Dollars (Dollar #2)

by Pepper Winters

  Use them.

  Bribe him…

  Adrenaline filled me as I swallowed back foul memories, doing my best to envision using beaten-taught expertise to buy myself more time.

  Do it.

  It’s the only way.

  Clamping down on doubt, I jogged into the bathroom.

  For a moment, I just stood there.

  What am I thinking?

  I shook my head. No, I couldn’t do it.

  You can.

  I hated it with Alrik.

  I’ll hate it with Elder.

  But if it kept me safe…wasn’t the discomfort worth it?

  Sucking in a breath, I stared at myself in the mirror.

  A girl I no longer recognised stared back. I couldn’t believe I contemplated doing the one act I deplored above everything, all in the name of bartering for my freedom. Taking my own life was more preferable, more acceptable.

  But I lived in a commerce world. People traded things all the time. Items that didn’t hold value for the current owner were priceless to another.

  All it would cost me was dignity and self-worth. I’d given up such things the moment I was sold. It was the currency I’d been taught—the sum value I was willing to spend.

  It would bankrupt me, but to Elder, it would carry the weight of winning.

  And if he felt I’d finally accepted his terms…

  It’s worth a try.

  Ignoring my trembles, I combed my hair until it shone glossy and thick. I pinched my cheeks until a healthy young girl stared back. I opened my mouth, touching the red line on my tongue where no black stitches remained, then sucked up every droplet of courage I had left.

  Placing my hands on the marble either side of the sink, I leaned forward, braced, fidgeted, braced again, then parted my lips.

  My tongue shaped and tested silent words. My vocal cords tossed off grime and grit to obey. And my lungs inflated with the knowledge that here and now, I took back a piece of myself I’d locked away.

  My first word was my own.

  I was the one who deserved it the most.

  Looking into my green-blue eyes, I whispered, “Stop being we—” Pain lacerated my throat. I stopped, coughing as tears formed and I massaged the abused larynx that was no longer on a sabbatical.

  The first vibration into understandable sounds was hard and painful and croaky.

  But to my ears, they were utterly sublime.

  Smiling through tears, I tried again. “Stop being weak, you—” another cough, swallow, wince “—have to—to decide.”

  The stutter-hum of my voice sent goosebumps down my spine. I’d forgotten what I sounded like. My English accent was different to the many ethnicities Elder hired on board.

  I sound like my mother.

  Wetness spilled over my cheeks as I let questions flow. Where was she? Why hadn’t she picked up the phone that day? Did she ever think about me?

  Pushing her away, I dug my fingernails into the marble and inhaled deep. I prepared to unlock the remaining snares and bear-traps around my throat. “No one else deser—deserved your first words but y—you. Stop being a vic—” Ouch, that word hurt more than the others.

  Turning on the tap, I poured a little water into my palm and drank. Once the burn in my throat was dampened, I finished. “Stop being a vic—victim.”

  My eyes narrowed in reproach even as I continued to berate myself. “You have to decide, Min—Minnie Mouse.”

  I coughed, swallowed, took another drink of water. My father’s nickname sent more tears plopping against the sink. My voice wobbled from sadness as well as ill practice. “Run. Find a way to escape—”

  Another cough stopped me short. Hot pain overwhelmed me, and as much as I wanted to continue talking, my body was not ready.

  Locking eyes to the mirrored reflection, my forehead furrowed with concentration.

  Escape, Tasmin. Go home…even if there is no home to return to. Do whatever it takes. Or decide if you want him to keep you. The world is not safe out there. You saw first-hand how Elder steals and that man buys pleasure. Perhaps you were never meant to live amongst normal. Perhaps there is no more normal.

  My fingertips pressed against the mirror. This isn’t so bad, is it? Sure, he’ll make you do things, sexual things, but he’s proven to be human beneath his monster.

  I couldn’t look deep enough inside myself to find answers. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I did know I didn’t want to be sold.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Never again.

  You know what you must do then.

  I nodded at my reflection, dropping my fingers from the cool mirror and swiping at the streaks of salt on my cheeks. Each breath plugged up the holes inside with ideas and fears and wishes.

  Swallowing, I muttered two words before embracing my silence once again. Two words solidifying my commitment to doing whatever was necessary to keep myself alive, no matter what world I stayed alive in.

  “I know.”

  Pushing off from the sink, I strode from the bathroom before I could change my mind.

  I HEARD HER before I saw her.

  The gentle breathing of determination sneaking on silent feet.

  My muscles locked.

  I’d deliberately kept my distance for three days, taking my issues out on Selix in the ring and swimming in the ocean.

  I was exhausted. Not just physically but mentally, too.

  Pim had dragged me back to a time when things were perfect. She’d reminded me of how I was before the catastrophe and showed me just how much I’d changed. The boy in my past would’ve taken her anywhere she wanted the moment I’d rescued her. I would’ve given her money to survive and professional help to thrive. Everything I’d stolen up to that point would’ve been shared because I knew what it was like to have no one.

  I was no longer that boy.

  I was a man who’d spent the last seventy-two hours obsessing over which choice was the lesser of two evils: keep her and destroy myself, or sell her and destroy whatever was left inside her.

  Freeing her was not an option—not because I hadn’t been able to track down her mother—even though I’d tried again to trace her number—but because I hadn’t finished what I needed to do before my past came to light and I was incarcerated for life.

  I didn’t know Pim’s name. I didn’t have an accent to go off, skin colouring to hint, habits to trace. I had no idea where she came from. She wrote to No One, but she was no one. Alone in the vast world of sin.

  Wait…that’s wrong.

  My fists clenched as my world imploded, crushing me with a new thought.

  She’s not No One.

  …I am.

  For years, I’d been adrift. I’d been forgotten, shunned, unwanted. I had no one to call my own, no home, no love. No one knew my true name (apart from three people). No one knew who I was anymore—including myself.

  I was the epitome of no one and nothing.

  Christ, had she been writing to me the entire time?

  Goosebumps snarled over my flesh that it wasn’t Alrik and his desire to build an armoured yacht that’d brought me to her, but her notes to No One—all along addressed to me.

  The determined footstep came again, smashing my stampeding thoughts into a singular one.

  Her.

  I stopped breathing.

  Stepping into the moonlight, Pim moved with a white sheet haloed around her. She’d tied the ends behind her neck, creating a loose toga that turned her from human girl to Grecian goddess.

  Every part of me stiffened.

  Fuck.

  How did she get even more beautiful in three days?

  My sea-droplet covered chest warmed until I was sure I’d steam with heat. My heart, already darting wildly from my prior conclusion of being her No One, increased its tempo until I grew lightheaded with need.

  Intensity arrowed down my belly, feeding my cock in a rush of lust.

  My wet boxer-briefs couldn’t hide my reaction as I thicke
ned and lengthened with how gracefully and brave she moved.

  What are you up to, Pim?

  Why did you have to seek me out now, when I’m so fucking close to breaking every rule and claiming you?

  If I was a better man, I’d command her to go—to turn around and return to her rooms, far away from me. But I wasn’t a man.

  I was No One and as our eyes met, I fell completely under her spell. I did my best to slow my pulse from my late night swim.

  It didn’t work.

  My heart decided it wouldn’t calm, not now she’d bewitched me with her immortal strength and fragile hope and the way her damn eyes dove into mine. Not now I felt tethered to her in a way I never thought I would again.

  Tension poured into being, waking around our ankles, getting thicker the longer we stared.

  Pim stood there silently judging, waiting, watching.

  I should put her on the helicopter and drop her off at the nearest police station. Fuck my past. I had the Phantom. I could outrun the law for long enough.

  So why did the very thought of sending her away hurt something inside that I thought was long dead?

  Tell her to go back to her fucking room.

  Coming to a stop in front of me, Pimlico bowed her head and clasped her hands loosely. The goddess herself prayed before me—for what I didn’t know—but she looked celestial and chills ran over my skin, adding to my previous layer of goosebumps.

  It was no longer about how beautiful or broken she was. My attraction for her had exceeded normal barriers; I didn’t know how to deal with that.

  Get away from me, Pim.

  Before I do something we’ll both regret.

  Her chest rose and fell as if she’d heard me, her hair silky and sensual, cascading over her shoulder.

  My muscles tensed as she slowly reached up, her hands disappearing beneath her hair to tug at the loose knot holding the sheet.

  My chair creaked as I tensed.

  The white cotton fell in a quicksilver cascade, puddling on the deck.

  Christ.

  Her eyes met mine, her chin tilted in regal power.

  Her nakedness wasn’t vulnerability. It was her strength. The one thing she’d claimed as her weapon. She stood before me bare and unyielding and fucking decimated me with how much I wanted her.

  I sucked in a breath, my cock hardening to the point of agony. I should’ve stood up the moment she arrived. I should've slung a towel over my waist so she wouldn’t be appalled with the lust I had suffered when lust had been what hurt her. But sitting on the deck chair with my legs sprawled in front of me, there was no hiding my arousal.

  Her gaze dropped to my crotch, her jaw tightening. Shadows crossed her eyes, faint lines etching her mouth as if she argued some internal debate.

  And then, she thudded to her knees.

  She winced at the hard wood on already punished bones.

  My stomach clenched to sit upright and pick her up, terrified she’d tripped.

  But her hands shot forward, one landing on my chest to keep me reclined, the other grasping my waistband and pulling.

  My cock leapt free from its confinements, not caring about right or wrong.

  What the—

  Before I could stop her, she inserted my length into her mouth.

  Holy.

  Fucking.

  Jesus.

  My mind collapsed as her hot wet mouth sucked me hard. She didn’t tease. She didn’t toy. Her hands slipped over me as her lips followed, sucking me deep, turning me brain dead.

  Instinct roared into control. Pent-up desire unleashing and taking ownership. My hips thrust up as my hand landed on her head. Somewhere in the back of sanity, I noticed how soft her hair felt. How she bobbed over me. How fucking good her tongue worked my crown.

  I didn’t think about her injury.

  I didn’t think about her past.

  All I thought about was how goddamn good she felt. What a magician she was with her tongue and fingers and mouth.

  Every blood cell relocated in my cock, throbbing for more. And she gave it to me as if she understood my body more than I did.

  Her tongue swiped again, dancing around the tip, dragging a ragged groan from deep inside me.

  I couldn’t fight.

  I couldn’t win.

  My legs widened as she shuffled closer on her knees. Her hair blanketed my thighs as she kept my ocean-damp boxer-briefs pulled away while her other hand dropped over my stomach to cup my balls below.

  She drove me insane.

  I shivered with every touch and lick.

  It’d been a age since I’d been with a woman. Been with a willing woman.

  The word ‘willing’ shot into my head, tearing through my lust.

  Pimlico was a woman, but was she willing?

  Why was her mouth on me? Her tongue tasting me; her hand superbly working me to come?

  Why was she on her knees after a lifetime of hell with another man?

  Shit.

  My teeth gritted as I dropped my hand from her scalp to her chin. It fucking killed me, but I summoned every decency I had left and tugged her away.

  My body trembled. Pre-cum rippled as she sucked harder, refusing to move.

  I pulled harder, battling so many things at once.

  I wanted to throw her down and fuck her beneath the open sky. I wanted to hit her to get her far away from me so I could gather my tattered thoughts and make sense of this.

  I wanted her to stop.

  “Pim.” I growled as her teeth scraped sensitive skin making another wave of pleasure shoot, begging for a release.

  It would be so easy to let her go, to lean back and give in. To spurt inside her expert little mouth and let her take that from me.

  But that wasn’t how I worked.

  I didn’t take advantage of people—apart from their money. And I definitely didn’t give in. Ever.

  “Stop!” Wrenching her mouth off me, I panted as my cock smacked against my bare stomach, glistening with her saliva, pulsating with the need to climb back inside her.

  It would be so fucking easy to pull her head back down and tell her to finish what she started.

  But the one question I couldn’t ignore gave me willpower.

  Why had she started this in the first place?

  Sitting forward, not caring I remained exposed or she was naked between my thighs, I grabbed her chin again. Her skin was ice beneath my fingers. I refused to look at her breasts or pebbled nipples. I focused on one thing only.

  “Why?”

  She didn’t meet my eyes. Her right hand crept forward and clutched my throbbing cock.

  My head fell forward as her palm stroked me with the lubricant from her mouth, soaring up to squeeze my crown.

  “Fuuuck.”

  Keeping her chin firm in one hand, I grabbed both her wrists with the other, flinching as I yanked her touch away and the elastic of my underwear splatted my cock tight against my belly.

  “Tell me why. You didn’t want to do this. You don’t even like to be in the same room as me, let alone touch me.” I shook her a little. “Have I made you feel like you have to repay me? I don’t need a pity blowjob.”

  Her teeth ground beneath my hold, rebellion and secrets in her gaze.

  I tightened my fingers, bruising her but unable to stop the frustration leaking through my hand. “Don’t touch me, Pim. I don’t want that from you.”

  Her face crumpled before determination replaced her pain.

  It was a cruel thing to say, but the truth. Only…not the complete truth. I didn’t want subservient sex. I didn’t know what I wanted, but fucking her against her will was not it.

  Taking a deep breath, I amended, “I don’t want that from you unless you want it. Do you understand? I’m not going to take from you. Not like him.”

  She struggled in my hold.

  I let her go.

  Instead of ducking for the sheet to wrap herself in, she stood seething with reckless calm.

&n
bsp; I wished so damn much she’d talk to me, but her silence said everything I needed to hear. I cocked my head, disbelieving the reason I saw in her gaze.

  Wait…

  I narrowed my eyes, doing my best to see past her anger to the plan gleaming below. “You…you sucked me because you’re trying to bribe me…is that it?”

  She sniffed, her chin soaring high in the air.

  “Why? If not for misplaced need to repay me…then why?” I stopped myself as the answer came. Of course. Fucking hell, why didn’t I realise her thoughts would go in that direction?

  Sitting forward, I glowered. “You think if I enjoy fucking you, I’ll keep you.” My voice lowered. “That I won’t sell you.”

  She locked in place, her kneecaps the only thing trembling when the rest of her was stoic. If I couldn’t read her body language, I wouldn’t have seen her terror.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You thought whoring yourself out would make me want to keep you.”

  Her lips parted at the awful word.

  I stood, tucking my pounding cock back into its prison of underwear. “Don’t like being called a whore?” I invaded her space, our chests touching, her nipples kissing my dragon’s belly. “Then don’t act like one.”

  I couldn’t be around her.

  I’d do something I’d regret.

  This night was fucking over.

  “Next time you think you can bribe me to do something by offering sex, remember that I want other things from you. Your body is not my end goal, Pim. Your mind is.”

  I didn’t look back.

  A WEEK PASSED.

  An awful, terrible week where Elder treated me like a member of his staff. We met occasionally on the deck where the sun shone bright and unhindered, glittering on the ocean all around us, but he merely nodded stiffly and ignored me.

  There were no invitations to dinner.

  No origami boats or roses.

  The night I’d sucked him, I’d relapsed to the same brittle sadness I’d existed in for two years. The shame Elder smeared me with coated everything, and for all the awful attention Alrik bestowed upon me, I wished Elder would at least acknowledge my presence in some way. His temper and judgment over what I’d done drilled holes into me bigger and bigger as each day ticked past.

  Not once in two years had Alrik made me feel cheap. He made me wish for death, but he prided himself on telling me how much I was worth and why that value meant he would never kill me.