That’s when the fresh bout of panic struck hard.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll be more careful with my words in the future. I won’t say it again, not anything like it. Not for the cameras, not for the full sixty days, I promise…”
“There’s much more to it than promising to be careful, Paige,” he argued, and I felt a fresh pang at the use of my name. “The sixty days will push you too hard to hold back any words, no matter your determination to avoid them. We don’t need declarations of love uttered in this place. You sure as shit don’t need to be in a position to speak them, the clients don’t need to hear them… hell, sweetheart, you don’t need to feel them.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how I feel, I will hold them back,” I insisted. “Really, sir, I’ll hold them back. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
That’s when the gorgeous monster sighed and closed the distance. He lowered himself slowly down next to me and took a seat on the bed.
I wasn’t expecting him to lean in close enough to push the hair back from my forehead and glide his thumb across my cheekbone.
“This is part of the reason you are such an intoxicating little sweetheart, Paige Emmerson. Honesty. Truth. Vulnerability.” He paused. “And such optimism. Looking on the bright side of a situation when all the factors point to hell. And this is the thing, you don’t belong in hell, sweetheart. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with me.”
“I can hold my tongue, I swear,” I whispered. “Please don’t take these sixty days away from me… my sister might be running scared for her life… she needs me with the money to save her…” I couldn’t hold back the tears as the concern hit home. “I need to… I need to save her. I need to make sure she’s ok. That she’s alive. That I can help her… Please don’t send me away…”
“You’re scared you’re going to lose your pay day? That’s your main concern?” His jaw was gritted hard. His eyes were still cold, even though I could see the rawness I’d come to love so much.
“Please!” I cried. “Please don’t send me back to uni before my time is done… please, sir… I’ll do whatever it takes… I might not even have a place on campus now, not after disappearing in the middle of the night without even emailing to say I was gone…”
I couldn’t face him. Couldn’t face seeing my own desperation registering so clearly in his eyes. I stared past him at the wall of camera controls, wondering if this was really it. If this was really it for me, and Phoebe, and my genuine love for the stranger who’d bought my soul.
“I’d never cast you out without a penny to your name,” he said, and took my chin. “I may be a cunt, but I’m not that much of a cunt. You can stop trying to convince me this is the right place for a girl like you for the sake of a pay day.”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Rehab and a new life for Phoebe would be expensive. Paying off her loan sharks would be even more so. I needed the full pay out. Not for me, not even a scrap for me. My eyes were thick with a fresh bout of tears when they crashed back to his. “I can’t stop before my sixty days are up. I need to keep going. I need to make you believe I can do this.”
“And what if I don’t want you to do your sixty days?” he asked. “What if you’re too pure a little beauty to taint to the max and sell on to a host of vile fucking vultures?”
I held his stare so hard. As hard as I possibly could. “I’m not pure, sir. Not inside. I don’t want to be pure, and you know it. You feel it. You feel how much I want this. How much I love this. How much I want you. And that’s what this is about now, it’s not just about money, or my sister… it’s about you… because I do really feel it. I do really feel how I said I did…” I grabbed a deep breath. “But that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to matter. I can do everything I signed up for, love or not. I can give myself over to the others. I can do whatever you tell me to do, and do it gladly…”
He was statue still as I continued, and I did continue. I couldn’t shut myself up.
“I’ve never been pure inside…”I told him. “I’ve just been hidden. Kept myself hidden… I’ve never really shown my true self to anyone before you made me express myself… before you exposed me for who I really am… for what I really want…”