I reached with shaking fingers to undo his tie, fumbling with the buttons of his dress shirt until I exposed his skin. Black hair fuzzed his chest and crinkled beneath my fingertips. He was so far from a boy that I could only stare for a moment.
“Do you like what you see?” he asked and I didn’t know how to respond.
No, I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to do this.
He was undeniably attractive, a fact that I resented. It would’ve been easier to stomach if he’d been a bloated old toad with a stomach that hung over his waist and threatened to obscure his dick.
But that wasn’t the case with Henri. His body was hard with muscle poured over bone. I wanted to puke at the sight of his obviously adult male body.
“You wear your emotions,” he warned in a soft tone, waiting for me to move to his pants. “It could get you in trouble.”
“So I’ve been told,” I answered, unbuckling his belt and unfastening the smooth button. What the fuck was I supposed to do now? I had no experience with seduction. He stepped out of his pooled pants, naked.
I averted my gaze from the protruding erection. I felt sick to my stomach.
He captured my face with both hands, drawing me to him. His lips brushed across mine in a gentle kiss that contradicted the cold and businesslike nature of our arrangement. His tongue swept my mouth, tasting. I closed off my mind, going somewhere else.
When his tongue searched for mine, I responded. His touch became more insistent as his hands pulled me closer. He groaned against my mouth and I trembled, stomping on the tiny tendrils of pleasure that dared to rise at his expert handling.
He kissed like a man who’d invented the concept of Frenching.
This man would take me tonight.
I told myself it was just my body.
But something told me, he would always own a piece of my soul and that just wasn’t right.
9
I lay stunned. The wetness between my thighs a reminder of what’d happened. He hadn’t used a condom – I was given a temporary birth control injection, another of Madame Moirai’s protocols — and one of the reasons for the all bloodwork to ensure I was clean.
I hated the intimacy of our skin touching without a barrier. Not that latex would’ve done anything for the assault on my dignity.
Henri sighed and rolled from the bed to grab two water bottles. He returned and handed one to me, another flash of kindness from the considerate billionaire that I knew to be false. I accepted it, drinking deeply but nothing would wash the taste of him from my mouth.
The act itself had been nothing I wanted to remember but I felt numb inside. I hadn’t thought this through. There was no amount of money that would compensate for how I felt in my soul. I drew a deep breath, trying to steady my frantic heartbeat. I wanted to wail at the world, at God, at the devil — anyone and anything I could blame for the unfair hand I’d been dealt.
All of it was overwhelming.
The pain of being entered for the first time. The degradation of feeling a man I didn’t love or even know grunting above me. The crippling sadness of knowing that I would always remember this moment no matter how hard I tried to forget.
And Henri, the generically handsome yet hollow-souled john, made me want to claw his eyes out for being exactly who he was — oblivious to the cost of his entertainment.
Henri seemed curious as he returned to the bed, casually trailing his finger down my shoulder. When I moved away, he frowned. “Why do you hate me?” he asked, his eyes soft with satisfaction, content to rest while he caught his breath. “Have I hurt you in any way? First times can be difficult.”
Hurt me? In ways he couldn’t fathom that had nothing to do with the physical act of sex. I cut a sharp look his way but remained silent. Henri had a deceptive dangerousness about him that rippled like a heatwave and I didn’t want to get burned.
“You are so quiet. I wish to know your mind. Please, you may speak freely.”
I didn’t believe him. “Do you expect me to be honest?” I replied, meeting his gaze with a bold stare. “You’ve already warned me that my emotions could get me in trouble.”
“Indeed. However, I’m feeling generous. Speak your mind.”
I once watched a nature documentary on TV about the King cobra charmers of India. They didn’t actually charm the snake into not striking. The snake was swaying, watching the person’s movement, tracking every move as it would a predator. In this particular show, the charmer had removed the snake’s venom glands so there was no real danger of being bitten but an assistant had unknowingly placed the wrong snake in the basket before the show — one that was fully capable of killing a man with one strike. Misplaced confidence was the snake charmer’s undoing.
He died.
Henri was the snake rising from the ornate basket, trying to convince me that he was harmless when I knew differently. Anyone who would do business with Madame Moirai was touched by evil in some way.
He nodded, giving me permission to speak freely with a magnanimous wave of his hand. “You intrigue me. Most girls are desperate to please. You are not that way. I am not accustomed to being treated like the enemy. I haven’t decided if I like it or not.”
Did he think I should be thankful? Maybe other girls were happy to scrape and beg and bend over backward to be someone’s sex toy but I wasn’t that person. I was angry. Angry at myself for agreeing to do something so disgusting. Angry at him for being the kind of person who would buy a desperate young woman. Angry at my body for feeling anything but revulsion as he sweated on top of me.
As much as I shied away from the truth, I couldn’t deny that some of it had felt good even if I didn’t want it to. I wanted to peel my skin off to escape the memory of his touch.
And if I was feeling this way, I could only imagine how Tana was feeling. I hoped she wasn’t screaming her head off or worse, crying in a corner.
Shame curdled my guts.
But to his way of thinking, I had no reason to feel anything negative. I should feel gratitude.
And that just pissed me off.
“Decent people don’t buy women,” I finally said.
“Decent people do not sell themselves,” he countered with a small smile. “Tell me, were you coerced to take the deal Madame Moirai offered you?”
“No.”
“Were you threatened with violence if you did not agree to the terms?”
No.”
He shrugged, concluding, “Then you came willingly and consensually and you will be paid for your participation. I do not see a problem. If anything, it’s simply a business transaction between consenting adults.”
I didn’t feel like an adult when I was signing the paperwork. If anything, I felt more like a child than ever before. I couldn’t have possibly known what I was getting myself into. I believe Madame Moirai banked on that ignorance to lure the girls into her circle, which made the deal all the more horrid.
“I may not have been forced physically but sometimes people know how to manipulate a situation to their advantage. My life is a shitshow. Somehow Madame Moirai had known that I would do anything to get out. Even sell myself to a stranger.”
“Everyone has a price,” he said, unimpressed. “Do you always play the victim?”
I stiffened. “I am not a victim.”
“You sound like one. Crying over something that only has value because I gave it value. I was not cruel. I did not mark your skin or degrade you as I could have. You should be happy that I was kind and considerate of your inexperience. The only rule for the buyer is the girl must be returned alive to Madame Moirai’s care. It says nothing about how the girl is used or the condition in which she is returned.”