“You like being caged up, huh?” he asks, voice deceptively gentle as he reaches out to tap the metal with one finger.
Even that light touch sends a jolt through me. “No.”
His smile widens. “Your body is more honest than your mouth, golden boy.” He tosses the towel aside.
Shame and need are warring in me. Because he’s right. My body doesn’t seem to care aboutshouldorshouldn’t.
“Go lie down,” he says.
I crawl back onto the white sheets. I expect this will be the moment, the moment he follows me to the bed, stretches out on top of me, takes that pesky virginity that drove the price up at the auction.
But he doesn’t do that.
He returns to his throne, takes up his coffee mug, and simply watches me again.
The silence stretches tighter and tenser like a rubber band until I can’t stand it anymore. Time to see how much power I actually have here. “Why aren’t you fucking me?”
He doesn’t reply.
“I thought that was the point. Of the plug.” The words feel clumsy in my mouth. “To keep me ready for you.”
His eyes sharpen immediately. I prop myself up on one elbow, trying to channel a confidence I don’t feel.
“You keep staring. I don’t understand why you won’t just…” I trail off. Ishouldhave leverage here, but I don’t know how to find it. I don’t know how to do this. “Use me?” I finish lamely.
“I didn’t buy you to fuck you.” His voice is icy. “I bought you to break you.”
I study his face as hard as he’s been studying mine. The way his pupils dilate when I move. The tension in his shoulders. The careful way he sets down his coffee mug.
Maybe I’m terrible at this, butsomethingis working.
“Are you sure about that?” I try like hell to channel Jesse Foster and shift slowly on the bed, hoping it looks intentional. Lookssexy. “You put a bed in here. A bed with a good mattress and clean sheets, when you could’ve made me sleep on the floor. This bed is for fucking.”
“You think I spent ten million on you just so I could get my dick wet?” The words explode from him.
What Would Jesse Do?
I force myself to laugh, light and mocking. “You’re a terrible liar, Dami.” I draw the nickname out, slow and deliberate,Dah-mee, so it sounds intimate.
And it’s a stroke of fucking genius, because it lands. He sucks in a breath. I roll onto my stomach, making sure he has a clear view of my ass, spread my legs a little to give it definition.
“You’re the one who put a bed down here, Dami,” I continue. “You don’t do that for someone you’re not planning to fuck. You don’t sit there staring and drooling?—”
And just like that, his control snaps. He’s standing over me in a millisecond, hand closing on my hair, yanking my head back.
“You think you know me?” he snarls. “You think you can manipulate me with that bitch mouth of yours?”
Triumph and terror war in my chest. I got a reaction. Idohave power here. But power I can’t control might be worse than no power at all.
Up close, like this, he’s terrifying.
“I think you’re more affected by me than you want to admit,” I gasp out.
His grip tightens and I wince, but I don’t back down. This is a game Ineedto figure out how to play, even if I’m making it up as I go.
“I think you don’t even know what to do with me now that you have me,” I pant. “I think you expected me to beg and cry, and instead I’m…” I lick my lips slowly, the way I used to see Jesse doing in the clubs when he wanted a free drink from a hot guy. “I’m offering myself to you.”
His free hand traces my jaw, gentle enough to make my breath catch. For a moment, I think he’llkissme.
