Here I am, surrounded by luxury while my only real family burns to ashes. The realization is a knife in my gut.
“Or Brandon?” Jenny says. “Could you maybe ask Brandon?”
Now she’s grasping. Even if I could tell my foster brother about the mother who gave me up at age fourteen, I wouldn’t. I know him. He protects me like a pit bull, and the first thing he’d use his own money for, his new wife’s father’s company’s money, would be to fly down there and try to settle it the way we learned to growing up. Brandon and I, we learned you don’t settle with bullies. You fight back instead. But if he tries it with these people — or worse, if he calls the corrupt police — what’s a brushfire will burn down the Everglades.
“You know I can’t.”
“If you pretended the money was for something else … ”
“Twenty-five grand, Jenny?”
She cries harder.
“Jen. Listen to me. Do you have a piece of paper?”
I tell her who to call. What to say. I tell her to make that doctor grow a spine in advance — just enough of a spine to last the days it takes for the first of the money to make its way through the wires.
I need to pay my rent and a few other essentials, but the remaining seventeen thousand in my account right now is hers, with the rest to come as soon as I can figure out how to get what I’m owed, and move it into the right hands.
When I hang up, Jen is crying. But this time, it’s with relief and prayers to someone who’s not exactly her older sister.
I turn the monitor off and stand in the office, headed for the door, for dinner.
Maybe Daniel was right. Maybe I’m finally letting myself want what I want.
But even if it’s just a convenient excuse, I guess my decision to stay overnight is now written in stone.
Another ten thousand dollars.
It will just be enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daniel
Bridget is on time for dinner, down to the second. Of course. But when she enters, behind the tall redhead and in front of the girl that’s all curves, she glances at me from the corner of her eye as I stand on our small podium at the room’s front, beside Trevor and the chair he’ll sit in that looks a bit like a throne. It’s not a sly look, or defiant like I might expect. It’s a furtive glance. One she probably wishes I won’t see, though of course I do because I can’t stop watching her. I wonder if she’s thinking about how I left things between us. If she thinks what I said was a threat, or maybe an offer.
At first, my mouth tips up into a smile, but then it fades.
Something has changed. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but it’s definitely there. It’s like Bridget’s been drained of her attitude. All the things I can’t stand about her and all the things I want to hate-fuck away, are already gone. What’s left, as she files into the dining room, is almost meek without it. I find myself reluctantly liking all that remains.
I suppose I scared her. Maybe, finally, she gets that I mean business.
But shit. Back in the arboretum, there was a moment where I felt scared, too, and I don’t even know why. I guess that’s why I lost my shit. I guess that’s why I objected to the idea of Bridget quitting. She’s not in control here; I am. It’s true that kicking her out would mean admitting my mistake to Trevor and possibly getting my ass in some serious trouble — as much trouble, perhaps, as admitting that I broke the rules and tested that particular piece of merchandise. But I wasn’t about to sit back and let her patronize me.
You don’t quit on me, bitch.
You stay until I say you can go.
That’s why I snapped. Her take-charge, I’ll-handle-this-so-you-don’t-have-to attitude.
Not because I happen to know she needs the money much more than anyone here.
Because again, fuck Bridget and her needs.
She sneaks another peek at me. It’s as if she knows what I’m thinking. It’s absurd, but still that glance is like a thorn in the soft flesh of my gut.
What’s different about her? The fire is gone, and all I see now, as she settles down at one of the long, opulent tables set with silver and crystal, is obedience.
The women sit where Tony, Richard, and Logan direct them. There are two tables of six girls, and the men all sit up front. It’s like a wedding reception in miniature, with us at the front table. Elevated a foot off the ground so we can look down on all that’s ours to partake. At least that’s the idea, but I’ve run profiles on every one of them and really, partaking is laying it on a bit thick. The contestants must all suspect what this is about, but once I spell out the stakes and the rules, they’ll come to us. We’ll be lucky if we can get through this meal without a few of them crawling up to Trevor’s chair on their hands and knees to blow him for favor.
Once the girls are seated, all of us at the front table sit. They’re in two small oblongs, slightly facing us and slightly facing each other. We’re in a straight line, all on one side of the table. Like a king and his court. Given the ornamentation on Trevor’s chair, the impression is only magnified.
Lucky bastard. I’ve handpicked a dozen of the most beautiful, most sexually open and adventurous girls I could find, even if a few of them need a nudge to be who they truly are beneath a lifetime of conditioning and pretense. They’re all med-screened, all on birth control. And the rules say I’m off limits so I can be objective — but before this is over, the guy beside me will surely fuck them all.
But then my eyes stray back to Bridget. That last thought caught in me like a fishbone in the throat, and there’s no reason.
Trevor is right. Bridget is wrong for this. She has a horrible history — first with her upbringing then with one horrible, abusive boyfriend followed by another, and now this thing with her birth mother. I don’t know all the details, but I know it’s bad. I know it’s complicated. And I know that there’s no way Bridget could possibly get Linda out of her situation without a mountain of cash. Without doing a bunch of things she’d rather not do.
She’s here because she’s wrong.
Because given Bridget’s history, this place will break her in half.
And that’s what I’ve always wanted.
She looks at me with her soft blue-green eyes, the fight all gone. I feel my breath and sense of purpose leave me.
“Dan.”
Trevor is elbowing me. Urging me, now that waiters are filling wine and water glasses, to stand and offer my welcome.
“Sorry.” I snap myself away from Bridget and look around the room at the rest of them. Watching porn isn’t nearly as good as having sex for real, but at least I’ll have that much in the coming weeks. At least I’ll get to watch what happens with all these beauties.
I stand. The girls see the movement and turn their immaculately styled heads to see, and hear, what I’m about to say.
All but Bridget, who’s looking down at her hands.
I was wrong about this contest breaking her.
By the looks of things, she’s already broken, and things haven’t even begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bridget
The girl to my right is about five-foot-two with a compact body, elfin features, and a Russian accent that doesn’t match her at all. It’s husky, like my voice, but full of Slavic vowels. I heard someone call her Kat on the way in; she’s radiating sexual readiness and seems to have all the delicacy of a jackhammer.
She kicks me under the table now, making me jump and look up from my short nails, which had suddenly seemed so interesting. A thousand questions tromp through my head — about this place and these people, but mostly about Linda and Jenny and the doctor we seem to like even as she extorts us — and almost none of them have answers.
“Pay attention,” Kat says. With her accent, “pay” comes out closer to “pee.”
I see the backs of heads across from me. Then my eyes lift and I’m looking at Daniel again, but this time it’s not just me he’s watching. He’s stood from hi
s chair beside the man in the throne, who I assume is Trevor Ross. There are photos of Trevor out there on the Internet, but he looks different in person. Probably because I’ve only seen candids. Between Caspian White and Parker Altman making the magazine covers lately, I guess Trevor’s been squeezed out. We’re fascinated with these other billionaires right now, thank you very much.
Daniel doesn’t shout for attention. He doesn’t have to. There are less than twenty people in the room, so he waits for them all to turn and acknowledge him. At the end of the other table, two of the girls take too long to stop chatting. Daniel waits them out. And by the time they notice his hard but patient gaze, I can feel the whole room’s embarrassment on their behalf.
Daniel raises a glass. His cuff slips an inch, and I can see the points of his tattoo like thorns along his wrist. I still haven’t seen that tattoo, not really. But for some reason, watching him now, I desperately want to.
His eyes flick toward me before he speaks as if my attention and interest are obvious, but it means nothing. Nothing to justify the feelings I keep having when I see him, or what I had the urge to do, yet again, between my illicit Skype call and touching myself up for dinner. I banned him from my mind. I just need to make it until morning. That’s all. Then I’ll never have to see or think about Daniel Rice ever again.
“Welcome,” he says. “My name is Daniel. Most of you know me already, since I flew out to meet most of you.”
I look at Kat’s profile. Her nose is tiny, and her eyes are chocolate. Then I look at the girl on my other side — a brown-haired girl who isn’t rail-thin like most of the others, yet in my mind is all the prettier for it. I think she’s foreign too, but we haven’t actually spoken. I wish Erin or Jessica were at my table, because my glance might mean something to them. I know Daniel retrieved all three of us, but does what he just said mean that he didn’t retrieve all of the rest? I’d assumed. But then again, I assumed he’d stuck his dick in everyone, too, but that’s clearly not the case.
My eyes return to Daniel as he resumes speaking, but before my head makes its full circuit I catch Kylie, the straight-haired brunette with the tiny silver nose stud who was giving me the stink-eye earlier, staring right at me.
I don’t want a pissing contest, so I demur. But then Kylie raises her glass ever so slightly and sends me a condescending little smile.
You sad little thing, I almost hear her say.
“And most of you also know Tony — ” Daniel waves his arm toward the giant who Erin had so much shameful fun with earlier. “And Richard — ” He indicates the guy who looks like a quarterback. “And Logan.”
“I look forward to serving you.” Logan’s mischievous blue eyes fix me for a split second, but I see the little shiver that several of the other girls make and know he somehow just managed to eye-fuck (or at least eye-finger) every one of us.
“But you haven’t met the most important among us. It gives me great pleasure to introduce my very good friend and our host, Trevor Ross.”
Trevor stands then bows. A smile passes between the two men, but I’d swear there’s something off about the pleasantries. Maybe they are good friends, as Daniel says. Or maybe there’s more to their relationship than meets the eye.
“Now,” Daniel says, cracking a rare and dead-sexy smile. “I’ve been practicing this. Just bear with me.”
He points to a petite girl with a Mediterranean complexion and jet-black, razor-straight hair. “Ivy?”
Ivy nods, a small smile touching her lips.
Then he indicates Erin, beside her.
“Erin. And … Kylie.”
They both smile at Daniel, but for some reason Kylie looks at me again as Daniel moves on, the smile still on her perfect lips.
“Jessica. I got you last.”
“But not least!” Jessica says, clearly nervous, trying to break the ice at her table. I’m immediately uncomfortable for her because although her table mates laugh, it sounds feigned.”
“Abbie. Ruby. Aaand … ”
With the first table complete, Daniel points toward ours. The first girl he indicates is across from me. She’s tall and thin, with a beautiful face and what appear in her gown to be tiny breasts. Like Kat, her features look exotic and Eastern. She has an accent as well. I haven’t talked to her, but I heard her worrying to someone earlier about loose ends she may have left unattended at home. “Did I feed cat?” she said aloud as I passed, forgetting to include the article.
“Blair. And Renee.”
The girl with all the curves nods.
“Kat. Malory. And Roxy.”
Roxy nods. Her hair is dark brown, almost black. There’s a tiny gap between her front teeth, and after Daniel says her name, she runs her tongue across it. I’ve been watching Roxy since we came in, and it’s possible she’s been playing with herself under the table, maybe even trying to play with Blair. Every single thing she’s done thus far has been sexual. Roxy reminds me of a girl I knew, back during an early stint at a homeless shelter, named Tawny. Tawny was homeless too but had a way of never going without anything she needed due to her in-your-face friendliness and street-tough body. Tawny used to say that she wished she had more holes, to accommodate more dicks. I get the same vibe from Roxy.
“And Bridget,” Daniel finishes.
Daniel pauses, and I think for a second I’m sure he’ll say something quippy about why he saved me for last. But then the moment ends, and he looks away. It doesn’t stop several of the other girls from turning their heads in my direction.
“As I’m sure you’ve figured out,” Daniel says, “you’re here for a competition. You’ve probably also predicted some of the nature of this contest, though I assure you, you could not have predicted it all. Some of you have, quite separately, decided to mingle with these three fine young men here and with each other. That is, of course, your business. Not something we’ve asked or requested in any way.”
Some of the girls look at each other, and even though I don’t want to, I find my eyes turning toward Erin’s. She still won’t look at me. It’s the oddest thing. She and Jessica don’t strike me like the others do, though it’s possible that’s only because the three of us are the newest. But I’d swear, we seem like three peas in a pod. Girls who aren’t right for this scene, even if Erin proved me wrong. Maybe that’s why she’s looking away — because she thinks I’m judging her. It’s also possible, given what happened and the way she looked at me back in my room, that she’s interested in me the way she was in Tony.
Still, something is wrong here. Something I’m missing.
Daniel has paused for a few meaningful seconds. I know what he’s doing —reminding them all that just because some billionaire invited them over and they decided to start screwing around with each other, there was and won’t be any coercion. I’d guess it’s also drawing the first of many lines between the contestants: those who were proactive enough to act early, those who abstained, and those who got their rocks off because they were horny — all contest considerations aside.
My mind flashes back to the mind games Daniel played with me when we met. Games at the website on the card included with my invitation. The survey. The interview. Little things, like Daniel tricking me into admissions I didn’t want to make.
“If your guesses about this competition in any way make you uncomfortable,” Daniel continues, “I’ll ask you to let us know now. I’ll have one of our pilots fly you back the second you’re ready to go, and we will pay you five thousand dollars for leaving.”
He looks around the room. His eyes stop on me for a fraction of a second too long, and a few more heads turn before he moves on.
Five thousand isn’t enough.
Come hell or high water, I’ll stay until morning.
“By staying past the end of this sentence,” Daniel says, “you are waiving your right to any action against anyone here barring overt criminal behavior, as stipulated in the contract you signed earlier.”
My brow furrows. Contrac
t? I didn’t sign any contract.
He pauses again.
“Perfect,” Daniel says when no one objects.
He turns to Trevor, who again stands. The two men nod mutual thanks, and Daniel sits in his chair beside the throne.
“I guess I’ll take it from here,” Trevor says, smiling down at Daniel, “since I’m the one looking for a bride.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Daniel
I let Trevor lay it all out. I’m bored by this part. The two of us hashed it out for weeks before setting things in motion, to make sure we got it just right. Say it wrong, and it sounds like prostitution, like we’re asking for sex in exchange for money. Say it wrong, and we get sued. We can make lawsuits disappear easily enough, given all of the company’s connections and our powerful friends, but there’s no guarantee the news wouldn’t go public. And none of us want the attention. Not because we’re afraid of scandal, but because scandal invites the spotlight. And with Caspian coming in a few weeks to negotiate terms on his GameStorming data, that’s the last thing anyone needs.
Not with what Alexa has in mind.
Not with what this company aspires one day to be.
So I listen as Trevor spools out the speech that, by now, I could probably mouth along to by heart.
How he’s finally ready to settle down and find a wife. But how, when your profile is as high as his, dating like a normal person is impossible. How (and this was something Trevor wanted to omit, but I insisted we include) people of Trevor’s means are used to always having the very best of everything, and therefore his mate should be no exception.
Why marry someone ordinary?
Why not find the very best?
Once we had an outline, dovetailing lies with truth became a simple matter of crafting a coherent picture. We didn’t try to hide the most unsavory, despicable parts of this because nobody’s naive enough to believe in pixies and fairy tales. Everyone is looking to play an angle; everyone thinks the rest of the world is playing an angle, too. So instead of dimming the baser elements, we game them a highlight, as if proud.
Burning Offer (Trevor's Harem #1) Page 12