Page 45 of Take Her

And I was not ever going to fuck Nero’s little girl.

At least not inside the building.

20

LIA

“You’re the only thing keeping me here, you know?”

“That’s awful. Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, Berry. I worry about you every night.” Mason’s voice was raspy, his breath smelled bad, and he was still breaking my heart. “I need to know you’ll be okay when I’m gone.”

—Sarah, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

Ifinished our dinner order quickly. Burmese was one of the few cuisines I knew nothing about, so I doubled up on everything he’d picked since I didn’t know any better.

Then I figured out what I else I was going to buy. Rhaim wasn’t wrong about my wardrobe; I didn’t have many business-oriented pieces. I’d never needed them before—which was why my father’s shopper had sent an outfit for me the other day, I realized, so I wouldn’t embarrass my dad when he took me around the office to show me off.

I quickly hopped from store to store online, picking out clothes in the soft grays and warm browns that I knew went well with my pale skin, along with a few jewel-toned pieces for color, in the same shaped skirts and blouses and slacks I’d seen women in the halls wearing here.

And for a second I thought about buying a new phone, since my screen was broken—or a trip back to Europe, where I would be safer from my uncle.

But now that Rhaim was less mad at me, I didn’t want to. Plus, I knew there was nowhere in the world I could truly disappear.

I’d run away once from my first boarding school, when I was fourteen. It’d been a little bit like prison-lite—bars on the windows and guards at the gates. I’d concentrated so hard on getting out of the place that I hadn’t figured out any of my next steps—like how I was going to live on the streets in an entirely foreign country—and my father’s goons had tracked me down in under twenty-four hours. I might be slightly slicker now if I tried, and definitely multi-lingual, but there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go too that would be any safer for me as long as I still needed my father’s money to get by.

I stared down at Rhaim’s Amex card, wishing it were mine—and then figuring out how I could get one.

It’d start off by getting an actual paycheck. My dad had blown me off when I’d talked to him, but that wasn’t fair. I was here, working, and putting effort in...or I would be, if Rhaim ever wanted to teach me anything.

I stared at the closed office door between us.

I did want him.

But I also wanted freedom—the kind of freedom that only the kind of job that earned a black Amex could buy.

I needed to talk to my father again and make him see me like an employee, not just his daughter.

I quickly bought the rest of what I hoped would be a “professional enough” wardrobe and then a text on my phone let me know that our dinner had arrived.

I walked into Rhaim’s office sipping from a sweet, cold coffee drink in one hand, while holding another in the other, with the plastic loops of the delivery bag on my arm. “This is delicious!”

He looked up from his desk at me and frowned instantly—it was his almost constant expression. “Oh, Christ, don’t drink that, you’ll never go to sleep—it’s like rocket fuel,” he said, standing up and coming around to help me, taking his drink and the bag, careful not to touch me—but his eyes fell on my wrist. “What’s that?” he asked, before I could shake my sleeve back down.

“Nothing,” I said, fighting the urge to hide my arm behind my back, knowing that would only make me seem more suspicious.

He set the bag of food down on his desk with one hand—and then used it to lunge out to snatch my wrist, so quickly I jumped and squeaked.

I didn’t like being grabbed.

“Easy,” he said in a soothing voice, pulling my arm in his direction.

I let him, taking a step closer as I did so. His fingers around my wrist were like beautifully articulated bands of warm steel. Suddenly, I understood Sarah’s attraction to Caleb’s hands in an entirely different way, and Rhaim’s nearness and attention almost distracted me from everything else he might find as he set his drink down on his desk and then used those cooler fingers to start sliding my sweater’s cuff up.

My heart leapt into my throat as the entirety of my moth tattoo was exposed.

That was bad enough—but if he kept going?