“Your father knows,” she said to Nick, as soon as he had woken up. “He knows we're—he called me little bird,” she said, her voice breaking a little. He saw us. He saw me.
Oh God, he'd seen her. What had he seen to make him look at her like that?
“That's all he said?” Nick asked, rubbing at his eyes.
“No. He said . . . other things.”
“Like?”
Even the most unsound horse alive knows not to mount the colt before the stallion.
“It was disgusting. I don't . . . I don't want to repeat them.”
It made her feel so sick, the idea of him seeing her like that. Enjoying it. It must have been that time on the couch, she thought. He must have looked over the low-wall and seen us.
“Don't worry about it.” There was a dangerous gleam in Nick's eyes that scared her. “It will all be fine. He won't do anything to you. And if he does, let me know. I know a thing or two about what he's been up to that I don't think he'd appreciate getting out.”
“Like what?” she asked desperately. “Tell me.”
“I can't.” Nick patted her cheek. “You'll ruin my plans, blue jay.”
With those frustrating words, he had gotten up to change for dinner, leaving her on the couch. What plans? She'd wanted to scream after him, How are you going to fix this?
It was the exact same way he'd always been, though. Even as a child. Secretive and vague and utterly disdainful of the consequences. Whether it was being rude to the housekeeper or sneaking liquor out of his father's cabinet or blowing through the girls at school, Nick had never really put a lot of thought into the effects of his actions on others.
He's a boy, Justine. A boy doesn't fuck like a man. Not even if you call him Daddy.
Nick had come to see her before he left, letting himself into her room and pulling her into a tight embrace. Like we're a couple, she thought bitterly, as he kissed her forehead. “Text me.”
No, thought Jay. You can text me if you want to talk to me so badly.
He'd be gone for two months before his next holiday break. Jay didn't go to see him off, not wanting to be trapped in a car with Damon. Life immediately began to feel more like a prison. She stopped texting her friends back because she got tired of telling them over and over again that nobody wanted to hire her and she had the distinct impression that they were secretly relieved to have her negativity pruned from their life as if it were an infected branch.
Nick didn't text her at all, which didn't surprise her. She hadn't messaged him, either. He was probably off fucking some rich society princess who came from Big Tech money.
Jay almost felt sorry for her, whoever she was. She was going to get her heart ripped out.
Damon didn't touch her again but the way he looked at her made her feel as violated as if he had, and she made herself sick imagining what he could have seen. All of it?
Somehow, the thought of an audience made what they were doing feel even filthier.
Jay asked Yelena if she could have her meals an hour earlier than Damon and her mother did and Yelena acceded without comment, even bringing them to her room. Probably still feeling guilty over allowing Nick to put a price on her loyalty, Jay thought uncharitably.
It had been a cruel favor he had done her, showing her how quickly the people she had once considered friends and family would hurt her if they thought they might benefit from it. She couldn't even really blame Yelena for doing what she had. Not really. In the house hierarchy, Jay was firmly at the bottom. Yelena might have liked her just fine, but she was afraid of Nick, and fear brought more urgent results than love or loyalty did. Jay did not exactly instill the decisive need to obey in others—but Nick's father did.
And so did Nick.
She spent long hours out of the house trying to make herself feel better. There were plenty of things to do that didn't involve jobs, she told herself. She volunteered for the adult literacy program at the library. She went to the one thrift store in town and thumbed through all the CDs until she could have picked out the titles by the gumminess on their cases alone. She joined a few hiking groups and went out on a few of the trails, until some of the men got too creepy.
At one point, she tried to sign up for classes at the local community college and was unsurprised when the charge was once again canceled. God forbid she try to do anything to keep from melting into ooze. She pushed back from her computer so angrily that she ended up propelling herself nearly halfway across the room in her chair.
So he thought he could keep her trapped her because she couldn't be bought off? Jay threw together all the jewelry Damon had given her as a teenager—Nick's words, dumb bimbo, kept clanging in her ears—threw it all in her most expensive purse, and went to a pawn shop on the outskirts of town that was literally on the other side of the tracks.
She sold everything for $2300. It wasn't much, but it was more cash than she'd ever actually held in her hands in her life, and it was $2300 more than what Damon wanted her to have. She nearly stashed it under her mattress, but she thought that might have been too obvious. For years, she'd kept her diary there, and she'd noticed that it looked like it had been moved.
So she Googled ideas about hiding valuable items in plain sight and then, when she was done, she wiped her whole search history just in case someone was checking that out, too.
Jay glued one of her old Mercedes Lackey hardcovers together, sealing all of the pages shut so it opened and closed in two large pieces. She hollowed out the center with a sharp cutter she'd gotten from Nick's room, carving out two large rectangles to make a chamber where she could store the bills. Carefully, she replaced the book on her shelf, where she checked on it a couple times a week just to make sure the money was still there. It made her feel a little safer.
I have money now, she thought fiercely. You can't control everything I do.
It wasn't a lot, but if she ever needed to flee, it would be enough to get started.
Before she knew it, September had become October, and October had turned into November. The leaves began falling from the trees and there was a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the AC, which finally got turned off. Nick arrived on a flight from SJC to LAX the day before Thanksgiving.
Jay, in her room, heard him come home. He always slammed the front door too hard and it rattled all the pictures on the wall, making that eerie jellyfish sculpture shiver.
She tossed her book on the bed and went downstairs just as her mother screeched from her room, “Nicholas? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” His booming voice sent a chill rippling down her spine. “It's me.”
“Your father wanted you to call him when you arrived. I don't know why—it's not like he wouldn't notice you sitting at the table.” Her face poked out of her doorway when there was no response and her eyes landed immediately on Jay. “Justine, did you get the mail?”
“I did.” She glanced at Nick's open bedroom door. “There was nothing for you.”
Nick appeared in his doorway almost before she'd finished speaking, wearing jeans and a red Stanford shirt with a long black coat. Jay felt something in her stomach drop when he looked her up and down. “Jay,” he said, in a way that made her know this wasn't over, “come here.”
She walked towards him with deliberate care, thinking he was going to hug her. His hand slid out of his pocket. She caught a gleam of something silver. A necklace? She tried to look at it, but he kept his fingers clenched around the pendant so all she could see was the glitter of the chain. Her dread increased. “You didn't need to get me anything.” I wish you hadn't.
“I wanted to.” He reached around her neck, fumbling a little with the clasp in his large hands. “I got this in Santa Clara. We were coming back from dinner and I saw this store. My friends thought it was hilarious, gave me all kinds of shit. Asking me if I was whipped. And do you know what I said?” he asked, stirring the strands of hair around her face.
Jay looked at his bowed head. “No.”
/> “I told them that the girl I was giving this to would be wearing this, and only this, to greet me when I got back.” Nick slid the pendant down the chain, giving her a glimpse of the little jeweled bird, before allowing it to fall gently against her throat. “They asked to see pictures.”
“What pictures?”
“Exactly.” The chain dragged against her skin as he centered the necklace.
Jay stepped back. “You talk about me to your friends?”
“Not really. They only know I'm seeing a girl back home.”
“We're not dating, Nick. You're blackmailing me.”
“Would you rather I told them the truth?” Nick closed the distance again. “I didn't tell them your name and the only photo I have of you isn't one I'm willing to share around.” His arms looped around her back, pulling her into his open coat. She could feel the weight of his hands at the base of her spine. “It's a gift, Jay. Don't be so uptight about it.”
“I guess I don't exactly feel comfortable taking gifts from you right now.” She leveled a look at him through her hair, feeling her anger rise at the casual reference to the video. “Especially not expensive ones.”
“You took them from my father,” he said. “You wore that bracelet for years.”
“That was different,” Jay said, struggling to form words, “And I regret it.”
“Justine!” Her mother shouted down the stairs. “I think I saw the UPS truck. Can you check?”
Jay stepped away from Nick, grateful to have an excuse that wouldn't make her look weak. “What is it with her and the mail today?” she wondered aloud. “She won't stop harping about it.”
“It's probably something for the pool boy.” Nick stretched against his door, touching the top of the frame. His shirt lifted, baring the tops of his boxers and a strip of tan skin. “Isn't that just fucking typical. Fake tits, shopping sprees, and adultery. She really ticks all the boxes for the sad, aging trophy wife, doesn't she?”
Jay stormed past him to the door, where the UPS man was waiting. “Hi,” he said, smiling at her. “Mrs. Beaucroft? I need you to sign here.”
Mrs. Beaucroft. Jay's smile faded. “No. I'm her daughter. I'll sign for it. Do you have a pen?”
The man handed it to her and she scribbled her signature while he watched. Then his eyes flicked to something over her shoulder and he quickly wished her a good afternoon and left. Jay dropped the package on the end table, puzzled, and nearly walked right into Nick, who had apparently been standing there, looming quietly behind her.
“Mrs. Beaucroft,” he sneered.
“What?”
“He was flirting with you.”
“I really don't think so.”
“I know that look. I see it on the faces of a lot of the men who look at you.”
“I don't know what you want me to say to that,” Jay said coldly. “I can't help the way I look. You want me to take out a billboard and tell people not to look at me?”
“You know what I want.” With a crumpling sound, Nick pulled a paper out of his coat. There was some kind of grid on it, printed with numbers and letters she couldn't make sense of.
Whatever it was, Jay made no move to take it. “What is that?”
“It's my test.” He looked at her unsmilingly as she blanched. “You told me I wasn't allowed to touch you until you saw one. Well, here it is. Take a look.”
“Justine!” her mother called. “Was there a package?”
“Yes!” She snatched the box off the end table, looking away from Nick and his test. “I'm bringing it now.” She swerved around him, heading towards the stairs. She could feel his eyes following her, his unspoken anger making the air feel pressurized.
“Thanks, baby.” Her mother was lounging in bed with a copy of Memoirs of a Geisha and some sort of herbal tea that she'd gotten from one of her new-age friends. She had a whole group of them: they all wore expensive quilted skirts from Anthropologie and spent their mornings doing hot yoga while talking about the benefits of essential oils and juice cleanses.
“What, um, is it?” Jay asked curiously, hovering,
“Oh, nothing,” her mother said, too gaily. “Just something I ordered off Amazon, Kitchenware.”
That smacked of a lie. Her mother never cooked. Shit. Nick was probably right. “Okay,” Jay said slowly. “Well—be careful.”
“Did Nicholas call his father?”
“Not yet.”
“He never listens to me. The disrespect, I swear. You've heard the way he speaks to me. It's like he thinks I'm a whore, Jay. He's not like you, baby. You're so obedient.”
Jay winced internally. “Thanks.”
“Be a lamb and remind him, won't you?” Her mother smiled at her. “You're the only one with any control over him.”
“Yeah,” Jay said faintly. “I'll ask.”
Jay left the master bedroom, trudging down the hall. The door to her bedroom was open a crack and she was displeased but not entirely to surprised to see Nick sitting on her bed, now coatless, with Gypsum coiling around his spread legs. He looked up, leaning back on the bed.
“Lock the door and strip for me.” As he unbuckled his belt, he added, coldly, “I left the test results on the nightstand if you want to take a look before we begin.”
Control, Jay thought weakly, gripping the hem of her shirt in her hands. Right.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Stanford had been nice—he loved the open, sprawling campus. The freedom. His roomate, Philip, left him the hell alone, which he liked, and he'd met a couple people in the dorms he thought were okay. He worked harder in class than he wanted to, taking a grim satisfaction from wrenching the cold, hard solutions from the smatterings of data in lecture hall.
Before he knew it, those two months were gone in a whirlwind, and he was booking a flight through SJC. Returning home. To Jay.
He had his friends and wasn't lonely but sometimes at night he found himself rolling over and feeling restless. Missing the drag of her curls across his chest or the way her firm little ass felt against his cock when he held her afterwards. As the nights grew colder, he'd spent a lot of time thinking about how soft and warm she was, and how much he missed her mouth and all of the strange, bitter things that came out of it whenever she snapped at him.
She hadn't messaged him once since he went away.
Maybe I should have ordered her to, he thought, watching her take off her clothes. She did it very quickly, as if wanting to get over with, looking anywhere but at him.
And that was unacceptable.
“Bed,” he said, standing up. “On your knees.”
Nick saw her shoulders hunch but she did as she asked. He looked at her for a moment, feeling like he couldn't breathe, staring for so long that she looked over her shoulder at him. Whatever she saw there made her quickly whip around, her shoulders going even more tense.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, a little mockingly, wanting to hear the answer regardless.
Jay said nothing, still clearly angry with him. That was fine. He could work with anger.
His cock was so hard that he didn't need to touch himself at all. He took her from behind, going slower than he wanted because she made a distressed-sounding cry when he entered her. When he reached around to stroke her, she didn't feel very wet and he had to force himself to go slowly, letting her get used to his size as he touched her the way he knew she liked.
As he played with her, he said, almost absently, “You never wrote to me.”
“Neither did you.”
The accusation hung. Nick tightened his hands on her hips with a rather grim expression on his face and finished fucking her in silence, digging his nails into her backside as he came. She bucked a little but he knew she hadn't really enjoyed it, and that annoyed him.
Nick stripped off the slick condom and wiped himself off with a tissue with quick, agitated motions before tucking himself back into his boxers. Jay was sitting on her bed with her legs angled demurely and her hair draped over
her shoulders in two tangled sheaves to hide her body.
He tugged off his shirt and handed it to her. “Here,” he said shortly.
She looked at it with a sigh and pulled it on, yanking it down to her thighs. He liked the way it slid down her shoulder, revealing a glimpse of the necklace. He collapsed beside her, swinging his legs up on the bed without bothering to do up his jeans. His flight had only been about an hour long but suddenly he felt like he'd flown all the way from Japan.
“Come here,” he said, groping for her, pulling her body against him as he'd been wanting to do for months. She didn't resist. “You could have visited me.”
“Your father is doing his best to make sure I can't go anywhere,” she said coolly, primly tugging the hem down where it had ridden up. “I can't even buy a bus pass.”
“I'll send you tickets. If you don't want to kick poor Philip out of his room, I'll put you up in a hotel, too. We can go out to dinner. Wherever you want,” he added, closing his eyes. “There's a steakhouse up there so fancy that even their garnishes have garnishes. I'll take you there.”
“You can put me in a hotel and buy me a steak dinner, but you can't get me out of here?”
“God.” Nick sighed, letting his hand rest high on her hip so that his fingers were pressing into the crease of her inner thigh. “You're so frustrating. I don't want it to be like this between us.”
“Maybe you should blackmail me into feeling what you want.”
“We have an arrangement, blue jay. I have something you want and you're paying me for it with something I want. Quid pro quo.” She made a muted sound and pulled her hips away. Nick opened his eyes to find himself staring at her turned back. He scooted closer. “The terms might be stacked in my favor, but that doesn't mean I don't care about you.”
“I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it means,” she said. “Normal people don't blackmail people they care about into having sex with them. Because normal people don't have to.”
That made him flinch, and he hated himself for it, as well as for the brief flash of guilt that chased it. Angry himself now, he swung out of bed, letting her fall back against the sheets. Shirtless, he prowled her room, aware of her study and not liking it.
Quid Pro Quo: A dark stepbrother romance Page 37
