by Skye Warren
It wouldn’t be safe for us anywhere.
That was how we ended up at the door of a mansion.
The high gates and tension in Shelly made my heart skip. “I don’t want to go here.”
“Sorry to say, we’re running low on options. What, you don’t like rich people?” She glanced at me, and I read the truth in her eyes. Whoever owned this mansion was dangerous. Even more dangerous than the man after us. That was the only way we’d be safe.
Safe had become a relative term. “I don’t like men,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Men aren’t for liking, Ella.”
“What are they for, then? Fucking?” My stomach turned over at the memory of the men in that hotel room. Of the men in that empty house, coming in to use the bathroom while I was chained to the pipes. Of all men, everywhere. “For money?”
“At least I provide a service when I take their money.”
So she thought I’d gotten paid for being there, that I’d made a deal and then backed out. It wasn’t the truth, but I didn’t bother correcting her. It didn’t matter how she thought I’d ended up there. All that mattered was that I was out now. And I would never go back.
We stopped at a metal pad outside the wrought-iron gate, a little green light the only illumination besides the moon. She typed in a number, and the gate rattled open. Whoever this was, Shelly knew him, and knew him well. She pulled the car into the circular drive as the gate closed behind us.
The engine popped under the hood as it cooled. Shelly wiped her palms on her dress.
She’d had nothing but confidence since I met her. Now she looked scared.
“You seem…nervous,” I told her, which was a charitable description.
Her lips pressed together. She said nothing, which only made me nervous too.
I glanced at the forbidding facade of the mansion. “I mean, why wouldn’t you come here first—a loaded guy like this in your address book?” Not just a man she knew. One she knew well enough to have a security code. “Unless he’s really bad.”
“He’s my friend,” she said, her voice somehow small. “It’s just that…well, he might be upset with me.”
Shit. “What’d you do?”
“I sold him out.” She sighed, resigned. “Almost got him killed.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know much about powerful criminals, but I would have thought that was a death sentence for her. She seemed to know it too, her expression chillingly blank.
We were both tense as we approached the front door. A man in a smart vest and slacks answered the door. His clothes looked expensive enough, his eyes jaded enough, but he didn’t quite exude power. And definitely not anger. He seemed more bored than anything.
“Philip’s not here,” he said, and I couldn’t help a quiet sigh of relief. I didn’t want to meet this man—a man who could inspire fear in a woman as self-assured as Shelly.
Except I could feel Shelly’s panic—and I knew that we had nowhere else to go.
“But you’re free to wait here until he returns.”
*
WE WAITED IN some kind of living room, the oversize molding and furniture making me feel small. Shelly kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa, falling asleep within minutes. Apparently it had been a bad night for her.
I was right there with her, dark memories following me into sleep, crowding my nightmares.
I dreamed of men’s leering faces and cruel words. I dreamed of rough hands and lingering pain. I dreamed of a warm weight on top of me—and I fought it. Just like before, I kicked and punched, determined to fight my way out.
“Shhh,” came a voice I didn’t recognize. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
My vision slowly cleared from sleep, blurry shapes sharpening into a man. He wore a white dress shirt, slightly rumpled but clearly well fit on his powerful frame. His gaze took in everything—from my tangled hair to my messy makeup to the bruises on my wrists.
And he was holding a blanket.
That had been the weight I dreamed about. He wasn’t going to hurt me.
This must be the man we came to see. The man who owned this mansion. The man more dangerous than the one who hunted us now.
“You’re Philip.”
He gave me a small smile. “And you are?”
I shrugged, only half-awake. “She calls me Ella.”
He glanced at Shelly, who was asleep on the couch. “Why did she bring you here?”
Would he kick us out? If he did, I’d have nowhere to go. Nowhere safe. I’d be lost. But even more than myself, I was worried for Shelly. She had betrayed him, she said. Sold him out. He might kill her—and she’d risked so much for me already.
“Please don’t hurt her,” I whispered. “She saved me.”
A slight frown crossed his handsome face. “Why would you say that?”
Oh shit, what if he didn’t know what she’d done? I couldn’t tell him. “No reason.”
Then he did something that surprised me. He laughed softly. “All right, Ella. I’m not going to hurt her. Even if she is fucking a cop.”
My throat was dry. “Please.”
Something dark flickered in his eyes. He reached for me, and I flinched. It didn’t stop him. He ran a finger down my cheek, barely a whisper, maybe not even touching, just moving the air. “So soft. You don’t even know what you’re begging for, do you?”
The air felt too thin. I couldn’t breathe enough in. “I’m not.”
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
THE 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 lefto
ver 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.
