Burning Offer (Trevor's Harem #1) (15 page)

“Erin—
 
”

“Needed permission. Some people just need to be told that what they want is okay. Others must be compelled to do what they actually want to do.”
 

It sounds so familiar. “You told me my problem is that I won’t let myself want what I want.”

“And so does everyone,” Daniel says. “The difference is that for everyone else here,
what they want
is a lifestyle, and their own inhibitions are standing in their way. Tell me. How impressed are you by all of this?” He waves his arm around the arboretum, but I assume he means the mansion, the private plane, the limo, all of it.
 

“It’s very nice.” I’m still guarding my answers. I don’t trust Daniel, though I’m sort of shocked by this side of him.
 

“Do you want it? With all your heart, would you like a place like this?”
 

I know what I’m supposed to say. It’s what everyone would say.
Of course I want it all. I want to shower with Dom Perignon and bathe in Krugerrands. I want seven handmaidens to slide my shoes onto my feet each morning and bare-chested Chippendale butlers to feed me peeled grapes.
But I hesitate because in truth it all seems so high maintenance. Brandon and I grew up with less than nothing, and in a strange way I’m thankful. I’ve always believed that the more stuff you own, the more stuff owns you. I’d take the limos, the plane, the mansion, the help. But only on my own terms, after I’ve satisfied everything more meaningful, and earned what I have.
 

“You don’t,” he says.
 

“I do. But not badly enough to … ” I let the sentence hang.
Not badly enough to win whatever contest you’re putting on here.

Daniel sits on a wooden bench. He motions for me to sit beside him, but I sit on a short stone wall opposite him instead, my knees primly together.
 

“When I said that with Tony, I expected you to be yourself? That’s where I made my mistake. By pushing for you to be here, knowing what I do. And what I don’t.”
 

I’m not so sure he’s making a cogent argument. Maybe I didn’t fuck Tony, and maybe any one of the other girls would have, or at least would’ve wanted to. But I did back my wet pussy right into Daniel’s fingers. My body still remembers his touch. My knees still twitch at the memory of my climax. And that’s not to mention the two other times I let him force himself on me. How I, too, seem to have only needed permission.
 

“You think you know me.”
 

“Not as much as the others.”
 

“You’ve been spying on me.”
 

“It’s part of why you’re so well compensated.”
 

“So that’s how you work? You think you can do whatever you want, then just buy people off?”
 

“Yes,” he says.
 

I wait for more, but there isn’t any. His cockiness has returned. His certainty that the world is here to amuse the rich man he works for. His worldview has been poisoned by wealth, which is one reason I’ve always been suspicious of it.
 

“And just because you’ve been watching me, listening in on my phones in ways the FBI might have a problem with if I reported you, probably having me followed, who knows what else … you think you’ve got me all figured out.”
 

The assessment comes out covered in bile. Presumption is just about the worst thing to me. I don’t like anyone to feel they can pre-guess me for the same reason I hate the idea of fate.
Nobody
pulls my strings. Throughout my life, the best way to get me to go right is to insist I go left. The best way to get me to do the wrong thing is to command me to do everything right.
 

“I thought I did, yes.”
 

“And Trevor Ross?”
 

“Selections were my job. He trusted me to do that job to the best of my ability.”
 

“That’s very nice of him.”
 

“Don’t act pissed off, Bridget,” Daniel spits, breaking my spell. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you. You’re too goddamn pleased with yourself to be a victim, and we both know it.”
 

“What the hell are you — ”
 

“I’m not apologizing for selecting you. I’m just telling you I made an error.”
 

My head snaps up. I look into Daniel’s eyes and realize he’s angry. If he’s been saying he misjudged me, that’s an understatement compared to how much I’ve misjudged him in this moment. He seems sorry, but his regret is for himself and his mistake. He’s right; he hasn’t apologized at all. I jumped from “it was a mistake” to “I’m sorry” all on my own, but that’s not what he means. Daniel isn’t expressing regrets for my benefit. And what I took for surprising tenderness was only more of the same asshole I’ve seen before.
 

“
You’re
pissed at
me?
After convincing me to come here, refusing to let me make any phone calls, coercing me into — ”

“And you fought me so hard, didn’t you? Practically begged for it every step of the way.”
 

I bolt to my feet. “That doesn’t give you any goddamned right to — ”

“I could have left you there, you know. I told Trevor about you, and he said no. But I insisted. I wanted to see what you were made of.”
 

I look down. He found out, all right. Right there in the alley. Fucking me from behind as I screamed into the brick.
 

“I made my bed. Now I need to lie in it. I can’t kick you out before it starts or he’ll know I know screwed up, but if you stick around, you’ll be a disaster. I knew it going in, of course I did. Bridget Miller can’t be coerced unless she wants to be! Her Highness
Bridget Fucking Miller
doesn’t need the billionaire’s trappings. Strip away your inhibitions, and what’s there? Just
you
, that’s what.”
 

I watch Daniel’s face. There are at least three competing emotions on it, and I can’t decipher a single one. He’s giving me half statements full of unknown presumptions, and I can only see the top card in his deck. Yet whatever this is, it’s a game he’s been playing for a while now. He hates me, he wants me, he’s sorry, and yet that seems to make him angry. He really did fuck something up; I can see that for sure. But it’s not just about whatever this contest is, or his job, or any of the other things he’s claiming. There’s an unseen piece of this puzzle, and I have no idea what it is, or how to protect myself against what surely must be coming.
 

I know two things:
 

Daniel Rice is bad fucking news. He doesn’t even know who he is, and that makes him dangerous. He’s wearing a tux but has tattoos like a biker. I’d have sworn he was vulnerable five minutes ago, but now I’m almost afraid he’ll hit me.
 

And I don’t need to win this. Not the contest, but the argument. The clash of wills. Daniel brought me here, and now for some reason he resents my presence. I could keep pointing that out to him, and it’s what I’d do to just about anyone else, simply to mock them. But I’m afraid to with Daniel. Best to cut my losses now. Get out while I’m ahead, if that’s what I am.
 

“I’ll leave,” I say. “You don’t have to kick me out. I’ll just go.”

His jaw works. His eyes have grown hard, and I can see yet another motivation working now behind the scenes. He’s a man with a team of warriors competing inside his head, and I have no idea what any of them want or which will win.
 

“No,” he says.
 

“You just said you made a mistake. You can’t kick me out. I can’t stay. So I’ll quit.”
 

I’m saying this for me. Not to help him. For me.
 

“No,” he repeats. “You’ll stay.”
 

After he fingered me, he said,
Stay for dinner.
 

And yet I know this man hates me as much as I hate him. Everything I’ve heard from him over the past few minutes says,
Get the fuck out.

I watch him, my nerves on high alert, sure somehow that he’ll come at me. Hit me. Push me down. Straddle me. Fuck me until I scream his name.
 

He stands up. Glares at me. And in that glare, I see resentment. Lust. Regret. Anger. Loathing and self-loathing. Fear. And indecision.
 

“Be at dinner at seven,” he says. “And if you’re one minute late, I’m going to stick my cock down your throat and fuck it until you learn how to listen.”
 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Fuck her.
 

FUCK. HER.
 

I knew it was stupid to bring Bridget into this, but ironically a lack of willpower sits in the centerpiece of our mutual backstory. I’ve never been good at seeing something I want but shouldn’t have, then taking it anyway. And these days, there’s not much I can’t have if I truly want it. Pop Tarts and french fries are behind me. Now it’s people. Companies. Power.
 

But the principles are the same. I used to be in the middle of doing something I shouldn’t, and I’d think,
I shouldn’t do this.
Then, hating myself, I’d do it anyway because desire is stronger than sense. And that’s how it is now. That’s how it is with Bridget.
 

I lock my office door. I walk to the closet, pull out the chair, and rake the clothes aside. With the door closed and Bridget’s light off, I’m almost entirely in the dark. She left some sort of a small device, maybe a Fitbit, charging on the nightstand in front of the mirror, and in the moonless evening that tiny light is all I have to see by.
 

Fuck Bridget Miller. Fuck all she represents.
 

I should never have reopened this box. I thought I had it all figured out. I’m in control now. I’m different now. She doesn’t even have a clue who I am; of course she doesn’t. I made a point to change as much as possible, ironically thanks to her. Now I live here, in this house, Trevor Fucking Ross notwithstanding. Every extravagant form of transportation known to man is at my disposal. I can raid the cabinets and wine cellar, drinking more in a light evening than most people earn in a month. I’ve trained so hard, I swear I’ve spent a decade hunched over a garbage can, puking from the intensity. I have the world’s best trainers, and always did exactly they said. I’m all I never was back then. Today, I could make Bridget Cunting Miller cream her panties by lifting my shirt.
 

So fuck her. Fuck this situation. Fuck her willingness to go, to help me out of the jam I’ve got myself into. The way things are now, there’s no way to win. She can’t know that, or know why. But I blame her anyway. Because without our past, I never would have sullied this competition. I’d have picked twelve hot women with corruptible morals to dance and writhe while Trevor held court. While they stood in line to suck his dick and he made his selections, thumbs-up or down, like a Roman emperor. Even while I was running Bridget through the protocol, I knew it was a mistake. I regretted it while it was happening, but my lack of willpower was back in charge, wearing a different set of clothing but pulling my strings just the same.
 

Fuck her for being who she was, who she is.
 

Fuck her for her sympathy.
 

And fuck her for
my
sympathy. Or really, fuck
me
for that one. Why couldn’t she be short a few months’ rent? I’ve given her almost twenty thousand dollars — pocket change for the company, especially given all that Alexa seems to be brewing. That would handle a person without someone to save. But research turned up Linda Bernard, age forty, living in the lap of luxury in Miami. I know Linda’s secret, too.
 

Fuck Bridget for her bad luck.
 

And fuck me for caring. I shouldn’t want to help, especially when my neck’s on the block to provide it.

The mirror window comes alight. Seconds later, I see Bridget enter the room, toss her still-off shoes into the corner. Her body language is angry. She would be; the arboretum is a bit of a maze. I didn’t want her following me, and she wouldn’t, after what I’d said in parting. But anyone else would be afraid right now. Nervous too, in a more practical way. I know the other girls’ minds as well as I know my own, and their profiles suggest that given this strange cocktail of stimuli, they’d be fretting, worrying their hands together, hearts beating fast enough for the room’s biometric system to pick up clear the hell across the room from the mattress sensor.
 

Not Bridget. She’s too hard for fear. She’s seen too much real-life horror to be scared by the likes of me.
 

I think she’ll go for her bag. Pick it up, stuff the charging Fitbit and whatever else she’s spread around the room into it, and storm off. She’ll either find one of the boys and demand that she speak to anyone in charge other than Daniel, insisting we cut her first check and release her, or she’ll march the miles it takes to get off the grounds, in the dark and empty-handed. If she demands payment, it won’t be for money. It’ll be to prove she’s not afraid, that she won’t be bullied. It’s the way she is. And always was.