Page 13 of Seven Nights

My nod is jerky, my body certain I won’t last an hour without relief given all the heat knotting inside it.

He moves toward the door, stopping in front of a giant armoire. He slides the front panel open to expose a big screen tv. He turns it on. A live picture of me standing there appears.

This was not in the fucking contract!

“You're recording—” I start, but he interrupts.

“Watching, not recording.” His gaze leaves the screen and lands on me, the blue eyes lazily stroking the soft fur of my sex before he nails me with a hard look. “Obey the rules or face the consequences.”

I wait for him to leave then check the time on the clock. Fifty-five minutes remain. Such a long stretch will be pure torture unless the bathroom isn’t wired.

Walking over to the door, I flick the light on. The view on the television immediately splits down the middle, the left side showing the entire bathroom from a top-down fisheye.

Fuck. He has me trapped both ways, an ice cold shower the only relief I can hope for.

* * *

I arriveoutside Montgomery’s office ten minutes early, flesh bumps lining my skin from the shower and the barely there dress. Across from the office door stands a single chair and a side table with an antique clock. The items were there earlier, but I barely registered their presence.

Now I contemplate them with a deep curiosity, wondering how many women before me have stood in the same spot for the exact same purpose.

Dozens, I imagine.

Mouth pulled into a sour frown, I stare down the long hall. I should leave. I will lose forty-nine thousand dollars, but it wasn’t the money that forced my signature.

Sure, the last of the funds in my bank account will be gone before the month is through. I won’t be able to pay rent or the utilities or buy groceries unless I sell something. But I still have a few remaining things to sell that don’t include my body.

I check the clock to find I have seven more minutes to wait. Then I study the device, placing it late eighteen hundreds. My father was a collector, so I have an idea that the piece is worth upwards of ten thousand dollars. It would have had a prized place in the house where I grew up. Here it is on a table in a hall with no one but Montgomery, his staff, and his whores to admire.

An angry grunt pushes through my throat, my mind returning to the complexities of leaving. The thousand dollar parting gift will not stretch far, but, again, I am not without a few remaining resources. I have stayed afloat since the unemployment ran out by selling possessions. Gone are the fancy watches, the best of my bags and luggage, the diamond earrings my father gave me the first time I qualified for nationals. Through it all, however, I held onto one valuable item, the only item that means anything to me.

It is funny, really, so funny I am ready to cry. If I stay, I will feel like I am betraying my mother’s memory by allowing a man like Montgomery to possess me, use me—degrade me. On the other hand, if I sell the last tangible object she once owned, an object that was with us during our most poignant moments together, then I am also betraying her.

I weigh it over, another minute slipping by on the clock. It was not the money that made me sign, I remind myself. I signed because, for that one short moment in time, Montgomery’s touch meant more than my own dignity. If I lose that, I can’t buy it back.

And he isn’t touching me now, is he? His need was so little that he calmly walked off and stayed gone while I burned for him the entire time.

I take a step away from the door and the table with its mocking clock that reminds me of another cold and callous man. And then I take another step.

The handle twists. The office door jerks inward.

I freeze, afraid to turn and meet Montgomery’s gaze.

“You're early.” He grabs me and turns me toward his office before letting go.

“I was waiting to knock,” I mumble.

“Never lie, Kate. You're bad at it.”

Reaching out once more, he touches the back of my neck. Heat flows from his fingertips to gently propel me into the room.

He closes the door then directs me toward a tall, round pedestal table near the window.

“Sit.”

Approaching the table, I see that it has a small step attached. My chest tightens as I again think of all the women with whom he must have played a similar scene. I stop in front of the piece of furniture and stare at it, wondering if all the asses over all the years have left an impression.

On the table’s surface, of course. I know they have left no impression on Montgomery.

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