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Nix stands and paces the room, another cigarette dangling from his lips, this one unlit. He’s going to be the weak link in the whole operation if he doesn’t get over whatever hold she has on him. I’m not the only one thinking with my dick. I’m just the only one who admits to it.
“Waldgrave doesn’t give a crap about Lucinda,” he says, pulling out the cigarette. “He never did, but he has to appear like the doting father. His reputation rests on it. I think that we can get his money without too much trouble if we threaten to expose him in some way.”
Dacre pulls out a can of air freshener and sprays it liberally over the trashcan where he dropped the ash-covered magazine. The stench of lavender fills the air. “How do you plan on doing that?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Nix says irritably. “It’s too late to call Waldgrave now. We’ll do it in the morning.”
“Fuck!” Dacre strums his fingers together. “Okay, Lucinda has the spare room, I’ll take my parents' room and you two will have to sleep on a couch each. Don’t even think about smoking on them. They are Chippendales.”
I lay back with my arms behind my head. “Like the dudes that take their clothes off and shit?”
Dacre rolls his eyes before retreating into his parents’ bedroom and slamming the door behind him.
I already know I’m not going to be able to sleep with her in the next room. I want to go and look at her. I don’t even need to touch her. I just want to stare at her and breathe in her feminine smell. Fucking Lucinda Waldgrave. Here! It’s like being given tickets to Disneyworld, if Disneyworld was made up of supermodel tits and ass and I could ride all day for free. I can’t though. Not with Nix sleeping with one eye open. He knows me too well. He can trust me with his life, but there’s no way he can trust me to make any promises about not touching Lucinda. I drag a blanket from the couch and head outside onto the patio, shutting the door behind me. Tonight I’ll sleep with my favorite partner, New York City. I lay down on one of the reclining chairs and breathe in the dirty air. I’m in a multi-million dollar apartment on one of the most exclusive buildings on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, and the air stinks just as much here as it does on the ground. I fucking love it. I close my eyes and conjure up the image of Lucinda in that sheer dress. I am going to have her. Nix is in denial if he thinks he can control me. He should know by now that I’m not one to be controlled. And where Lucinda Waldgrave is concerned, I’m not going to be able to control myself.
6
LUCINDA
I wake, a sheen of sweat coating my forehead, my heart beating more quickly than it should, even following a nightmare. Most people have a fear of the dark. I don’t know anything else. There’s someone in my room. I can’t hear anything, but I can feel it. A disturbance in the atmosphere.
“Who’s there?”
There’s no answer and for a second I wonder if my senses are off. There are so many new things to process that it’s hardly strange that I’m unsure, but then I catch it. A quiet inhalation. They are on the chair at the opposite side of the room. The one I know is there because I checked out the whole room seconds after they locked me in, running my fingers over the walls, the window, the wardrobe full of stiff clothing. I latch onto the sound. Breathing in, breathing out. Long, low breaths. It’s not the sound that scares me, but the lack of it. Whoever is in the room with me doesn’t want me to know he’s there. I can’t tell which one of them it is yet. I’ve not spent enough time with any of them to learn their breathing patterns. I give a slight sniff, but that doesn’t help. This whole house has an air of masculinity below the nasty floral scent that lingers in the air. It smells like them, but just like their breathing, I can’t figure one smell from the next.
It’s clearer than ever how much I’m at their mercy. One of them is literally in my room and there’s not a god damned thing I can do about it. If I get up and try to run, they’ll be on me in a instant. Now is not the time, but I’ll need to make a plan soon if I ever want to get out of this mess. I try to steady my trembling limbs. I keep my eyes closed and pretend to go back to sleep, even effecting a long deep breath. Keeping my breathing deep and steady might give the impression of sleep, but it also stops me from hearing the man on my chair. The one pretending not to be here in this room with me. I feel him watching me in the silence. It’s like a weight on my chest, clawing at me, pressing down.
I can’t remember the amount of times I hoped to be in the presence of Joshua Nix, and how the thought both excited me and terrified me in equal measures. I was sixteen years old when he left my life and yet I never forgot him. He invaded my dreams, a prince in some, a monster in others. Having him in the room with me, watching me silently, thrills me in ways I don’t understand. I wonder what I would do if he moved over to me, touched me. I’m so keyed up with warring emotions that I don’t know if I’d scream or move over to let him in the bed with me. I hate myself for even contemplating the idea, because it’s clear he’s a monster and I’m a quick paycheck to him, but monster or not, my skin is tingling with anticipation.
Suddenly there’s another noise. He’s moving now. Swift motions, the sound of skin quickly rubbing against skin the way it would if my hand was vigorously rubbing against my other hand or against clothing. It shouldn’t be scary, but not knowing what is happening has my anxiety ratcheting up a notch. Trying to keep my breathing steady is difficult when my heart is pounding. The sound of blood rushing through my ears almost drowns out the strange sound.
Almost.
I dig my fingers into my palm. Three times. I need everything to be okay, but it isn’t. I’m scared and in a place I don’t know with three men who only want to use me, one of which, I know, has the capacity to cause pain.
I remember so clearly the first time I squeezed my palm as a mechanism to calm myself. Ten years ago, when my father decided that words were no longer enough to control his daughter so the verbal punishments became physical. A few years after that, they would become sexual. Not that the great Peter Waldgrave would ever touch his daughter in such a way, but he had no trouble passing her around to his friends. My father never saw the living flesh and blood daughter, only dollar signs, and he did everything in his power to make sure he used the illusion of a loving family to become the man he is now. No amount of money will ever be enough for him. It doesn’t matter that he can buy almost everything he wants. The multimillion dollar houses, the fast cars, the expensive tailor-made suits. None of it really means anything to him. It’s the number in his bank account that’s his bottom line. If he’s richer than the next man, then in his mind, he’s better than the next man. He’s richer than almost every man on the planet and still he’s miserable. If I didn’t hate him with every fiber of my being, I’d feel sorry for him.
The man watching me no longer holds on to the pretense of not being here. He lets out a light moan followed by a grunt, which injects another thrill of terror through my veins. The swift motion stops. It’s quiet again.
Then it isn’t. The door opens and I can no longer hide under the pretense of sleep.
7
NIX
“What the fuck, Mercier. I warned you not to touch her.”
Mercier buttons himself up, no look of contrition on his face at all. “I didn’t touch her. Don’t worry, your sweet little princess isn’t harmed, are you, Princess?”
I grab him and haul him up out of the chair. I itched to come into her room and look at her last night, but I fucking didn’t. Unlike Mercier, I managed to restrain myself. I need to know if she’s really Lucinda. It’s been years since I’ve seen her, but I’d know her body anywhere. I jerked off to her memories enough in the past. I can’t blame Mercier, but right now I want to punch his fucking lights out.
Mercier gives me one of his patented grins, which only serves to rile me up more. “Don’t tell me you’ve not thought of jerking off over her.”
Fuck. Of course I’d thought about it. I’d thought of nothing else but taking her for myself since the moment I caught a glimpse of her. Hell. I’ve thought of nothing but Lucinda Waldgrave since she fucked me over all those years ago.
“She’s mine,” I warn him, letting him go.
“I don’t see your name tattooed on her ass,” Mercier grumbles as he sits back in the chair and runs a hand through the bristles on his shaved head. I shoot him down with a harsh stare. I don’t know why having Mercier spilling his load to Lucinda has me so het up, but it does. I thought I’d exorcised that particular ghost, but now she’s here and the deviant cunt looks more like a ghost than ever, I want her for myself. I want her to know pain, the same way she caused me pain. I owe myself that. Fuck it, she owes me.
