Doc leans forward, his eyes on me. “Do it, you dirty bitch.”
“What did I say about telling me what to do?”
With immense effort I move my fingers from myself and give an exaggerated yawn. “I’ve changed my mind. If no one’s going to play with me, I’m going to bed.”
Three simultaneous noises of fury.
“Don’t you dare,” Eli snarls.
“Sorry.” I pull my legs together and Doc reaches across the table and grabs my ankle.
“No, you fucking don’t.”
“Let go of me!”
“No. Touch yourself.”
“I only touched myself because I wanted to! You can’t make me. None of you can. Now let go.”
Doc releases my ankle, his teeth bared. He looks to Morelli. “Deal with her.”
Eli scrubs a hand across his dark jaw, and I feel him drawing on all his inner strength. I pull my knees into my chest. “Eli…”
“If you don’t come here,” he says in a soft, dangerous voice, “I’ll throw you in the cage downstairs and leave you there.”
“And what will happen if I come to you?”
His lip curls and I understand that he’ll have sex with me without saying what I wanted to hear. My heart sinks. “No. You can lock me up, but then you won’t get my virginity.”
There’s a spiraling second when I think he’s going to storm from the room, then he slams his hands on the table, making all of us jump. “The hell I won’t. I should have fucked you the night you came into his house, January Whitehall. Iown you.”
I slide back on the table, my heart pounding. I’ve never seen Eli like this. His hair is on end and there’s a wild look in his eyes. A storybook prince driven to madness.
Part of me strains to comply, to say yes and make everything right again, but I trust the humming feeling in my chest telling me it’s okay. That Eli Morelli might like a woman who holds her own a lot more than a girl who cries in a cage.
I send my legs across the table and let him look at me. All of me.
“You can take me by force if you want to,” I say in a ringing voice. “But I know you won’t. You’re too good for that. That’s why none of you have ever slept with me, even Doc.”
“The fuck do you mean,‘even Doc?’” Doc demands.
I ignore him.
“I want to obey you,” I tell Eli. “I want to be your princess, but only if you respect me. Do you respect me?”
“Of course not.”
“Eli,” Bobby says through gritted teeth. “Maybe this isn’t the right—”
“Why would I respect you? Respect is earned. From the moment I laid eyes on you, all you’ve done is defy me.”
My spine stiffens. What does he mean, ‘defy him?’ But I already know. The night I arrived at Velvet House, I refused to take off my clothes or suck the gun. I didn’t let Eli seduce me in my cage. I didn’t sleep with anyone the night he commanded me to give my virginity to Doc. It didn’t feel like defiance at the time, but it was. My insides glow. I’ve grown so much since I arrived at this house, but even from the beginning, I was stronger than I thought.
“I didn’t mean to defy you,” I tell Eli. “But I’m allowed to control my own body.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Morelli…” Doc says. “Not to tell you to shut the fuck up, but you’re ruining this titty show,shut the fuck up.”
