by Shayla Black
She realized what she must have looked like when Oliver opened the door and saw her with her dress askew, her legs spread and wanton. She’d looked every inch like Callum’s mistress. Like his whore.
She scurried out of Cal’s embrace and wobbled onto her heels. Oh, dear god. The best of London society and many of the worst of its tabloid reporters were not a hundred feet away, separated by a few thin walls, and she’d allowed herself to be groped by a playboy who’d taken hundreds of women to bed because the instant he’d touched her, her brain had melted.
Tears filled her eyes as she pulled the bodice of her stupid dress up higher. When she’d first tried it on, the silky green gown had made her feel elegant and sexy. Now, despite the expensive dress, she felt cheap.
What kind of twit behaved this way and expected to keep her job? Only a stupid one.
“Tori?” Callum was at her side, smoothing her skirt. “Love, let me help you.”
She jerked away from him. “No. I have to go. Oliver, I understand that my services are no longer needed. Please let me know what I owe you to buy out the contract and I’ll send you a check.” She’d figure out how to raise the money later. “I’ll leave you the name of that PR person in New York I mentioned yesterday.”
But no way could she walk back into the Thurston-Hughes offices with her head held high. Never again. Certainly not, given the pure ice in Oliver’s eyes. She shrank back from his seeming fury and contempt.
“We’ll discuss that at a later date,” Oliver bit out. “If the two of you are through, rejoin the ball. Miss Glen, you should take a moment to make yourself more presentable, unless this fundraiser was merely a pretense to focus the tabloids on you. If that’s the case, then feel free to enter the party looking like you’ve just had intercourse. The press will write a nasty story about you, but don’t think a little embarrassment will have any effect on my brother. He’s used to getting caught in the act.”
Callum stepped in front of her as though he meant to shield her. “If you’re angry, take it out on me. Don’t you be a prick to her.”
She hated standing in their shadows, feeling like a piece of white trash, when only moments before she’d felt so close to Callum. That was the lie of sex for women, she realized. The act could feel so beautiful and intimate. The minute it was over, she was nothing but a whore.
Tori trembled, cold seeping down to her bones.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get cleaned up.” Her voice shook.
“I’ll take you home. We can leave here quietly,” Callum offered. “Oliver, I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“No, you’re staying. You’ve got a speech to make in twenty minutes for your fundraiser,” Oliver snarled. “Do your fucking job.”
She wished they would both leave. “You have to go, Callum. If you don’t thank the people for attending and donating, they’ll remark on it. Given the bad press of late, it won’t do the company any good.”
He clenched his teeth and reached for her hand. “I don’t want to leave you. You’re rattled, vulnerable.”
She couldn’t touch him now or she’d throw herself into his arms and cry. He couldn’t shelter her from Oliver’s wrath. She had made a terrible lapse in judgment, and he couldn’t save her from that. “I’ll be fine, Callum. Just give me a moment.”
His jaw tightened. “This isn’t over, Tori. I’ll see you in the ballroom. Oliver, why don’t you come with me?”
The eldest Thurston-Hughes looked her up and down, lingering on her rumpled skirt and swollen lips. Tori felt three inches tall before they both turned and exited, leaving her alone.
She’d ruined utterly everything. Now, she had to hope she could leave with some smidgeon of dignity. She feared that asking for a sparkling professional reputation was too much to hope for. And she wouldn’t even consider her heart.
With tears running down her face, she planned her escape.
* * * *
Oliver watched the conference room door. He wasn’t a fool. Tori meant to run. No way she would choose any other path. As much as he seethed with anger, he didn’t want her gone from his life. He might be a stupid bastard, but he couldn’t abide the thought of her no longer near him.
A young woman in a daring evening gown stepped up to Callum and said something, rubbing against him as if she was in heat. His brother flirted back with ease. Oliver scoffed. So much for true love.
“What happened?” Rory moved in beside him, asking his question in a low tone.
“What do you think happened? I found Cal with his hand in Tori’s knickers. He was two bloody seconds away from another paternity suit.”
Rory sighed and leaned against the wall. “Hell. Where is she? Is she all right?”
“She’s still in the conference room. I suspect she’s pulling herself together, though she should really be here so she can see how quickly Cal moves on.”
Rory frowned as he looked Callum’s way. “What are you talking about?”
“The blonde. He walked straight out of Tori’s arms and into hers. I don’t know. Perhaps she won’t care. Perhaps she’ll do the same thing with the next man she meets.”
Why had he thought she was any different? Why did he still care, for that matter? He’d caught her cheating on the man she’d promised to marry before they’d even exchanged vows. And here he was, loitering outside the conference room, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He really was a self-torturing fuckwit.
He also had terrible taste in women. But at least now he knew what cloth Tori was cut from. No need to treat her with kid gloves anymore. If she didn’t care about her fiancé and wanted a fucking on the side, why shouldn’t he give it to her?
Something nasty took root in his gut, and it warmed him. Oliver welcomed the sensation because he’d been cold and almost numb for so long. Any change felt good, including the need to get a taste of what his brother had gotten—before she left for good.
“He’s just being polite, Oliver.” Rory’s voice drew him out of his thoughts. “And now he’s actively trying to escape her.”
Sure enough, Callum was extricating himself from the handsy blonde. His brother turned away and began pointedly speaking to a portly member of parliament.
“Really, Rory. Give him time,” Oliver drawled. “He’ll be back to his old habits.”
“No, I think you’ve got it wrong. He’s serious about Tori and he won’t give up. At this point, I understand completely.” Rory hesitated. “You know I like Tori quite a bit, too.”
He turned on his younger brother. They were all mad for the girl, and she would destroy his family if he didn’t stop her. “You would have liked her even more if you had seen her a moment ago. She was spreading her legs for your brother while still wearing her engagement ring. Is that the kind of woman you want? Do you fancy Callum’s leftovers?”
Rory’s eyes narrowed. “Watch what you say about her. She isn’t some object, and she isn’t a whore. She’s a woman and she has feelings. I understand that you went through something terrible with your first wife, but Tori isn’t Yasmin. I don’t know what happened between her and Cal tonight, but I’m willing to bet she got caught up in the moment because Cal has more experience with sex in his little finger than she has in her entire body.”
“She looked pretty experienced to me.”
She’d also looked stunning, like a woman claiming her pleasure. Oliver had watched, and she’d been uninhibited and raw. Her beauty had shocked him. As soon as she’d caught sight of him, she’d utterly shut down, shame smothering her like a blanket.
He’d done that. He’d shut down her glow.
“Because you see everything through a set of pitch-black lenses, and I don’t know that you’re smart enough to ever take them off. I’m going to talk to Cal. Try to behave yourself around her. Just because you can’t see how pure and kind she is doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t. If you drive that woman off, you’ll have problems with more than Callum.” Rory strode away.
Oli
ver watched him go, blinking, bereft. All this time, he’d believed he could count on Rory when the chips were truly down. He’d genuinely thought his youngest brother understood him. All his siblings had closed ranks around him after Yasmin had nearly destroyed him. They’d sat at his bedside and nursed him back to health and assured him that he wasn’t at fault. But after a time, they’d fallen away as though they’d grown weary of waiting for the smiling, laughing Oliver again. Only Rory had understood that man was gone for good.
Finally, the door down the hall opened, and Tori stepped out, smoothing her gown around her. Oliver retreated to the shadows as she wiped at her eyes. When she glanced up, as if she sensed his eyes on her, he noted that most of her makeup was gone. She looked young and vulnerable and impossibly innocent.
Only he knew that face masked a cheating wanton.
Before she returned to the ballroom, he planned to have a talk with her. She would not jump beds from her fiancé’s to his brother’s. No matter what, he refused to let Callum fall into a relationship with a woman who would ruin him. Yes, Cal would be furious, but if he saved his brother future anguish, then Oliver could live in peace, knowing he’d served the greater good.
Of course in showing Cal the error of his ways, Oliver didn’t mind if he got a little pussy for himself.
Tori turned and fled the opposite direction, not toward the ballroom—but the exit.
Damnation. He couldn’t let her escape. He couldn’t let her play the wounded bird. Callum would fall right into that trap, and Rory, who was already half under her spell, would follow.
“Where is she going? Is Tori all right?” Claire approached, wearing a concerned expression.
Naturally, his siblings would take her side. Perhaps they wouldn’t when he proved she was nothing more than a doe-eyed hustler. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Help Callum get ready for his speech. Make sure his tie is on properly. He should be announcing how much money we’ve raised in the next fifteen minutes.”
“Is something troubling you, Oliver?” His sister had always been able to see through him.
He schooled his features into a polite mask and placated her. “Nothing. I’ll make certain Tori is safe.”
From everyone except him.
He left Claire and followed Tori down the hall, the world getting quieter as they put distance between them and the glittery ballroom.
Ahead of him, she sniffled but didn’t seem to notice anyone following. That didn’t surprise him. She’d never once noticed when he’d followed her before.
She managed to wend her way to a hall that led out of the building. When she darted outside into the cool, humid evening, she took a deep breath, then sighed as though relieved to be free of the pomp and the people.
Oliver was relieved as well. Now he could hunt her down properly.
Then again, she should be easy prey. She had no way back to her corporate flat. She’d come with them in the limo. Was she going to try to navigate the Tube in a designer dress that left her looking half naked and four-inch heels that would break on the first grate she stepped onto?
Absently, he wondered why she behaved with such maudlin desperation. She had Cal under her finger. All she had to do was bat her lashes and cry prettily. He would likely drop everything to take her home.
With a curse, Oliver texted his driver his location and continued following her on foot. When she got to the end of the street, she hailed a cab.
Luckily his car pulled up and he climbed in. “Follow the taxi, Charles.”
It didn’t take long before he realized she was heading back to her flat. Within minutes, the cab arrived in front of the building where Thurston-Hughes housed its visiting employees. Tori got out and turned to pay the driver with money she’d tucked into a clever pocket in her skirt.
The street was quiet at this time of night, though no part of London was ever really deserted. He watched as she stepped into the light under a streetlamp. She’d been crying again. It was there in the pink of her skin, the slight puffiness around her eyes.
Did she feel guilty now for cheating on her fiancé? Was she going to tell him that she’d been unfaithful or would she pretend it had never happened?
Tori made it to the door and swiped her card through the reader. The door popped open. He was about to tell Charles to pull away when a man dressed in head-to-toe black sprinted from the shadows and slipped in before the door closed behind them. A ski mask covered his face.
Oliver bolted out of the car. It looked like he would finally get that fight he needed after all.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tori sniffled as she stepped through the stark, contemporary lobby of her building, toward the lifts. Her heels clicked against the marble tile in the eerily empty space. She was alone. The hour wasn’t late, but it seemed as if everyone was either tucked in for the night or out on the town. The building employed a maintenance worker and a manager, but not a doorman. She usually liked the privacy and tonight was no exception. The last thing she wanted was someone she knew seeing her walk of shame. Of course it wasn’t morning, but slinking back here after running out on Callum felt wretched, both professionally and personally.
Her heels continued clomping against the floor, reminding her that she wasn’t used to walking in anything so high. She usually wore practical shoes because she was on her feet most of the day, nothing like these princess shoes she was going to have to figure out a way to return.
Groaning, she reached down and pulled the shoes off. Her feet ached, but that was nothing compared to the rest of her. She was weary. Her whole bright future in public relations seemed to have vanished with one foolish act, and the biggest idiocy of it all? She would be damned for spreading her legs at a work event for one of her bosses, and she hadn’t even gotten to have sex.
What did her virginity really mean if she didn’t give it to someone worthwhile? She loved Callum, and he would have made sure she enjoyed the act.
Maybe her virginity was holding her back. She’d come to that conclusion during the cab ride back to her flat. An experienced woman wouldn’t have lied about her engagement because she was worried about being hit on. She would have refused the men she didn’t want and dated the ones she did. An experienced woman wouldn’t have stood in front of Oliver Thurston-Hughes and felt shame slither down her spine. She wouldn’t have felt like a whore because she hadn’t done anything wrong. Okay, maybe the timing hadn’t been spectacular, but still… If she’d been a man caught with a woman’s hands down his pants, there would have been a quick cover-up and a shrug.
When she returned to the States, Tori intended to find some decent guy, have some hopefully decent sex, get the virginity thing behind her, then move on with her life. After that, she wouldn’t be the sort of girl who lived her life like a nun and turned into a puddle of goo the minute some hot man put his hands on her. Nope, she would be experienced then. She would take charge.
The plan seemed logical…but she didn’t love it. Thankfully, she didn’t have to unravel this mess and figure out her future tonight. She would chalk up her time in London as a lesson. She’d spend a couple weeks’ vacation in Bezakistan and hold a bunch of babies and try to forget that she’d ever come to England. Back in the U.S., she’d start over professionally and romantically.
A little squeak behind Tori made her pause. It sounded like the rubber soles of sneakers on the marble floor. She whirled and saw a large man creeping up behind her, his face covered by a ski mask. He held a wicked-looking knife. Terror flooded her as she gasped. She thought about running but knew she wouldn’t get far with her aching feet.
“Give me the jewelry,” he snarled.
Tori took a steady breath to quell her shaking. Surely, CCTV cameras lurked in the corners and someone would see what was happening. They would send help, right?
She heard the ding of the lift and considered making a dash for safety. Maybe she could surprise him and get the doors closed between them before he caught her. She couldn’t g
ive up the jewelry. It was too expensive. She could never repay Callum if she lost it.
“Don’t even think about it, bitch.” Her assailant grabbed her wrist, wrenching it as he pulled her close.
His meaty fist tightened around her wrist. Pain flared. She tried to jerk free. “Help!”
“There’s no one to hear you.” He sounded snide. “I can already see this job will have benefits. I was told to have a little fun with you.” He yanked her close and pressed the knife against her ribs. “I think it’s time we take this party to your flat. If you scream one more time, I’ll cut you. And I’ll still have my way with you. I don’t mind if you get a little cold.”
Abject horror threatened to overtake Tori. Her entire being revolted at the idea, but before she could fight him, the man
