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He dropped into the seat beside her and pulled out a cigarette.
“Silly girl for making me come to you,” he said.Chapter TwentyBrandonIf looks could kill she’d be a dead girl.
I kept my eyes on hers as I lit up my cigarette, giving not so much as a scrap of acknowledgement to the two girls seated opposite.
“I was going to call you,” she spluttered. “Just as soon as I was done here… I only got your message this afternoon…”
“You’re a terrible liar,” I said. “I’m sure you remember what happens to liars.”
I could see Paige squirming in her seat in the corner of my vision but fought the urge to take a look at her. Added tension was invariably worth the patience.
Rebecca Lane was deliciously intimidated, no doubt battling the well-ingrained impulse to drop to her knees at my feet. I could see it in her. In the tremble of her fingers as they dithered around her cocktail glass. In the flicker of her eyes.
“Um, hello?” her sister blurted, and I shot my eyes across to hers.
The family resemblance was striking. So was the bristling confidence. I’d enjoyed tearing Rebecca’s right out of her and reassembling her to my liking.
“Carolyn, yes?” I said, and the girl’s shoulders tightened. “I heard plenty about you. Your sister was quite forthcoming with the family history.”
I loved the concern in her eyes, at odds with the strength in her proud jawline.
Secrets. Always so many secrets in the closet.
“This is a private social,” she told me.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Interesting choice of words,” I said. “Seeing as your little social club doesn’t appear to have any appreciation of privacy.”
I turned my attention back to Rebecca, and her eyes were wide and wild.
Scared.
She was scared.
And so was Paige.
I could feel her trepidation burning. Sizzling deep beneath her meek exterior.
My dick was hard with the urge to lunge across and pull her over the table top. To scrap every tiny piece of red tape and punish her right there and then for reaching out to dirty little girls for dirty little insights when I was due to deliver it to her in the flesh.
“Do you like having money, Rebecca?” I asked. “Does it please you to drink your expensive drinks in your expensive clothes with expensive makeup slapped all over your pretty face?”
“Yes…” she said, and her voice trailed off.
I waited.
She bit her lip.
I exhaled cigarette smoke in her direction and watched her breathe it in like she was starving for it, even though she didn’t smoke.
The other girls didn’t say a word. Staring like rabbits in headlights at the standoff.
“Manners,” I whispered to Rebecca, and she whimpered, forgetting herself.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered back. “I like having money, sir. Thank you. I like having everything you gave me.”
“What the–” Carolyn began, but shut her mouth as I turned to her.
“Your sister knows how to give respect when it’s due,” I told her. “If she’s extremely lucky, I may overlook her disobedience. It depends how well she does at convincing me she’s learned her lesson. There could be… consequences…”
I didn’t need to say another word.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Rebecca said quietly, and my dick twitched as she fell into line. “I won’t say another word about any of it, I swear! I’m sorry, sir, just give me a chance to prove myself. I promise I’ll be good, I promise.”
And there was the moment I’d been waiting for. The moment that would reward my patience.
My eyes were cold and fierce when they met Paige Emmerson’s. Her mouth was open, breaths shallow, fingers clenched white around her glass as she stared.
I didn’t react at the scrape of Rebecca Lane’s chair as she pushed it away and dropped to her knees at my side. I didn’t move a muscle as she bowed to me, resting her forehead on my thigh with her hands clamped overhead in the prayer position.
I took another drag of my cigarette and didn’t say a fucking word.
“Rebecca!” her sister hissed. “Rebecca, what the hell are you doing?!”
But my dirty little high roller didn’t move an inch.
“Forgive me, sir,” she breathed. “Please, sir, I’ll never speak a word again. I’m so sorry, sir, please forgive me.”
“Good girls always mind their tongues,” I said. “Bad girls deserve everything that’s coming to them, don’t they, Miss Lane?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
The younger Miss Lane was a picture, open-mouthed and dithering.
I knew all about her. Knew their family history with the mother who’d left their stepfather over the lies they’d spread about him when they were young teens. Knew how Carolyn needed constant reassurance that they’d both learned their lesson for keeps and would be good girls for the rest of their days, no matter what. Sister secrets.
“You fucked my sister up,” she hissed at me. “The things you did to her…”
I made a tutting sound. “Oh dear, Rebecca. It seems you’ve been hiding the real truth from your sweet little sister, haven’t you? Such a bad little liar on top of a bad little gossip, it seems.”
