I turn to the door, place my hand on the doorknob, take a deep breath in and wish I’d drunk that whiskey. I could use it now.
I open the door.
Blood flushes my face at the sight of him. He’s good-looking, but rough. Rugged, like he doesn’t quite belong here. Not in an office. Not in a suit.
He watches me, his face impassive, waiting for my decision, I guess.
“Will I be safe?”
He nods once.
“Can I say no? Once I’m…bought.” The word sends a wave of nausea through me.
He shakes his head. “Once you agree, you’re bound.”
“To anyone?”
“To anyone.”
God.
Can I do this? Can I even do it?
“It’s one night of your life.”
One night. One night when I give myself to a stranger.
“Melissa?”
One night where I prostitute myself.
I can say no. It’s my choice. I can walk away.
I had a choice then, too, and I chose. I walked away. I left her behind.
Do I abandon her again?
“Decide.”
I shift my gaze from his, take a deep breath in and nod.
3
Hawk
Yes.
That was her decision.
Melissa is taken backstage to be prepared.
I sit at my table with Axel across from me. He’s back from his errand.
Axel Drake and I have known each other since I was sixteen-years-old. He’s one of the few men I consider a friend.
There were three years when he left Vegas and went east. It’s a time he doesn’t discuss though, not even with me. All I know about it is that he and his brother, Hugo, a man I’ve never met, spent time in prison there and I have a feeling it has something to do with that errand he ran earlier.
I understand revenge and I don’t care what Axel has to do to take care of what he needs to take care of as long as he’s available when I need him. It’s an understanding we have between us.
He drinks the last of his whiskey and I pour him another.
The gong goes off and the auctioneer announces this is the last of tonight’s draw. They’ll be anxious for it. I only have half a dozen girls at each party. Keeps them hungry.
“Want me to keep someone on the sister?” he asks as the curtain goes up. “I have a feeling she’ll disappear as soon as she’s released. If she’s smart, that is.”
We’re both watching the stage as he speaks, as the spotlight begins its ascent up the raised dais where she stands like an offering.
It seems like it’s a slow dragging of the light, like we’re given an inch at a time. Just glimpses as it travels up the draped figure where two women stand on either side.
Finally, the light shines on her face and she squints, turning away momentarily.
I didn’t realize how long her hair was. It falls in waves over her shoulders and thick bangs frame her whiskey eyes. They’ve fixed her makeup, lined her eyes heavily and put a sheen of gloss over those pouty lips.
I notice her hands are fisted and she doesn’t raise them like she should when the girls draw the cloak from her, baring her naked body.
I swallow at the sight.
“Keep someone on her, but don’t pick her up,” I say, hearing how thick my voice sounds. “She’s no use to me anyway, not in the state she’s in.”
I swallow the rest of the whiskey in my glass and can’t drag my eyes from the naked woman on the stage. Watching her face burn in embarrassment while her eyes narrow in a combination of rage, rebellion and confusion as the men call out numbers.
The auctioneer discusses her heavy breasts—large for her small waist—and the particular shade of pink of her hard little nipples.
I myself can’t look away from those breasts, can’t not think about how perfectly they’d fit in the palms of my hands as I weigh them.
“Turn her!” someone calls out.
Feeling oddly possessive, I note who.
Melissa struggles against the girls who take her wrists and they’re confused. The women on the block are willing. No one is made to do this against their will. Not really.
This one, though, she’s not like any of those women. I knew it from the moment I first saw her.
“Turn her!” more chants come from the crowd. Her resistance will only make them want it more. Want her more.
The auctioneer, too, is momentarily at a loss. He glances over the crowd to my table.
I give a nod and two guards step out of the shadows and onto the stage.
The auctioneer gestures to the men. “Turn her.”
By the time they get to her, she’s off the dais.
“I guess she changed her mind?” Axel chuckles as we watch the scene, this cartoon as the two giants grab the naked woman who can’t be more than five-and-a-half feet. She’s fighting as if her life depends on it and somehow manages to knee one of the men in the balls.
Axel winces.
“Ouch,” I say, pouring more whiskey into my glass without taking my eyes off the spectacle.
“Why don’t you stop it. You know you’re going to buy her anyway,” Axel says, taking the bottle and pouring for himself.
I turn to him. Before I can deny it, he laughs.
“I know you, Hawk. You want that girl. You did the moment you laid eyes on her.”
I shrug a shoulder and when I turn back, the men are forcing her back onto the platform. And when she raises her middle finger at the crowd, the bids explode.
The soldiers hold her there, and the auctioneer is looking at me again. I nod once more, and he picks up the strap and walks toward the girl.
She sees him, sees what he’s carrying, and her eyes go huge as she’s turned and bent at the waist. She screams when he raises the strap and brings it down hard across her ass once, twice.
“Quiet, girl,” he hisses the command.
More numbers are called out from the cheering crowd.
Calls for more strokes to be laid on her beautiful ass.
When the auctioneer returns to his podium, she’s straightened and turned to the room again. Her face is flushed, and I wonder if she can see me. If she knows I’m watching. If she knows it was me who ordered the strap.
I stand. The room quiets as I do, and I speak my number.
“Quarter-of-a-million dollars.”
I don’t have to raise my voice and I meet every eye in the place daring any one of them to challenge my bid.
The gavel comes down once. That’s all that’s necessary when I bid.
“Sold for a quarter-of-a-million dollars.”
I look at Melissa’s tear stained, mascara-smeared face. She still can’t see me. The spotlight is too bright on her. But she must recognize my voice and know that it was me who bought her.
The men take her down from the platform. She still fights as she’s removed from the stage. The curtain falls and the lights in the room go on announcing to everyone that it’s the end of the night.
Axel chuckles. “Told you,” he mutters as I resume my seat.
“Fuck you,” I say, the excitement I feel in my gut something foreign. Something I’d forgotten.
One hour later, Melissa is delivered to my penthouse by the same two men in about the same fashion as when she threw that fit on the stage.
I’m standing at the window with my back to the elevator when I hear the doors slide open. I sip my drink, watching the lights of the strip in this city that never sleeps.
A city of vultures.
Hungry.
Always hungry.
Always looking for innocent flesh with which to fill their bellies.
I’m hungry, too.
I set my empty glass on the counter and turn to face her.
Innocent flesh.
I’ll fill my belly with hers.
“You asshole,” she says.
The men are physically restraining her. She’ll have bruises on her arms
tomorrow.
“You fucking asshole!”
I give a nod and the men strip her of her cloak as they step back onto the elevator.
It takes her a moment when she’s naked again but then she meets my gaze and her eyes narrow as she marches toward me. It’s hilarious because of the fact that she’s naked, very much so, and her hands are still fisted. They only un-fist when she stops inches from me and raises her right arm to slap me.
I catch her wrist, narrow my eyes, catching the other wrist too when she raises that one.
“Don’t ever do that,” I warn calmly.
“You’re an asshole.”
“So you’ve said.” I stretch her arms wide, looking her over as she struggles to free herself.
“They took my things. My bracelet—”
“You’ll get everything back. No one will steal from you.” I look her over. “You’ll shave your pussy.”
“Like hell I will.”
I give her a smirk, transfer her wrists to one of my hands and turn her, take in the two thick welts on her ass and spank one cheek.
She yelps and jumps.
I turn her back around, lower her arms and pull her to me so her naked chest is pressed against mine. I feel her hard nipples through the fabric of my shirt. I search her face, her pretty, angry face.
We stand like that for a long moment. Her breathing is shallow, her heart is racing. I can see it in the violent throbbing of the pulse at her neck. Her eyes are ringed in smeared black and she looks like she’s about to cry again.
I release her, step back, look her over again. Long legs. Slender but defined. Yoga, I’d guess. Not a runner, her muscles are too lean.
“Why did you do that?” she asks when I turn away momentarily to pick up my glass.
I watch her as she stands awkwardly, not sure how to cover herself, I guess.
“Why did I do what?” I ask just to piss her off some more. Most women are eager when they’re brought up here. And very willing.
She’s different.
“Why did you put me up there? Humiliate me like that when you were just going to buy me all along.”
“Who says I was going to buy you all along?”
She’s confused.
“Besides,” I continue. “I thought you could use a little humbling.”
She turns away as her forehead wrinkles and she wipes away a tear, smearing more black across her temple.
“You’re a mess,” I say.
“You’re an asshole. An asshole!”
“And your vocabulary is disappointingly limited.” I walk to the liquor cabinet. “What do you want to drink since you don’t like whiskey.”
“Can I just have some clothes?”
“What did I teach you earlier about ‘can I’ and ‘may I’?”
“Fuck you!”
I decide on vodka and pour it straight. She’s going to need it for what I have planned. I walk back to her and hold out the glass.
“I warn you, don’t slap it out of my hand. If you do, you’ll kneel in the broken shards while you suck my dick, understand?”
Her face flushes a pretty red.
It strikes me. I can’t remember the last time I saw a woman blush. Not the women I know, at least. And it’s not something she can fake.
She looks up at me, trying to gauge how serious I am, I guess.
I’m dead serious.
She takes the glass. Sips. Looks down at the floor or her feet or something. Just not at me.
“Why don’t you have a good cry. Get it all out now because right now is when I’ll be most patient with you.”
“Patient? You just stripped me naked and put me up on a stage for those…those…perverts to bid on me like I’m a piece of meat!”
“Remember, it was your choice. People need to learn to take responsibility for their lives, their choices. Own their shit.”
“Fuck you, Hawk!”
I step to her, and to her credit, she doesn’t back away. I cup her chin, tilt her face up.
“I will fuck you. It’s why I bought you, sweetheart.”
She shrugs away, turns, walks to the chair and picks up the blanket draped over the arm to wrap it around herself.
The pattern of the tartan makes me pause for a moment. The maid must have put it out by mistake. It’s the only thing that doesn’t fit here. And I should have gotten rid of it long ago.
I sit on the leather couch, cross my ankle over the opposite knee, watch her.
She swallows the contents of her glass and stands there looking at me.
“Help yourself if you’d like more.”
She shakes her head, sets her glass down on a nearby table.
I watch her as she takes in the penthouse. It takes up the top floor of my building and is situated just above my office. The room we’re in is a grand room, wide-open with kitchen, living room, dining room and walls of glass. The furniture is modern, everything either black, white or gray. And as beautiful as it is, it’s almost clinical. The lines clean, everything in its place, everything with a purpose.
I don’t like clutter or anything messy, not anywhere in my life.
My eyes fall on that tartan again. Why have I kept it all these years? I need to talk to the maid. I don’t want to have to see it every time I fucking turn around.
Melissa lowers herself into the chair nearest her and farthest from me. She hangs her head and her hair falls forward like a veil between us, but I don’t miss the tear that drops.
She combs her fingers through the thick mass, sniffles and straightens her spine. She meets my gaze.
“One night,” she says.
I nod.
“And I’m free and you won’t hurt Liza.”
“Not a bad deal if you ask me.”
“You’re not the one who has to fuck you.”
I chuckle at that. “You could do worse, sweetheart.”
“I’m not your sweetheart.”
I shrug a shoulder. I could give a fuck.
“What are you, anyway? What’s your accent?” she asks.
She hears it? I wonder if others do too. I’ve worked hard to rid myself of it. Rid myself of the past.
“Scots.”
“You’re from Scotland?”
“Born in the Highlands.” I sip from my glass. I hear it now, too. Familiar and foreign at once.
She scratches her head, studies me, then dismisses whatever thoughts are going through her head by giving it a shake.
“What happens now?”
I uncross my legs. Point to the floor between them. “You come here.”
Her eyes grow wide at the command.
“I said come.”
She gets up, walks toward me like a condemned woman walking to her execution. She stops a few inches from me.
“Kneel.”
I see fear in her eyes. Her breathing is short and uneven, and I notice how the light dusting of fine hair on her arms stands on end.
“Kneel,” I repeat.
“No.”
I reach out, keeping my eyes on hers as I slip my hand under the tartan she’s still clinging to and, before she can get away, grip the patch of hair between her legs and twist. I rise to my feet, holding her where she is by that handful of hair.
Her face contorts in pain as I loom over her.
“You really think that tartan will keep you safe from me?” I ask, my voice low as, with my other hand, I drag it off and let it fall to the floor. “I said kneel.”
“I said no.” Her voice is high and trembles and her pupils are dilated either with arousal or fear. A combination of the two, I’d say, considering the musky scent of her.
I walk her backward, still holding onto that patch of hair between her legs. “You want me to make you, Melissa?”
“You will anyway. It’s what men do, isn’t it?”
My jaw tightens. “You’ve dealt with the wrong kind of men, then.”
Her eyebrows knit together, and she studies me.
When her
back hits the wall, she swallows, slaps her hands to my chest. “Stop.”
“I change my mind,” I say, leaning down inhaling her hair, her skin. “Don’t shave your pussy.” I press my chest against her as I curl my fingers.
Her mouth opens and she makes a sound, something like a squeak.
I slip my fingers between her folds and when I do, I cock my head to the side and grin.
“Oh, Melissa,” I say, drawing her name out slowly.
She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, lowers her head. She pushes against my chest like she’s trying to move me, and it’s cute that she tries, but I don’t budge.
“Are you wet for me, sweetheart?” I ask, tilting my hips, making sure she can feel my erection against her belly. “Because I’m hard for you.”
“This is a devil’s bargain,” she mutters.
I lean my face down, kiss her jaw, cup one heavy breast with my free hand, weigh it like I wanted to from the first moment I saw her naked. I rub her pussy.
“Are you going to come on the devil’s hand, then?” I ask.
She fists her hands, punches my chest. It doesn’t hurt. I wonder if she meant for it to. Probably.
It’s quiet, the only sound that of her wet arousal.
“I want to be clear,” she finally says, her body giving a little jerk when I take her clit between thumb and forefinger.
“Yes?” I ask, not bothering to try to keep the grin from my face.
“I don’t want this,” she says as that involuntary jerk comes again.
“No. Clearly you don’t want me to touch you,” I say, pinching her nipple.
“I mean it.”
“Noted.”
I rub that swollen nub and watch her. It won’t take long for her to come. I can see it on her flushed face, see it in the dilated pupils of her pretty whiskey-colored eyes, in the panting, open mouth.
But then I draw my hand away, up toward her belly, wiping her own arousal on her as I step backward.
“You don’t want it,” I confirm, giving her a wink like we’re co-conspirators. “Get on your knees,” I tell her, undoing my belt, the buttons of my pants.
She looks down at my length pressing against the slacks, then back up at me. She gives me a one-sided grin.
“Do you usually have to pay women to suck your dick?” she asks, tilting her head.
Devil's Bargain Page 3