They meant nothing. They were worth nothing.
They lead to nothing but disaster in this world, and I knew it.
I knew cash was king and nothing else. That cash was the only thing to stay sure of in this miserable world.
I promised myself I would stay sure of it. Promised that she was meat to me and nothing else. Promised that I’d drop her back on the beachfront when her sixty days were up and never think of her sweet little body again.
And then I did what I should have done hours earlier.
I locked the door behind me as I stepped out onto the landing, and cash really was king again for me as I made my way back downstairs.Chapter FifteenBrandonI walked into another world in the office room downstairs. Eric was tipping back whisky with a couple of the security detail, a beam of a smile on his face as I crossed the threshold.
“Here he is!” he announced, raising his glass in some sad fucking toast. The other guys nodded and raised theirs too, but my eyebrows were pitted as I made my way over to his screen, caring about nothing more than the business I’d been missing out on.
He moved aside for me to get a clear view of the bid screen. His voice was loud in my ear when he spoke again.
“I should be cursing your superior slut reading skills doing me out of my leadership bid,” he told me. “But how can I? How can I when such a sorry little bitch as the one upstairs has come good enough to earn us a fucking fortune? Good call, brother. Good fucking call.”
I gritted my teeth as he landed a slap on my back, fighting back the urge to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the idiotic thrill right out of him.
“I need quiet,” I grunted, and the other guys didn’t need telling twice. They knocked back their drinks and made their exit, closing the door tight behind them.
Good fucking riddance.
My eyes were lasers on the screen, senses honed in hard on the generous list of online bids for the girl sleeping soundly upstairs.
“Drake’s been on to me already,” Eric said, seemingly still ignorant of my distaste at his attitude. “I told him you were busy with the slut upstairs, but he didn’t leave a message. Maybe this’ll be enough to get him off your back, hey? Good shout all round.”
“What the fuck did Drake have to say to you?” I hissed, but again the whisky did wonders at dulling down the dimwit even further into the dregs of stupidity.
I saw his shrug at the side of my vision. “He said he was aware of the bids coming through. Not just from the bid portal, but from his personal contacts. He said he’d been talking. That he’d been in demand, people wanting a back door guarantee they’d get their needs serviced. Secret handshakes and all that jazz, you know how it goes.”
I did fucking know how it goes. People at the top scratching the backs of other people at the top. A bubble of slimy cuntish associates all invested in getting their wants serviced at whatever the cost. And so they did. All of them lumped in together. One big stinking vat of privilege and prestige and enough money to buy their way to any putrid destination they were craving.
As it turned out, they were all craving her.
Paige Rowan Emmerson.
The delicate little petal upstairs.
The dainty little girl whose pleasures lay in the filthy half-light.
The bids on screen surpassed even my previously ambitious expectations of her worth. It wasn’t just in the volume of offers either. It was value too. Value and experiences desired.
My clients were filthy to the extreme, of course they were. That was the nature of the business here and always had been, right from the moment Drake enlisted me as a hardnosed young deviant, on the edge of my own rails all those years ago. Still, I felt the extremity of these bids as though I was seeing through fresh eyes all over again.
The Dubai twins had been first with their offer, but unlike regular double penetration the guys had a list of finer details seared under their bid heading.
Double vaginal. Double anal. Ass to mouth. Full night unbarred. Twelve hours straight with potential room for additional associates included in the action.
So she was to be their party piece. A filthy party piece with their dirty shit-stained dicks down her throat.
I could picture them laughing. Goading. Slapping her about as she retched and spluttered and gave them forced thanks over and over.
The figure they were offering burned my senses. I cursed myself afresh that I wasn’t clicking accept with enough force to give me fucking whiplash, regardless of the shit storm they’d put the girl through.