I quietly sat in the back of the car and stared out the window as we passed the highway markers at a rapid speed. I was unsure what I should say to Kenneth now. I had never allowed such passion, hunger, and unrestricted lust with any man before. Now that I had, I wasn’t sure what was next. He didn’t seem to even care that we had just had sex. It was a fuck and nothing more for him. But did I really expect anything more? And what did I really want from Kenneth? Cuddles and sweet words of love? No. No, I definitely didn’t want or expect anything sentimental, or caring from this man.

I refused to give even the littlest part of me to a man, or at least I always had believed that in the past. Every day of my life, every single moment was forced. People forced me, the universe forced me, life forced me to count on me. Me alone. No man ever would enter my heart. Impossible to have a broken heart if you never opened the heart to be broken in the first place.

Yet… there was nothing forced about what just happened. No, I’d wanted it. I’d begged for it. And even now, with his seed still seeping out of me, I wanted it again. Harder, longer, and with more domination than before. Oh God… I craved his control over my body that willingly surrendered.

“You can talk to me you know,” Kenneth said to me as he righted himself in the seat beside me. “This is going to be a long trip if you insist on a childish silent treatment.”

“I have nothing more to say. I said it. You chose to not hear me.”

“I heard you.”

“Fine. You chose to ignore me.”

“Yes, I chose to ignore you.”

Silence surrounded us again as the day passed us in a whirl of fast landscape, and my thoughts drifted back to the wild sex that still lingered between my legs. Having been held by Kenneth’s arms hours before, his lips on my pussy with such skill, driving me to pleasures I never dreamed existed, I ached to again feel such intense animalistic pleasure.

We had been on the road for hours, my thoughts and memories of what had happened with Kenneth tormenting my mind. But he was still a bastard. Kenneth Saxon was a goddamn bastard. I had to remind myself of that fact.

“Why?” I finally blurted out, not being able to sustain my vow of silence.

Kenneth looked over at me to quickly meet my eyes. “Why what?”

“Why do you care so much about Spiked Roses and its reputation? You have all the money in the world, so why do you care about a damn club?”

“First of all, how do you know I have all the money in the world?”

“Don’t you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I suppose.”

“So do you really need Spiked Roses? Aren’t you a big shot lawyer or something? Why don’t you focus on that rather than this shitty club that forces women to return to monsters to get pissed on?”

He laughed and shook his head.

“What’s so funny?”

“Remind me to never pee on you. It clearly traumatized you.”

“Wouldn’t it you?”

He laughed again. “I mean, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just piss.”

“Just piss?” I nearly choked on my own spit at the absurdity of what he’d just said. “You can’t be serious. Have you ever been pissed on?”

Still laughing, Kenneth said, “I will make a deal with you.” He started laughing even harder. The thin laugh lines around his eyes seemed to accentuate the deep brown. If I weren’t so appalled at his belief that being peed on was no big deal, I could have found myself lost in their depths.

“What kind of deal?”

“I will tell Marco that he can’t kill you, and he can’t pee on you again.” Kenneth barely was able to say the last words of the sentence because a deep belly laugh escaped his mouth.

“I’m glad you find this so funny,” I said as I crossed my arms against my chest and stared out the window.

“Well, it kinda is funny. Just think the stories you can tell your grandchildren. It’s not everyday you get pissed on by a ruthless mafia king.”

I tried to hide my smile. He had a point. A disgusting and twisted point, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I agreed. My experiences since starting to work at Spiked Roses would certainly make for an interesting story.

“So why did you come after me and not send someone else. Surely you have staff or someone who could have done the drive.” I still wasn’t satisfied with his response. Why did he care so much? Didn’t he have better things to do than worry about where I was, or what I did or did not do?

“If I didn’t do it, someone else would have from Marco’s camp. I didn’t want your life at risk. Plus, I learned a long time ago, that if you want something done right, you need to handle it yourself. We already had enough of a fuck up with you bailing. It looked bad for the club. I didn’t want any other fuck ups to add to the mess.” He paused and looked at me. “Reputation is everything. I wasn’t going to allow you to fuck with the reputation of a business I worked really hard to build.”

“I still don’t know why you care so much about that damn place. It’s just an overpriced bar and whore house,” I blurted.

“Maybe so. But it’s mine. It belongs to me and my friends, and that means a lot to me. I don’t fail at anything. I succeed. So the last thing I need is to have people talking about a staff member taking the client’s money and running. The Tasting Room and the parties would be over for good. And if we lose The Tasting Room, it would just be a matter of time until we would indeed become an overpriced bar and whore house.” He looked out the window and released a deep breath. “But that’s not going to happen. Because like I said, I don’t fail at anything.”

“Do you think it is right? What happens in The Tasting Room?” Why I asked or cared what Kenneth believed I wasn’t sure. Who cared what this asshole truly thought… but I did.

“It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters to the men who are doing the purchasing, and the women who are doing the selling.”

“But what do you think? What do you think of the men and the women?” I prodded on.

He looked at me and studied my face for a few moments before answering. “Is this your way of asking if I think you are a whore?”

I shrugged. “I don’t care if you think I am.” But I did care. I really did care. I didn’t want to be a whore. And somehow I had convinced myself that as long as I wasn’t agreeing to having vaginal sex, that I wasn’t truly selling my body. I had only agreed to be Marco’s pet—whatever that meant—but sex wasn’t in the contract. So, I wasn’t a prostitute. Or so I kept telling myself.

“I think you do care or you wouldn’t be asking.”

“Fine. Do you? Do you think I’m a whore?”

He shook his head slowly as his eyes locked with mine. “No. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean that I like what you did. You never should have agreed to the things you did with Marco. It’s not who you are.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“I’m good at reading people. It’s how I made a shitload of money in the courtroom. Not that it is hard with you. You think you hide your feelings, but I can see them. I can read them easily. From the moment you walked into the office interviewing for the job, I could tell you weren’t right for the club.”

“Then why did you hire me?”

He shrugged. “A lot of women hired aren’t right for the position. But I also knew you needed a job. Call me a bleeding heart. I don’t know. And I liked that you were honest, you were sober, and you were easy on the eyes. What you did from that point on was up to you. You didn’t have to go into The Tasting Room. And you definitely didn’t have to sign one of the harshest contracts with Marco.”

“Have you ever contracted someone?” I asked, not wanting to think of Marco and my awful fate signed with my blood any longer. I still had some time on this trip to not think of the devil waiting for me, and I wanted to take that time to pretend I wasn’t going to hell.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t felt the need.”

Jesus, the man was a closed book.

“You don’t want a woman who you can have do whatever you want?”

“I’ve had plenty of women do exactly what I want. I just don’t need a contract to make that happen.” He gave me a wink. “I got just what I wanted last night and today. No need for a contract.”

“Ass,” I mumbled, hating that he had that over me. Such an arrogant ass.