Chapter 14—Payton
“Wha—”
I can’t even finish asking the question. My mind is stalled on that word. Fear spikes through me. But along with it comes heat. A steady heat that rises from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
“I don’t like repeating myself,” he says as he brings his coffee to his lips, sipping from the ceramic cup easily as I just watch his lips separate. Hoping, praying, begging for another word to come out of his mouth. One that says it’s a joke. One denying his claim. Anything but that.
But it doesn’t come. His face is neutral, other than an expectant eyebrow raise at me. One that has me standing before I know what I’m doing.
I shake as I slide my arms out of the sweater, raising the ends up and over my head a moment later. Then stopping. Stalling. Seeing if this is enough.
But I know it’s not.
With unshed tears in my eyes, I look away as I pull off the shirt I was wearing underneath, dropping it to the side.
He coughs to clear his throat, and it sends a tremor through me. The heat that was once there is gone, replaced by ice in my veins as a chill takes over.
Without looking, I push down the sleep shorts he lent me, letting them fall down my legs. I don’t move other than that. They land on top of my feet, but I couldn’t kick them away even if I tried.
I can’t do anything more.
I’m in my bra and underwear in front of someone who claims to own me. Who I said I would never sleep with. Who made it clear he doesn’t like to be denied. And yet I can’t move to continue to do as he asked.
This is as far as I can go. Nothing more. My body won’t let me. My brain is screaming at me to cover up, to run and hide. But my limbs are as solid as ice.
The scrape of his chair on the floor makes me flinch. I don’t look at him, but I watch his shadow from the morning sun shining in the window as it moves across the hardwood floor. It encases me in its darkness a second before his feet come into view.
Only when his fingers lift my chin do I look up into his eyes.
There’s no anger in his gaze. No lust. Just calculations as he looks over my face.
When his fingers drop away, I keep my eyes on him. He takes a step back, his own eyes lingering over my body before his feet take him around me looking over everything that I am and finding me… I don’t know.
Wanting?
Unacceptable?
Desirable?
The heat that I felt earlier stirs inside me once more. The small bit that feels lust for this man. The part of me that ignores the fact that it’s not safe, not right, to see Tommy as anything but a danger to me. That finds him more than attractive and seeks his touch for comfort and protection.
It’s that part of me that reaches out to him when I’m weak. That thought the club was the safest place for me after I was attacked. Knowing that if I got to him, got to Tommy, I would be cared for. Looked after.
I don’t know why there’s something in me that thinks this way.
That almost craves him. It’s unnatural. I’ve spoken to him very little, seen even less of him this past month, and yet that part doesn’t die.
It doesn’t grow either, but no matter what I say to make it go away, it doesn’t.
It’s a candle that won’t ever stop burning.
Yearning for something it wants, but the rest of me knows I shouldn’t have.
“Are you sore?” he asks once he’s finished walking around me, but his eyes don’t seem to be done looking me over.
They continue to assess me as he tilts his head and crosses his arms in front of his chest. Something I wish to do to cover myself, but I hold my hands firm at my sides.
He let me get away with not showing him more for now.
If I cover what little I’ve revealed to him, I don’t know if he would be so forgiving.
I shake my head. Like my limbs, my mouth seems frozen shut.
He nods. “Good. We can cover the bruises for you to perform tonight. And while they heal, you can start learning to dance.”
I blink, shocked, as I watch him turn and walk to the other side of the table, presumably to pick up his phone or his coffee. Both are still where he left them when he came over to examine me.
“I know how to dance,” I say without thinking.
My tongue is no longer frozen in my mouth. My feet even step forward an inch. Just enough for me to feel the pull of the fabric of his shorts around both ankles.
He raises an eyebrow at me as he sips his coffee once more and glances at his phone, tapping away one-handed as he all but ignores me.
“You know ballet. Not dance. I need a dancer.” His tone is final, not up for further debate.
“F-for what?” I’m almost too afraid of what he’ll say, but I have to know.
I need to.
He looks up at me then. “Private affairs.”
My heart stops as I feel myself sway from his words. I lock my knees to keep from toppling over.
My mouth falls open, ready to say what I said last night. I won’t sleep with someone for money. I can’t. I don’t think I can handle it. I’m weak in many ways, strong in others. I know this about myself. And that… that would break me. More than I already am.
He shakes his head and looks back at his phone. “Not for that. I need someone to dance when I have private meetings. To tease and distract while I talk.”
Pocketing his phone, he grabs his cup with both hands and brings it to his lips, speaking once more before drinking.
“To strip.”
A distraction. To use my body, but only to be seen and not touched. To be part of some game that I won’t understand.
I shake my head in confusion. “But I… I don’t know how.”
He nods. “I know. You made that clear on day one.”
I should feel offended. Appalled. And a bit of me is.
But another part is happy that I don’t look like a stripper.
Don’t act like one. Because I’m not. I’m a ballerina.
That was the goal. The dream since I can remember dreaming.
It was torn from me, but it’s still a dream I wish for.
One I hope is the reality, and the rest of this is just a nightmare I haven’t woken up from yet.
“Why not use someone else?” Like Trixie.
I don’t know why I don’t say her name. The part of me that finds joy in him looking over my nearly naked body clamps my mouth shut at the thought of the other woman. She would know how to seduce. To use her body in a way to get something that Tommy wants from whoever or whatever he needs.
He tilts his head, not looking down at my body but at me. Into my eyes. Reading me. I swear he can see and hear my thoughts. Feel my heart beating frantically from the way he looks inside me.
“They might know how to dance, but there would be no way for me to guarantee they won’t use what they learn to their advantage.
I need someone in the room with me. To listen, hear, but not speak about it unless it’s with me.
To notice things I might not see. I’ll be watching them, and I need to be watching them.
I cannot get distracted and watch the girl as well. That’s why it will be you.”
I flinch at the fact that I’m not even something for him to be distracted by. A fly on the wall might be more appealing. It hurts more than it should.
“Because unlike the rest,” he continues, “I own you. Everything you are is now because of me. And you already know not to disobey me. To go against me. You might think you have nothing left to lose, but we both know that’s not true. Unlike them, you’re desperate enough to not fight me on this.”
He’s right. I am desperate.
I stayed up almost all night looking for a way out of this.
The same thing I did almost every night before someone told me about the Kings.
Then I was foolish enough to think things would work.
The small breathing room they gave me was just enough to make me think I could go back to the dream of a ballerina life.
Till it was ripped out of my grasp before I could cling to it once more.
Starting at the club gave me something back. Not enough to feel good, but enough to breathe just barely above sea level. Till that was also taken from me with the attack.
And now this.
Tommy.
I know very little about him. The Leone family is a whisper in the wind. A name spoken in dark corners along with other words.
Dangerous.
Deadly.
Mobster.
Between him and the Kings, I don’t know who to fear more. But I do know that getting involved with him is worse than being involved with the Kings.
But like he said, what choice do I have?
Nothing came to me last night. No immediate clue on how to solve this. I went from owing the bank to owing the Kings to being owned by him.
He has all the cards. I have nothing. I’m desperate.
But beyond that, I’m hopeless.
There doesn’t seem to be a single way out, a single hope that I can make this work without him. And he knows that. If he wants me to dance, then I’ll do it.
So far that’s all he’s asked. Told, actually. There’s no asking. No need to when you own a person.
So now I have to learn how to dance. To entice a person to look at me. To not feel sick to my stomach at the eyes that will travel my body. To feel comfortable in every part of myself as I show it off to another.
I nod.
What else can I do?
He doesn’t jump for joy at my acquiescence. He smirks, just a small lift on the side of his lip that sets off a flutter in my stomach. The sight should make me fear him.
But I don’t. Because that small part, the one I want to just shut up and die, grows like a steady glow inside, holding on to the smirk as though I should be happy he graced me with it.
“Let’s go.” He turns and goes to the kitchen, washing out his cup before putting it in the dishwasher.
“Go?” I start forward and trip, my feet sending the message up to my brain that I still have his clothes wrapped around me. I pull them up quickly and grab the sweater before pulling it on as well.
He nods and walks toward the hallway with that damn elevator.
“Where?”
“Your place.”
“My place?” I question as I continue to stand by his dining table, clothed now but barefoot.
He stops and turns to look at me. “Usually I wouldn’t care what you wear, but since we’re going outside—put shoes on.”
This man has a way of leaving my mouth opening and closing, no words prevailing.
With a sigh, he comes toward me, his fingers moving not to lift my chin, but to close it and keep it shut as he looks me in the eye.
“You were attacked at your home. Do you really think I’d let my investment stay some place that could affect my investment again?”
I slowly shake my head, lost in his eyes as his voice casts a spell around me.
“You aren’t safe there. So we’re going to get your stuff and put it where it is safe.”
I lick my dry lips, noting his eyes glance down for a fraction of a second to track the movement before returning to my face.
“Where will I be staying?”
He looks at me before dropping his hand and walking away, not answering my question.
“I’ll wait” is all he says before I move back to the room I was in last night. Not slept in, since I didn’t sleep. Not enough to count, anyway. Rested? Perhaps that’s the right word.
I put my shoes on, then absently grab my purse that’s still hanging on the back door hook in the guest bathroom and walk back to him.
He says nothing as he pushes the button and the elevator doors open. Nor as he escorts me out of the elevator, past the car we drove in last night, and into a black SUV that is two parking spots down.
I don’t speak as he opens my door. Don’t question him when he takes my elbow and helps me up into the vehicle.
And when he programs my address into the GPS? I don’t even blink.
There could be a million and one reasons why he knows my address by heart. He’s the boss. He could have already looked it up. He could have asked someone at the club yesterday when I told him I was attacked.
But that same damn part I hold close to my heart is denying all that. It’s screaming in glee and jumping in victory. Because it thinks, crazy as it sounds, that Tommy already knew where I lived. That he knew a long time ago.
And this is just an excuse for him to see for himself where I lived after my world fell apart and before he took it over.