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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ALSO BY AIRICKA PHOENIX
DEDICATION
PROTECTOR’S CLAIM BLURB
Chapter One — Gabrielle
Chapter Two — Gabrielle
Chapter Three — Gabrielle
Chapter Four — Kieran
Chapter Five — Gabrielle
Chapter Six — Gabrielle
Chapter Seven — Gabrielle
Chapter Eight — Kieran
Chapter Nine — Gabrielle
Chapter Ten — Gabrielle
Chapter Eleven — Gabrielle
Chapter Twelve — Kieran
Chapter Thirteen — Gabrielle
Chapter Fourteen — Kieran
Chapter Fifteen — Gabrielle
Chapter Sixteen — Kieran
Chapter Seventeen — David
Chapter Eighteen — Gabrielle
Chapter Nineteen — David
Chapter Twenty — Gabrielle
Chapter Twenty-One — Cordelia
Chapter Twenty-Two — Kieran
Chapter Twenty-Three — David
Chapter Twenty-Four — Kieran
Chapter Twenty-Five — Gabrielle
Chapter Twenty-Six — Kieran
Chapter Twenty-Seven — Gabrielle
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Kieran
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DEDICATION
For my lovers of the dark & twisted.
PROTECTOR’S CLAIM BLURB
Gabrielle Thornton
I made a mistake.
I allowed myself to be born. I allowed myself access into a life that wasn’t mine, and for that, I had willingly submitted my body and soul to a man whose sadistic pleasures knew no bound, a man who relished in my pain as much as he craved my flesh.
A monster I would do anything to escape.
But what if I could make it stop? What if the cost of freedom was a single night in a stranger’s arms? What if one final sin was all I needed to commit to find peace?
Kieran Kincaid
I had always known of the sickness that lived inside my father, the demons who controlled the man. His death was a blessing to every innocent he’d destroyed with his dark hunger.
Yet, despite his demise becoming my curse, a shackle trapping me in his twisted secrets, it lured me to it, too. It promised me the thing I coveted above all else. It seduced me deeper into the world I wish I knew nothing of, but there was no turning back, not even if by accepting, by taking what didn’t belong to me made me a monster like him.
Gabby would finally be mine.
Chapter One — Gabrielle
Six Weeks Ago...
Sellable: to give up or surrender in exchange for a price or reward: to sell one’s soul to the devil — a word I had never used to describe myself.
Yet, I tasted my own failures sitting in that compressed little room. It was the repugnant sting of a final meal with too much salt and desperation.
I hated myself.
I pitied the person I’d been forced to become.
That I’d allowed myself to become.
This was on me.
“Can you come on command?”
The unabashed question hung in the oppressive weight of the room, a personal invasion I had given permission to and couldn’t ignore.
I eyed the thick, hairy man seated across the desk from me with his sweat stains and foul odor. Gin exuded from his pores and created a thick sheen across his heavy brow. It glistened in the sickly hue radiating from the single lamp lit between us.
He sickened me.
Everything about the place did.
But this foul, little man was the only person in the world who could help me.
“I’m sorry?”
Fat knuckles rapped the end of his blue pen on the folder open in front of him.
My folder.
The photo I’d been asked to provide was held to the corner by a silver paperclip.
I hated that picture. Granted, I hated any picture with me in it. I wasn’t photogenic at the best of times, but even less when I was expected to act natural for the camera.
This was no exception.
I resembled someone who had been on the heavy stuff for too long. The flash had made my face stark and waxy. My green eyes appeared dull and too big, and I’d made the mistake of pulling my blonde hair back that day, so I looked spooked, strung out, and bald.
“You left it blank.”
I had left many of his questions blank. Most of them, I hadn’t understood. The other half was too horrifying to even entert
ain.
“I don’t know what it means,” I explained lamely.
Large hands folded one on top of the other with the pen still threaded through the fingers. Small, beady eyes the exact shade of animal turd bore into me, heavily shadowed by his caterpillar eyebrows.
“It’s when you’re told to come and you do. It’s self-explanatory.”
When put like that, I probably should have guessed, but it wasn’t as if I were some kind of expert on the matter. If anything, he was the idiot. If he had only read all the way through my answers, he would have known without having to embarrass me by asking.
“No,” I answered quietly. “I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”
He scribbled something in the space I’d left open for interpretation.
It was my first sit down with Hans, but my third interview. Not one had felt right, or natural. Not Hans. Not the pretty blonde woman in the café. Not the robot-faced man behind the counter at the insurance kiosk. Each one seemed steadily worse.
“You’re still a virgin?”
Virgin was enunciated with a guffaw of disbelief, a heavy slap of scorn that burned my cheeks with his verbal handprint. If I had even a lick of any kind of confidence, I would have said something. I would have at least pointed to the note the doctor his people had sent me to had written verifying that very fact. It was in there somewhere, in his massive, methodical folder. I knew it was, because getting that tiny slip of paper had been one of the most mortifying experiences of my life.
“Yes.”
Hans nodded a large head that was just a wee bit flat on top, like someone had tried to make him shorter than he already was and ended up pressing his skull in.
“Why?”
I blinked when he raised his face and fixed me with those prodding eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“Why are you a virgin?” he repeated, speaking very slow now, like I was an idiot. “Says you’re twenty-two. That isn’t normal. Was it religious reasons? Personal reasons?”
“Personal,” I semi-lied.
I didn’t think he’d understand if I told him I’d already sold my virginity once before. The person just hadn’t claimed it yet, not until after graduation. That was the deal. He would kill me if he knew what I was doing, if he knew I was giving away the thing he considered his.
But that was an answer I couldn’t give Hans. I doubted he would take my confession as endearing or mildly entertaining. If anything, he’d probably deny my application on principal. After all, he made money selling sex, selling women. It wouldn’t make sense to waste time on a woman whose only reason for remaining a virgin was because she’d been forbidden to have sex with anyone else.
“You have read the requirements?”
I nodded.
He continued to jot down notes while he talked, simultaneously doing both effortlessly. “You will not meet the client outside the safety of our house. You will not take money after the act is finished. You are selling a service, not yourself. This is not prostitution. All money made during the auction will be divided sixty-forty with the house taking a larger percentage due to expenses. You will be paid in check at the end of your session. The client will be given your file before every session. He will know your limits, your preferences, etc, but occasionally, in the heat of the moment, if they should forget, you will be given a safe word. You are encouraged to use it if you feel uncomfortable, or need security. The rooms are equipped with voice monitors designed to pick up those words and those words only. It will alert the staff and someone will come to make sure you are all right. Your safety is our only priority. Do you understand so far?”
I nodded again.
He paused just long enough to make sure, then went back to his writing and talking. “You will be issued a handler, a medium between you and the clients. They will vet each client carefully and make sure they match your criteria.” He flipped the page over and continued down the back. “You are not to do drugs before or during your session. You are not to be intoxicated or medicated. You will not stray from character while in session. Clients may request a certain scene and it is your job to provide that. You will be trained by our professional choreographers and kept up to date on all popular fetishes, tastes, plays, etc. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head.
I told myself this was what I wanted, what I actually needed, but it didn’t stave the feeling of nausea building in my throat. I’d gone my entire life never wanting sex, yet there I was, signing away the one thing that made me physically sick to even think about. But dire times required dire solutions, was what David would have said. We all have to do what needs to be done, whether we wanted to or not. Selling my body was cliché, mortifying, degrading, and terrifying, but it was the only valuable thing I owned.
“Gabrielle Thornton?”
I shook out of my thoughts and blinked at the man. “Yes?”
Hans looked up. “Is that the name you want to use?”
There wasn’t a person on earth who didn’t know the Thornton name. My family legacy was legendary. As famous as the Rothschilds, Waltons, and Ferreros. It was impossible not to know who we were.
Hans knew.
He’d known the moment he’d scanned my photo ID. But other than a raised eyebrow, he hadn’t brought it up. He hadn’t asked why the daughter of David Thornton was coming to him for money when her father could easily buy the entire city. I liked him a little for that. But I knew he would be the only one. Anyone else and my business would have been all over the press.
Hans couldn’t afford that.
Neither could I.
“No,” I said.
His head nodded like that made perfect sense. “What is the name you want clients to call you?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t...”
“We can put it in later. Just think of something before the first auction.”
The first auction.
Hans had already explained that I could return as often as I wanted. As long as I needed the money. The application process wouldn’t be as grueling, but it would still need to be done to update the changes.
I would still need to attend the auction.
I would still need to be sold.
Every time.
“When...?”
Hans barely glanced up when answering, “In six weeks, after your training.
Chapter Two — Gabrielle
Six weeks later...
Thornton Manor greeted me with the same cold, calculating emptiness it always had. Its columns of ivory, it’s gleaming windows, and marble floors remained an elusive, and bitter friend I could never fully convince I wasn’t a traitor. Standing at its steps, head tilted up to embrace its grander, I was still struck by its intimidating force, by the shame that quickly followed. It knew, like the people dwelling within, that I did not belong there. That I was an outsider, a weasel in the hen house. I was not wanted and yet I continued to return like a loyal dog.
As the youngest of three, one would think the attention would be kind, loving even as I was the baby. That I would get all the support and leniency. But everyone knew the bastard child of infidelity seldom received compassion in the betrayed’s family.
My mother had had an affair. She’d admitted it to David and he had forgiven her.
I was another matter entirely.
I had soiled the Thornton name.
I had tainted the royal blood.
I had forced myself into a place I did not belong, a weed amongst a valley of roses, and I hadn’t had the courage to abort myself before being pushed into the world.
All sins I would forever be condemned for.
“Gabrielle.” The sultry purr with the musky potency of red wine bled through the late October breeze, equally brittle, equally dismissive. “You came.”
Cordelia, the second born, the golden goose of her father’s eye, the greatest replacement for a son any man could ever ask for, unfurled miles of legs and supermodel grace from her sleek Lamborghi
ni — a gift from David. Her platinum mane glinted like the fine threads of corn silk in the sharp sun, each glossy strand was twisted expertly into a French knot to compliment the oval structure of her face. She wore Mother’s pearl earrings, I noted with some dejection. I’d always loved those.
“Hello Cordelia.”
She sashayed towards me as if she were in the middle of a Paris photoshoot. Every willowy limb moved and swayed in time with the crack of heels across stone.
“Has Eric arrived?”
Eric, the first born, was the only male heir and the love of their mother’s entire existence. There wasn’t a single drug charge, speeding ticket, or assault charge she hadn’t made vanish for him. All lies, in her eyes. Fabricated stories to ruin her precious son’s reputation. But Eric’s most recent vehicle, the one he had yet to demolish in some drunken rage, wasn’t parked in the cul-de-sac.
“I don’t think so,” I told my sister.
I couldn’t make out Cordelia’s icy blue eyes behind her Gucci sunglasses, but I could feel them slip away from me and linger on my 97’ Honda Civic parked discreetly off to one side. I knew it, because the one corner of her mouth quirked upwards the way only pretty girls knew how to do when they were silently laughing at someone. I braced myself for the comments, for the sly little jabs I should have been fairly used to at that point.
Instead, she made this little tittering sound at the back of her throat and started around me. I waited a full heartbeat before pivoting on my sensible three-inch heels and following.
Jameson, my father’s butler for what felt like the last eight hundred years, opened the door before we reached the top.
He inclined his graying head to Cordelia.
“Ms. Thornton.”
Then brushed aside to let us in.
Cordelia swept in, dainty hands already unfastening the fat, ivory buttons on her beige coat. She shrugged free and Jameson immediately accepted it when she practically tossed the article at him.
“Where is Father?” she asked, fluidly removing her glasses and scanning the grand foyer.
Protector's Claim Page 1