A Betty's Pledge: Volume One (24 page)

“You didn’t think I’d let you leave me that easily, did you?” I heard Isaac say, and
I whirled around to find him behind me, staring at me smugly with his hands dug deep
in his pockets. My fists flew to my hips, my defenses flaring hot.

“Ever heard of the term ‘privacy’?”

“Ever heard of the term ‘fuck me harder’?”

“You’re a pig.” I turned my back on him in defiance despite the pounding in my chest
and the ache his words had caused.

“You’re a tease.” His voice was closer to me than before. I could feel the heat from
his body radiate into my back, pressing into my exposed flesh. I felt my skin dimple
and burn with his close proximity—my nipples pushing through the slick fabric of my
dress—my body set aflame despite the cool breeze in the air.

How I hated the reaction he evoked inside me. Even from our first encounter, he’d
been like this intoxicating annoyance, one that had all my senses alight and preening
for attention.

“I’m not a tease,” I told him, hating myself when my voice wavered a little on the
delivery. “Teasing implies I’m making promises I won’t keep. Believe me when I say
I promise you that you will
never
be my Consort.”

“And why is that?”

A sudden desperate plea from somewhere deep inside me screamed to let Isaac back in,
to give him a second chance because there had never been another man who’d made me
feel so alive before. But my self-worth and pride seemed to overshadow my needs, and
with a deep breath, I turned and told him exactly how I felt.

“Because I would never give myself to a man who felt I was worth nothing more than
an orgasm. I’d never let a man treat me like nothing more than a means to an end,
and that was exactly how you made me feel today by the car.”

I saw a slight tension in his eyes, but his gaze never left mine. He stood there staring
at me, seeming to read something in my expression that caused him pain. I stood my
ground, never wavering in my stance or my opinion of him, despite how it made my heart
hammer seeing him change into a man I didn’t recognize.

It wasn’t the asshole I’d met before, not the charismatic man from the party. He seemed
different, tortured, letting me see the truth within. What I saw had probably been
the one emotion that could’ve changed my horrible assessment of Isaac Wilson.

Humility.

Isaac was ashamed.

Or embarrassed, more like. Either way, I could read it as plain as day on his expression,
and that little voice deep inside me reared her head once more, whispering words of
second chances and reckless nights of passion.

“I don’t know what to say, Mady,” Isaac told me as he took a step back, his posture
and stature completely different from the self-indignant man he’d been only moments
prior. “I never meant to make you feel that way.”

“And yet you did.”

“I truly didn’t mean to, Mady. I was just dealing with . . . something . . . today,
and I didn’t know how to cope with it, I guess.”

“So you thought treating me like pond scum would make you feel better?”

“No.” he said, running his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry
if I made you feel that way. I’d never think of you like that.”

“Why not?” I let out a humorless chuckle. “You don’t know me, and it’s not like I
didn’t offer myself up to you on a silver platter. I guess all of us Betties seem
like mindless sluts to you, don’t we?”

“I don’t view any of you like that.” His tone became defensive. “I have a lot of respect
for the Betties.”

“Really? ’Cause it seemed like you were heading out here for a quick fuck.” I turned
abruptly to head back to the house, wanting him to sit and simmer in my accusation,
as my mind started whirling with new questions about all of this Grant bullshit.

“Stop that.” He caught me by the arm. “Stop saying shit like that.”

“I think I’m starting to see this program clearly for the first time,” I told him
bitterly, ripping my arm free from his hold. “The gift that Jackson gave me tonight
is just payment for services rendered, isn’t it? That’s my royalties from you boys—a
premature thanks for letting you all have your way with me.”

“No.”

“Perhaps you all feel that if you wave a couple grand in front of the poor girl’s
face she’d sell herself out to the highest bidder.”

“It’s not like that. Stop it!”

“Really? Then why do you feel like you can treat a woman the way that you have treated
me and still be allowed to fuck her?”

“I—” His words seemed stuck in his throat.

“You say this program is not about taking advantage of women, then tell me why, Isaac?
Justify your actions.”

“I can’t,” he admitted finally. “I’m sorry, Mady. I acted like a selfish pig and I’m
sorry. I made you feel like that night at the party had meant nothing to me, when
in fact, it meant a lot.”

“Yeah, at the moment I’m sure it meant a lot to your hard-on.”

“No, Madeline.” Taking a step closer, he reached his hand out to cradle my face in
his palm. Part of me cringed at the contact, but the softer side of me—the one that
wanted to trust that Isaac wasn’t the prick I’d met this morning—stopped my body from
backing away. “It meant more to me than I can express. I don’t ever want you to think
that what you offer me is taken for granted. You deserve respect. You deserve to be
cherished, and I didn’t hold up on my side of the bargain.”

I stared into his eyes for a moment, hoping to gauge the sincerity of his words. I
wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust him because I didn’t think my heart could
take the disappointment.

Channeling my father’s skill at reading and assessing a person’s veracity, I looked
at Isaac through the eyes of an observer, trying to discount my emotions and inner
pleas to give him one more chance. Isaac looked sincere and remorseful. He watched
carefully, waiting for my response. I studied his eyes and the way he watched me with
not the eyes of a man wanting to have sex with me, but of a man who’d made a mistake
and was asking for forgiveness. And in that moment I knew I’d give him just one more
chance.

“Don’t do it again,” I told him plainly, leaving no room for argument. I allowed him
to pull me into him, smiling softly as I felt him wrap his arms around me and place
a small kiss on the top of my head.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered the words into my hair, and my heart shed just one minuscule
layer of ice from around it. We stood like that for several minutes, long enough to
have drawn the attention of the other residents in the house to our absence.

As we made our way slowly back to the house hand in hand, I couldn’t help but feel
like the small bubble I’d had around me had burst. I was delusional, I realized, in
regards to my earlier assessment of the Grants. It seemed there would be more to all
of this entire illustrious sex club stuff than I bargained for.

I didn’t plan on my heart being hurt because I’d figured that this whole thing came
with no strings attached. But in the end, it had been silly of me to think I could
check my emotions at the door, especially when the other Pledges here continued to
make me feel less of woman. Between Sonia and Isaac’s behavior, I couldn’t help but
think for just a moment that I’d bitten off more than I could chew by being here.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Isaac said as we approached the back door to the mansion.

“Sure.”

“Will you still consider me to be your first?” I took a step back, surprised by his
question. Probably interpreting my action as the beginning of another confrontation,
Isaac hurried on to explain. “It’s just that I want to make up for my earlier behavior.
I need to show you what I think of you, and I don’t want other people interfering
with that.”

“What happened to ‘I will be your first, do you understand that? After moving day,
you will be in my bed.’ You sounded so sure of yourself then. Having doubts?”

I smiled to let him know that I was kidding, and soon enough, the cocky as hell, fucking
sex-god came back and turned my panties into mush.

“Don’t worry, baby.” His fingers traced the bare skin of my back, setting my body
aflame. “I won’t leave you doubting any part of me again.”

The Invitation

~ Madeline Cain ~

It had comes down to this moment. The invitations were in and I had to choose one.

I stood in my bedroom looking at both elegantly scripted envelopes with invitations
for a night with a Consort. The enormity of what I was about to undertake came crushing
down on me. My confrontation with Isaac the night before had really opened my eyes
to this place. I wasn’t sure I liked the air of superiority most of these Betties
had about them. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

The men seemed to be ten times worse. Brad was an idiot, that much had been certain.
And Isaac . . . well, the way he stood there staring at me, smug and sure that I’d
just open my legs for him at a flash of his sexy smirk had set my teeth on edge. Of
course, I realized that I was currently a resident of an elusive sex club, but I wasn’t
a whore. I wasn’t someone who cheapened sex to be nothing more than an easy lay. If
that’s what I wanted, I could go back home.

Contemplating everything with two invitations in front of me to partake in some incredibly
hot fucking by two gorgeous men seemed to be a bit ridiculous to me. I guessed the
question was futile at the moment. I was going to do it regardless of any argument
I formulated in my mind in an attempt to save my dwindling sense of propriety. That
had disappeared the moment I’d decided that this utter bullshit was the most important
thing in my life.

“So are you just going to stare at them all damn day or are you going to open them?”
Diane’s voice echoed from behind me where she sat perched on my bed, awaiting my decision.
She’d been pretty quiet up until that point, and I honestly had forgotten she’d been
there.

“I’m thinking.” I kept up my vigil before the two envelopes, staring at them as if
they’d spontaneously open, telling me which one to choose.

“How can you be thinking about it when you don’t even know who the invitations are
from?”

I let out a large huff of air, not really knowing how to answer her question without
divulging the internal battle that had been raging in my mind since my argument with
Isaac.

“I’m just . . . nervous.”

It was an honest response, probably the one she was expecting, in any case. So what
if I wasn’t being one hundred percent honest with my Dame, the only person in this
house I’d been requested to confide in. Pledges didn’t get kicked out for keeping
their inner monologues silent, did they?

“Having second thoughts?” Diane was developing a freakish way to read what resided
inside my brain. She had quickly deciphered my little cues, interpreted them, and
turned it around on me with the ease of a life-long friend. Perhaps it was because
she learned how to read me so well while we’d been intimate, but only Mina had that
ability in the past. It was a welcome gift because I honestly didn’t think I would
have said anything to her without her prompting. Without meeting her gaze, I nodded.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Mady,” Diane admonished, and the fact that she was trying
to make me sell out my convictions without a second thought made me laugh.

“How can I not have second thought? I mean, yeah this all sounded like a hell of a
good time coming into it. But now that I literally have two invitations to fuck sitting
in front of me, everything else is coming into question.”

“But that’s where you have to look at it differently, Mady,” Diane said, rising from
the bed and coming to stand beside me. “This is not about fucking or getting your
rocks off. This is something totally different.”

I looked at her, my eyebrow raised in a stone-cold flat expression of incredulity.

“It is,” she said, her tone defensive. “I know you can’t see that now because you
haven’t experienced it yet, but this is more about self-discovery than you can possibly
imagine. You will learn things about yourself, not only sexually, but about your heart’s
most intimate desires, that will shape how you live the rest of your life.”

I laughed. “You’re telling me that these men have the power to make me see myself
clearly?” I couldn’t help the mocking tone in my voice.

“No, you smartass.” Diane smacked my shoulder. “They do, however, have the power to
make you see the heavens.”

“I’m sure. Every man in this house is trained on how to make a woman come on command?”

Diane just looked at me pointedly in answer, her expression giving me the impression
that it was, in fact, a true statement.

“Just open them, Mady.” Diane encouraged me with a little nudge at my shoulder. I
took a deep breath and peeled back the tab to the first envelope. Inside was a flat
piece of stationery with short bold lettering in the middle.

Mady,

I meant what I told you when I first met you. Seductive clothing has its purpose.
I would love to show you exactly what I meant this weekend.

Carson Price