Chapter 12 – Ben
Chapter
Twelve
BEN
I followed Chrissy up the stairs like a predator pacing behind prey it already owned but wasn’t allowed to taste yet… not because I didn’t want to, though. No, because I needed the next time I touched her to be unforgettable. More than that, I needed it to rewrite her DNA in an irrevocable way.
If this was going to work, I had to make her want both sides of me: the man she’d only encounter blindfolded until the time was right, and the man she thought she knew on that goddamn roadside.
I needed her to want me so badly she’d never be able to walk away once she realized where one ended and the other began.
Chrissy didn’t look back once. Her shoulders were tight, chin tucked. She was moving like survival was an art form she’d practiced her whole life.
She had no idea she was walking into the first real test. Our little encounter out on the road was just a primer, the situation in the foyer with the original Number Seven was a warmup, and dinner was a warning.
Chrissy had no idea that, the next time I touched her, she’d be blindfolded and at the mercy of the real Ben Stonewood.
My mouth watered as I pictured her on her knees in front of me, pulse fluttering at the base of her throat like a trapped bird.
Fuck. I need her so bad it’s killing me. I need her to win this Game. I need her addicted to the danger, to the mystery, and most of all to me.
She reached her door and stopped, breath shuddering out of her like she’d been holding it since Henry took Twelve’s head off with nothing but a polite tone.
“Miss Jones,” I said softly.
Her hand froze on the knob she didn’t have a key for. She must have forgotten that contestants aren’t free to come and go at will. Her spine went rigid.
I stepped in front of her and unlocked the door, the metal cool against my fingers while everything inside me burned white-hot with need.
The lock clicked open and my restraint damn near snapped.
I could still taste her kiss from earlier, still remember the sound she made when I let her pull me in instead of pushing her away. That tiny, broken gasp nearly made me forget who I was supposed to be and what we were here for.
“Your instructions from Mr. Stonewood are on the bed,” I said, voice even though my pulse hammered hard enough to shake my bones. “And a… gift.”
A silk blindfold. It would be a gift to us both, really.
It would give me the gift of anonymity, and it would give Chrissy a kind of freedom she probably didn’t even realize she’d been craving for years.
It would give her the freedom to let go of always having to be the responsible one, the one in control.
I’d also left a note with her number and instructions in my handwriting. Put on the blindfold, sit on the edge of the bed, and wait for me.
God, I was dying to see if she’d follow directions like a good girl, and how she’d handle the… interview if she did.
Her beautiful brown eyes flicked up, searching my face for some emotion or another.
They were so wide, curious, and unsure it was fucking intoxicating. I wanted to ruin her in every way a man could ruin someone… with truth, with deception, with desire so sharp it left scars.
But not here. Not yet. Not as Jacob. Not when I needed her to crave Mr. Stonewood so deeply she wouldn’t run once she realized they were one and the same man.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to thank you or apologize,” she whispered.
Neither. Both. God, something.
“Just be ready for him,” I said. “Tonight matters more than you realize. How you respond could change the entire course of both our futures.”
She didn’t know how true that was as she wrung her hands and took a half-step closer to me.
“Jacob, I—”
I held up a hand, warning her off.
“Whatever you’re about to say… just don’t. There are cameras everywhere and we’re both in way over our heads already. Be careful. The boss is a jealous man, and we’ve given him more than enough reason to worry already.”
She bit her lip and looked up at me through her lashes.
“I bet you’re really regretting hitching your wagon to mine now that your job’s on the line, huh?”
I shook my head and gave her a sad smile.
“No matter what happens, I regret nothing, angel. Best of luck to you.”
She stifled a sound that was somewhere between a giggle and a sob.
“Thanks. Somehow, I think we’ll both need all the luck we can get.”
I jerked my chin at her.
“In you go, angel. He won’t like us talking so long as it is. The longer you linger, the worse this looks.”
“Of course.”
She nodded and bowed her head as she stepped inside. Good girl, I thought before I cleared my throat and spoke.
“A little tip for you, sweet girl: optics are important to Mr. Stonewood, and it’s best you remember that.”
“I’ll do my best not to lose… for both our sakes. I, um… guess I’ll see what Mr. Stonewood left,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the room.
“Get some rest, Miss Jones,” I said, falling back on the safest thing Jacob could say. “Tomorrow is sure to be a long day.”
Her laugh was breathless and humorless and still somehow the sweetest sound I’d heard in years.
“Something tells me that’s a wild understatement,” she muttered.
I waited until she was a few steps past the threshold, then wrapped my fingers around the edge of the door.
“Trust me,” I said, echoing what I’d told her downstairs, letting a tiny bit of myself bleed through Jacob’s facade despite my better judgment. “You haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.”
Our eyes caught one more time.
Then I closed the door gently between us.
For a second, I just stood there with my hand still on the knob, listening to the muffled sounds on the other side.
The faint rustle of fabric. The soft thump of her heels hitting the floor as she kicked them off.
The rustle of the envelope when she found what I’d had a maid leave on the bed for her to find.
A silk blindfold and a card with a simple set of instructions.
The moment I locked the door behind her, I let out a breath that felt like a wound tearing open. My whole body pulsed with restraint, tight as a drawstring pulled too far.
Tonight, she’d meet me in the dark. Tonight, she’d learn what it meant to be chosen. In a little over an hour, once she’d had time to get ready, I’d interrogate her, push her, corner her, test every soft spot she’d tried to hide at the dinner table tonight.
And then, once I got to see what she’d say and do under pressure, as well as how she held up to my punishment, I’d praise her for being such a good, resilient little doll and I’d make her come on my tongue until she couldn’t think the name Jacob without also tasting Mr. Stonewood in her mouth.
I needed her hungry and hooked. I needed her to win this fucking game as badly as I needed to breathe.
I stepped away from her door on a shaking exhale.
Time for the interviews couldn’t get here fast enough.
The other men would be doing the same thing with their assigned partners tonight: sitting across from the blindfolded women in the dark, asking the questions I’d given them, gauging reactions for my benefit later.
They’d imitate my cadence as best they could and try to inhabit the role of ‘Ben Stonewood’ like it was a suit you could put on for the duration of the game, and take off again when the check for your performance cleared.
Their questions would stay within the lines one might expect of this game.
Mine wouldn’t.
I pulled my hand away from her door and forced my feet to move, heading back down the hallway toward the staff stairs. With every step, the domino mask settled a little heavier on my face.
I was Jacob on the outside, and Ben on the inside.
Number One’s outburst replayed in my head as I walked. Pet project. Rigged. Staff-boy. The exact language we’d agreed he would use.
He’d done so well.
He’d made Chrissy feel the weight of what was supposedly hanging over Jacob’s head, and what was really hanging over hers.
Was it deceptive and misleading? Absolutely.
Was it necessary? Yes, for both of us and our future.
One had framed her as a threat to the others just enough to paint a target on her back, and then Henry had stepped in and made an example of One and Twelve instead.
Lesson delivered: This game could take your future away in an instant.
Lesson two was coming within an hour.
I cut through the servants’ corridor, past the security closet where the monitors hummed softly behind a locked door.
I didn’t go in. I didn’t need to see her on a screen right now.
If I did, I’d spend the next hour watching her pace her room, reading and rereading that card, touching the blindfold like it might bite her.
I already knew what she looked like when she was scared. I wanted to see what she’d do when she thought she was alone with a rich and powerful stranger in the dark.
Would she posture? Would she flirt? Would she lie to protect herself or ‘Jacob’ or both?
Or would the girl who nearly bent a fork in half under her fingers at dinner finally snap and tell the truth to a man she thought she’d have to spend the rest of her life with if she won, consequences be damned?
By the time I reached the end of the hallway and started down the back stairs, my palms had stopped itching to touch her and started itching to tear the whole house apart if she couldn’t handle what I’d built for us.
I wanted to kiss her again so badly it sat in my chest like shrapnel, but I wanted to know what she was really made of even more.
If she passed tonight’s test… if she waited for me in that room blindfolded, sat across from me, and didn’t crumble under my punishment, then she’d survive the rest of it, I was sure.
If she didn’t…
I couldn’t finish that thought, couldn’t picture her leaving this house without feeling something inside me go with her. If that happened, I knew I’d never get that piece of me back.
At the bottom of the stairs, I straightened my shoulders, rolled the tension out of my neck, and shoved Ben Stonewood back behind Jacob’s tired eyes and rough voice.
The interview was coming, and for the first time in years, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was testing Chrissy Jones… or whether she was testing me.