Buy My Soul (Sixty Days 2)

Call me. Just fucking call me.

No more words. I’m through with words. You will be too soon enough. Get the fucking Fisher girl uploaded or I’ll finish her stint off my fucking self.

And the last.

The threat wouldn’t sound nearly so ominous if it wasn’t from the fingers of a guy born to be fucking ominous.

You’ll pay for this.

I could imagine him typing it, feeling so damned sure of himself as he doled out the threats. But I wasn’t some kid on his payroll anymore. Wasn’t some friend’s gangly son looking for any helpful opportunity coming his way.

This was different.

We were different.

I was different.

And I was going to be doing things my fucking way. The way I fucking liked them.

The regular crew were done for the night when I took those stairs back up. There was only me and the crack of dawn on the landing when I stepped into Annabel Fisher’s room and switched on the light.

She blinked. Started. Pulled into the corner of the bed when she registered it was me at this ungodly hour – even for ungodly me.

I didn’t hesitate to join her, only this time my jaw wasn’t tight and firm and my hands weren’t waiting to punish her.

They were waiting to set her free.

“You’re done,” I told her as I took her wrist and pulled her towards me. “Your contract is finished.”

“It is?! But…” she began. “But I thought you said…”

“I know what I said, sweetheart, but you’re done here. Time duly served.”

Her face was a half-finished puzzle, struggling for composure. Her eyes were pools of what the fuck barely daring to believe.

I pulled a mini suitcase from under the bed as I dragged her to the edge of the mattress. I unloaded some vaguely passable clothes from the collection and threw them at her bare chest for her to cover her modesty in the great outdoors.

She was shaking as she pulled her pants up her legs.

“The money…” she said. “Will I still get the money? Some money?”

“You’ll still get your contracted payment,” I told her, still doubting the words were leaving my mouth. “Since it was me who terminated the agreement. The funds will find your listed bank account in due course, I assure you.”

A fairylike nod was all I got from her. It amazed me that after everything I’d done to her body, mind and soul too, even in just a few short days of sixty, she was still able to trust me with such weighty affairs.

But she did.

She got to her feet on bandy legs when she’d tugged the simple lace top on over her bare little tits.

“You’re taking me home?” she asked when I headed to the bedroom door and threw a cursory glance at the landing.

“I won’t be taking you anywhere,” I responded when I saw Eric heading up the main staircase.

If his face had been a picture earlier on the porch, it was nothing compared to the shock in his jaw when I walked out of that bedroom with Annabel Fisher’s shaking fingers gripped in mine.

“I need you to do something for me,” I told him, before he could say a word. He looked from the girl to me and back again, as though she was a mirage. “You’ll be driving Miss Fisher back to the pier,” I continued. “Her time here is done.”

“But her time here is…” he began, until my steps in his direction put paid to his words.

“Her time here is done,” I repeated, “finished,” I told him as I handed her over.

Her eyes were wide and wild as his fingers clenched around hers.

It was instinct that saw him lead her in my wake down the staircase with her scrappy suitcase in his spare hand. Instinct that saw him raise an eyebrow and ask me to repeat my request anew to be certain.

“The pier,” I said, with a scowl of impatience. “Take Miss Fisher to the fucking pier and report back for duty. Our next project is going to require every little scrap of your sodding input, so be fucking quick.”

The girl edged to the front door, maintaining her grip on his fingers.

She was still nervous. Still edgy. Still a whole fucking host of different from the girl who’d rocked up to take her fill just a few short days earlier.

I waved goodbye to the decent payday in my mind.

“You really want me to drop her back at the fucking pier?” he asked again, both of them staring like I was an organ grinder with a crazy monkey on my head.

“Go,” I said. “Get her the fuck out of here and get yourself back for the next round.”

He didn’t bother shrugging this time. No shrug and no grunt, just a good little brother doing what big brother told him the fuck to do. Finally, after an ocean more patience than I could normally even pretend to have, he led my previous sixty-day pretty girl out of our building and on towards his little sporty number.