Highest Bidder

“I did,” he responded.

I wasn’t touched … I was just speechless. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I hate it when banks bully their most vulnerable customers.”

I had never been so confused. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Are you trying to guilt me into sleeping with you?”

He grinned suddenly. “Freya, I don’t need to guilt you into anything. With or without the money, I could have you any time I wanted to.”

At my widened gaze, he cocked his head. “Is that not true?”

“You speak as if I have no say in the matter,” I retorted annoyed.

He looked genuinely amused as he rose to his feet.

I staggered backwards a few steps before I caught myself. I was not afraid of him.

He began to circle the desk and the air was suddenly charged with danger and tension.

I started to feel like a prey. “Brent,” I called.

He smiled. “You’re already out of breath.”

“Don’t touch me,” I cried, but I wanted nothing more in that moment than to kiss him. I almost couldn’t believe that those lips had been on the most intimate parts of my body.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t,” he said, stopping just a couple of feet away from me.

My heart fell into my stomach with disappointment, especially since the scent of him was filling my nostrils. That scent … of tobacco and musk. I was certain it would forever haunt me. I couldn’t stop my eyes from drifting down to the expertly tailored dark slacks.

He laughed, and I hurriedly dragged my gaze back to his.

“I won’t touch you,” he said, “until we have an agreement in place.”

“Agreement?”

His lips spread to reveal his perfect teeth, in what would have seemed to the casual onlooker that he was smiling, but I could tell from his eyes there was not an amused bone in his body. “You see I have a very vivid memory. I can’t stop thinking of how sweet your cunt tastes or those little mewing kitten sounds you make when I run my tongue along your slit. It blows my mind and has made the past few weeks excruciatingly difficult for me. I’m constantly distracted at work … and it really pisses me off when I can’t concentrate on the job at hand. I can tell just by looking at you now that it is the same for you. So how about you and me stay together for a month. The goal is to get you out of my system and me out of yours.”

I couldn’t believe what he was saying and my heart was beating ferociously.

“I didn’t kill your father,” he continued. “And if that’s what’s holding you back, and if it was indeed Liam who put such a crazy idea into your head, then you can go back and tell him that I'm especially angry now. His death was meant to be slow, but now, tell him to expect the worst in a few weeks. Let that drive him crazy just as you’re doing to me right now.”

“Brent!” I gasped, shocked out of my mind. “You can’t say things like that.”

“Why the fuck not?” he asked, his brows furrowing into a deep frown as he slipped his hands into his pocket. “Do you think I’m joking? Liam knows me. He knows I mean every word I say. You don’t have to believe me, but he will.”

“Are you stupid? Do you want to fucking throw your life away? If anything happened to him, you’re going to be ruined.”

His smile was mocking. “You’d have to prove that I was responsible first.”

I felt my belly clench with fear for him. What was this feud between them? Whatever it was, Liam was not worth it. “I’ll stop you,” I said, “so for Pete's sake stop whatever the hell you’re doing.”

“Okay,” he said, and turned around to return to his seat.

I felt like I was being toyed with. “I’m not joking, Brent.”

He narrowed his gaze at me. “Why do you even care? You did the same thing a decade ago.”

“I don’t believe that you truly wanted to go through with it. You were just furious. You needed someone to make you stop.”

He was genuinely amused. “You think I didn’t go through with it because you stopped me? I stopped because I didn’t know how to get away with it.”

“And now you do?”

“It’s been ten years. What do you think?”

I felt something very cold run down my spine. “Hearing you speak like this, it truly makes me wonder if perhaps Liam was telling the truth about what you did to my father.”

“Freya, if I killed your father I’d let you know that I did. I’m not a scurrying rat like Liam is.” He replaced his glasses back over his eyes. “You can see yourself out.”

I watched him as he returned to his laptop, his gaze moving between it and the other three giant screens before him. I hated how he could just cut me off like that and I wanted to hurt him. Really hurt him the way he was hurting me. “Actually, Liam is not such a scurrying rat. I found him quite attractive.”

He shot to his feet and I could have sworn that I felt the room slightly shudder. In one swipe of his hand, the laptop flew from the desk and crashed into the book cases on the opposite end of the room.

My hands flew to my mouth in fright as I watched the equipment smash violently against the wood and fall to pieces on the polished hardwood. “Brent,” I gasped.