Elle
I don’t want anything he’s given me to touch my skin because it burns. I want out of everything, this penthouse, these clothes, whatever the fuck this is with Gant, even my own body, NOW.
I tear off the stupid polo shirt he’d bought me and toss it over my head, tears running down my cheeks, before tugging at that stupid button I thought was so adorable a half-hour ago on my pleated skirt. I can’t bear for the fabric to touch me.
Nothing! I want nothing from him!
“Rin!” I scream, not giving a damn if anyone hears me, as I run down the hallway. My voice echoes, bounding off the triple-height ceiling and walls.
My feet slap against the floor as I sprint for Bart’s room and collide against it in my haste to turn the stupid door handle that’s suddenly too slick from my sweaty palms. I fiddle with it, creating a metallic series of clicks, before I finally manage to shove it open.
“Rin?” I push open the closet door. Then the bathroom door. “ RIN! ”
Nothing. No one.
I sink onto the bed, and that’s when I catch sight of myself in the mirror. In that stupid matching emerald green lingerie set Gant lovingly put on me, the whore. The temporary wet hole he was handing over to his father. Is that why he chose this set?
Unable to get the hooks unfastened in my frustration, I rip it over my head and toss it to the floor before rolling the thong down my legs until I’m ass out on the bed. Until my shoulders shake uncontrollably because what the fuck am I still doing here?
I don’t give a fuck about the three hundred grand any more. I text Rin through a blur of tears. Get the one hundred grand from Beaussip and keep a bigger cut. I’m done. With everything. Not even a half second later, the devil horn emoji comes up.
Rin-seandRepeat : Less money, but more humiliation. Now that’s petty… Welcome to the darkness.
I barely have time to read the last line before a noise echoes down the hallway, and I realize it’s footsteps a second too late.
Fuck.
I jump to my feet as the door handle turns.
Rin? The question flits briefly through my mind, but then I spot spiky shoes beneath the door. Cricket shoes, I’d learned, and they’re not the black ones Gant had on. No, these are white and far too big. I dive for the bra before slipping into the closet and stumbling in the darkness as something tangles around my ankle. A strap to a duffle bag. The lumpy thing muffles the sound of my fall, but I freeze as the bedroom door shuts. Pressing my cheek flat against the hardwood, I watch as the cricket shoes walk past the closet door and into the bathroom.
Gant said Bart never stayed at the penthouse!
Then it dawns on me. He wants his father to break me, and what better way than with an ambush?
My heart thuds in my ears as the shower starts, and I know it’s my only shot to escape this lair I’d stupidly walked back into.
Get out. I have to get out. Now!
I ease the door open soundlessly and peek around the wood into the empty room. The bathroom door is cracked, steam already filtering out. I tiptoe out of the closest and make it midway to the door before freezing because my panties are sticking out from beneath the bed.
Leave them! Who cares if Bart or even Heldina finds them? Just go!
I reach for the door handle, my fingers extended and just seconds away from touching the knob.
“?”
I turn to see Bart Auclair emerging from the bathroom in nothing but his briefs and a towel around his neck. He’s shredded, carved from marble and just as imposing.
“I…”
He smiles. “Red hair… You must be Eloisa.”
A whip of white sails toward me, and I catch the towel, wrapping it around my body and gripping it for dear life.
Why hadn’t I grabbed something from the closet? Sure, I didn’t want anything from these lunatics touching me, but was this any better? Why the fuck am I so stupid?
My face overheats, burns at his words, at his eyes that had lingered on my nipples and fallen to my pussy when he said red hair.
He’d…he’d seen me, seen what I swore was his son’s just last night.
‘It won’t be too hard to turn her into your bitch, your little pet, or whatever your heart desires.’
Gant was passing me off like a doll he was sick of playing with and to his father, of all people. Panic floods my veins as I step back. “I-I didn’t know you were here.”
Why the fuck am I answering him? Leave!
But I feel like I can’t as I spot the door handle in my peripheral. I feel dwarfed by this nearly naked man, but it’s not just his physical appearance that’s freezing me in place. There’s something in the room, in the air, that he’s recycling. I could just reach out and open the door, but something’s telling me that I can’t. That he’s locked it with his dark eyes.
A trance …he’s casting a trance over me.
“You didn’t? Gant said we were supposed to meet at the field.”
“I-I mean, I knew you were here ; I just meant not up here. ”
“In my penthouse?”
I can’t see myself, but I know I can’t possibly turn any redder, yet my face burns with a thousand suns.
“In my room?”
He steps forward, and his toes catch on my panties halfway under the bed. He bends to pick them up and stretches them over his thumbs just like Heldina had with Rin’s thong, but instead of pure disgust, he zones in on the gusset curiously. I watch in horror as he rubs his thumb over it like it’s sticky, damp, and slick. My slick . His son’s girlfriend’s slick.
Gant’s words come rushing back to me: ‘whatever your heart desires.’
He’d told me he didn’t like to share. But that doesn’t include Bart. Bart Auclair is the exception to every rule.
Run.
But my feet are rooted to the spot.
“I think you’re lying. I think you came to my room, in my penthouse, to see me,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at the bed.
Now that he’s broken eye contact, I can move, but the second I step toward the door, I see what his wandering eyes are staring at because it’s not the sheets themselves. The green folder. It’d fallen out of my purse when I’d tossed it onto the mattress. Half of the papers are sticking out, namely pictures of Silas’s Packard.
“Is this for me?” he asks, opening the folder.
Don’t look into his eyes.
Don’t look…
And….don’t leave.
I don’t know where the thought comes from.
You’ve come this far. He’s seen the files. Tell him what you’ve found and demand what you deserve. Because don’t you deserve years of financial stability for all this fuckery?
Forget your tears. Forget Gant’s words. Forget your feelings because feelings are fleeting. Money isn’t if you know how to spend it.
“Yes,” I say, finally able to speak as the imaginary hand gripping my throat slackens. “You’re right. I did want to see you. I had a package for you.”
His dark eyes shine brighter as he skims the words, the photos, and the demand letter Rin had typed out for me. “And to think I thought you were presenting your cunt to me, but this is so much better.”
I bite my lip and draw blood as the agonizing seconds drift into tortuous minutes as he studies the files.
“You found all of this information out?” he says, finally looking at me, and I look at his eyelashes instead. I won’t be caught up in his voids that have an even stronger pull than Gant’s.
I nod.
He lifts the demand letter. “For the reward money?”
I nod again.
“Not for Gant’s sake? To finally put his mind at ease?”
“I stated my reasoning in the letter,” I say coldly. “I’m just here to collect the reward. That’s it.”
He smiles a smile that isn’t a smile at all. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a girl like you.”
“Yeah, it seems like everyone knows a girl like me . You, Delphine, Silas…”
“Gant.”
I straighten. “Good, we’re all on the same page, so let’s not waste any more time.”
He tosses the file carelessly onto the bed as if none of the information is new to him…
Isn’t it?
He takes a step forward, I ease back, but then he bypasses me for the closet. When he emerges, he drags out the same duffel bag I’d nearly broken my ankle on. He lifts it onto the bed, unzips it, and it’s full of a shit ton of money, all neatly stacked…for this precise moment.
“There you go. Three hundred grand. It isn’t too heavy, a little more than three kilos.”
He offers me the strap and gazes from his outstretched palm into his black eyes, and I immediately note my mistake. It takes me a minute to break his hold, to step forward and tentatively take it from his fingers without touching his skin. But he ensures that I do, curling his fingers so that my knuckles brush his flesh. Immediately, I recoil, slinging the duffel over my bare shoulder.
“That’s it?” I ask breathlessly. It feels like a trap, and I’m in his lair after all. No, his chamber. His chamber where he slithers through the pipes.
“You want more?” He cocks his head. “What? Does it seem too easy?”
He took the words right out of my mouth.
“Do you want it to be hard?”
At his words, I’m suddenly aware of what’s pointing just a few centimetres away from me. His dick, that’s tenting his briefs. My eyes snap up to those traps, to those shining black coals. I’m hopelessly free-falling into them, despite not wanting to. Something about Bart Auclair tells me nothing is ever your choice. Not really.
He’s real danger. Not the deliciously devouring danger I’m used to.