Page 13 of Bought

“My room? Or my cell?” I fold my arms over my chest and look at him defiantly. I’m not going to stand here and tell him what a lovely home he has. He already knows he has a nice house.

“You’re tired,” he says smoothly, apparently not caring that I’m referring to his misdeeds in front of Forsyth. The butler is probably in on it. Butlers always are. “You need rest. You would not get any rest if you were in my room.”

There is openly lascivious threat in his tone, enough to make me blush. He might have used me like a whore, but being spoken to like one in front of the most proper man in the universe brings it home. Ethan likes an audience. He’s made sure to have one every step of the way so far.

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. It’s hardly an award-winning response, but it’s the easiest thing I can think of to say that imparts my disdain for him. It also saves me from sounding either disappointed or relieved about that, though I am both. The prospect of spending the night in Ethan Keller’s bed is a charged one.

He starts walking, and I am left without choice but to follow him. I trail after him, down a hall and up a staircase and around a corner and to a door that opens into a room that is larger than my apartment.

“I suspect you’re the sort of woman who needs her space,” he says, ignoring my snark. “There’s plenty here. You’ll be comfortable.”

I won’t be comfortable. This place is nice, but it’s the kind of nice people make things when they’re trying to imagine what nice would be and not when they have to live in it. There’s a chaise I can already tell would only be comfortable if you were all angles.

The bed looks more promising. It’s a super super extra king, or something like that, because you could fit three people and a Great Dane on it. It’s covered in a neutral beige quilt that just screams ‘guest room.’

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s better than the cell you were threatening me with earlier,” I say. Okay, so I fucked him. That does not mean I surrender. As soon as I can, I’m out of here. I don’t care that this place is the most incredible place I’ve ever been.

“That old-fashioned contraption next to the bed is a phone,” he says. “If you lift it up, you will be connected to one of the staff. They will attend to your needs. You can request anything. Food. Drink…” he gives me a significant look, “clothing.”

“You have a team of seamstresses held in the basement to make me clothes on demand?”

“No, but they can go out and get you what you want. In the meantime, I’d prefer you stayed in this room until I come and see you.”

I look at him, astounded by his arrogance. “You want me to keep myself prisoner for you, is that it?”

“I want you to avoid getting into any more trouble than you’re already in.”

“Sure, you’re concerned for my welfare.”

An expression I find difficult to read passes over his face. “You’d be surprised to learn that I actually am concerned for you, wouldn’t you, Casey.”

“I’d be downright shocked,” I bite back.

The expression fades. He smiles. “There is a bathroom through that door. I’m sure you know how the rest of this works.”

He leaves me in there. Alone. Feeling naked without my laptop and my phone. This wouldn’t be a problem if I could get connected to the outside world, but I am guessing the phone in the corner of the room isn’t connected to anything outside this house.

I walk over to the door he indicated before, and check the bathroom out. It’s huge. Of course. Marble. Of course. As nice as all this is… I keep thinking nice, but it’s not nice. It’s fucking insane. It’s beautiful and grotesquely grandiose. This is a display of wealth and power like nothing I’ve ever seen and it’s serving to make me feel small and scared.

It might impress me, if I had interest in him. Or, if he had any real interest in me besides wanting to control me. What we shared in that police room was just fluids. It wasn’t intimacy. I don’t know him, and he definitely doesn’t know me. I’m just a data stream to him.

I don’t know what happens next. I can’t stay here forever. He won’t want me here forever. I’m today’s problem. Tomorrow, there will be another problem. Maybe he’ll just lose interest. That seems to be how it is for a lot of these hyper-rich men. Right now, I’m presenting him with a challenge. I’m resisting him. So of course he’s trying to pursue me. That’s what he does. I’ve been triggering his prey drive, as surely as if he were an aggressive dog, and I were some small, squeaky prey rushing about the place.

What if I stop being interesting? He’s already fucked me. His sexual curiosity has been sated. A lot of men lose interest after sex. What if I stop trying to fight him as well? What if I do my best to just relax, get comfortable, and wait for something shiny to come over the horizon?

No. Fuck that. That means giving in to him. And I refuse to give in to him. There are a lot of ways a man like Ethan Keller can use a woman before he gets bored. Tomorrow, I’m getting out of here. Tomorrow, I’m going to blow so many whistles on this guy it’s going to sound like a whistle convention is in town.

Thinking rebellious thoughts, I check out what the bathroom has to offer. The shower has three heads. When I turn it on, a cascade of water erupts out of all three of them. It’s more than large enough for two people too. I find my thoughts turning to the indecent. All sorts of things could happen in this shower. Most of them already happened in the interrogation room.

My nerves are starting to return. In his absence, this place is cavernous. He has left me to feel my inadequacy, to let it sink in. Alone, I have nothing to fight, except myself. My desire. My shame. My aching ass. My sticky sex.

God, do I need a shower.

I decide to pull myself together, settle in, get comfortable. Maybe make believe that I’m on some kind of business trip and this is a hotel I’m staying in. It seems silly to be playing pretend right now, but what I’m wanting to pretend is much saner than what’s actually happening.

I strip my clothes off, leave them on the floor, and step into the shower. The three jets of water assail me immediately, and it’s some effort to keep them from hitting me dead on the ass. The mirror across the way doesn’t fog, of course. I can see myself in the shower, my curves, my nakedness. My bottom bears the marks of Ethan’s belt. There are several places where the leather left a mark, and as my skin heats with the shower, those marks become brighter and pinker. He thrashed me from the middle of my ass all the way to the very bottom, where my cheeks meet my thighs. There’s a methodical placement to them. I see the skill he brought to bear on my flesh, the precise location of each and every one of them. My ass looks like it’s been tiled with hot fire. And it feels like it too.

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