I sink into the passenger seat, a thousand voices immediately shouting about why that’s a bad idea, a mistake, huge, the worst decision I could ever make.
But fuck those people who ‘make better decisions.’ They should try it out with my choices and see how far they get.
CHAPTER TWO
LOCK
“Where are we going?”the girl asks and I glance over to her, taking all of a second to assess her current level of wretchedness and decide that telling her anything will just add to it.
“To pick up a dress,” I say instead. A true enough statement without all the foreshadowing of what is going to be one very fucking long night.
I’m still burning at Kari’s dismissal. She knows we won’t break up for real; our parents married us off in their heads a few years ago. Well, not me precisely—I was still minding my own business back then—but the eldest son of Creighton was certainly getting hitched to the eldest daughter of the Abercrombies.
That my half-brother vacated his side of that equation, leaving me to fill the empty slot eighteen months ago, hasn’t put a dent in anyone’s plans.
“You said it was a date.”
“Yeah.” God, the traffic sucks this late in the evening. Half the cars in the city are heading out to the suburbs to lose themselves in screens until it’s late enough to go to bed. The other half are heading into the centre, determined to partake of all it offers before finding themselves a companion for the night who’s just as scared to spend time alone.
Mindless drones, all of them. I can’t stand the dreary routines these sheep brainlessly follow.
Not that I’ve got a lot going for me right now, either. A night with the old man for company is just the kind of evening that I’d rather kill myself than endure.
Hyperbole. Obviously. Otherwise, I’d be finding a nice cliff to drive off instead of ferrying this little mouse to an appointment that Kari should have her moved her arse to meet instead.
It’s a fucking bespoke dress. That’s the bit that gets me. Thousands spent to get it fitted perfectly to her body and now she won’t even wear it.
Not my thousands, not my wasted time, but still.
Kari and I have an understanding. She sucks me off when I need it and I eat her out when her toys and fingers fall short. If I want a real fuck I go elsewhere, thanks to her daddy’s strange adherence to old customs—chief among them, his insistence she remains intact until wed.
Apparently, the fact no one is going to stick a speculum up inside me, taking a peek to ensure I’ve been as good as my word, hit the wrong side of her lately. She even offered me her arse one day, something I promptly refused.
If I wanted to fuck someone in the arse, I’d choose her brother. At least he comes with a nameanda business fortune attached.
My dismissal didn’t land as intended. Ever since, not one part of me has been allowed between those plump cherry lips.When I complained, she gave me the card for a full-service massage parlour. I returned the favour, pointing out the variety of ways that she could go get fucked.
Now she’s on her high horse, determined to teach me a lesson. Like it’s my fault her father insists on living in the fifties.
Still, if she wants to play silly beggars, I can do the same. It’ll be fun to see how long her current abstention lasts when she sees shots of me and whoever-the-fuck-it-is-sitting-in-the-passenger-seat hit my feed.
I could send Kari a shot from my bedroom afterwards just in case she’s worried that I’m missing out.
“How long will this take?” The girl’s querulous voice breaks into my thoughts. “I have school tomorrow.”
Jesus. I can’t deal with this pick-pick-picking the entire drive. “We’ve got a family event. You’ll be my date for the evening, and you’ll do everything and anything I tell you. Someone’ll get you home afterwards, in time for school. Don’t worry.”
“And what about my father’s debt?”
She’s insistent. I try glowering at her, but I’m distracted by a random prick of a driver who decides the side street leads to a merging lane and have to lay on the horn. By the time I turn back to her, there’s a small crease of worry between her eyes. Every cell in her body looks set to anxious.
“Do everything and anything I tell you tonight and it’s wiped. All of it.”
I can’t even remember how much he owes.
It’ll serve Dad right if it’s an astronomical figure. He has no business sending me out on these paltry jobs. As much as he insists it’s to teach me the ins and outs at all levels of the business, I know it’s to shaft me because I don’t have my nose jammed far enough up his rectum to satisfy him.
Miss Chatty settles back into her seat, apparentlysatisfied. The prospect of making small talk with a stranger for the entire evening annoys me, but nothing like it will annoy my father, and not even in the same ballpark as how much it’ll upset Kari.
