Page 12 of The Bargain

It’s just coin-operated.

I pull the envelope of money out of my pocket. Elias is watching me carefully. He’s filled out over the last few years—the Spearcrest diet agrees with him. There are muscles roped into his slim shoulders, his long arms, his lean torso. I try not to stare, but I’m an athlete, the daughter of an athlete. I can’t help but admire the machinery of muscles beneath flesh, the same way I admire the physicality of my opponents when I’m on the court.

I can’t help but linger on his scars. Who gave them to him? Why? How many people did he allow to hurt him before Julian? How many did it without his permission? It’s an unnerving thought; it makes my heart catch uncomfortably. But Elias doesn’t know what I’m thinking—if I stare at him too long, he might assume something else altogether.

Something that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Maybe that’s why he asked me to sit on his bed instead of offering me his desk chair, why he’s in my space, touching my face. He doesn’t want me to forget that he’s a boy—a young man—already inhabiting his adult body, and that I’m a girl, no matter how tall and strong I am. That girls and boys can’t be alone in a room together without that one unspoken thing being there.

I shove the envelope at his chest, eyes snapping back to his.

“Here.”

The money feels so disgusting that I can barely stand to touch it. Under my uniform, my skin crawls with goosebumps. But Elias, who seems to be enjoying himself enormously, doesn’t take the envelope.

“How much?” he says.

He doesn’t deign to glance at the cash. His hands are in his pockets, his body language loose and relaxed. His thick dark hair falls forward on his eyes, which are deep-set, almost black in the dim light of his desk lamp.

Elias has strong cheekbones and his nose is a little crooked, but his mouth is full and expressive. When I look at him, I have the horrible feeling that I’m looking at a ripe, beautiful fruit that’s been bruised shapeless.

You probably don’t know it yet, but you’re going to grow up to be painfully beautiful.

I drop my gaze.

“Twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand?” There’s a mocking inflection in his tone, a faux surprise that makes me want to recoil. “That’s a lot of money, you know,” he says softly, almost playfully.

That’s a lot of money for me, is what he means. That’s nothing to you.

I don’t reply, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor, feeling myself step out of the discomfort of my body, the discomfort of the moment, wishing myself off and away. Elias lets out a small laugh.

“Show me,” he commands.

He says it low and dirty, like he’s asking me to take off my clothes.

I force my body to move, picturing an engineer programming machinery. The comforting separation between operator and device. I open the envelope, pull out the two wads. My voice sounds hollow and far away.

“There are two hundred fifty-pound notes in each wad. Twenty thousand total.”

He nods thoughtfully, takes the money from my hands, fingers brushing against mine. His touch is acid, a sore, insistent burn. It makes me want to amputate the sensation away. Elias, curious as a feral being, turns the ridiculous blocks of bank notes in his hands, flicks through them, tearing open the paper bands.

He bites one of the notes between his teeth, testing it, his eyes never leaving mine. Something about the motion, the shamelessness and defiance of it, of setting his teeth to this dirty money, sends a strange heat spiralling down my stomach.

Adrenaline, I remind myself. Everyone knows fear and desire are easy to confuse.

I swallow, and Elias’s eyes drop to my shuddering throat before flicking back up to mine, brimming with such black satisfaction it chills me to my bones.

“My academic career,” he says, barely raising his voice above a whisper. “My only chance at a decent education. My future professional prospects. My freedom.”

He raises the money between us. I can’t bring myself to look at it.

“That’s how much you amount it to, love?”

My face is so hot I can practically feel the blush burning in my cheeks. I’m caught in a trap I can’t even chew my own leg off to escape, a trap of my own making. Because Elias is right, isn’t he?

“You’ve added up the sum total of my entire life, and that’s what it’s come to,” he says. “Twenty thousand pounds?”