Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45806 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45806 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
3
Maisy
I don’t know whether to be relieved or horrified.
Both. Definitely both.
My mother’s boss just paid ten million dollars to sleep with me.
I can barely wrap my mind around that fact. The fact that my twenty percent cut is going to make me rich at the end of tonight is something I’ll have to think about—to marvel over—later. Right now, I can only stare at Winston Creed in horror. Did he just say…?
The highest bid of the night is consummated in the viewing area.
Where we can all watch.
There’s no way. I won’t live through the humiliation. These men and the lecherous way they stared at me tonight will tax my memory forever. My skin is still crawling, the fear still weaving through my nervous system. To have my first sexual experience in front of them would not only tarnish it forever, but it would traumatize me.
“Yeah,” laughs Jack Lincoln, his eyes hard. “That isn’t going to happen.”
Cool relief coasts into my stomach and I step closer to Jack, recognizing him as my ironic savior. This is a man who pays my mother peanuts to clean his twenty-bedroom, eighteen-bathroom mansion. He’s the reason she can barely afford to put food on the table. The reason I had to take a job cleaning, instead of starting classes at the community college this fall. In our apartment, his name is synonymous with the devil.
When the man in the audience started calling out bids, claiming his client—Jack freaking Lincoln—was on the way, I thought it had to be joke. I’ve never even met Jack. And I definitely, one thousand percent would recall meeting this man. He’s nothing like the bitter old man I’ve been picturing. No, he’s young. Maybe thirty. He’s charismatic and wildly arrogant.
To say he’s good looking would be an understatement, with his wind-whipped black hair, a square jaw and piercing blue eyes. All that abundantly muscled height. If I didn’t know for a fact how poorly he treats my mother, I would call him a romance hero in the flesh, but facts are facts. He’s a romance villain.
He’ll pay to deflower a virgin, but he won’t pay the help a proper salary.
Those priorities tell me all I need to know about him.
However, he is the lesser of two evils here.
And he’s just told Winston Creed that there’s no way he’s collecting on his prize while this roomful of men watch it happen.
“It is going to happen,” Winston says, with deceptive calm. “This club has been meeting for decades and we follow the rules. To the letter. If you’re refusing to have her in the viewing area, I’ll have no choice but to offer her to the second-highest bidder.”
A line jumps in Jack’s cheek. “I wouldn’t suggest you try that.”
If I wasn’t a believer in Stockholm syndrome before, I definitely am now. Jack is paying to have sex with me, yet I’m granting him sainthood for wanting to do it privately. Have I lost my mind? Every man in this room is morally corrupt, including Jack.
So why am I putting my hand in his?
Why am I twining my fingers through his much larger ones and moving into the protective heat of his side? It makes no sense.
When our palms meet, Jack jolts a little, his arrogance slipping. He looks down at our hands, visibly shocked for a number of seconds, before tightening his grip and pulling me closer. I curl into him almost automatically, hiding my face in his chest, and now it’s my turn to be shocked. Since arriving, his attitude has almost been blasé. Yet his heart is stampeding like a pack of wild horses.
I peek up to find him looking down at me. He looks…caught.
Because I’ve discovered his crazy heartbeat?
He clears his throat hard and shifts his attention back to Winston. “I’ll pay more to have it done privately.”
“Bidding is closed,” Winston says, enunciating each word. “And perhaps you should read the room a little better, Mr. Lincoln. Can’t you see they’re salivating to watch you fuck the hot little virgin? It has been a while since we’ve had two young, attractive people in their prime give us a show. Too long.” I turn in Jack’s arms to find Winston gesturing, bringing two men forward.
They have guns.
Jack slowly turns me until he’s using his body as a shield. “What the fuck, Creed?”
“There is a…steep penalty for not following the rules,” Winston purrs. “If you’re not actively participating, then you’re an innocent bystander. A witness with no guilt. And we like everyone here to be nice and guilty, so there’s no fear of you talking to the Feds.”
Through the expensive material of Jack’s suit, I feel his muscles grow taut. An angry vibration sifting inside of him. This is a powerful man who never gets cornered, but we are quite simply that. There is no way out of this, is there?