Chapter Five
I WOKE THE next morning to the strange sound of birds chirping outside. It seemed like this mansion should be some kind of war zone, a place that animals instinctively knew to avoid. Then again, maybe this place was only dangerous to humans.
Someone had been in this room while I slept. Not Philip.
That was just a guess, but he didn’t seem like the type to deliver clothes. There was a stack of them at the foot of the bed.
I used the attached bathroom to wash up and change into them. The jeans were a little long and the shirt a little loose around my bust. Shelly’s clothes, then. I tried to remember what Philip had called the butler guy—Adrian, I think. He must have come in quiet as a mouse. Or I had been dead to the world.
I was dead to the world. It had been almost a week. My parents must have thought I was dead by now. It was the most likely outcome. It probably would have been the outcome from last night, if Shelly hadn’t saved me.
Shelly.
I went in search of her, but she wasn’t in the guest room next door. There was another stack of clothes on the foot of that bed, but the sheets were too smooth. I didn’t think she’d slept here last night. Maybe she had slept in Philip’s bed after they…
After they had sex. How long had he made her work last night?
How long had she had sex in payment for my safety?
On bare feet, I padded over a ornate, plush rug that ran the length of the hallway.
Downstairs I found Philip in his study.
He looked harder this morning, somehow colder. His shirt was crisp, his jaw freshly shaved. He reminded me of a glittering diamond, all angles and weight, reflecting back instead of letting me see inside. His eyes were sharp when they glanced up, stripping away the borrowed clothes—and then putting them back on, as if he wasn’t interested in what he saw there.
And why should he be? I was a skinny teenager, and he had Shelly. Beautiful, glamorous Shelly—who shouldn’t have to pay for my adoptive father’s mistakes any more than I should.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice brimming with impatience. You’re interrupting me, his tone said. You’re not worth my time.
I wished I had some of the anger from last night, the bravado born of adrenaline. It had been a fake confidence, but it had felt real. Anything was better than this trembling fear.
“I’m here to discuss terms,” I said, feeling not unlike a stowaway on a pirate’s ship.
“Terms?” the pirate asked, intrigued.
“For me to stay here.”
“You’re here because Shelly brought you.” In other words, she was already paying my debt.
Except if I let her do that, I was no better than my father. “If there’s anything I could…” I had to take a deep breath and close my eyes to force out the words. “If there’s anything I could do to repay you, I want to do it.”
There was a long silence.
His voice was gruff when he broke it. “Do you have money?”
My eyes snapped open. “No.”
He leaned forward, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Jewelry?”
“No.”
“A brick of coke?”
He wanted me to say it. “No.”
“I don’t understand what you could possibly give me.”
“What you’re taking from her.” That was as close as I could come to saying it. Sex.
He made a rough sound. “You don’t know a damn thing about what I get from her.”
I flinched. “Maybe not, but I can learn. And if anyone should be paying my way here, it should be me.”
He stood, and without thinking, I took a step back. I sucked in a lungful of air—which carried his scent, spicy and male, deep inside my body. It made me dizzy, but I forced myself to step forward, to offer myself.
He circled the desk, and I realized just how tall he was. I’d been on the armchair last night, and he had been sitting when I walked into the room. This was the first time we had stood near each other, and he was almost two feet taller than me. His shoulders were broad, making him tower above me. It was like a shadow had crossed over me, an eclipse.
A large hand came up—to touch me? To hit me? Both had happened so many times in the past week, and I flinched. He stopped an inch away from my mouth, his hand loosely held in a fist. His thumb brushed over my lips, the calluses there catching like sandpaper on silk.
“Such a brave girl,” he said softly.
I let out a shuddery breath. “So you’ll do it?”
He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Such a light touch, so much softer than the men in that hotel suite. But this one held me frozen when theirs just made me fight harder.
He leaned forward, his mouth inches from my ear. “Why would I fuck a little girl?”
A little girl. The words clashed with the groping hands and crude words I’d heard for the past week. With the hotel suite and the dirty bathroom pipes. “I’m not,” I said, my voice raw. “I’m not a kid.”
Two words, barely a breath across my temple. “Prove it.”
He stepped back, and I saw in his eyes that he didn’t believe I’d do it. He didn’t believe I’d undress. He didn’t believe I’d follow through with any of it.
And maybe he wasn’t wrong to doubt me.
The thought of baring my body to him was terrifying. Flat chest and slim hips. Nothing to offer a man, unless the men were drunk and popping pills. They’d been so worked up they would have fucked a blow-up doll. Philip was very sober—and absolutely focused on me.
I forced myself to grasp the hem of the T-shirt and pull it over my head.
It fell beside my feet.
I wasn’t wearing a bra. There hadn’t been one in the pile on the bed, and I didn’t need one anyway. He could see my breasts, how little there was.
My fingers were already working at the clasp on my jeans when he stopped me.
He touched my arm gently. “Ella, was it?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
Only then did I look and see the bruises covering my skin. Dark and mottled. Ugly. A tear fell down my cheek.
“Not only little,” he said. “Broken too.”
I stumbled back as if he’d hit me. That was what it felt like—a wound deeper than those other men could have made. They could only touch my skin. He hurt me where I was already raw and bleeding, where I was all alone. My stomach turned over, and I was afraid I might throw up in his office.
Blindly I groped for my T-shirt. It landed in my hand, and I realized he had bent to pick it up.
Shoving it over my head, I ran out the door of his office. I would never step foot in there again. I would never speak to him again. I never wanted to see him again.