Page 10 of Contracted

He chuckled darkly. “You were more than enough, sweetheart. You’re all I want. But I can’t say the same for my brothers. Since I made you unavailable, they would have had to find some female guests to enjoy in their beds...or wherever they happened to fuck them.”

I quietly exhaled before another thought brought back anxiety. I’d been ready to hand in my resignation, but if two girls were already gone, Sinead could ill-afford another girl to leave.

Shit.

He smirked, his eyes assessing me. “She also values the girls who look after their clients.”

I frowned. “I did that—very well—last night.”

“You did,” he murmured. “But I’m not finished with you yet. I want today and tonight again with you.”

Something dark and intoxicating stirred inside me, making me breathless...reckless. This was living! This was the challenge I needed. It didn’t mean I’d be taken for granted. “I don’t do anything for free. My time has a price.”

He didn’t appear shocked, if anything he seemed accepting, perhaps even a little amused. “You will be generously compensated.”

“Generously?” I repeated.

His eyes hardened fractionally. But I wasn’t about to defend myself. I wasn’t about to ease his mind and tell him I never wanted to be poverty-stricken or homeless again. If I was a gold digger it was because I had no one to rely on except myself. My financial security and independence was imperative to me now.

I couldn’t ever be helpless again.

“Very generously,” he added.

I tingled all over, even as a part of me shriveled a little. Did he look at me differently now? Pfft. I might be a high-class escort, but most men, even those who had sex with me, considered me lower than low. The double-standards and hypocrisy had long ago stopped making my blood boil.

I’d accepted I couldn’t control other peoples’ mindset. That my fucked-up childhood had led me toward this path wouldn’t matter to them, and I was sure it wouldn’t matter to Serafino, either.

He turned from me and stalked around the bed to his nightstand, his back muscles flexing and his lighter-skinned buttocks apple-tight. I swallowed convulsively as he retrieved his cellphone. He glanced back at me. “Let me put that money into your account. This will be off the books, yours alone. I’m certain Sinead has made enough off you and the rest of the girls.”

My throat tightened, my chest warming, though I hopefully managed not to look too desperate or grateful as I rattled off my bank details.

He nodded, then finished with his banking, he put down his cell and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

I looked down at my barely-there dress. “In this?” It wasn’t exactly appropriate for daytime wear.

He stepped back to his walk-in closet, forgoing underwear as he dressed into a charcoal gray suit with a cream shirt. After pushing on his footwear, he retrieved a white, button–up shirt and returned to hand it to me. “This should suffice for now.”

I pushed my arms into the shirt’s long sleeves, then buttoned it up before tying it to one side so that the hem of my dress was visible beneath.

His eyes darkened. “You’ve transformed that shirt. But then, you’d look gorgeous in a sack.”

After re-holstering his firearm, he reached for my hand, then led me back through the wing of his house and down the elevator. Collecting my clutch bag from under the bar, we walked together out through the portico.

I breathed in the fresh morning air that was tinged with pine and the vague scent of wood smoke. A bird twittered in the trees, a small lizard scuttling off the slate pathway and under the safety of the hedges.

My heels then crunched across gravel before click-clacking on the concrete driveway, where a suited man waited beside the opened, back passenger door of a black sedan.

I nodded at him, but he barely acknowledged me. I supposed I barely scraped anyone’s interest being that I was nothing more than a prostitute, yet another transient lover in Serafino’s life. I sighed heavily as I climbed into the leather seat and slid across, making room for him.

He looked at me. “Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Nothing I haven’t gotten used to.”

He cocked a brow. “Meaning?”

The driver shut the passenger door then walked around the car to take the driver’s seat. I nodded at the man. “Meaning I’m looked at differently, with disdain or disinterest, thanks to being a sex worker.”

“Emilio,” he barked at the driver.

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