“Don’t you fucking dare speak on things you knownothingabout, Ms. Kingston.” His low, rough tone is meant to be a warning. And yet, my fucking nipples pebble beneath my layers like he’s come onto me.
What the actual fuck?
“I didn’t mean?—”
“You need to leave.”
Before I can utter another pleading word, Elliot storms toward the front door, yanking it open.
“Don’t come back, Kayleigh.”
And then he slams the door in my face.
Well shit.
Plan B it is.
CHAPTER 2
ELLIOT
I fucking hate these auctions.
I don’t get the sick fantasies of these rich assholes bidding on young women to be their sex puppets. The amount of money they’re willing to shell out for one night of pleasure is more than most people around these parts make in a goddamn year. I don’t care what protocols and safeguards are in place for the women who willingly sign up. This whole damn thing is a disgusting flaunt of wealth and power.
“I owe you one, man,” Max says as a server offers us drinks from a tray.
“You owe me more than one, motherfucker.”
Max is like a brother to me. We served in Desert Storm together and have each taken a bullet for the other in one point of our lives. If it weren’t for that very fact, there’s no way in hell I’d be caught dead at this filthy place. But Max wasn’t getting in without my exclusive invitation.
“I’ll shovel horse shit for the rest of my life if it means she says yes,” Max says.
“If you get cold feet again, you’re on your own,” I grumble.
“No cold feet.” Max reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blue velvet box. “See, I got the ring right here. The minute I get her off that stage, I’m popping the question.”
I know more about their fucking drama than any sane man would care to know. It’s not just that Max and Natalie have been together for years, and he’s been stubborn about the whole marriage thing. It’s that she gave him an ultimatum, he called her bluff, and found out the hard way it wasn’t a fucking bluff. Now I’m prepared to ante up a pretty penny for the man who’s like a brother to me to keep the love of his life from auctioning herself off to the highest bidder as some form of demented revenge.
I don’t quite understand these two, but damn if I don’t wish I had what they did some days.
A flash of Kayleigh Kingston’s face, cheeks rosy from the cold, flashes through my mind. Those startling blue eyes nervously meeting my gaze on the snow-dusted front porch yesterday. She was the last fucking person I expected to see on my property. Her vanilla scent, the one that reminds me of Christmas cookies, has kept my dick half hard ever since.
Even if she did come around asking for money.
I still feel like a bastard for turning her away. I have no doubt my sorry excuse for a son did something terrible to her. Last I heard from my sources, he took off to Mexico. Until Kayleigh showed up on my ranch, I assumed she went with him. It was easier to believe that than to get tangled up in the mess, worrying about a woman I can never have.
Or so I thought.
Because when I spotted her in that tiny death trap of a car by herself, the first thing I felt was relief. She deserves better than Adam.
She deserves a man who’ll protect her at all costs, even from himself.
“You’ll be the best man, right?” Max asks.
“Get her to say yes first,” I groan.
“She’ll say yes.”
