Page 17 of Kept

I didn’t smile back. A dull flush touched my cheeks, but I wasn’t hiding behind my hair today. Or ever. If he wanted to blackmail someone, he could look me in the face and know he was doing that to another human being.

“I’d like to have some extracurricular nighttime activities withthat,” Rachelle sighed.

Oh, if only she knew.

I’d been wrong about the kind of man he was. There was another one hiding under his skin. My stomach clenched with an infuriating mix of desire and rage. There was a monster in there, but I… stillwantedhim.

He started talking. We flipped to the appropriate page in our textbooks. I let my mental gears grind back into a halt, going to that peaceful place where there were no consequences to actions, no words to analyze.

I waited before the bells chimed before coming back out of my Zen state. Rachelle was bickering with Sean about gerunds and infinitives. It was easy to let them walk ahead of me, and when I was the last one left, I quietly shut the door behind them, locking myself in with the beast.

I turned, an accusation already fully-formed in my mouth, but Rhett was on me in a heartbeat, kissing it away. His tongue slid in and filled the space where the words had been.

That was how he kept me, devouring my mouth, hands pushing up my shirt and stroking the swell of my breasts down to my waist. Hunger filled me, a craving to be touched, bitten, pinned in place by the cat’s paw.

He popped the button on my jeans and slipped his fingers inside, groaning in his throat when he parted my lips and found how wet I was.

Maybe that made me the fucked-up one here.See Jane come for her blackmailer.

Rhett shoved his leg between mine, angling himself so all the pressure of his thigh and fingers was placed squarely on my clit, and leaned in.

My eyes rolled back in my head as pleasure roared to life. The entire world was reduced down to the pads of his fingertips rolling over my clit, the hard bulge in his pants straining against my hip, nowhere close to being inside me, and it was still some of the best sex I’d had in my life.

He made me ride his thigh until I came, one arm flung around his neck, the other clawing his shoulder like I meant to draw blood. My breath came out in harsh pants and he swallowed those, too, leaving no trace of what we’d done here.

I was quivering when he finally let me have my mouth back, and all the accusations came back with full force.

“You lied to me!” I tried to shove him away, planting both hands on his chest and pushing, but he was an immovable object.

“I did.”

Somehow, that splashed cold water on my anger like nothing else. I’d expected excuses, maybe an apology- but not a cold, hard affirmative.

The mask had dropped. Rhett’s eyes were as frosty as Spears’s, no smile on his lips. At least, not the kind I was used to seeing on him, the one where kindness seeped out of every pore.

This one was amused, like I’d said something funny.

“You knew someone was taking pictures.”

“I sure did, Pet.” Somehow I knew there was a capital P on it, the way he said it. “Gabriel’s decided to branch out into photography. You were the perfect subject.”

I just stared up at him, feeling like I’d taken a step forward expecting solid ground and had fallen off a cliff instead. Gabriel Spears had been up on the balcony, taking pictures and listening to every noise I made. “Why?”

Rhett gently chucked me under the chin. “The question isn’twhy. You know why.”

I knew why. I was a mouse, and they were hungry cats, and they’d herded me neatly into a corner. I’d let them begin the hunt the moment I’d ignored the scholarship’s morality clause and accepted Rhett’s invitation to stay after hours.

He read my eyes like an open book. “The question iswho. Who deserves to be the Pet? I think that’s you, Jane. I read your essay first, by the way. Lovely way with words. When you showed up, all swan, no duckling left… well, I knew I’d made the right call.”

“Professor Spears manages the scholarship essays.” I was back to whispering again, not even a bark to go with my nonexistent bite.

“I read them, too. It was pure luck I came across yours and recognized your name. You can thank me for the SCS, Pet. I pushed your essay on to Gabriel. If it makes you feel better, there’s no nepotism involved. Even if I’d never met you, I would’ve chosen it for the scholarship. You’re here on merit alone.” He ducked his head, lips moving along my cheekbone. “The rest of the package is the bonus I was hoping for.”

Even though the thought that my being here was completely premeditated by his hand made mewantto be angry, I couldn’t summon the emotion again. It was swamped under my inexplicable desire for a man who didn’t really exist.

This was the true face of Rhett Harlow, but that didn’t diminish the magnetic pull I felt towards him. It perversely made it stronger.

I’d always daydreamed about the day I’d have the guts to go for it, but he’d neatly turned the tables on me without me noticing a thing, and made sure I was theirs, and theirs alone.

---