“He had this same necklace. It’s one of your fetishes.”
“I don’t have any fetishes.”
His head cocks condescendingly. “We all have fetishes, Bridget.”
“Not me.”
He looks back toward the orgy, and I feel time ticking away on some clock nobody’s bothered to tell me about. “This was a trigger during your first time. You associate it with powerful erotic feelings whether you know it or not.” He swallows, and I know his next words are something the pressing situation is forcing out of him. “We’ve worked to strengthen the trigger since you’ve been here.”
And all of a sudden, I remember it. My eyes tuned it out, but my brain always saw it. It struck me, from the start, as the one bit of Daniel’s style that didn’t fit him. It looks cheap. But he’s been fucking my brains out with it on, training me to respond like a dog.
I back away. I strike a bench then detour around it.
“This changes nothing,” he says. “It doesn’t change how I feel.”
“You just want to fuck me.”
“No. That’s not all there is.”
“Trevor said — ”
“Forget what Trevor said!”
“What else? What else is there, Daniel?” I look around the clearing for other triggers. This feeling is far too intense for one little magic trick.
Daniel sighs. “Scents. Both natural and synthesized pheromones. Sounds. Can you hear the ocean?”
I’m sure I’ve heard him wrong. We’re in the mountains, nowhere near water. But then I can, incredibly faint. Something playing from a speaker hidden in the flowers.
“When you were eighteen — ”
“Don’t you come near me!” I snap as he advances. I know goddamn well what happened when I was eighteen. By the ocean, in one of the most intensely emotional periods of my life. I don’t need him to tell me why I respond like I do.
“There’s more here than you know, Bridget.”
I look down at his cock. It’s still out. Rock hard. The tip is wet. I’m so, so angry. And all I want to do is to bend over and command him to fuck me as penance.
“I just need you responsive,” he says. “You need an edge to compete. This is Roxy’s test today, and I assure you she’ll pass with flying colors. You’ve seen how the other girls are.”
“A fucking contest?” I’m livid.
“Trevor is playing you against me. I don’t have time to explain. I didn’t have a choice. After the way you left Trevor, you’d have been eliminated for sure. I had to force his hand to keep you here. There’s only so much I can do — I thought that by turning it into a test you can do, cranking up the heat on what’s already there — look, it’s no different from putting on music and lighting candles to set the mood.”
He reaches for me. I slap his hand away.
“It’s nothing like that! You’re messing with my head! You’re trying to trick me!” Then it hits me. “You’ve always been tricking me!” In a flash, it all makes sense. I’m not this kind of person, and never have been. It explains so much of what’s happened, when my actions felt like they weren’t my own. “It’s like hypnosis! It’s like … like mind control!”
“Bullshit!” he snaps. “There’s no such thing! There’s only using what’s already there. Firing triggers. Even hypnosis won’t make a person do something she doesn’t want to do; it only lowers inhibitions to doing what you already want!”
“Bridget.” He comes toward me again then notices the presence at his crotch and tucks himself away like a man in a standoff lowering his gun. “Look. What I’m doing, I’m doing for you. I’m doing for us. You have to believe me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You have to stay in this. You can’t be eliminated. And right now, everyone across those hedges is gaining points with the … they’re gaining points.” He swallows around something else he’s keeping from me, one more thing I’m not allowed to know. “The cameras will see us, and it will go into the computations, but it won’t leave this compound. I’ve pulled you away because I know that what’s happening over there makes you uncomfortable. I’ve given us as much privacy as we can get. All we need to do is what we’ve already done over and over. Only this time, it’s allowed. It’s required.”
He comes forward again. This time, I can’t find the strength to stop him. Our lips meet. The kiss is deep, long, and only stirs the flames within me. I’m not just dizzy. Not just turned on, needing to be fucked. I’m quite literally out of my mind until the kiss ends and I find his hands are on me. Not on my breasts or between my legs, but on the sides of my face, his thumbs brushing away strands of errant hair.
I swallow. I want to comply. It’s impossible not to. I want him to lean forward at the waist, pressing his crotch against mine. I want to feel the hard musculature of his chest against me, flattening my breasts in our embrace. I want him to murder me with his lips, and lose myself in his eyes. I want all of him. Inside me, from heart to body to soul.
But I push him away. I’m not a parlor trick, no matter how hot I feel.
“Bridget … ”
“I can save myself.”
I leave him alone. I walk back into the house, feeling acutely uncomfortable, each step torture. I’ve never been so torn, so pulled between two entirely opposite directions.
I want Daniel, badly. I’ve been made to want him.
On the way back to my room, I pass the hidden door. On impulse, I enter the room.
There are no cameras in here, but with my supercharged, hyper-acute senses, I realize I can smell him. I can smell us. I see a handprint on the wall and remember the orgasm that racked me as I made it. I see our ass prints in the floor’s dust, the small dried puddle of Daniel’s evidence as it trickled out of me.
I close the door and realize it can be locked from the inside. I slide every stitch of clothing from my overheated body and let the air prickle my hypertuned skin.
Then I lie on the floor and make myself come.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four.
The walls are soundproofed, so I don’t hold back. And after four times, I feel mostly back to normal. Mostly clearheaded.
I return to my room and take a shower, knowing full well that I’ll soon be packing my bags.
But I’m still here the following day.
Roxy’s gone instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daniel
Caspian White is tall, broad, and blond, with piercing blue eyes and a jawline sharp enough to shave granite. Jaws like his are a hallmark of hitting the testosterone sweet spot during adolescence. Ditto his perfectly symmetrical face. He’s also a risk taker, dominant, and bold — all highly compelling traits in a mate. The literature states that at the peak of a woman’s ovulation cycle, she’ll preferentially select men with looks like his because they can subconsciously tell how great his pedigree is. And evolutionarily speaking, “I want you inside me” translates to wanting genes inside eggs that whore around on the endometrial lining with their legs spread.
Given the media adulation the young billionaire prodigy has received in the past year, I’d have to say the studies have hit one particular nail on the head: based on looks and attitude alone, women like Caspian plenty.
But the literature also says that women won’t select men like him for long-term pairing because they have too many options and tend to philander. So the idea is to let them fuck you once then make them leave. And given what I’ve seen of Caspian so far in this meeting, I think the studies have hit that nail on the head as well.
He’s definitely fucked us, or is in the middle of fucking us now. But you can’t refuse Caspian. He’s forceful and compelling. Once he’s around, you kind of lie back and wait for him to finish so he’ll leave.
“Your oddity is still here,” Caspian says.
We’re sitting on the upstairs patio off of what I suppose is meant to be a dining room, but there are another three
rooms just like it on the third floor alone. This one is darker, more wood and chrome. A man cave made somewhat formal and amenable to dinner service. Our table outside is wooden as well, thick as a butcher block. It looks utilitarian, but its workhorse appearance serves to make it somehow fashionable. Every time I set my drink on its top, I want to whack it with a cleaver.
It’s me, Trevor, and Caspian in the slightly chilly evening air, sitting in front of an outdoor heater.
Everyone knows this is Trevor’s house, and I run things. But Caspian has set himself up at the head of our tiny group, posture erect, suit so immaculate I’d swear it’s not made of fabric but is actually a rigid movie prop. Trevor and I have dressed formally, but despite our suits costing five figures each, Caspian’s attire makes us look like we’re in rags. He’s just a bit farther from me and Trevor than Trevor and I are from each other. We’re more turned toward him than we would be in a perfect triangle. I don’t even know how the cocksucker did it, but he’s set himself up as somehow leading us. Like he’s the Big Man on Campus — and we’re supposed to kneel and kiss his ring.
Fucking Trevor. He answers Caspian’s question rather than asking what Caspian means. You can’t toss him crumbs like that, sitting up and obeying at every turn. Everything with this asshole is a power play, and Trevor has just tripped over one in a series of tiny land mines.
“We’re looking into it.”
“Who was eliminated instead?”
“Does it matter?” I ask.
Caspian turns to me like his head’s on a swivel. He seems somehow pleasantly annoyed, definitely condescending. “Of course it matters.”
“Her name was Roxy.”
“The one with the gap in her teeth.”
Fucker. This is all supposed to be confidential, but that little move proved that he knew exactly who Roxy was before asking, and that he could make me jump through a hoop like a good little dog.
“What was the last challenge? The one that eliminated your ‘Roxy’?”
Trevor looks at me, unsure how to respond. So I go head on. I’ve thought this out in the days since the elimination. People like Caspian have strategy plotted a hundred moves in advance, but I’m better at thinking on my feet.
“I adjusted the challenge on the fly,” I say, as if it were always part of the plan.
“To?”
“To something overtly sexual.”
Caspian nods. He’s giving me approval and encouraging me to continue, but really, fuck his mother. This is our company, not his. He doesn’t need to approve. He doesn’t get to approve. He’s not involved in this at all, except that his data reservoir and all the underhanded shit that goes along with it means … well … everything. I’ve only ever talked to Caspian on video, but every time I’ve felt like the entire thing happens with knives held behind our backs while balancing atop eggshells. I don’t know if he’s studied neuro-linguistic programming, garden variety negotiational psychology, or fucking seduction cues and scripts for all I know — or if his persuasive presence is uncanny but natural. Either way, he makes all our careful control techniques look like we’re kids throwing sand in a box.
“Why did you do that?” he asks.
“I don’t think that’s something we need to explain,” Trevor says. And I think, Good for you, kid.
“So your oddity … ?” He raises his eyebrows.
I don’t answer. Thankfully, neither does Trevor.
“What’s her name?” Caspian asks.
“Bridget,” I answer.
“So she participated? Performed well in your sexual challenge? Proved herself capable? Took dicks in all her many holes, like a proper lady worthy of Eros attention?”
“What we’re looking for is a bit deeper than that, Caspian,” I say.
“Really?” He raises his eyebrows for me to go on, but I’ve already told him as much about our methodology as he needs to know.
“Really,” I answer.
“Hmm.”
Even the curious hum is more bait, but I won’t keep volunteering information. It’s safer to say less, considering I don’t entirely understand why Bridget wasn’t eliminated. I have my hands on Halo’s balls, sure, and it required some careful help to make that happen. But you can only torque so far, and in a sexual challenge, Bridget wasn’t sexual at all. I haven’t reviewed the footage, but the crew tells me she didn’t even masturbate. No spontaneous nighttime orgasms as I approached her in dreams, which I pretty much had to, given the number of response triggers I fired off in the garden. Like the rest of them, she’s been carefully conditioned, and I hit her with all five senses. My cock didn’t enter her body, but I don’t see any way that it wasn’t throbbing in her brain, fucking her thoughts from the inside.
I won’t try to explain how Bridget advanced because despite my manipulations, she shouldn’t have. Maybe Halo genuinely sees something I’ve missed.
Caspian sips his drink.
“I’m told that your ‘Roxy’ — the one who was eliminated in this most recent event — had a key indicator of sexual proclivity.”
Trevor leans forward. “How do you know about that?”
Caspian smiles.
“Seriously. That’s not something we’ve divulged.”
“Trevor,” I say.
“This isn’t a little thing, Daniel. It means we have a leak.”
“Come now,” Caspian says. “I’m your partner.” He sips his drink again, smirking around the glass.
“Trevor, it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine! Who else knows about the superpowers outside of … ”
I silence him with a sharp glance. Caspian knows about the board, of course, but we don’t need Trevor spilling verbal diarrhea. Although I have a suspicion that if there’s a leak and Caspian hasn’t just hacked his way somehow into Eros affairs, the leak is on the board in the first place.
“‘Superpowers,’” Caspian says. He’s not looking at us; he’s gazing out across the mountains, seeming to test the word more than being amused by it.
“Yes. Roxy’s … ” Why duck it now? So I just say it. “Superpower was sexual. Or at least, it presented as sexual.” I let that dangle. Maybe Caspian knows that Roxy’s sociopathic inability to recognize social cues was what made her sexually fearless and maybe not, but I won’t volunteer it. “When we announced the contest, she went all out. She did the filthiest things. Twisted things. Things that would make one of those five hundred-man gangbang girls blush.” Now I sip my drink, leaning back slightly. “The kind of stuff you’d like, Caspian.”
He looks sharply at me. I’ve never met anyone who will come clean on the rumors about Caspian and what flips his switches, but we all have our guesses. Even Parker Altman, who I’d swear spends half his fortune on drugs, booze, and the exorbitantly priced hooker he calls a girlfriend, flinches at what might have fucked Caspian up as a kid.
“So she performed well,” he says evenly.
“By Alexa’s definition. But Halo makes the decisions.”
“So why was she eliminated?”
I have thoughts on that, but they’re more philosophical than scientific. It’s true — or at least likely, given that nobody actually knows what we’re looking for or even truly what we’re doing, other than poking with sticks to see what happens — that the final “bride” will need flexible morals and a sense of sexual adventure. She can’t be cold; she must be hot. It feels like a safe assumption, but what Roxy did on the other side of those privacy hedges was a grand concerto of orgasmic genius, where everyone won and then won again and again. Yet she still got the axe, for reasons unknown.
“You’d have to ask the algorithm,” I say.
“And … Bridget? You never answered the question. Did she do the job better?”
No. Not at all. Not in the least. By mansion standards, according to surveillance, Bridget’s an ice queen. And last week’s events were yet another level. She survived a full-on assault then merely removed her pants for a businesslike shower —
the diametric opposite of what we assumed Halo was looking for.
I shrug. Let Caspian infiltrate our recordings if he must know.
But of course Trevor says, “She did nothing at all.”
Fucking hell.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Caspian looks at me. And, insultingly familiar and presumptuous, he says, “She’s that loyal to you?”
And Trevor, the fucker, says, “She was with him. He … ” Trevor’s face clouds, and I can’t sort the emotion that flits across his brow. “Gave her permission to be with him. To violate the experiment’s rules.”
“And she didn’t want to fuck you?” Caspian recrosses his legs before I can answer. He chuckles lightly, almost under his breath. “Well, that must have been emasculating.”
Caspian leans forward. He reaches into his leather valise and removes a small tablet, not standard issue. It looks to me like something Eros might make — with the marketing spyware and orientation reporting deactivated, of course.
I lean in to watch him tap the photos icon. There are three folders inside the app, but I only notice the name of the one he taps before it opens to a panoply of image thumbnails: RESEARCH. His errant thumb taps one, and for a second, before he flips away, I see a stunning, fine-featured girl of maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, hair blonde and skin milk-smooth, eyes blue enough to see from where I’m sitting. Then the stunning, virginal-looking girl is gone, and I see a different face on Caspian’s tablet. One that gives me chills.
It’s Bridget, and judging by the thumbnails, he has as many other photos of her as he has of the blonde. He flips through a few, and I realize they must have come from LiveLyfe: photos she posted herself, for only friends to see. And disturbingly, a few are far too candid even for social media. Photos that, if I had to guess, never left Bridget’s phone … or so any reasonable person would surely assume.
“Perhaps she’s too good for you, Daniel,” Caspian says.
My blood boils. Caspian smiles.
“Or perhaps she’s still waiting for the perfect lever.”
Burning Choice (Trevor's Harem #3) Page 12