Page 34 of The King (Masterpiece Duet 1)
Of course it is. Expensive and luxurious and completely impersonal.
It doesn’t mean anything that he brought me here, that he holds me tight as if he can’t stand to let go. I tell myself that, but it still burns too hot. His arms and his abs. He’s hard and warm and painful.
And then I feel something against my hip. Oh God.
I may not have gone all the way with Brennan but I recognize that. This one’s bigger and more insistent. When I try to squirm away Damon holds me tighter.
“I heard you almost died,” Damon says, his voice casual, as if he’s not throbbing against me. “Did you lose…what? A whole teaspoon of blood?”
The man responds with equal languor. “A quarter cup, at least. We should talk.”
I can already hear the words. They whip around in the water between us. Words about Jonathan Scott and about pain. About bullets and about sex.
“You can talk in front of me,” the woman says. “I want to know.”
No, you don’t. I want to tell her that.
Damon looks at me, reading the truth in my eyes. “In private,” he says.
She doesn’t give up. “Why? What happened to her? Does it have to do with your father?”
Only when Damon pulls away from me do I feel the cold. It’s deep in my bones, settled like ice that will never melt. I want the fire back, but I know it will hurt. It doesn’t matter what I want. Damon is already getting dressed, already leaving. Already riding away on his invisible white horse.
“Stay with her,” he tells the girl. “Her name’s Penny.”
“What happened to her?” the woman says again, her voice desolate, knowing he won’t answer.
Of course Damon obliges, leaving without another word. Then it’s only this woman and me, someone who was auctioned off like some rare and valuable object, and meanwhile I’m cracked into a thousand pieces like a worthless one. The princess and the pauper.
* * *
She doesn’t undress like Damon, which is a small relief. I don’t think I could handle any more vulnerability in this night. But she does join me in the bed, stroking my hair gently until I fall asleep.
I wake up with the room darker, the shadows deeper.
Her body feels warm and still beside mine, as if she had drowsed too.
Who is she? And why does she care what happens to me? Or maybe she does whatever Damon tells her to without question. I’m all too familiar with that unblinking obedience.
“Are you one of them?” I ask, half in the dream world.
“One of who?”
The whores. I can’t say the word, not only because it would offend her. Because I’m one of them. What are we called, anyway? “One of the girls. The ones Damon collects when someone can’t pay the loan back.”
“Do you mean the strippers?”
“Are they strippers?” I ask, my voice thick with sleep.
I guess it makes sense. A way to make money where none had been. And probably some of the customers are the very same men who owe money. It’s a complete circuit, powering Damon Scott’s rise to power.
But I can’t really imagine Damon on a cigarette littered floor, tossing dollar bills onstage.
My eyes flutter closed again. “I thought he kept them for himself. I imagined a harem of girls, one for every day of the month.”
At least that’s how he had made it sound. Was that supposed to make it more palatable?
So I would go more easily into my captivity?
She sounds contemplative, as if she’s wondering the same thing. “There aren’t other girls. At least not here. What made you think there were?”
Come to terms with what you have to do. “He threatened to take me. If Daddy didn’t pay.”
“Maybe he wanted you to work off the debt,” she says, uncertain.
But I swear to God you’ll be mine.
“No,” I say, drifting back into sleep. He said he’d make me like it. The strange thing was, I believed him. “He told me what he wanted to do. Him and me.”
She holds my hand when the doctor comes.
He doesn’t wear a white coat or carry a black bag. Instead he wears only black slacks, exposing his broad chest with pale red hair and silvery scars I’ve seen on men who fight a lot. His soft-sided grey cooler looks more like it should carry body parts rather than heal them.
“Trust him,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.
I close my eyes, holding onto her when he examines me.
The doctor may look like a thug but his manner is professional. Impersonal, even. He doesn’t express any surprise over finding my ribs bruised or my rectum torn. It’s with a fast, impersonal touch that he cleans my wounds and applies topical antibiotics.
And blissfully he has pain medicine. Serious, hardcore pain medicine. The kind you can get addicted to. That’s what I need right now. I need to escape my own mind, my memories. I need oblivion.
