Prologue
Three Months Earlier
“I don’t really care who you are anymore, sweetheart. I’ll still fuck you like a slut and you’ll still come. Deal or no deal?”
Sweet. Jesus. Christ.
“No,” I gasped. “Shit, I mean yes, I just… wow.”
His fingers weren’t talented. They felt like moonshine in the thirties. Or Britney Spears on the radio back when I still lived at home. They felt fuckin’ illegal and I didn’t want a hit. I wanted the whole goddamned thing.
“Sweet ’till the end. I can respect it.” A whiskey laced breath hit my ear the same time I felt him hard against my ass. In college, the thickness of him used to frighten me, but I wasn’t no eighteen year old, no more. I knew what men like him were supposed to do with girls like me. With his large hand on my back, West proved it, shoving me face first down onto the hard desktop. “Or I can at least pretend to.”
I didn’t need him to respect me.
I just needed him to fuck me.
“Whatever you want,” I gasped. I hated that I meant it.
“Well I am sure glad to hear you say that ‘cause I got plans for you, bunny.” His growl lickin’ the back of my neck, I almost came as he bit down. Hard. I yelped. “You used to like secrets. You wanna hear one?”
I didn’t. I could handle penance by way of penetration—after all, that particular reckoning was always meant to be his. What I couldn’t handle was knowing him. His life. His desires. His thoughts. Wants. Dreams. I couldn’t handle being reminded that none of those things would ever involve me.
Licking the bite I knew would be my only souvenir from this night, he chuckled. “Despite everything, I feel like I owe you the truth, dirty girl. Imagine that—me owing you something.”
Quiverin’ like a kitten exposed to the world for the first time, I supposed the analogy was as accurate as it got. When my pussy was wet, I whined and jumped. And I’d only ever been wet for my owner. I did something so stupid, I would be cursing myself in the mirror at work tomorrow— I wanted to know what truth he owed me. “W-w-what?”
Palming my ass almost as hard as he bit me, West— “Fuck!”
“She speaks,” he murmured, his finger ghosting my asshole. I flushed so hard I felt lightheaded. “I wonder what else I can make you do.”
Panting, awkward, I didn’t know where to put my hands so I clasped them behind my back. As far as his query was concerned, as long as it involved his dick and not my heart, I didn’t give a shit. “Anything,” I cried out.
“And what if I want it all?” he said, pushing against me there.
I stilled. I fucking flat out paused.
Way to be an impenetrable wall, Miss Spencer.
Still shaking on the height of my toes, my heart sped up ten more beats per minute. Suddenly the air was cold. My chest ached. And memories that had no business escaping the prison I’d spent the last eight years building, bled out all over the floor of this hotel.
Suck it up. Cry about it later. This is business.
“It’s yours,” I whispered. “On one condition.”
I couldn’t see him so I wasn’t sure if he was watchin’ me or waitin’ for me to continue. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I spoke my final words of the night.
“Make it hurt.”
