Page 12 of Take Her
“How would you know?” I snapped.
He reached forward and plucked at the sleeve of my blouse. “What’s this cost, eh? Or this? Or those?” His hand brushed across my skirt and then stroked along the instep of the four-inch high heels I’d had to practically chase him here in, in turns.
I gasped in surprise rather than answer him, as parts of my heart flared in what I realized now was absurd hope—and the truth was my father’s shopper had picked out the silky cream-colored, pussy-bowed blouse for me. The outfit had been delivered to my apartment that morning, I only knew it was Balenciaga.
He took my moment of stunned silence after his touches for defeat. “You don’t know what things cost, because money’s literally never mattered to you. And I’m supposed to teach you to be in charge of everything?” This last sentence was said to himself, as he stood again. His temper was back under control, but only barely. “Tell your father I fucked you for all I care—but I won’t be helping.”
5
RHAIM
Iwalked away from Lia in a daze, feeling like I’d signed a warrant for my own death.
Probably because I had.
She’d go back to her actual Daddy’s skyscraper, crawl into his lap crying, and tell him all about Friday night and I—I stood stock still in the middle of the sidewalk, shouting “Fuck me!” at the top of my lungs.
And the city being the city, some other dude shouted “Yeah! Fuck you!” right back.
“What the fuck have you done?” I asked myself, like some part of me was going to answer. My common sense, perhaps, that had apparently left the club that evening after looking at Lia’s ass—or my dick, which I’d rubbed raw the rest of that weekend, dreaming of her pussy?
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” I yelled at myself, in increasing volume. I raked a hand through my hair, as other passers-by parted around me like a school of fish.
If I’d been considering all the possible piss-poor times and all the worst women to ever be a pervert with, accidentally finger-banging my rich boss’s little girl at a sex club—in public, no less!—wouldn’t even have made my top twenty.
Because it didn’t matter that there’d been three millimeters of cheap spandex in the way—not when I’d been able to feel her cunt grabbing as it came.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
And Nero was going to murder me.
He knew people who knew people—hell, I was one of his people—the only question was should I own up to it immediately? Just walk right up to him and say, “You know, my only regret is that I didn’t taste her,” and then pretend to be surprised when I got shoved out of a high window a month later, Russian-style?
Fuck.
Me.
My phone buzzed, and I looked down at it without answering—somehow half an hour had passed—me just walking around in the city like another one of its undermedicated denizens, muttering to myself about what a fucking idiot I’d been—it was Mrs. Armstrong.
Probably to tell me that there were already men in my office, sizing me for my coffin.
“What is it, Char?” I said abruptly, as I picked up.
“Ruiz from janitorial says he needs to talk to you.”
I groaned. “Tell him I’m busy.”
“He said to mention Guatemala?” she pressed.
I took a long, pained inhale. Certain of Ruiz’s people spied for me—mostly so casually they didn’t even know they were doing it, but it was why we kept our janitorial in-house instead of outsourced. If someone started shredding too much, I wanted to know about it.
I protected Corvo Enterprises from threats both without and within.
Maybe the building was on fire, I thought darkly. “Put him through,” I said, and heard her do so. “Now is a spectacularly bad time, Ruiz. This’d better be important.”
“Yo, Rhaim,” said a man with a light South American accent on the far end of the line. “There’s a really pretty girl down here demanding I give her a job.”
I pulled my phone away from my ear, to take a moment to stare at the screen, before replacing it. “Who?” I asked him, though I already knew.