Page 30 of Kept

Dread filledme when I walked to Bourdillon on Monday morning, but by the time I reached the doors, it’d become a hard resolution.

Maybe Vincent regretted asking me that question, but I didn’t regret answering it honestly. Perhaps he’d see that I was a real person, that my family depended on this, and choose another Pet to torment.

Morning classes flashed by like the clocks were moving at hyper speed. When the chimes filled the halls, I glanced at the empty block on my schedule that would usually be reserved for studies and was now occupied by Vincent.

I slipped down the halls to his office, finding them all empty. Few of the Bourdillon students had remained on campus for the empty block, choosing to do their studying downtown in the coffee shops and vegan eateries, which meant no one would notice if I was in the Dean’s office.

I hesitated outside the doors, my fist raised to knock but not touching the wood. I steeled myself and forced a polite rat-a-tat that was barely audible.

“Come in.” A shiver went down my spine at the sound of his rough voice, and I opened the door and slipped inside, closing it behind me.

“Lock it.” Vincent Thayer sat behind his desk. This time there were no damning glossy photos spread across it like a crime scene. He took me in from head to toe, including the frayed hem of my dress. I wasn’t entirely sure frayed hems were even permitted inside Bourdillon, but if not, I’d be the first one to wear them with pride.

He patted the desk in front of him. I locked the door behind me, dropped my bag by the door, and came over obediently to perch on his desk, keeping my knees pressed together. His body heat touched me from inches away, and I tried without success to push away that familiar tingle of want.

I’d half-expected to be mauled or manhandled open, but Vincent managed to surprise me. “Tell me about your life, Jane.” His brown eyes were warm like chocolate, even with the rest of his patrician face as hard as ever, but he looked away at a file he had open on his desk. A quick glance at the name told me it wasn’t myself. “What goes on in that head of yours?”

I was momentarily at a loss for words. What could he want to know about me that he didn’t already have access to in the school’s files?

“Well…” I trailed off, very aware that only a few days ago I’d been annoyed with Sean for doing that exact thing, and decided honesty was the best policy. Fuck it. He already had me by the metaphorical balls. There wasn’t much else he could do short of kicking me out.

“I hate being the Pet. I hate being meat for you all to chew up and throw away. I’ve never been that kind of girl and I never will be. Honestly, no matter how much I’ve thought about it, I can’t fathom what was possibly good about it for the last poor girl you all used up and discarded, and I wonder how much her life sucks now because you did.”

Vincent’s pen stopped moving. He looked up at me without a single hint of emotion marring that beautiful, expressionless face.

I’d probably put my foot in my mouth for good now.

“Her life doesn’t ‘suck’ at all.” He used slang like it was a foreign language to him. “She was quite pleased by the settlement we came to when her time was done, and now she’s the CEO of her own company, along with a handsome, vanilla husband and three adorable rugrats to show for it.”

It was my turn to stare back at him. “And you think you can credit that to yourself?”

A faint smile broke through his veneer. “Not at all. But being our Pet did nothing damaging to her. She enjoyed every second of it and walked away with the means to put her mark on this world.”

“You paid her.” My mouth was dry as cotton when I realized what he’d meant bysettlement. She’d been the Pet, and she’d walked out with a fat stack of cash in the end.

“We settled on a reasonable agreement to ensure she’d be taken care of.”

“Like a hooker.”

He laid his pen down and steepled his fingers. “She had a whole future ahead of her and needed the capital to accomplish it. We made sure she’d have it.”

“Is that what this is going to be?” I waved at the empty air between us, my fingers shaking with anger. “I’m going to send videos and pictures of every part of myself, and fuck you all, and you’re going to pat me on my head and send me away with money for the privilege?”

For once I no longer felt like a mouse in his presence, or at the very least, I felt like a mouse that’d grown long fangs and sharp claws that it wanted to use.

“If money is what you want.” How could he look at me so calmly when I wanted to rage?

“Did she agree to this, or did you blackmail her into it, too?”

The Dean had the audacity to smile. His plush lips, surrounded by that salt-and-pepper stubble, were very distracting. I’d imagined them against my skin too many times to count. “Is it the method that bothers you? I know it’s not the result.”

I made sure my knees were still together. Somehow being angry with him just made me want him more, like he had a direct line to the primal urges that drove all human beings and knew how to tug on it. “What makes you think Ilikethis result? I have no choice.”

Vincent stood up and leaned over me, firmly planting his palms on the desk on either side of my hips. My lungs slowed to a standstill while my heart picked up the tempo to a gallop.

“Because your eyes glitter when you strip for me,” he said, the genteel tones becoming the growl I loved so much. “Your skin flushes, here…” He raised one hand, stroked the column of my throat and moved down to my collarbone. “And here. You make the most beautiful music when you pant, and it only rises when you come.”

I was completely frozen in his thrall. None of those things I could explain away or lie about. Nobody was that good of an actress.

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