by West, Jade
“Paige Emmerson is just fine,” I told him. “My question to you is why does it fucking matter?”
I leant against the post opposite him, pleased at how obvious his posture was to read in the shadows. He was hunched up, nervous but desperate. Desperate for her safety.
Which is exactly what I wanted him to be.
“I care about her,” he offered. “I know her from college. She’s nice. Really nice.”
I didn’t mince my words. “You want to fuck her, don’t you? You wanted to fuck her that night on the beach. Get enough of a taste to drive you fucking crazy, did you?”
Somehow I didn’t doubt it.
But no. He didn’t agree with me. Another indication that the two of us were such polar fucking opposites on the nice guy front.
He straightened up, and the offence was obvious. “That night doesn’t mean shit,” he said. “It was me being a dickhead. What I want from Paige is nothing to do with that bullshit. I like her. Not just like that.” I didn’t interrupt his pause. “I really like her, ok? I’ll pay whatever it takes to see her.”
I lit up a cigarette slowly. “So you’ll pay a big slab of your family fortune just to make sure she’s doing ok ahead of the sixty days reaching their conclusion?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll pay a big slab of whatever necessary to make sure she’s doing ok. Sixty days can get fucked, I’m not waiting that long.”
“And what then?” I prompted between drags. “What fairytale outcome do you have in mind after burning a whole chunk of cash to spend time with her?”
He shrugged hard. “Whatever fairytale outcome she wants when she gets to know me. I’m not the kind of asshole to push her into anything she doesn’t want to do. She can make up her own mind what comes next.”
His words made me laugh. “You think I’m pushing her into things she doesn’t want to do?”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Pay girls too much cash to say no, then force them into a whole world of shit they can’t escape from. That’s what you did to Rebecca Lane. That’s why she’s gone on the run, right? Just to get away from you.”
Oh, if only he fucking knew.
Running away from me was the last thing Rebecca Lane fucking wanted by the time the end came around.
I didn’t have the slightest interest in arguing my case with such a sad little white knight on wet sand. Not now, not ever.
“Tell me this,” I said. “If Paige Emmerson returned to campus as usual tomorrow morning, would it be safe to say you’d be there to take good care of her?”
He stiffened at the question. “Take care of her? Take care of her from what?”
I took a step forward to get a better look at him. “From the idiots around college. From any assholes who come calling. From herself.”
“Yeah, I’d take care of her,” he said, and his voice was watertight in its steadiness. “Is that what you’re planning? To return her to campus? What about the sixty days?”
“The sixty days are no concern of yours,” I snapped. “The only thing of concern to you would be the girl you’re so invested in safeguarding.”
“I’d be there,” he assured me. “I’d be there for whatever she needed. There’s no way I’d let anyone pull any shit on her. No way for anything.”
“What is this about?” I pushed. “A teenage crush? Some morbid fascination with damsels in distress? Guilt at groping her pretty little tits on the beach with your idiot fucking mates that night?”
Again, the offence was obvious. “I just like her,” he said. “I like her for her. I like her because she seems like such a nice girl around campus. She’s honest, and kind, and doesn’t talk shit about anyone.”
“And gorgeous, yes?” I prodded.
This time he at least nodded. “Yeah, and she’s gorgeous.” He scuffed the sand with his shoe. “She’s absolutely fucking beautiful.”
The pang in my gut was loud and clear. More fucking crippling than I’d have ever imagined.
It was the truth in his words. His clear fascination. The genuine enthusiasm in his voice, so fucking genuine.
And I felt it too.
She really was absolutely fucking beautiful. Honest and kind. Genuine and giving.
Fascinating.
And mine.
That’s when I knew it beyond all doubt, despite every scrap of cynicism blaring in my soul.
She was mine.
Whatever the fucking cost to take care of her for all time.
“So what happens now? You dropping her back at uni?” he pushed, and I realised with a jolt I’d been staring at the sand and not at him.
My eyes met his in the darkness and clashed hard, two men brimming with soul level desperation for the same glorious girl.
My girl.
“No,” I said. “I’m not dropping her back at uni.”
And with that statement the tides turned inside me. A whole backlash of ocean waves pouring right the way through my brain.
There was no way I was dropping that beautiful fucking creature back at university in the morning.
Oh Lord, how the craziness made me smile, grinning like a fucking lunatic as I embraced the whole sorry lot of it.
I backed away with an easy laugh, and he followed me with eager steps, one for every one of mine.
“But you said…” he snapped. “You said you’d be dropping her back. How much do I need to pay you? I’ll fucking pay it!”
“She’s not for fucking sale,” I told him, smiling right up at the starry sky. “She’s not for sale and she never fucking will be.”
“I don’t get it,” he said and kept on coming. “I don’t fucking get it. Why the hell not? I have money.”
“Money isn’t enough,” I laughed, for the very first time at the irony. “Money will never be enough.”
He kept on following me up the sand, but I didn’t care. I could have taken him in a heartbeat if he was idiot enough to try to pull his fists on me, which was yet another reason to trust Paige Emmerson’s care to someone who could truly safeguard her.
Just as well that person was me.
“How come it’s not enough?!” the kid asked. “You sell girls for cash. That’s what you do! Why the hell won’t money be enough for Paige?!”
I said it before I realised. Just like that. In the magic of the moment, just like sweet little Paige had earlier. The magic of the moment when the truth spills over and slams its way free from your mouth.
“Because I love her,” I told him, and turned my back without a single scrap of care for his reaction.
There was only one thing I cared about. Only one thing driving me on as I paced my way like a crazed man up and off that beach and back to my car on the street.
And that one thing was getting back to the manor to speak those words aloud to Paige herself.
Chapter Thirty-One
Paige
I was tired and battered. My bruises were paining with every step I took back and forth across the bedroom as I waited for a sign of him.
I was desperate for a sign of him.
I couldn’t let him send me back to university life without giving him every scrap of fight I had in me. It wasn’t about Phoebe, or the money, or staying true to my sixty day commitment here. Not anymore.
It was about him. About us. About the depth of my conviction that he was worth so much more than the monster he put so much into being.
He was more than that. So much more than that. I felt it with every screaming cell in my body.
If I could feel this much for a man so quickly, there was going to be no limit to how much I could feel when the truth in his soul raised its face to the surface. And it would raise its face to the surface. I knew it would. Him saving my sister confirmed everything I’d been suspecting… everything I wanted… everything I’d felt from him in those soul felt moments.
Hell, how I wanted him.
I tried to calm myself down enough to rest and recover, but my nerves were too wired. My throat
was thick with a thousand words I wanted to say. My arms were tight with the need to hold him and tell him all over again that this love I felt was real. Too real to let go of. Too real to walk away from without bleeding out my very soul in the process.
The minutes were an age. The night long and lonely as I prayed he’d walk back through the bedroom door and hear out my words for him.
In reality I had no idea how long I was waiting before I heard the first sign of movement outside the bedroom door.
My heart jumped like crazy, battering hard as I heard voices on the landing. I presented myself as the true little submissive he’d ordered me to be for the sixty days, dropping to the floor and kneeling with my knees spread wide, my hands clasped at the nape of my neck with clammy palms, my voice ready to beg, ready to plead, ready to do whatever it took so that he’d hear me out loud and clear.
I felt the presence looming hard outside the door before the handle turned, willing the universe to give me a shot at a good outcome for just once in my sorry history. I waited for the lock to click with bated breath. Ready. I was ready.
But the lock didn’t turn.
The handle didn’t lower.
The bang on the door made me jolt.
On the next bang I scooted back up the floor and against the wall.
The boom of the door bursting in was enough that I screamed.
The footsteps that burst in after had me hugging myself to hide my nakedness as four sets of brogues came to a stop before me, tall suited legs standing firm as my eyes crept up to find stern faces waiting.
And then a fifth set of footsteps sounded, coming to rest so close to my feet that I could smell the leather and polish as I shivered and shook, curled up against the wall.
“Good evening, Miss Emmerson,” a stranger’s voice said, and it was an older man’s voice. A hostile man’s voice.
I dared to look up at the figure talking. He was tall and broad and suited in the finest tailoring. The knot of his tie was perfectly formed. A host of badges down his lapel showed some grand status I had no idea of.
“Good evening,” I whispered. “Please, where’s Mr Grant? I’m waiting to speak with him.”
I thought Brandon’s laugh was cold and sterile, but the laugh that came out of this stranger’s mouth was enough to make me scared.
“Mr Grant won’t be around for any further conversation,” he told me. “Your sixty days are about to take a substantially different turn.”
I couldn’t help myself staring up at him with wide eyes.
His were icy. Calculated. Hard without even a sliver of raw soul behind the cold.
“Please, sir,” I said on instinct. “Please, sir, I don’t understand…”
“Oh, you will understand, little one,” he told me. “You’ll understand perfectly clearly soon enough.”
He held out a hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to take hold of it.
His fingers beckoned, demanding mine. “Come on now, Miss Emmerson. I’m taking over your contract from here on in, the rest of your sixty days belong with me. The more willingly you come along with me, the easier you’ll find the process.”
“But I…” I began. “But I thought…”
“Let me introduce myself,” he offered, but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to know him at all. “I’m Brandon Grant’s business partner, and as far as you’re concerned, I’m the only one who now matters until your contract is done.”
I wasn’t expecting his nod to the figures at the side of me. I wasn’t expecting two of them to lunge forward and take hold of me under the armpits. I wasn’t expecting them to sweep me up and onto my trembling legs.
He reached out and trailed his fingers over my nipples as they held me there and I couldn’t stop the sobbing tears.
“Please let me go,” I said but the man just laughed at me.
“Get her out of here,” he said and the two of them half dragged me out the door.
“Please, let me see him!” I cried out to the main man over my shoulder. “Please, let me talk to Mr Grant just once before I go!”
The stairs went quickly. My feet barely touched the steps as they took me down. And there, at the bottom, were the regular men I’d seen in this place.
I called out to the one I recognised. The one who looked a little too much like Brandon to ignore.
“Please!” I cried. “Please get Brandon for me!”
It was only when he turned his face to the side that I saw the blood running down from his temple. And then I screamed. Oh hell, how I screamed, but it didn’t make the slightest difference.
I was carried outside into the cold night and shoved into a blacked out vehicle before I could muster my senses.
I was alone in the backseat, a blacked-out glass panel separating me from the driver.
Alone. I was alone.
Alone and terrified.
The car rumbled at speed down the driveway as I slapped hard against the windows, glaring out frantically at the convoy of vehicles behind us as the huge house disappeared out of sight.
Please, no. Please, God, no.
The buzz of the intercom sounded loud and clear as we made it out onto the open road, but my cries were rife and frantic. Heart pounding hard.
“Welcome to a whole new world of sixty days,” the voice said from behind the glass screen. “I’d save up your tears for later if I were you, we have a whole host of purchasers who’ve paid serious money for them.”
That laugh again, so cruel. So horribly cruel.
And there was no way in this world I could save up a single one of them.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Brandon
The car tyres screeched on the drive as I came to a stop. My soul was buzzing, flying high, flying crazy with my need to share the three magic fucking words to the girl who’d defied every scrap of my common sense and snared them.
I didn’t bother locking the car as I piled out, just raced my way up to the front porch and burst my way inside with a stupid grin on my face.
And that’s when I saw the carnage.
The utter fucking carnage of the scene before me.
Eric was slumped down in the main hallway, with a towel pressed tight to his temple. A few of the security detail were hunched over desks in the office, my breath catching hard in my chest as I registered the damage.
No.
No.
No fucking way.
I threw myself down next to Eric, my hand crushing his shoulder and rousing him to some semblance of consciousness.
“Where is she?!” I asked. “Where the fuck is she?!”
“Drake,” he croaked. “You should have checked the fucking messages, Bran. Why the fuck didn’t you check the fucking messages?!”
Sickness lurched from my gut. I retched up nothing, struggling to catch myself as the full weight of the implication hit home.
“He came here?! Drake came here?!”
Eric’s eyes struggled to focus on mine, and I felt guilt as well as terror. “Yeah, he came here. Of course he came fucking here! She’s worth too fucking much for him not to!”
He was right.
The stupid jackass was fucking right for once in his life.
“He did this to you?” I asked, and pressed the towel a little tighter.
His groan conveyed everything, but words spluttered out alongside.
“He said this was a token gesture for taking the wrong side of the battle lines. Said he’d be back in touch when I’d had the chance to learn my lesson.” He gripped my wrist as I made to rise to my feet, holding on tight. “He said to tell you to stay fucking clear of him if you value your spleen intact. Said Paige Emmerson’s sixty days were the last thing you should be worried about if you had a scrap of sense in that fucked up head of yours.”
But I didn’t have a scrap of sense in that fucked up head of mine.
Not anymore.
I pulled free of Eric and landed a fresh squeeze on his shoulder before getting to my feet.
Then I lit up a cigarette, pacing out to the front porch with my jaw clenched tight.
My fingers were sharp on the phone keypad. I pressed his contact number without even a pause for thought.
He answered on the third ring.
“Well, well,” he said, in Henry Drake’s typical cuntish tone. “I was wondering if you’d be foolish enough to call.”
“Let’s talk,” I snapped. “Let’s talk Paige Emmerson. I’ll give you whatever you fucking want for her, just bring her right the fuck back here right now.”
His laugh was bitter. Twisted.
“Brandon, Brandon, Brandon,” he sneered, and I hated him with every fucking scrap of my being. “There’s nothing I want bar happy clients, just as you claim to. I’ll be taking over the sixty days from here on in.”
“Bullshit!” I hissed. “That’s fucking bullshit, Drake, and you know it! You fucking know it! Just fucking tell me what you want to get this conversation started!”
But the prick was already gone.
END OF PART TWO
Afterword
I hope you’ve enjoyed the second part of Paige and Brandon’s story.
Their wild ride is all set to carry on in the final instalment!
I really hope you stay on the journey with us. If so, you can pre-order part three here:
Own My Soul
Acknowledgments
My acknowledgements this time will be another round of thanks to so many incredible people that it’s hard to focus.
After finding my partner, Jon, dead in his sleep in March, life has been more painful than I could have ever imagined. I miss him so much it physically hurts. The triggers come out of the blue and leave me reeling for days and days on end.
Yeah, it’s savage. Really, really savage.
But, on the flip side of the pain and misery comes such beauty of human compassion that I wouldn’t even know where to begin with my thanks.
