
It swung open silently, and I stepped out into a cool night breeze. Several strands of hair brushed across my face and I pushed them back, turning in place. Bourdillon’s roof was flat, the building tall enough to look out over the forest for miles. A dark lake glittered behind the building. I’d been in such deep shit I hadn’t even gone exploring yet.
“So you decided to stay.”
My back straightened at the sound of Rhett’s voice. “Of course I did. You can’t scare me off.”
“That wasn’t my intention.” I turned, saw him, and a strange lump rose in my throat. No fast food bags here. He’d laid out a fucking rooftop picnic, one of the cafeteria’s stolen tablecloths making up our spot. A glass of white wine waited for me, along with the kind of food I could’ve only dreamed about eating a year ago: an entire charcuterie plate, steaming risotto, ripe red berries dripping cream.
Heady stuff for a person who’d once lived on ramen and Rice-a-Roni.
“If you think feeding me is going to soften me up, think again,” I finally said, but my stomach was grumbling.
He just held up the glass of wine and raised an eyebrow.
I sank to my knees on the opposite side of the tablecloth and slid my messenger bag off my shoulder. My mouth started watering from the smell of the food.
He started loading a plate with food while I sipped the wine and handed it to me. What was his endgame here? It had all the makings of a date, but a date wasn’t a date when one person was on the hook for their education.
I forced myself to eat slowly, savoring every bite. If they were going to blackmail into being the Pet, I’d get my dinner’s worth out of it.
Halfway through, I summoned my courage to make a demand. “Are you going to apologize at all?”
I wasn’t fooling myself; there was a price to pay for everything good in life. Dinner for sex. At their beck and call. What else was a pet good for?
Rhett sipped his wine. He hadn’t eaten very much. “No.” The arch of his eyebrow dared me to push the subject, but I didn’t have the fortitude to push yet.
When the last of the berries were gone and the dishes were packed back in their basket, I licked my lips, catching a few stray sugar crystals. Rhett’s eyes followed the motion, and he shifted in place.
This was it. Time for payment.
He climbed over the empty tablecloth. The way he was crouched over me was almost beast-like and possessive. My heart caught up with the moment and started galloping in my chest when he wound his fingers into my hair and kissed me hard enough to bruise my lip. My limbs had gone to liquid.
Despite my anger, I was so pliable to his touch.
“Let me drive you home,” he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.
What the hell? I shook my head. I could walk home alone like a big girl.
I scrambled out from under him and got to my feet. He remained on his knees, looking up at me. The man gave me emotional whiplash. Threatening my future in one moment, bringi
ng me a rooftop picnic and offering to drive me home the next.
“I can walk. Your Pet is an adult who can take care of herself.”
He stood up slowly, like he knew he didn’t have to move quickly to catch up. That twisted Jane inside me was waiting for her dismissal.
“I’m driving you home,” he said, with perfect finality. An order.
He left the basket on the roof and walked me down through the darkened halls of Bourdillon. I didn’t say a word, caught between seething irritation and a feeling I couldn’t pinpoint.
Rhett’s car was parked at the end of the lot, a charcoal-gray Aston Martin. He held open the door for me. Tucked me into the soft leather seats and the intoxicating scent of bergamot and tobacco cologne.
In a way, this treatment felt worse than the callousness, because I knew this guy wasn’t the Rhett Harlow I’d believed he was. He’d already ripped the packaging off his cruelty; why stop to be nice now? To treat this like a real date and refuse to let me walk home?
The drive was very short. He pulled to a stop in front of my cottage, where the lights were off, leaving it bathed in the shadows of the trees. “Good night, Jane,” he said, and reached over to place his entire hand over mine, which was resting on my thigh.
The heat of his hands sank through my chilled skin. I waited for it to slide upwards, to find how wet I was for him despite all emotional evidence to the contrary, but he didn’t move. His fingers tightened around mine.
“Good night, Rhett.” I opened the car door, and his hand slid away.
He didn’t drive away until I was inside, and he waited another thirty seconds on top of that. Waiting for me to lock the door.
It was a weirdly sweet gesture. I didn’t want to examine it further, not while I was tiptoeing through the house, listening for Mom’s quiet snores, and I dry-shampooed my hair instead of washing it when I showered.
Lying in bed, I wondered if I did something wrong to discourage his touch. If my words had hit home.
Then I wondered if I was fucking insane for thinking I’d done something wrong. I hadn’t done anything wrong here. They were the blackmailers. They’d already seen everything there was to see.
Thayer and Spears hadn’t yet laid a hand on me. I was on the hook for everything a woman could be hooked for, my future in the palms of their hands…
Which meant my time with them was coming, and soon.
Somewhere, deep inside a well in my mind, Twisted Jane sighed and stretched. Biding her time.
Chapter Seven
I blinked and realized Sean was only inches from my face. “You seem distracted today, Jane.”
He leaned back in his seat, chewing the end of a pencil to a worn nub, eyes still glued to my face.
Last week I would’ve flashed him a quick smile, but I was getting tired of the constant commentary on my state of mind. At least Rachelle was distracted from my own distraction, still planning her Victoria’s Slut-cret bubblegum statue.
“I’m a very distractible person,” I said shortly, scrawling a few more notes, more for the sake of doing something with my hands.
When I thought of Rhett, my heart wanted to go full-bore and hammer right through my chest. I could’ve said last night was something like a date, even if it wasn’t. A date-not-date. He owned me, his brand-new shiny pet, but he hadn’t tried to claim anything from me.
“Want to get coffee later?”
The question caught me off-guard. He wouldn’t stop looking at me. Whereas the gaze of the Three Demons laid me bare, Sean’s gaze felt like a worm trying to wriggle its way under my skin.
This time I did smile, hoping he got the message. Purely platonic. Here’s your crash pad into the friendzone, please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times. “Thanks, Sean, but I have a lot of homework to catch up on, and I promised my mom a movie night.”
He leaned in again, and I resisted the urge to lean back. This was my personal space bubble. He could get out; I wasn’t going anywhere. “You seem to spend a lot of time with your mom.”
I stared at him blankly. “I… live with her? It seems like a given to me.”
Sean was nice, I’d give him that. But I wasn’t going to lay out my life for him. Our life, and how easily it had fallen apart when Mom had gotten cancer.
“What kind of movie are you guys watching? We can always put off the coffee date until after one of your library shifts. I’m a nice guy, Jane. I can wait.”
For some reason I bristled at the questions about what I was doing with my mom. They were so innocuous, but it felt like an interrogation for some reason.
Okay. Time to come clean. As much as I liked Rachelle, I didn’t like Sean at all. He made me feel the same way my ex from Northeast made me feel: like I was under a microscope, every answer I gave being dissected and evaluated like I was a different life-form.
Not to mention I had no interest in a date, and calling yourself a ‘nice guy’ was an automatic big, fat no in my book. It was a disingenuous disguise.
At least the Three Demons were honest about what they were. They were morally corrupt, but they owned it, and didn’t make me feel slimy just by talking to them.
I was saved from snapping at him (we were watching Dirty Dancing, not that it was any of his business) when the bells chimed. I tossed all my things in my bag and practically bolted into the hallway, almost running face-first into Rhett.
Of course my heart kicked up like a storm of birds trying to escape my ribs.
“Professor Harlow,” I breathed, still tasting sugar and the pressure of his lips on mine, but he didn’t smile. His face was hard, forged from iron and set in stone.
“Report to Professor Spears over your lunch break, Miss Fawkes.”
My stomach sank. To my dismay, it wasn’t because Professor Spears had obviously requested his Pet’s attendance.
It was because Rhett was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. A perfect stranger.
I wanted to sink into the floor. Why? How did someone who could fuck me on a table in plain sight and blackmail me with it make me feel like I wanted to shrivel up and die?
“Yes, sir,” I whispered, losing my voice again. Welcome back, mouse.
He stepped around me, like he was a stream and I was the pebble interrupting his perfect flow, and continued down the hall.
Rachelle might be distracted by her new project, but Sean would no doubt ask why I looked like I was this close to crying, and that was one question I had no good answer for. I strode down the hall, forcing myself to take deep breaths. I knew what he was. His inexplicable coldness towards me shouldn’t mean a thing.
The Hall of Art was mostly deserted, a few students straggling their way into class. I found the door with Professor Spears’ name on it and slipped inside, relieved to find it was empty. It must’ve been his lunch break. It was a wide, amphitheater-like room, with a solid white table at the front draped in cloth. That must be where his live models posed for the students.
The office door in the back was cracked open. I knocked once, torn between the hope that he wasn’t there, and a strange thrill of excitement that we were all alone and he wanted something from me.
God, I was as perverse as they were.
“Come in.” His deep voice echoed through the empty room. “Close the door behind you.”
My stomach was a twisted mass as I obeyed his order and turned to see Professor Superman reclined behind a broad desk, looking me over from head to toe.
He raised a hand and crooked a finger, calling me closer. His handsome face didn’t so much as crack when he did it. A slew of paperwork was spread across his desk, and I recognized the scrawl at the bottom as my own signature. It was my scholarship contract.
Instead of sitting in the chair across from him, I crept behind his desk, pausing a solid foot away from him. He didn’t move an inch, but tapped on the paper on the furthest side of the desk. “I’m required by the Committee to ensure you understand the terms of financial aid for
each semester.”
I had no choice but to move closer to him to see the paper he was talking about, my hip brushing his arm as I leaned over. The cold bastard was doing this on purpose.
“You’ll need to see me to sign a new contract every quarter. With the number of students who can’t handle the course load here, we operate on a semester-by-semester basis, rather than a yearly one.” I almost jumped when warm fingers brushed the back of my knee, the gentle touch almost a tickle. “Of course, you’re under my observation as well. If at any time I’m displeased with your progress or feel you’re not a good fit for Bourdillon, we’ll need to re-evaluate the contract.”
My abdomen felt like it’d been stuffed with a ten-pound bag of ice, a stark contrast to the heat against my legs. His fingers trailed upwards, skimming bare thigh under the hem of my skirt.
There was no way in hell I was going to do anything to displease my beneficent overlords, not when so much rode on my success here. “Sounds fair to me. I’ve given you… almost no reason to believe I’m not a good fit.”
I looked down at him while I spoke. His head was at a level with my chest, and his hand had definitely drifted past the hem. He pressed his whole hand flat against the back of my leg, the heat of his palms warming my skin only inches from the crease of my ass.
He smiled at my words. It was so hard to get a smile out of this ice king, and when I did, it really felt like the sun rising. For a moment, he was Superman again with genuine amusement in his bright blue eyes.
I wondered how he’d look with that perfect blue-black hair all rumpled from roaming hands.
“If anything, you’ve given me a very good reason to believe you are.” He gently pushed my leg, nudging me forward. I somehow ended up wedged between him and his desk, and when his hands found my hips and pulled me down, a silent order, I sat without hesitation.
Right in the ice king’s lap.
He shifted under me, his hips moving upwards, and a chill ran down my spine when I felt how hard he was. “Sign here, Jane. It’s documentation that we’ve discussed the nuances of financial aid and your understanding.”