by Maisey Yates
“I have my dream job. Friends. Family.” She nearly stumbled over that word. She hardly ever spoke to her parents. Could hardly speak to her mother at all. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
“Why so much armor, then? If you’re so happy, why are you so well-protected?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He leaned forward, extending his hand and sliding his thumb and forefinger over the collar of her jacket. “You know full well what I’m talking about. I’m talking about this.”
“Are your suits armor, Ferro? Or are they just something you wear to create an image.”
“Armor,” he said. “So that no one can say I look like the street urchin that I am. So that, no matter the rumors, I look like a man who earned my success, rather than a man who slept his way to the top. Underneath, though, it doesn’t change a damn thing, that’s the rub.”
“It does. I would feel a lot worse about myself if I had to go up on stage for presentations with my limp hair, braces and baggy shirts.”
“But it doesn’t change you. Not really. If it did, even if you were in baggy T-shirts you would feel confident.”
“Such an expert for a man who is so freaking dysfunctional.”
“But I’m right. You know I am.”
“So? Everyone does it. You do it, you just said.” He nodded. “I suppose they do. Image, as they say, is everything. Unlike you, though, I don’t pretend that I’m all right.”
She didn’t like that assessment. Didn’t like that he seemed to think she was pretending to be fine. Or that it felt true. In that moment, she felt very much like the girl she’d been in high school, like a little kid playing dress up.
“Well, when you’re comfortable throwing off your image, I’ll ditch mine,” she said.
“I’m not challenging you. I’m not even judging you. I’m the last person in a position to pass judgment, and I think we both know that. I’m simply stating a fact. You hide a lot, Julia. I can feel it.”
She didn’t like it at all. Didn’t like that he knew just what her butt-kicking outfit was for. It made it feel less effective. And he was right, the change wasn’t any deeper than her skin, because if it was, he wouldn’t have been able to shake her confidence half so quickly.
Jerk.
“Well, next time I’m in the mood for a psychoanalysis I’ll hire a professional, okay? I don’t need my head read by a guy who has more issues than I do.”
She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms and legs, wiggling her foot in an effort to keep from leaping up and pacing the length of the plane.
“Anyway,” she said. “How happy are you?”
“I never said I was happy.” He slid his hand over his chin. “I’m not sure I even know what happiness is. But I am winning the game, and to me that’s all that counts.”
“This is incredible.” Julia shoved her hands in her pockets and blew out a breath that clouded in front of her face and hung in the crisp, cold air for a moment before fading away on the wind.
The hotel was set on the edge of a lake, surrounded by mountains and tall evergreen trees that secluded them in a wall of green and blues.
Ferro looked around, his expression impassive.
“You don’t seem thrilled,” she said, pulling a scarf out of her bag and wrapping it around her neck.
“I don’t like the cold,” he said simply, walking toward the entrance of the hotel.
It was made from rough hewn logs, polished and stained the color of honey. A luxury cabin set out in the wilderness. She’d been completely taken with the city when she’d moved out West to California. With the heat and palm trees. With the sheer difference between Cali and her hometown. But this was something else entirely, more incredible in some ways. Because all people could hope to do was come out here and survive. No matter how beautiful the hotel was, it seemed pulled into the landscape. As if the wild had claimed it, rather than humans claiming any sort of civilization.
“Then we’ll go inside,” she said, following him through the glass doors that slid open and admitted them into the lobby. “Nice,” she said, looking around at the sleek, wood interior. “Big fish statue.” She pointed to the iron representation of a sockeye salmon. “That’s pretty cool. And hey, it’s for sale. I could buy it and stick it in my house.” She was rambling and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she was getting used to wicked Ferro and stoic Ferro was throwing her off a little bit.
“I would like to see that, Julia,” he said. “A salmon in your beachfront mansion.”
“Hey, it’s…sort of to theme.”
“And sort of not.”
She smiled and tried to draw a smile out of him. She managed, but there was something terribly false about it. And she didn’t know if it was because this one was false, where all the others had been real. Or if she was just seeing something different in his expression after their conversation on the plane. After his assertion that he didn’t know what happiness was.
This was exactly what she was afraid of. That more time with Ferro would make him human. would make her get him. Might make her care.
No way. Ferro was a jerk. She could not, would not, care about him.
“Just a second and I’ll check in,” she said.
Ferro looked around the lobby and waited for the sophisticated heating system to take effect. He didn’t know why he’d let the temperature bother him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t experienced cold in the past few years, but truth be told, he did go out of his way to avoid it.
And ever since they’d gotten off the plane he’d been battling with the thought of what it would have been like to be stuck outside here. To have to suffer through a night dealing with the elements.
The fact that he’d moved to a place with a temperate climate wasn’t by chance. He liked to be warm. Didn’t like to remember what it was like to sleep on cold cement or dirt, covered in cardboard.
It was the same reason he didn’t like to be hungry. The same reason he didn’t deal with relationships.
He didn’t like reminders. Reminders of how worn down he’d been when Claudia had found him. She’d seen him standing on the street, asking for work. And she’d offered.
Do you want a bed to sleep in tonight, sweetheart?
He still remembered her first words to him. The way her perfume smelled. How his skin had smelled after, her perfume clinging to him along with his shame. She had paid a lot of money for his virginity. She’d found it exciting to train him. And it had provided him with a week’s worth of food and a small hotel room. One night of sex, a week of comfort.
And when his money was spent, Claudia found him again.
I need you again, sweetheart. And when I’m done with you…I have friends, you know? Lonely. Neglected by their husbands. I’m sure they’d love a chance to get to play with you. If you say yes, forget staying in a little hotel. You can buy your own place. How does that sound? Independence? Heat?
Impossible to turn down. But every dollar earned cost so damn much.
“All checked in!”
He looked at Julia, at Her figure, the way her clothes, even her down-lined trench coat, conformed to her body. She would be warm. He didn’t doubt that. Her skin was soft, he knew that already. And she would be warm.
He flexed his fingers, curled his hand into a fist, trying to get the phantom impression of her flesh off him.
A strange sort of heat fired its way through him. Just the thought of her warmed him when, a moment before, he’d been freezing from the inside out. Interesting. But not something he was going to pay attention to.
He followed her, wordlessly, to the elevator and let her push the buttons, taking them up to a high floor. A room with a view, no doubt.
The doors opened and he followed Julia down the hall, her shoes clicking on the wood floor. She liked to take long, hard steps. He’d noticed that about her early on. All a part of her armor. To seem tough. To seem impenetrable.
“It’s on the end,” she sai
d, chipper, sliding her keycard into the reader and pushing the door open.
The room was, as she’d said, completely open with massive floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the lake and mountains. There was a couch, and one large bed, framed in wooden poles that looked hand-carved.
Most men would be thinking about all the activity that could be accomplished in a bed that size. He, in fact, started to.
Do as you’re told, boy. You’re not here for you. You’re here for me. For my pleasure. I own you.
That was the real Claudia. Not the woman who acted like she wanted to help a young man with no place to sleep. The woman who took pleasure in owning him. In selling him. That voice was always in the back of his mind, reminding him just how dirty he was.
No matter how much he tried to convince himself that none of it mattered, it did. It did.
Because there was no freedom from it. There was no escaping the fear of being cold, no matter how many years you’d spent warm since. There was no escaping the feeling that your body belonged to someone else. No matter how long it had been since you sold it.
The fact remained, he had sold it. And somehow, he had never felt that he’d gotten it back.
“Nice,” she said, “and, only the one bed, as advertised.” Her cheeks turned pink and he wondered if it was all down to embarrassment, or if she desired him?
If she desired him, the entire game they were playing would be easier. So much easier if one of them was feeling something genuine.
And he would know how to use that desire. To make it burn hotter for him. Brighter. He was trained, after all, to give a woman exactly what she wanted.
He rebelled at the idea, though. He had already played with her once, at the charity event he had used her emotion to bring on arousal, had used his expertise against her, to make her enjoy the kiss even though she loathed him.
He knew for a fact that with the right thoughts in mind, it was possible to be turned on even when you hated everything happening to your body. That it was possible to find a place deep enough that you controlled everything with your mind.
He gritted his teeth.
“Yes, but I am still willing to take the couch, no argument.”
“Great.”
“Will there be media at this wedding?”
“Yes, lots. That’s why I knew we needed to go together. Josh is a Colter, you know, of The Colters who own the restaurant chain, so it’s a big deal.”
“And still you booked everyone’s rooms? They must all be millionaires at minimum.”
“My wedding gift,” she said.
He looked at her, trying to read her, trying to figure her out. She was insecure, yes, he’d read that early on. Compliments would go a long way with her, because she was hungry for external validation. And yet, also, she did these things that were just nice.
She gave to people for no reason and he found he had a hard time understanding that.
Or maybe it wasn’t so much niceness. Maybe she was buying friends. Yes, that made sense to him. Especially knowing what he did about her.
“And your attempt at buying friends?” he asked. She frowned. “Everyone does nice things for their friends.”
“I don’t.”
“Do you have friends?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because. At this point in life, yes, I would always feel I was buying them. I’m not particularly likable, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“No, I had.”
“I came to the world stage with nothing. There are no connections from my past I wish to maintain.”
She sighed. “I’m not buying friends. I’m doing this because I want to, and I can, so why not? I do find that problem with dates, though,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Do you?”
“Yes. Gold diggers. I am a meal ticket to almost every man that wants to go out with me and it’s really, really tiring. The big question I ask myself before I agree to go out with a guy is would he have dated me before I had money? If the answer is no, I don’t bother anymore.”
“And how do you gauge that?”
“Men of a certain…handsomeness threshold,” she said, “are not with me because of my brains.”
“Stereotyping.”
“But I’ve found it to be true. I had a uh…incident in high school.”
“More of your past hardship?”
The cynicism in his voice had her turning away from the urge to share. “What about you? You don’t have friends, but I’ve seen the sort of women you take to events.”
Yes, he was very selective about the kind of woman he took to parties. Beautiful, shallow. He bought their dresses, their jewelry, he let them hang on his arm and have his picture taken. And at the end of the night, they always went their separate ways.
He had never started out intending it to be that way, but the voice was always there. Interrupting desire. Destroying his lust.
“I don’t care what they’re after,” he said. “As long as we both get what we want.”
He got to present the image he wanted to give to the press, they got diamonds, exposure, the thrill of being with a celebrity, whatever it was that got them off. So long as it wasn’t sex.
“Gee, you’re like most of my dates.”
“No, I don’t use. I trade. And anyway, you think it’s better to try to guess what they want before you get in too deep?”
“Okay, so that sucks. But so does finding out the guy who you’ve gone on four dinner dates with is a gay man in a committed relationship trying to get close to you to get to your money. By the way, the man he was in the relationship with had no idea, and he was very, very unhappy to discover us together at the trendy restaurant I had taken him to.”
“At least he only took advantage of your wallet and not your body.”
“I know,” she said, biting her lip. “I really do. But it would be nice to go out with someone who clearly just didn’t want to use you. Back before…before Anfalas, everyone in my life always made it very clear that there was something wrong with me. And now, yeah, now I’m popular because I dress well and I have money.”
She looked away from him then, out the window. He felt something strange happen to his chest. Like there was an invisible thread that ran between them and he could feel what she did. Or maybe it was just what she’d said. The desire to feel what normal people did, if only for a moment. He didn’t usually worry about it, but sometimes he wondered. What it might be like if his body, heart and brain worked together instead of as separate entities.
Wondered what it would be like if he could scrub the dirt from his skin and walk on. Clean. Like nothing had happened.
But it wasn’t possible.
He shrugged. “That’s the way the world works, Julia. The man with the money holds the power, or in your case, the woman with the money. Do you think anyone gave a damn about me when I was a poor orphan? When I was living on the streets?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure they didn’t otherwise…you wouldn’t have been on the street, would you?”
“No one cared when my mother died,” he said. “Because she had nothing to give anyone. She only had a son, a son no one wanted to look after. A boy who fell through the cracks.”
“How did you survive?” she asked.
“For a while? The church. I lived there for a few years, went to the school the nuns ran. But after a while there wasn’t enough money to care for me, and I found myself homeless again.”
“I suppose that makes my complaints about gold-digging men sound a little silly.”
She looked away, her expression sad. He should compliment her. She’d just fed him the best information, told him that she craved that sort of male attention. She was giving him ample material to use against her. A chance to form a bond that he could use to his advantage later. After he took down Hamlin. When it was time to take Anfalas, and Julia, out, too. He could use this in conjunction with informatio
n already in place. All he had to do was use it.
But he didn’t. And he wasn’t sure why.
Perhaps because she was honest. Her words weren’t designed to manipulate. She was truly giving something of herself, and no one had ever done that with him before. No one had ever made him want to share his past before. Just now, he’d told her more than he’d ever told anyone else before.
Again, he felt that strange sort of warmth. Fire licking at his veins.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. She turned to face him. “Uh…sure?”
“Good. Let’s go find something for dinner.”
“O-okay. Just let me get something on other than this.”
He nodded, and suddenly, he was assaulted by an image of her peeling those leather pants from her body. The flames burned hotter.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
He strode out of the hotel room and closed the door behind him. And he was cold again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JULIA TRIED TO shake the little shiver that seemed to cling to her skin whenever Ferro was around. It would be so convenient to blame the Alaskan chill, but it wasn’t really fair or accurate since she’d felt this way ever since their kiss on the balcony.
She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Red, which was unusual for her, paired with matching shoes and lipstick, and a fitted black dress, all provided by her stylist with explicit instructions. Along with every other outfit she would wear this weekend.
True horror had been discovering that her very helpful assistant, who did not know her affair with Ferro was fake because she couldn’t have anyone privy to that, had ensured that a different horrifically see-through negligee was provided for every night.
This had prompted her to send Thad a very angry text message about her being in the frozen tundra. His response had been that skin-to-skin contact was the best way to reduce hypothermia. He suggested she get that “delicious bastard” naked and snuggle up for safety.
Her follow-up text had been unrepeatable in polite society.
Ferro was waiting for her at the bar in the hotel restaurant, a glass of whiskey in hand.
“That ought to warm you up,” she said.