Page 55 of The Secrets That Kill

“I’m betting you’re going to love sex when we really get started.”

“Let me up.”

“No.” I haul her forward by her hips so her pussy rubs against my erection. What can I say? She’s very arousing. “Sex is dirty when it’s good and nothing to be ashamed of. But you are.”

“No. I’m not. Sir. I liked it.”

I start laughing. “Liked? Oh, fuck, Pollyanna, I’ll chop his fucking dick off for you since he did it wrong.”

“I’ve had sex with more than one person.”

A dark, cold throb hits me. “Recently?”

She skitters her gaze. “No. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“You’re what? Twenty-two?” I shake my head, selfishly glad whoever it was didn’t do a good job. I’d have bet there’d only been one. Some idiot her own age. It’s the one thing I didn’t look into with her. “So you lost your virginity at what? Twenty?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about this.”

I curl a hand in her hair. “Too fucking bad. I do. How old?”

“Younger.”

“Eighteen?”

Now she looks away completely.

The dark cold morphs into something ugly and I don’t like it at all. “Ivy.”

“Sixteen.”

I don’t like how she says it, the way color hits her cheeks, the lack of anything in her expression. There’s more to this, but I don’t have time to dig.

And it’s not my fucking business.

I don’t care.

I don’t like her.

“Sixteen. Jesus. Remember when you rubbed up on me and tried to kiss me at fourteen? I didn’t want you then, and I sure as hell don’t want you now. You’re here to do a job. Period. Nothing else matters.”

Her head snaps back to me, eyes sharp and bright and glittering with hate.

“Tonight we’re going to Velvet Rope. A lot of people will be there. All you need to do is everything I say. You keep your eyes down, you stay behind me or by my side.”

“Is that all?”

“You’ll look at me like I’m your fucking world. Like you worship me.”

“I’m not that good an actress,” Pollyanna says in her snotty Pollyanna voice.

A tight smile stretches across my lips. “Try. Your sister’s life depends on it.”

Velvet Rope is on the Upper East Side. A nice, well-heeled neighborhood near First Avenue. There aren’t any signs or parking. Just a doorman who directs guests to the elevator of what looks like an ornate apartment building.

Three stories, dedicated to kink. I press the button for thesecond floor and it opens out onto a dark, wood-paneled foyer where a gorgeous redhead who has to be Liza stands.

“Mr. Vale.” She walks toward me, hips swaying. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

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