Chapter 18—Payton
I slept more last night than I did the night before. Which I wasn’t expecting.
After… well, after what happened in the tech room, I crashed. I felt like I was out for days, but when I looked at the clock, it had been less than two hours. I was so tired from the night before and… everything else.
I still feel heat on my cheeks when I think about what happened in that room. I don’t know if it was watching the screens, letting go and feeling the music, or just… him. Whatever it was—probably a combination of everything—I let go in that moment more than I ever have in my life.
I shouldn’t have let that happen.
I got off on my boss. Like, really got off. He barely touched me, yet I was the one chasing that orgasm last night. I feel as if I should apologize, but I’m so not ready to bring it up. Like ever.
After we left the club last night, I expected…
hell, I don’t know. But when he said he was going to feed me, every thought of what that could mean went in my head except for what it was.
Him stopping in a back alley and having food brought out from the kitchen of some fancy restaurant wasn’t what I pictured.
Nor was it us driving back to his place, where he told me to eat while he took a call, and his food, into the other room.
So I ate. And it was amazing. But with everything going on, I was too tired to wait up afterward for any kind of talk. Too tired and embarrassed, really. Hiding was more my speed. From him, from what I’d done, from what I felt….
Not knowing where else to go, I went back to the room I’d slept in earlier, with my meager possessions on the chair by the desk that I seem to have claimed as my own. For however long he’ll allow it, anyway. I crashed quickly, and when I woke up, I felt better.
Not as sore as the morning before. Not refreshed either, but awake enough to grab a few things and head to the bathroom for a shower before walking into the living area.
I know he’s here, somewhere. A similar spread as yesterday sits on the table, and I half wonder if he puts it out or if someone comes and does it and then puts it away after.
When we left yesterday to go to my place, neither of us touched the breakfast spread, but it was gone when he dropped me off to rest before work.
However, unlike yesterday, the juice isn’t out. Just a single cup already filled across from a coffee mug that’s half empty. A lump rises in my throat at something as simple as him remembering my drink preference. I grab a muffin and nibble on it as I take a moment to look around.
I don’t feel like a shadow will jump out and tell me to stop. No idea when I stopped feeling that in the last two days, but I do. Here, in this place, with Tommy, I’m not as scared as I was the last few months.
If I’m being honest with myself, I think I’ve been scared my entire life. Afraid of failure with dance or failing my parents who put in so much time and money into my dream. Not their own, but mine.
Living in the city always carried a healthy dose of fear as well.
Sure, you overlooked it because it was life, but there’s a small weight off my shoulders while I look out the windows at the people moving about their day below.
We might be in a busy part, but I don’t hear any traffic.
No outside noise that would keep me up at night or add to my nightmares.
Nothing telling me what a person is talking about as they march down the street on their cell phone.
Unlike my old place, where I knew far more about the people around me than I wanted.
Even at dance or at my parents’ home, I could still hear outside noises. Again, it was part of life. Not as loud as my last apartment, but it was there.
But here? In Tommy’s home? I feel like I’m in another world. Time and space seem different here. And safe. It all feels safe.
“Oh good, you’re up.”
I turn at his voice and trip a bit over my feet as I swallow my tongue and thankfully don’t drop my muffin at the sight of him.
Tommy is a good-looking man. He draws the eye with his face alone. Nothing detracts, not even the scar on his neck. His clothes are of high fabric, showing off both money and style. And from the cut, you can tell he’s lean and fit.
But like this? In gray joggers and a small towel he’s using to dry off his hair and nothing more? I understand now why so many nude sculptures have been created. His body is a work of art and should be bronzed immediately to share his beauty with the world.
I’ve seen men with little on before—you can’t do Swan Lake without a male dancer. But those were dancers, bodies shaped by it. Built for it.
Tommy’s muscles are more defined. The narrowed hips to the deep cuts of his abs are from a different kind of strength building other than lifting one’s partner. Something he’s proven to have done over and over with me already.
And the art that graces his body? I can’t look away. He’s not covered, but there’s enough on his forearms, sides, and chest to keep me looking for hours, if not days.
“Going to need you to be ready by five.”
“For what?” I manage, my voice thicker than I want. My mind and body can’t help but react to his. Add in the memory of him, the feel of his body beneath mine as I writhed on him and his fingers fluttered between my legs, and I’m feeling flushed.
“Dinner.” He walks to the coffee that he must have left when he went to shower, and I force myself to take a bite of my food. Anything to keep from drooling over him.
Which is a bad idea. My mouth is dry, and it just sticks to the top of my mouth when I try to swallow it down.
I cough a bit, drawing his attention, and not in a way any woman would like.
The look on his face says he’s trying to determine whether I’m going to choke and die or spit out my food on his pristine couch.
I try again and get it all down in a forced swallow before going to the trash can and throwing the rest away. I won’t be eating. Not right now, anyway.
“Will it be a private dinner?”
“Private?” He twists his head like a bird hearing a noise in the far distance. Then understanding dawns, and he nods before shaking his head. “Ah, private. Yes and no. Not in the way you’re thinking. No one-on-one client meeting.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t think I’m ready for that. I had one lesson, if you can call last night a lesson. I’m not ready to try my hand at seduction just yet. Or whatever he wants to name what he plans on me doing for him in these “private meetings” he mentioned before.
“This is for the famiglia.”
That’s worse. So much worse. These won’t be faceless people in the crowd, but people he knows. Works with. Family, even.
My mouth opens, but no words come out. Just sounds of an animal dying mid-squeak. Which he finds amusing, if I go by the soft rise of his lips as he watches me freak out.
“There a problem with that, my pretty little Crown Jewel?”
I close my mouth quickly at his turning my club name into something more adoring and not something I feel unworthy to be called.
As if I’m something special. A grand prize, something worthy of all the glory the name implies.
Not a homeless, penniless no one without a dream and zero family to fall back on.
And while his words could be taken as a joke for me being in his debt, I don’t feel laughed at.
“I have nothing to wear.”
It’s the truth, and while it might sound petty and silly, it’s all I can say.
He comes from money. He’s rumored to be dangerous.
His family? Probably the same. And me? I don’t want to embarrass myself, or him, by showing up in what I have on now—leggings and a tank top.
It’s all I had left that no thrift store would take when I pawned most of my stuff.
And if this isn’t a private affair that a dance costume would be used for, I have nothing that would make me blend in.
I would only stand out. More than I do now.
He hums at my response before nodding. Draining his coffee cup, he then performs the same ritual as yesterday, rinsing it out and putting it in the dishwasher.
“In that case, be ready to go in twenty minutes.”
He turns and goes back to his room, leaving me standing there with nothing to do for twenty minutes.
I’ve already gotten dressed for the day.
And before I left the bathroom, I covered the bruises on my face the best I could with the small concealer I have here.
I’ll need to either go to the club and pick up my stuff there or stop and get more if we’re going out tonight.
I doubt Tommy wants to advertise my face.
Unless that’s part of it, to show off his new “thing.” Not that he has yet to make me feel beneath him in that way.
With the Kings, I knew what was on the table. Or more exactly, I knew what was expected of me. With Tommy? I’m clueless. Anything and everything seems to be out there, and I have no idea what that means. Do I still get paid? Do I still have to pay the same amount, or is it more? Less?
I should ask, but with everything else, there’s a bit of fear mixed in.
And… if I say nothing, then I can pretend just a little while that all of this—the food, clothes, a safe place to sleep—is just a friend looking out for me.
A new person in my life who cares. And it has zero to do with a debt I owe.
Too bad I was never good at lying to myself long-term.
The stores he takes me to are ones I don’t even look in the windows of. Ones I always passed on the other side of the street. They were a degree above anything I ever thought I could look at, much less own.
And Tommy walks into each high-class boutique as if the world owes him something. He expects the service, and not a single person seems bothered or put off by him. When he speaks, they listen and do as he says.
Which leads to me being the equivalent of a paper doll as dress after dress is put on and taken off me. Tommy watches with a critical eye the entire time, not once speaking to me, but to the staff. Always in such soft tones that I never hear what he says.
I’m not opposed to it. It’s oddly comforting not to have to decide.
Something I was familiar with in my dance life, when I was told to try this or that on and then parade in front of others who had the final say.
I never chose the outfit, so I never cared beyond that it fit comfortably. Similar to what’s happening now.
I’m a pawn. Something for Tommy to use in some way that I don’t know about quite yet. If this were a private event, I would dance. Since it’s a dinner with those in his family, big or small, I’m assuming I’m just meant to be the person who sits beside him. Who hangs off his arm. Just a prop.
But a pretty one. One draped in fabric that’s soft as butter and glides with my skin, molding to accentuate every part of me and still leave me covered appropriately.
Others might think I’m wearing too much, especially since I work at a strip club, but no one knows who I am here.
No one has asked what I do or what Tommy is to me.
Which is fine, because I don’t know the answer myself.
He pays and has things in bags before I come out the last time in my own clothes. He doesn’t hesitate to hold the door for me to exit the store or open the one for his car. It’s as if this is a normal thing, him shopping for a woman.
I embrace the bit of jealousy that stabs at my heart. I need to. Because despite all this, this… fairy tale, I’m not his girl. I’m not in his life because he likes me, but for what I can do for him and how much money he can get out of me to pay him back.
“Can we stop at CVS?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I need to pick up some makeup.”
“Anything else?” he asks as he pulls out into traffic.
I shake my head.
“Well, in that case….” He leaves the rest unspoken as he takes a left instead of right toward the CVS that’s down on the next block.
“I’m not her.”
He glances at me and then back to the road. “Not who?”
“Vivian from Pretty Woman. I know you bought my debt, but… but you didn’t buy me. I can pay for my own stuff.”
I don’t know why I’m speaking up, but I am.
It’s one thing for him to buy me a dress for a function he wishes for me to attend.
But it’s different when it’s obvious that he intends to do the same with makeup that will last more than one night.
If I go by what I’ve learned about him over the last few hours, he looks for long-lasting, wanting things that are durable.
If he buys me the makeup, it will last. It’ll probably be a year’s supply that I can turn into five.
And the day the debt has been fulfilled and I go back to who and what I was before him, I’ll have the makeup as a reminder that I was part of this. Part of him.
In this moment, I already know it’ll be hard to walk away without wanting something more.
I never gave an ounce of faith to the idea of Stockholm syndrome before, but I get it now.
Two days and I feel as if a lifetime of being with him won’t be enough.
There’s something about him that calls to me. I fear it, but I also yearn for it.
So far, he hasn’t scared me to the point that I fear what he can do to me.
I already know. He’s a man. Men are always stronger than me.
But he can break me, more than I already am.
The small part of my heart that’s not shattered could crumble if I don’t protect myself.
I need to put space between us. To separate the difference between who he is and what I am to him.
He huffs out a laugh.
“I know a Vivian.” He glances at me with half a smirk before looking back at the road. “Even she isn’t the Pretty Woman type. And she’d deck me in the face if I ever even mentioned that to her.” He shakes his head at whatever thought he has, but nothing more.
No mention about me buying anything. Nothing about him not buying me more than what he already has.
And when he pulls up to another fancy store, this one filled to the brim with makeup and anything else a person could ever need, I already know I lost.
The worst part is that I don’t even have the heart left in me to feel bad about it.