I bit my lip, hoping it would hide the way it trembled.
“Do you understand?” he pressed.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“You’re the one who defines what is within reason,” I whispered.
“Much better, but I’d be more inclined to believe you understand your situation if you referred to me as ‘sir’.”
“Yes… sir,” I whispered, my cheeks burning hotter at the images that word conjured in my mind.
I could feel him pacing in front of me now, the way the air shifted against my skin as he moved slowly from left to right and back again, like an animal testing the end of its leash. I imagined him there, tall and masked, watching the blindfolded girl on the bed like she was a puzzle he planned to take apart, piece by piece.
“Third,” he said, voice now at my shoulder, “I want to know how you really behave when you think you’ve been left unsupervised.”
My brows pulled together.
“I don’t?—”
“Jacob,” he said. Just his name, and nothing more. Everything in me went tense.
“I’m told my groundskeeper decided to… intervene on your behalf today,” he said. “First on the road, then in the foyer. He fixed your tire. He volunteered to be your partner. He put himself at risk to keep you in a game you’d technically already lost. Why?”
Guilt knifed through my heart, sharp and immediate.
“That wasn’t his fault,” I said. “My original partner — Brandon, I’m told his name was — broke the rules. He was eliminated. I would’ve been too if Jacob hadn’t stepped in.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “He spared you the consequences of someone else’s carelessness. How noble of him.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Please, be fair,” I blurted. “If he’s punished for?—”
“Oh, Jacob will pay dearly for volunteering,” he interrupted, utterly unbothered. “No one inserts themselves into my Game without a cost, especially not my staff.”
My hands curled into fists on the bedspread.
“You’re punishing him for helping me,” I said. “That’s?—”
“Not up for debate,” he said, voice cutting clean through mine. “The question is whether or not you intend to make it worse for him.”
I sucked in a breath.
“What do you mean?”
He moved again, slow and unhurried, until I felt his presence in front of me once more. A moment later, the mattress dipped oneither side of my knees, just enough to tell me that he’d braced his hands there to cage me in.
God, he was close, too close.
“This is an interview,” he reminded me. “And a test. You broke one rule already, by fraternizing with my staff. You were late. You drew attention at dinner. You put yourself on very thin ice. After the way you lingered together outside your door when he escorted you back here after dinner, I’m left to wonder if more happened that I am not, as yet, aware of.”
He paused and I bit the inside of my cheek hard to keep from whimpering.
“Tell me,” he said. “Has Jacob touched you in any way that would violate the rules of my little Game?”
My heart stopped dead in my chest.
