Chapter Two
Dante
I have no idea what the fuck came over me. I was there to meet with some dipshit my father was supposed to be meeting with. The dipshit never showed, but she did.
I don’t get off on the whole stripper thing. Why pay to watch some stranger parade around for a bunch of assholes when you can have your own private show, complete with a blowjob afterward?
And then I saw her. Big blue eyes. Long, silky black hair. Big, luscious tits, sweet little rounded stomach, and the kind of hips I could see myself gripping hard as I rammed into her.
I had heard about Harry’s little auctions. My brother uses Harry’s services sometimes. It took a few words, a little extra cash, and Harry included her in the auction.
But a million dollars? I must be out of my fucking mind. I can get a girl without paying.
But I won’t get this one. Or have her pledge to do anything I want.
And there’s a whole lot I want to do to her.
I pull up to the address she gave me. It’s in a shit part of the city, and when I take the elevator up to the fourth floor, it smells like piss. I walk down the hall until I’m outside 4E. I knock, and a moment later, she’s peeking out the door at me.
“One second,” she says in her soft, sweet voice, and I nod.
I hear a chain slide, and then she’s opening the door for me.
One look at her, and I’m fucking hard again. She was cute at the club, but now she’s wearing a little button-down top and a pair of jeans that fit her curves like a glove. Bare feet. Still wearing makeup, but not plastered all over her face like it was at the club. The pigtails are gone, and her hair tumbles down her back.
“Are you ready?”
She nods and picks up one of the bags on the living room floor. I take it, then grab the second one.
“Is it okay if I bring a laptop?”
“Bring whatever you want,” I tell her, and she grabs a small bag in addition to the ones I’m carrying.
I can’t take my eyes off her. I should have sent a driver instead.
This woman, the sight of her, the smell of her, the things I imagine doing to her…all of it has me feeling like I’m already out of my mind.
“Come on,” I growl at her, and she jumps a little at my tone.
Fuck. I don’t want her scared. I have no idea what the hell’s come over me tonight. But that’s a lie. I know exactly what it was, and it’s wrapped up in the curvaceous, silky-haired, soft-spoken little thing leading me to the elevator.
One month. Mine.
I plan to make the most of it.
We take the elevator down to the ground floor. She’s kept her eyes down the entire time, and I have to confess that I didn’t expect a stripper to be this shy. I mean, she did say it was her first night, but I assumed she meant her first night at the Calla Club.
This woman, out of the slutty costume and the fuck-me heels, doesn’t strike me as the stripper type. And I just paid a million dollars for her, making her, very likely, one of the most high-priced escorts in the world.
I nearly laugh. I must be out of my goddamned mind.
We make our way to the door and I open it for her. She murmurs a quiet “thanks” and as she walks past me, the scent of her envelops me again, just as it did at the club. She smells like something sweet and citrusy, and I wonder if that scent is everywhere, if, were I to sample her sweet pussy later, I’d be surrounded by it, covered in it.
I’m so fucking hard I can barely walk.
“We’re over here,” I mutter, nodding toward my red and black Bugatti Veyron with more than a little relief that it’s still there. I half-expected to find some dickhead in the process of trying to steal it. I glance at Samantha, and she’s staring at the car, then glancing at me.
“I should have asked for more,” she says, and the hint of self-deprecating humor in her voice almost makes me laugh. “Now I think I sold myself short.”
“Well. I know this car gives me a good ride. How good a ride you are remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” I ask, raising my eyebrow. She blushes prettily and glances away.
I open her door and wait as she slides into the passenger seat. I close her door then toss her bags into the trunk, taking a deep breath before I get into the driver’s seat.
The engine purrs to life and I pull away from the curb. It’s about a twenty-minute drive to my apartment in the South Beach neighborhood. The huge steel-and-glass tower overlooking the bay is the first building I was in charge of for my father’s construction business. I oversaw every part of its construction, and when it opened up, I took the top floor for myself.
I never take anyone there. Even Marlena, who I was technically engaged to for a little while, never slept there.
And I’m taking this stripper there.
Did all of my brain flow down to my dick or something?
“So your dad’s in trouble with the Mafia?” I ask, shaking off my irritation over wondering what the hell I’m doing.
“Yeah. He was doing a good job paying them back, and I kick in everything I can, too, but it’s not enough since he lost his job.”
“What kind of work does your dad do?”
“He’s an electrician. He’s been trying to get started as an independent contractor since losing his job, but he’s not great at putting himself out there and getting business.”
I nod. I’ve seen that before. Good, skilled tradesmen are irreplaceable on a job site, but many of them are happier working as part of a firm than going out on their own. It strikes me that I can probably find the guy something.
Later. I’ll deal with that later. “He took out this loan to pay for some kind of arts academy for you?” I ask, glancing over at Samantha.
“Yeah.”
“What kind of art?”
She sighs. “Acting. I’ve wanted to be on Broadway since before I even knew what Broadway was.”
Something in her voice catches my attention. “Tell me more about that.”
She’s silent for a few moments, and I wait it out. I can be patient, but she’s going to answer me whether she thinks she wants to or not. Finally, she says, “My mom was a Broadway actress. I remember seeing her on stage. When I was little, we used to make blanket forts in our living room and eat baklava and watch musicals. I knew every word to every song of ‘Singing in the Rain’ by the time I was five,” she says, and a glance shows me that there’s a sad little smile on her lips that makes my gut twist, just a little.
“And where’s your mom in all this? Did she leave your dad?”
Samantha shakes her head. “She’s gone. Breast cancer,” she adds softly, and I want to kick my own ass for bringing it up.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen,” she answers. And then she sighs. “I knew I wanted to be like her. She was so graceful, so talented. Her voice was like honey. I kind of felt like, if I made it, I was making it for both of us. She wasn’t ready to be done yet.” And then she gives this bitter little laugh. “So I went to the same academy she went to for three years. Pops insisted on helping me. There was no way I could have afforded it, even with the scholarships I got,” she adds, and I nod. “And now, he’s in danger of losing his life because of me.”
The self-hatred in her voice makes me want to pull over and hold her. Which is fucking stupid. This is a business arrangement, a way for me to have an easy, no-strings escort for all of the mind-numbing but necessary events I’m forced to go to over the next month. I should be thinking about that, not about how to help her fix her life.
But the fact is, I’m already finding that, to my total surprise, I actually like Samantha. She is so far from the jaded whore I expected. She’s intelligent, well-spoken, driven. And despite her nervousness, she’s the rare woman who seems to know her own worth. I would have laughed in the face of anyone else who’d told me to pay a million dollars for the privilege of hiring her as an escort. I respected her for telling me what she needed. And we made it clear: we are both here for an arrangement: I’ll use her services as often as I need, and she’ll accompany me to the boring-ass events my father makes me attend. And when the month is up, when it is time for me to start my next project, she’ll be gone.
Easy.
“Well, you fixed that. The money’s in your account, but you won’t have full access to it until the month is up.”
“That’s all that matters,” she says quietly, and we drive the rest of the way to my place in silence. She doesn’t say anything when I pull into the parking garage, though I can tell by the expression on her face that she’s impressed by the building.
We step onto my private elevator, and she glances around. The sides of the elevator are glossy black, and I can see her reflection in it. A flash of me fucking her against the wall, seeing our reflection from every angle, has me hard again.
Tonight. I’m going to have her tonight. We just have some bullshit to get through first.