Buy My Soul: A Sixty Days Novel

by West, Jade

  No hesitation. Not even a heartbeat. “Paige,” I repeated. “You’re beautiful enough to drive me fucking wild, little Paige.”

  And that’s when her head twisted just enough in my grip that her eyes met mine, so fucking close, her breath on my cheek.

  “And you’re beautiful enough to drive me wild, Mr Grant…”

  I’d never have imagined I’d want to hear my name on a girl’s lips in a million years.

  I’d never have imagined I’d want a girl to know my name full stop in a million years.

  But from her it was everything.

  My voice was nothing more than a rasp.

  “It’s Brandon,” I told her. “Call me Brandon.”

  Her voice was a rasp right back. “You’re beautiful enough to drive me wild, Brandon, sir. Brandon, master…”

  I shouldn’t come inside her. Not her tight little cunt. Not without the medicals, or the assurances of contraceptives. I’d already skirted the line at every opportunity since holing up with her for her sixty-day sub fest.

  Yet again, all my common sense bailed right out the window.

  “Take it, Paige,” I hissed. “Take my seed and tell me you really fucking want it. Tell me you really fucking want me.”

  She didn’t have the opportunity to do much more than whimper and buck back harder for more. My slams were frantic. Deep. All fucking consuming as my balls burned hot and threatened to blow their load.

  And so they did.

  They blew their load deep inside that sweet little cunt.

  The commentary that came from her lips was glorious. Sweet. Tender and dirty all at fucking once.

  “Oh God, Brandon. Please, I really want your seed! Please, sir, I want you!”

  My breath was ragged. My dick still pulsing deep as I emptied myself inside her.

  And then she said it.

  She fucking said it.

  “Brandon…” she whispered, eyes open wide. “I love you…”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Paige

  It was a wrong move – a bleat of idiot words when I was too caught up in the magic to stop myself.

  I shouldn’t have said it out loud. Not in front of the cameras and the whole world of viewers watching. And not in front of him.

  Not in front of Brandon Grant.

  Brandon.

  I felt him tense up the moment the words were out there between us. I hitched my breath as he pulled out of me in one quick movement and lifted his body clear of mine.

  Repulsed?

  Shocked?

  Embarrassed by my outburst?

  It was everything I could do to strain my neck to face him, shackles still fixed tight to the bedposts.

  “Tune in for tomorrow’s show,” he grunted to the cameras and backed away across the room. My heart was in my throat as he closed off the live feed. The camera lights flicked from green to red and stayed there unblinking.

  I’d messed up, for sure.

  I’d messed up so bad my stomach was a bag of misfiring nerves.

  “I’m sorry,” I offered. “I was lost… in the moment…”

  I’d wanted to say I didn’t mean it, it was just a stupid blunder, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie, not like that. Not to him.

  He was as cold as ice as he returned to unshackle me, releasing the buckles and casting the shackles free without so much as a comment.

  “Please, sir,” I said, not daring to continue using his name. “Please, sir… I shouldn’t have said anything like that, not on camera…”

  “That isn’t it,” he told me. “You have nothing to apologise for. The errors here are all mine.”

  I changed position, sitting up on the bed with my knees pulled up tight, ignoring the soreness of every scrap of flesh. I felt like such an idiot. Embarrassed. Uncomfortable. Vulnerable in my honesty.

  And he saw it. His eyes focused on mine and he saw it.

  Only he didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe I could really feel that way…

  “This isn’t love,” he said. “You’re just a good girl in a bad world, wanting to see the best in it. Wanting to see the best in me.”

  “I see what’s there,” I countered. “I see what your eyes have shown me, how they care for me, even if you haven’t wanted them to. I see what you’ve done for me, even if you want to be nothing more than a monster.”

  “I am a monster. Everything else you think you’ve seen is irrelevant, sweetheart.”

  Nothing felt irrelevant to me. Not the time we’d spent together in this intense bubble of soul for sale. Not the truth I’d seen in his eyes during quiet moments, just him and me. Not the warmth I’d felt in his arms, in his touch, in his voice. In his everything.

  But it didn’t matter. Not to him. His stare was steely, jaw gritted tight, as though he was fighting monsters of his own.

  Maybe his personal demons would win the battle of love versus illusion and cast me out of here as a girl gone mad.

  That’s when the fresh bout of panic struck hard.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll be more careful with my words in the future. I won’t say it again, not anything like it. Not for the cameras, not for the full sixty days, I promise…”

  “There’s much more to it than promising to be careful, Paige,” he argued, and I felt a fresh pang at the use of my name. “The sixty days will push you too hard to hold back any words, no matter your determination to avoid them. We don’t need declarations of love uttered in this place. You sure as shit don’t need to be in a position to speak them, the clients don’t need to hear them… hell, sweetheart, you don’t need to feel them.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how I feel, I will hold them back,” I insisted. “Really, sir, I’ll hold them back. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

  That’s when the gorgeous monster sighed and closed the distance. He lowered himself slowly down next to me and took a seat on the bed.

  I wasn’t expecting him to lean in close enough to push the hair back from my forehead and glide his thumb across my cheekbone.

  “This is part of the reason you are such an intoxicating little sweetheart, Paige Emmerson. Honesty. Truth. Vulnerability.” He paused. “And such optimism. Looking on the bright side of a situation when all the factors point to hell. And this is the thing, you don’t belong in hell, sweetheart. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with me.”

  “I can hold my tongue, I swear,” I whispered. “Please don’t take these sixty days away from me… my sister might be running scared for her life… she needs me with the money to save her…” I couldn’t hold back the tears as the concern hit home. “I need to… I need to save her. I need to make sure she’s ok. That she’s alive. That I can help her… Please don’t send me away…”

  “You’re scared you’re going to lose your pay day? That’s your main concern?” His jaw was gritted hard. His eyes were still cold, even though I could see the rawness I’d come to love so much.

  “Please!” I cried. “Please don’t send me back to uni before my time is done… please, sir… I’ll do whatever it takes… I might not even have a place on campus now, not after disappearing in the middle of the night without even emailing to say I was gone…”

  I couldn’t face him. Couldn’t face seeing my own desperation registering so clearly in his eyes. I stared past him at the wall of camera controls, wondering if this was really it. If this was really it for me, and Phoebe, and my genuine love for the stranger who’d bought my soul.

  “I’d never cast you out without a penny to your name,” he said, and took my chin. “I may be a cunt, but I’m not that much of a cunt. You can stop trying to convince me this is the right place for a girl like you for the sake of a pay day.”

  He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Rehab and a new life for Phoebe would be expensive. Paying off her loan sharks would be even more so. I needed the full pay out. Not for me, not even a scrap for me. My eyes were thick with a fresh bout of tears when t
hey crashed back to his. “I can’t stop before my sixty days are up. I need to keep going. I need to make you believe I can do this.”

  “And what if I don’t want you to do your sixty days?” he asked. “What if you’re too pure a little beauty to taint to the max and sell on to a host of vile fucking vultures?”

  I held his stare so hard. As hard as I possibly could. “I’m not pure, sir. Not inside. I don’t want to be pure, and you know it. You feel it. You feel how much I want this. How much I love this. How much I want you. And that’s what this is about now, it’s not just about money, or my sister… it’s about you… because I do really feel it. I do really feel how I said I did…” I grabbed a deep breath. “But that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to matter. I can do everything I signed up for, love or not. I can give myself over to the others. I can do whatever you tell me to do, and do it gladly…”

  He was statue still as I continued, and I did continue. I couldn’t shut myself up.

  “I’ve never been pure inside…”I told him. “I’ve just been hidden. Kept myself hidden… I’ve never really shown my true self to anyone before you made me express myself… before you exposed me for who I really am… for what I really want…”

  “And you are so delicious in your exposure,” he interrupted. “Believe me, Miss Emmerson, you really are a stunning creature. I’ll look back on our time here fondly, but this love, this need… it needs to go. You need to go, sweetheart. Your sixty days need to wrap up sharp before this illusion of love — whatever the hell that even stands for — drives you insane.”

  I couldn’t hold back the sobs. They ate me up. Pounding through my chest as I spluttered out my pleas.

  “Don’t throw me out, master… I need to save my sister… I’ll be nothing without this… nothing without her… please, I need the sixty days…”

  I wasn’t expecting the warmth of his arms around me. Wasn’t expecting the love in his grasp as he held me tight and pressed his lips to my ear.

  And I certainly wasn’t expecting the words that came right out of them.

  “You don’t need to save your sister from running from druggie cunts through the streets, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I already have.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Brandon

  I may have been a monster, and may have been one for as long as I could remember, but that didn’t mean shit when it needed to. I felt Paige’s pain pretty fucking deep in my gut. Her tears ate me up inside. The urge to reach out and tell her that I was feeling some kind of love myself was almost more than I could keep a hold of.

  Telling her I’d taken her sister from a torrent of potential doom was a blurt out I’d have to forgive myself for under the circumstances.

  “Phoebe?! You saved Phoebe?!” she asked, her face a ghost of shock. “How? When? Why?”

  I looked up at the internal camera on the wall opposite, all too aware that Eric was likely tuned in to this blabber fest.

  “Let’s get you tidied up and settled for the night,” I told her, but she shied away as I reached out a hand.

  “You really saved her? Please say you did! Please!”

  My voice was nothing but a low growl in contrast to hers. “Not here,” I said. “This isn’t anything like a conversation for the live feed room. We’ve had enough ill-fitting words spoken here already.”

  She gripped my fingers with a nod, and rose from the bed with a wince as I pulled her. I wasted no time in taking her out of that room and back along the landing to my own personal space, being sure to lock the door straight behind us should Eric decide to come investigating.

  Paige was steadier than I’d have expected on her feet when I turned to face her. Her face was pale, eyes wide on mine, the love bite bruises darkening beautifully on her swan neck and down onto her sweet tits.

  Even at the height of confessional bullshit, my dick was hungry for round two.

  “Please tell me,” she said. “I need to know…”

  I retreated to the window and lit up a cigarette, nicotine calling along with another round on that tight little slit.

  “The night you arrived,” I told her. “I sent someone for her, to your campus. She came willingly.”

  “And she’s safe? She’s really safe?!”

  “As safe as a solid stint in a rehabilitation ward can make a desolate drug addict, yes.”

  Her hand pressed to her chest, legs losing their solidity as she took in my words.

  “Thank you,” she managed. “I had no idea… I’d never have thought you’d do that…”

  That made fucking two of us.

  The cigarette did little to ease my tension. It did little to ease anything, the sickening buzz of something running deep between us in this place was enough to set me on edge.

  “Her recovery is in her court, not mine,” I added. “I’ve given her the option to take hold of her shit and set it in order, the rest is down to her.”

  “She will…” Paige told me, and there was that optimism again, so alive. “I know she will…”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” I said, and tossed my cigarette butt out the window.

  Her steps in my direction were tiny. Her fresh round of bruises stiffening tight.

  “I knew you were more than a monster,” she said, and her eyes were glowing with so fucking much.

  Gratitude. Hope. Relief.

  Love.

  “Don’t underestimate my darkness,” I countered, but she didn’t register a word of it as her arms reached out and gripped me tight.

  “Thank you, master,” she whispered and pressed her body so close, bruises be damned.

  It took every scrap of resolve in me to place my hands on her shoulders and push her away. My eyes were fierce on hers when they met. They had to be.

  “You can’t stay here,” I told her. “Whatever you think this is between us. Whatever you’re feeling… this life isn’t for you. I’m not for you.”

  But she didn’t believe me.

  Holy fuck how she didn’t believe me.

  Her fingers joined mine on her shoulders and squeezed. “Whatever you’re feeling,” she mirrored. “I know it’s real. I know it’s real between us. It has to be. It can’t feel like this if it isn’t. Please, please just let me stay here. It’s not about the money… not if Phoebe is safe…”

  It was the very trigger I needed to pull my sensibilities back.

  Not about the money.

  It was always about the money. The whole fucking world was about the money.

  But maybe not for sorry little Jake Wharton.

  My plan of action came tumbling back in in a heartbeat. Thank fuck for his idiot pings on my social media profile. I cast her grip aside enough to reach my phone from my pocket.

  Late.

  It was late.

  But maybe not too fucking late to get some clarity on my own crazy fucking scheme.

  “We’ll talk it through,” I told her, drawing a line well and truly in the sand with this whole sorry debacle. “But not now. Now I have business calling.”

  Her nod was weak but enough. She didn’t make a move to stop me as I stepped away and to a safer emotional distance in the room. At least some of her submissive state was still burning strong.

  “Rest and recover,” I said, well aware my voice was its usual bark of self-assurance. “I’ll be back before the night’s through. We’ll talk then.”

  “Ok, thank you, sir… master…” she replied in that soft little voice of hers, and I hated it. Hated how much I loved it.

  I didn’t hold on a minute longer, bolting out of that place in a beat and taking the stairs down two at once. Eric was waiting at the bottom, looking nearly as fucking shocked as the siren upstairs.

  “What the hell was going on in there earlier?” he asked, but I held up a hand.

  “Not now, jackass. Fuck off!”

  He followed me outside like a rat on my heels. “I don’t even know what to make of it. You were so loved up in there I thought you wer
e gonna fucking propose to her. She’s got you well and good, only it’s her that gave the I love you crap, yeah? I heard it loud and clear. We all heard it loud and clear. Clients galore heard it loud and fucking clear.”

  Like I needed fucking telling.

  I pulled my car keys from my pocket and bleeped the central locking.

  “Where are you fucking going?” he asked. “Seriously, Bran, what the fuck is going down?”

  I shot him enough of a glance to see the weird grimace on his face, clearly not quite sure what to make of the spectacle. His hands were fidgety in front of him.

  “Out,” I grunted. “I have business calling. We’ll talk later.”

  He shrugged a half shrug. “What is this?! Another sixty-day girl coming calling? A skinny dip in the fucking sea to clean the emotional bullshit off you? I just don’t fucking get it.”

  “So don’t get it,” I said. “It’s not your concern.”

  “No, but Drake is,” he grunted. “And Drake will be yours too soon enough if you don’t get your shit in order. Did you even read his messages?”

  I didn’t grace him with an answer to that one, just piled in the car and turned the key in the ignition, pulse racing as I sped my way out of the driveway and onto my next meet up.

  I used the hands free dashboard to dial Jake Wharton’s number en route.

  “On my way to the pier,” I told him. “You’d better be fucking waiting.”

  And so he was.

  I could see the figure on the beach as I parked the car on the street above. The kid was trussed up with his sports hoodie covering most of his features in the shadows, but I knew it was him on sight. The beach was deserted, but there was no sliver of confusion, just him jittering from foot to foot, shifting his weight on light feet as the wind ate him up under the strut hollows.

  I approached slowly, eyes burning as I closed the distance. He stilled as he clocked my presence, pressing his back to one of the wooded posts and keeping me in clear vision as I joined him by the waterline.

  “She’s ok, is she? Paige Emmerson is ok?” he demanded as soon as I was in earshot, and I couldn’t hold back the half smirk at his billowing concern.