Page 58 of Keeping The Virgin

I raise my voice. “The only way I can keep Liam from putting that stuff online is by paying him off, but when he made his first threat, I didn’t have the kind of money he was demanding. He didn’t believe me though. He said I needed to go to my parents, who own a nice house, but I couldn’t do that. So I did my best, pulling everything out of my savings, but then he started pushing for even more. I finally got him to agree on the sum that I found out I could earn from selling my virginity to the Highest Bidder. The site had no idea about this situation. Liam doesn’t even know how I’m earning the cash, but I doubt he’d care.”

“Let me guess,” Cage says. “You already gave him your advance from the Highest Bidder.”

“Yes. And he’ll get the final payment after you pay me for the rest of this job. But I made him promise that he won’t ask for any more after that, and he agreed.”

“Did he? Well, you can bet a shit bag like him will keep his word on that.”

His slashing words make me cringe. “I know there are no guarantees that he’ll keep his word, but I have to believe what he said. I don’t have any other recourse.” I stuff the phone into my handbag so forcefully that I drop both items. The thumps on the concrete are deafening, but my devastation is even worse as I stand there and brace my hands over my stomach. “My god, if those pictures and videos end up online and on porn sites, my parents… They’ll be destroyed. I’ll be humiliated. And if they go viral and Igor Vasiliev learns about them…”

Cage turns his back on me. I can’t see his gaze, but I don’t have to because I can feel the demons swirling around him, as if they’ve caught up to him in some way I don’t understand yet.

“Goddammit,” he rages. “You’ve been giving money to a drug addict, Karini. And this whole time, you kept it a secret.”

More tears run out of my eyes. Next he’ll probably say something about how I’ve messed up his life, because this deal with Igor is now in jeopardy. Some “family man” he’ll be with a flasher like me by his side.

“I’m so fucking sick of the lies,” he seethes.

As he slowly turns to face me, I wonder if he’s angrier about the pictures or being lied to. But it doesn’t matter. I’m already taking a step away from him, not because he’s disgusted—it’s because there’s something revealed in his gaze that I never expected to see.

Doubt.

It takes a moment for the realization to tear through me. He doesn’t believe what I’m saying.

But why? What did I do to him so that he doesn’t believe me?

As I keep trying to understand what’s going on, he speaks, his voice back to being so calm that it sends cold trickles down my spine.

“First,” he says, “I’m going to have the limo brought around. You will be going back to my place immediately and wait for me there until I return.”

He doesn’t have to say that there’ll be no “lessons” or escapades tonight. This goes beyond my bringing out the sexual animal in him.

“What about Mr. Vasiliev?” I ask.

Cage is still frigid. “I’ll make up an excuse, say you got sick and went home to rest. But you need to go out front and wait. Now.”

I flinch at that last word, wounded. All my fear and stress crash against me in a big wave, and I’m suddenly sobbing again, fumbling to pick up my phone and bag from the ground, then rushing away from him.

It doesn’t take the limo long to pick me up, and everything is a bruising whirl on the drive to the apartment.

Cage didn’t believe me. That, more than anything, is what I can’t stop thinking about. He isn’t on my side, and that’s what really hurts.

I hurry up the elevator and into his place and then, without thinking, I’m packing my bag.

I just can’t face him again. I don’t want him to call me a liar when I’m not. I just want to go, need to go.

I grab the very first flight I can find out of New York, huddling at the airport with my phone off until I’m finally in the air. I’m running away, hiding, but not from those pictures and videos.

I’m only trying to escape from what I saw in Cage’s eyes this time.

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