Deep (4 page)

He looked amused. “Not what? Not begging?”

I was definitely begging, but he was right. I wasn’t sure what I needed most.
Leave me alone.
Except that we’d come to his house. “Let us stay,” I said, my voice hoarse.

Someone would pay the cost of that. Shelly? Me?

He studied me for a long moment. Then he gently placed the blanket over me again, cocooning me in warmth. “Rest,” he finally said. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

And somehow I did rest—even knowing he was there, watching. It wasn’t a deep sleep, more like a haze of exhaustion that I let creep over me, a brief respite from the fear I’d known since men first stopped me outside the bathroom of the club. I was safe, for now.
We’ll figure it out in the morning.

I was almost completely asleep when I heard Shelly stir.

“Good,” Philip murmured to her. “You’re up.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick and weary.

“For arriving uninvited in the middle of the night, or for ratting me out?” he asked.

“Both.”

I kept my eyes closed, pretending to sleep. Maybe it was wrong of me to eavesdrop when they didn’t know I was awake, but I was far past right and wrong, white and black. There was only safety, and I would do anything to have it.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

She laughed softly, a tinkling sound that was somehow sensual. “Twenty bucks on the clearance rack. Sorry, babe. Not everyone keeps me in Dior.”

He grunted in response. “I take it you’re desperate, since you’re here.”

“Fishing for a compliment, Philip?” She laughed again. “Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t have come back otherwise. I figured you’d have me strung up by now.”

“I would have, if I’d thought you wanted it too. Adrian’s made up rooms for the two of you.” My heartbeat quickened at the mere mention of me. “You’ll be safe for the night at least.”

“And after?”

I held my breath, waiting. Hoping.

“Don’t press your luck, Shelly,” he said. “One of these days, it’s going to run out.”

It wasn’t much of a promise for the future, but it was all he left her with. I heard his footsteps grow quiet, and then he was gone. Shelly touched my shoulder to wake me, and it wasn’t hard to pretend I was exhausted—because I was.

“Where are we?” I asked even though it wasn’t what I really wanted to know.
How long can we stay? How much do you trust Philip?

“Somewhere safe,” was all she said. “Come on, let’s put you to bed.”

I let her take me upstairs to a large room with satin sheets like the ones at the hotel. Except there were no men with dark gazes and dirty hands here. There was only Shelly, her gaze almost tender as she tucked me in.

I curled into a ball beneath the heavy down comforter and pressed my face into the pillow. And pretended I didn’t hear anything when the unmistakable sounds of sex came from down the hall as she paid for my bed tonight.

Chapter Five

I
WOKE THE
next morning to the strange sound of birds chirping outside. It seemed like this mansion should be some kind of war zone, a place that animals instinctively knew to avoid. Then again, maybe this place was only dangerous to humans.

Someone had been in this room while I slept.
Not Philip.

That was just a guess, but he didn’t seem like the type to deliver clothes. There was a stack of them at the foot of the bed.

I used the attached bathroom to wash up and change into them. The jeans were a little long and the shirt a little loose around my bust. Shelly’s clothes, then. I tried to remember what Philip had called the butler guy—Adrian, I think. He must have come in quiet as a mouse. Or I had been dead to the world.

I
was
dead to the world. It had been almost a week. My parents must have thought I was dead by now. It was the most likely outcome. It probably
would
have been the outcome from last night, if Shelly hadn’t saved me.

Shelly.

I went in search of her, but she wasn’t in the guest room next door. There was another stack of clothes on the foot of that bed, but the sheets were too smooth. I didn’t think she’d slept here last night. Maybe she had slept in Philip’s bed after they…

After they had sex. How long had he made her work last night?

How long had she had sex in payment for my safety?

On bare feet, I padded over a ornate, plush rug that ran the length of the hallway.

Downstairs I found Philip in his study.

He looked harder this morning, somehow colder. His shirt was crisp, his jaw freshly shaved. He reminded me of a glittering diamond, all angles and weight, reflecting back instead of letting me see inside. His eyes were sharp when they glanced up, stripping away the borrowed clothes—and then putting them back on, as if he wasn’t interested in what he saw there.

And why should he be? I was a skinny teenager, and he had Shelly. Beautiful, glamorous Shelly—who shouldn’t have to pay for my adoptive father’s mistakes any more than I should.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice brimming with impatience.
You’re interrupting me,
his tone said.
You’re not worth my time.

I wished I had some of the anger from last night, the bravado born of adrenaline. It had been a fake confidence, but it had felt real. Anything was better than this trembling fear.

“I’m here to discuss terms,” I said, feeling not unlike a stowaway on a pirate’s ship.

“Terms?” the pirate asked, intrigued.

“For me to stay here.”

“You’re here because Shelly brought you.” In other words, she was already paying my debt.

Except if I let her do that, I was no better than my father. “If there’s anything I could…” I had to take a deep breath and close my eyes to force out the words. “If there’s anything I could do to repay you, I want to do it.”

There was a long silence.

His voice was gruff when he broke it. “Do you have money?”

My eyes snapped open. “No.”

He leaned forward, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Jewelry?”

“No.”

“A brick of coke?”

He wanted me to say it. “No.”

“I don’t understand what you could possibly give me.”

“What you’re taking from her.” That was as close as I could come to saying it.
Sex.

He made a rough sound. “You don’t know a damn thing about what I get from her.”

I flinched. “Maybe not, but I can learn. And if anyone should be paying my way here, it should be me.”

He stood, and without thinking, I took a step back. I sucked in a lungful of air—which carried his scent, spicy and male, deep inside my body. It made me dizzy, but I forced myself to step forward, to offer myself.

He circled the desk, and I realized just how tall he was. I’d been on the armchair last night, and he had been sitting when I walked into the room. This was the first time we had stood near each other, and he was almost two feet taller than me. His shoulders were broad, making him tower above me. It was like a shadow had crossed over me, an eclipse.

A large hand came up—to touch me? To hit me? Both had happened so many times in the past week, and I flinched. He stopped an inch away from my mouth, his hand loosely held in a fist. His thumb brushed over my lips, the calluses there catching like sandpaper on silk.

“Such a brave girl,” he said softly.

I let out a shuddery breath. “So you’ll do it?”

He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Such a light touch, so much softer than the men in that hotel suite. But this one held me frozen when theirs just made me fight harder.

He leaned forward, his mouth inches from my ear. “Why would I fuck a little girl?”

A little girl. The words clashed with the groping hands and crude words I’d heard for the past week. With the hotel suite and the dirty bathroom pipes. “I’m not,” I said, my voice raw. “I’m not a kid.”

Two words, barely a breath across my temple. “Prove it.”

He stepped back, and I saw in his eyes that he didn’t believe I’d do it. He didn’t believe I’d undress. He didn’t believe I’d follow through with any of it.

And maybe he wasn’t wrong to doubt me.

The thought of baring my body to him was terrifying. Flat chest and slim hips. Nothing to offer a man, unless the men were drunk and popping pills. They’d been so worked up they would have fucked a blow-up doll. Philip was very sober—and absolutely focused on me.

I forced myself to grasp the hem of the T-shirt and pull it over my head.

It fell beside my feet.

I wasn’t wearing a bra. There hadn’t been one in the pile on the bed, and I didn’t need one anyway. He could see my breasts, how little there was.

My fingers were already working at the clasp on my jeans when he stopped me.

He touched my arm gently. “Ella, was it?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

Only then did I look and see the bruises covering my skin. Dark and mottled. Ugly. A tear fell down my cheek.

“Not only little,” he said. “Broken too.”

I stumbled back as if he’d hit me. That was what it felt like—a wound deeper than those other men could have made. They could only touch my skin. He hurt me where I was already raw and bleeding, where I was all alone. My stomach turned over, and I was afraid I might throw up in his office.

Blindly I groped for my T-shirt. It landed in my hand, and I realized he had bent to pick it up.

Shoving it over my head, I ran out the door of his office. I would never step foot in there again. I would never speak to him again. I never wanted to see him again.

Chapter Six

T
HE MAN FROM
last night was in the kitchen, this time wearing an apron, with some kind of classical opera thing playing from speakers I couldn’t see. The room was spacious and beautiful, the kind you would only find in magazines. The wood cabinets looked hand carved, with real knots in the wood and a few subtle designs at the corners. The appliances were all stainless steel and gleaming. It didn’t feel lived-in or used at all, but there was a pile of brownies on the counter that proved it was. Adrian was bustling around with ease.

He looked up, and I tensed, prepared for him to throw me out—or insult me like Philip had done. Instead his expression softened. “Come in, come in. You must be starving.”

My stomach grumbled in response. “I am,” I admitted. Days of living on whatever leftover takeout they decided to toss on the floor for me had taken its toll. My muscles felt shaky even when I wasn’t moving.

“We’ll start with coffee, then? Or hot chocolate? How does that sound?”

“That sounds amazing.” I found myself reluctantly charmed. I didn’t want to like this butler, this cook, this piece of rich-man hierarchy that Philip had built for himself. And I felt even more out of place when I said, “Hot chocolate, please.”

He winked and made a steaming mug.

I breathed in deep, comforted by the sweet scent. Even this was rich-man hot chocolate, a lush chocolate flavor and creamy base, with no tiny marshmallows in sight—but it was delicious. The best I’d ever tasted. “Thank you.”

He slid a small plate with biscotti toward me, but we heard a sound at the door. I turned, relieved to see that it was Shelly joining us and not Philip. Of course judging by her expression, she had spoken with Philip. I had no doubt that Philip had told her how I humiliated myself.

“Would you like some coffee?” Adrian asked her.

“I’m good,” she said evenly, but she was clearly here on a mission. The look she gave him was direct:
go away.

Adrian gave her a look in return, though I wasn’t sure what that one meant. He did leave us alone, though. I focused on my drink, using the biscotti to stir it around and create a little brown whirlpool.

Shelly sat across from me at the rustic table. “Wanna tell me about it?” she asked.

I was not going to spell it out for her. “About what?”

“Any of it, sweetheart,” she said, sounding tired. “What happened with Philip. Why you were working for Henri. What your damn name is. You’re killing me here.”

Guilt seized my chest. “I thought if I could…”
If I could seduce Philip, then you wouldn’t have to.
“I didn’t want…”
I didn’t want you to pay my debt, the way that I had to pay my father’s.

I dropped the entire soggy biscotti into the mug. And as for the rest of it, working for Henri, I hadn’t been working. Not really. I’d been forced, and I had fought back.

I placed my palms flat on the table, feeling the hand-scraped texture underneath. “Like you said, if I had just done what I was supposed to do, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I didn’t want you to have to…have sex with Philip because of me.”

She looked away. “It’s not so bad.”

That wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. “I wouldn’t know.” The men in the penthouse had touched me. They had been planning on having sex with me, but I’d fought them. And then Shelly had come. I was still a virgin. “Apparently even when I want to seduce someone, I do it wrong.”

“Well, you don’t have to do that. Neither of us does,” she said. “We’re his guests.”

That sounded like a lie. Why would Philip help me without getting something in return?

“Philip and I will take care of Henri,” she said with more confidence. “So you just stay put. Let me know if you need anything. I’m sure we can order you some clothes so you’re not stuck wearing my hand-me-downs. Right, Adrian?”

I was startled when his muffled voice answered right away. “Right.”

I glanced at the closed kitchen door. “Um.”

“Adrian’s a terrible gossip,” Shelly said, which elicited muttering from the hallway. “We love him anyway. Couldn’t live without him.”

“Damn straight.” Adrian bustled back into the kitchen, this time carrying a slim silver laptop with him. “As if I need to eavesdrop. You can be sure I have more advanced surveillance methods if I were even interested in what you were saying.”

He flipped the laptop open on the table and navigated to a fancy clothing store. I’d thought we had nice things in my household—a new dress from Express or someplace like that, someplace where a T-shirt didn’t cost a couple hundred dollars. My eyes bulged. And this was a temporary wardrobe?