The timelines are wrong. I was told to bring a day bag, but Erin is talking like she did her packing after she’d had a conversation with Daniel. And NDAs. I didn’t sign any NDAs.
“Doesn’t he strike you as — ” Oh, just say it. “Overly sexual?”
“He’s definitely hot,” Erin says with a shy smile. “Very professional. Businesslike. Cold, I guess. But … ” She gives a little shiver. A pleased thought running through her, like a schoolgirl’s fantasy.
“But he’s obsessed. Didn’t he tell you about Trevor Ross’s business? And what about … ” There’s no good way to ask someone you just met about how things went when she fucked a stranger during tryouts.
“What about what?”
“You know.”
“What?”
I let it go. It’s too personal, and if Erin gives me quid, she’s going to expect some quo in return. We both look out the window and watch the clouds pass.
“So do you think that’s what it is? Like a reality show?”
“Maybe,” Erin says.
“But wouldn’t they have to tell us if it was?” My mind flashes back to the web page about Milgram’s experiments, the link provided helpfully to me by Daniel, or whoever made the invitations and built the page. Milgram once put people in a plane and had the only pilot fake a heart attack, just to see what the passengers would do when they thought they were going to crash. The test subjects weren’t told ahead of time. Doing so would spoil the results and ruin the fun.
“I guess?”
Erin is obviously nervous, but I don’t understand why she’s not bothered like I am. Her answers strike me as simplistic, maybe naive. She’s missing too much that could go wrong — that’s already going wrong. Or maybe I’m paranoid.
“If it’s a contest,” I say, “what’s the goal?”
Erin shrugs again.
“Do you think we’ll stop somewhere else? There can’t just be two of us.”
“Maybe it’s not that kind of contest. Maybe we’re just going to have dinner or something. To meet him. Trevor Ross, I mean.”
“But why? Who the hell are we?” But that’s something to ask, something I hadn’t thought of. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a dental hygienist.”
“But what makes you special? Are you remarkable in some way?”
“I don’t think so. Are you?”
I don’t shake my head so much as stand up and sigh. My No answer is clear, but mostly I’m frustrated. I’ve been twisted by conflicting thoughts every step of the way, my strings yanked by emotion and lust. Now that Daniel’s said he’s done with me and I’m trapped in a flying tube high in the sky, my head is returning to its usual cynical state. Why did I agree to this? What could have possibly possessed me?
In my memory I see Daniel’s arms. I feel his hand gripping my breast, his cock in my mouth, the waves of pleasure between my legs.
I pace, as much as I can in the small space. Daniel doesn’t turn, and I stay back from where he’s sprawled in his oversized chair. Then I sit, away from Erin, staring out the window.
It’s a while before I see ground through the clouds, but eventually there’s a tiny airstrip in the distance, nestled between a pair of neat little mountains. And although it’s hard to say for sure, I think I see the lights of a sprawling mansion not far beyond in the approaching twilight.
Somewhere I’ve never been. Where nobody but a select few ever has.
Somewhere private — an airstrip that’s never seen commercial traffic.
Somewhere, I’m sure, where no one will ever be able to find me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bridget
The plane lands, and the pilot throttles it around toward a series of hangars I hadn’t noticed from the air. Inside, I see all sorts of rich-boy toys: a second jet, much larger than the first. A corporate-looking helicopter on some sort of enormous wheeled platform. A few boats on trailers, although I’ll bet all of them are warm-ups for the inevitable yacht.
The plane passes the first hangar, and then the second, where I notice another limousine ahead with a driver standing beside it. The flight attendant opens the door and lowers some stairs. Daniel is waiting in the cabin in front of us, his blazer back on, hands clasped in front of his waist, staring at me. Unabashedly, flat-out staring. He sees me see him but doesn’t avert his eyes or crack a smile. He just keeps looking me over, like meat. Like a possession.
Daniel exits first. Erin follows. He waits at the bottom of the stairs until Erin walks past then holds out his hand when I still have five or six steps left. Without thinking, programmed by habit, I reach out to take it. He escorts me safely to the tarmac then toward the car. I look at him when he opens the door, but his eyes give no clue as to how odd this chivalry is, coming from the fucker he’s shown himself to be.
“You clean up beautifully,” he tells me.
I don’t know what to say, so I get into the car. The driver has already let Erin in on the other side, and I only realize that Daniel isn’t coming after the door is closed.
“What did he say to you?” Erin asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
The drive to the house is so fast, it feels almost unnecessary. Less than three minutes later, we’re winding a large round driveway, and the driver is out, again on Erin’s side, taking our hands to help us stand. He’s wearing gloves rather than the rougher, steadier hand offered by Daniel when I got off the plane.
I hear a low rumbling then turn to see the jet reclaiming the sky. I guess Daniel is only the errand boy, and now we’re on our own.
Nobody around here must trust the uninitiated with common sense because no step of our journey occurs without an escort. The chauffeur hands us off to a tall man with a pencil-thin mustache that was surely grown to make him look more like a butler. Alfred, or whoever he is, takes us to the front door. Then a doorman takes us the arduous eighteen inches across the giant entrance threshold and hands us off to a totally different manservant, this one in a tuxedo.
I take another look around at the mansion’s outward-curved wings before the door closes. Much of its front is glass. Many terraces and levels, stairways curving from here to there like an Escher lithograph. Gray stone with varnished wooden railings and accents — a perfect architectural match to the surrounding pines and snow-capped mountains beyond.
“Please.” The manservant is smiling, his every affect meant to convey manners and servitude. But I can read the true purpose behind that single word, too: come inside so we can close the door, you silly little girl; you’re bleeding all the heat.
Only once the tall wooden doors close do I notice the heat, and that it was chilly outside as light bled from the sky. We’re high up. Here, spring hasn’t entirely sprung. If I remember the mountains correctly from my trip a few years ago, it’ll be warm during the day but cold as hell at night. Not snow cold, but enough to make me appreciate the crackling fire.
Which, I see turning, would dominate the room if it weren’t otherwise indomitable. It’s the wood-and-glass room Daniel showed me, with the double-high ceiling and the spectacular, apparently west-facing vista where I now see a blood-red sunset. I notice the same oversized, modern chandeliers hung above the dark wood paneling, but somehow none of Daniel’s pictures showed the fireplace. It’s in the room’s center, and titanic. From here, where the foyer leads to an anteroom and then to a massive arch opening into what I suppose is a rich man’s living room, the fire blazing in the middle looks like something gone wrong. I attended high school bonfires that were smaller, and it’s completely unprotected. There’s no wall around the fire. No fence or grate. Just a blaze in the middle of a brick pad, with a chrome-and-wood chimney suspended from above like a restaurant’s exhaust hood. Space is the only thing keeping fire from the room’s occupants. The brick pad is twice the fire’s size. You can walk right up to the burning logs if you want, but nobody and nothing can catch fire by accident.
And the people.
The second it takes for the weird standoff to shatter feels like forever, and in that pregnant pause I think of the moment, in a movie, when someone says the wrong thing and the music stops to turn everyone silent and staring. But it’s only two heartbeats. One of the men stands. Comes forward. Takes Erin’s hand and then my own. He kisses each of them. A mountain of masculinity. Even with my heels on, he must be a foot taller than me and three times as wide. He must be three hundred pounds, but without an ounce of fat. Dark skin, like a Pacific Islander. Shaved head. White teeth and a smile that makes something inside me sigh, then awaken.
“Bridget,” he says to me. “And Erin.”
Erin and I look at each other.
“My name is Tony. We’re all glad you’re here. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”
I look around the room. One of the other men has sandy brown hair, is average height, and has a boyish face with a few days’ stubble — and an immaculate body. The other is about the same build but with dark hair. What strikes me about this one is his smile. I can’t tell his eye color from here, but I think they might be as blue as Erin’s. The eyes plus the devilish smile paint a sexy picture. While the first man looks like an all-American, this one looks like the troublemaker you should stay away from, but can’t.
The women are a different story.
They’re all intimidatingly beautiful. The kind of women that only exist in photo shoots. The male-approved feminine ideal that makes self-esteem rare for the rest of us. My toughness usually comes off as confidence, but seeing these girls — on their sofas, some possessively stroking the men’s’ chests — shrivels my assuredness to a trembling little ball.
Most are smiling. All but one, who looks like she smelled something foul — a girl with dark features, a model’s face, straight brown hair, and a sharp nose with a tiny silver stud in one side. But really, none of the smiles seem genuine. They’re all put on, pleasant to meet expectation. Yet transparent, with something sour lurking beneath.
It’s a contest, all right. I don’t know what kind it might be, but scanning the room I see only the false civility of rivals.
Good thing I’ve already made up my mind to leave as soon as I can find someone to ask. Or to stay only one day and not a moment longer.
Because Jesus. If these girls are my competition, I don’t stand a chance.
The big man points at the girls around the room one by one. He says their names, but I can’t follow them all. I hear Ivy, Kylie, Blair, a handful of others. Each time he says a name, one of the girls nods, smiles, or waves in acknowledgement. All except for the straight-haired bitch with the nose stud, who seems to have something up her ass. Her name, I definitely catch, Kylie.
“They’re your fellow contestants,” he finishes.
Again, I exchange a look with Erin: contest. Reality show. Some twisted billionaire’s game, with human chess pieces.
“I’m Tony,” he says, touching his massive, mocha-colored chest. He indicates the dark-haired guy with the troublemaker’s smile. “Logan.” Then the all-American quarterback. “And Richard.”
I find my voice, even though it feels lost.
“And who are you, if we’re the ‘contestants’?”
Tony gives me a dead sexy smile. “We’re whatever you want us to be.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bridget
Tony takes me and Erin on a tour, leaving the others behind. They seem so ensconced on the plush furniture, part of me doubts they could be dragged away, at least not without a lot of kicking and screaming.
We follow Tony out of the big room, but at the last moment I look back. Logan is looking right at me — almost through me. He has a dark-haired woman on one side and a blonde on the other. He grins while I watch, and the blonde’s hand slips down the front of his jeans. Logan’s hand, in turn, slides up the brunette’s leg, high enough that I see panties. Or where panties would be, if she weren’t bare.
I should run. Instead, I watch for an extra second. Logan grins wider, and it’s like he knows what I look like when I’m alone, when I’m naked, when I touch myself the way he’s touching her.
I’m sure — suddenly positive — that Daniel’s many dropped hints weren’t just said to freak me out. Tony is taking us on this tour, but I get the feeling that room was indeed waiting for our arrival. Holding back on something until we did. And that if we leave the tour too early, we might return to see things that aren’t normally permissible in public, but that are encouraged here. Or maybe expected.
I watch Tony’s massive back. I’ve never been with someone remotely like him. He’s not my type, never will be. But thinking about it and knowing what some of the others will be doing as we leave them behind … I’d never admit to the itch percolating inside me.
“This is the formal dining room, where you’ll eat meals for as long as you stay,” Tony says. We barely peek in, but I see another large room, another amazing view of the twilit mountains. The table is set, and there seems to be a dozen or more settings. At the room’s front is a shorter head table, raised on a slight plinth. The chair at the head table’s center is larger and more ornate than the others.
“Is our … host … around?” I feel stupid saying anything more specific. This is all so surreal.
“Of course. Eventually. But Trevor’s like the headliner at a concert. He doesn’t show up until the crowd is warm.”
I don’t know what to make of that.
We move into what looks like a second living room. A second fireplace. Only this room is subtly different, and it takes me a while to figure out why. It’s the cameras: large, broadcast-type cameras spread around the room.
“I’m not sure what you’d call this room.” Tony looks around. “A den? But it’s way too big. For a den. We just call it the playroom.”
Erin asks what the cameras are for.
“Don’t worry,” Tony says. “You have to sign a release before they can use any footage.”
Erin smiles and nods as if this is a sensible answer.
“A few times a day, there are people in here,” Tony says. “You can go in whenever. Same for most of the house, except certain reserved rooms I’ll show you later. But the formal sessions are after dinner. Participation of some sort is required, but participation is generously interpreted. Really, you can do whatever you want as long as you’re here.”
“Like play solitaire in the corner?” I ask.
Tony laughs like this is the funniest joke in the world.
Down a long, wood-paneled hallway. We pass a few fountains and a lot of art, but this place is decorated with a consistent eye. The mansion’s exterior struck me as contemporary without being overly modern, extravagant without being stuffy. The same is true throughout. The fountains are chrome and natural materials, not pretentious, but surely worth more than the house I rent. The art is probably original, but I don’t know enough to have a clue as to the surely impressive host of artists.
He pushes open a door almost at random then extends his arm for us to enter. It’s a bedroom, with the largest bed I’ve ever seen right in the center. It’s probably twice the size of a king, both wider and longer. There are four posts at the corne
rs and about a thousand pillows atop the extravagant comforter.
“I won’t show you every room because they’re mostly the same. Or more accurately, they’re different but same in the ways that matter.” He points. “Bed.” He points again. “Fireplace. It’s wood burning; you can use those logs there if you want to fire it up.” Another swing of his huge, slab-muscled arm, as big around as the largest man’s thighs. There’s a private veranda. You can see all of the balconies from the grounds, of course, but not from the other balconies. There’s a second bed out there. For variety.”
I don’t need a lot of variety to sleep.
“Bridget, this is your room, but yours,” he says, turning to Erin, “is almost exactly the same. I’ll show you to it later.”
“I have a bag,” Erin says.
“It’s already been brought up.”
“I did too,” I say, realizing I lost track of it in the confusion.
Tony points. I see my pathetic little backpack beside the luxurious bed.
“But there’s not much in it,” I admit.
“That’s fine. Trevor has specific tastes.” He opens a drawer I didn’t realize was there because it’s brushed steel and appeared to be part of the wall. It’s filled with clothing I could never afford. “The closet’s full as well. You’ll be given guidelines for what to wear for which events, but they’re only guidelines and you’ll find plenty of flexibility.”
I touch a second drawer. It pops open two inches, and I see it’s filled with fine lingerie. The kind I might buy for myself because it’s cute and comfortable while remaining sexy, and also plenty I’d never wear. The kind men buy women as presents for themselves. I shove the drawer closed.
“You’ll find the room fully stocked,” he says. “You’ll want for nothing here.”
Burning Offer (Trevor's Harem #1) Page 7
