Devil's Bargain

“Bathroom, Melissa. So you can get over whatever you need to get over and do what you need to do to pay me back.”

“And if I won’t? If I can’t?”

“Won’t and can’t are two very different things.”

“What will happen to her? To Liza?”

“Let’s not go there. Then you really will be sick.”

2

Melissa

His hand is huge.

Hell. He’s huge.

I reach out, place mine inside it and it feels warm and rough and when he closes his fingers over mine, his grip is firm, this gesture, it’s as though I’ve already agreed.

Because I know what I must do. I know why he brought me here. I have no doubt.

You owe her nothing.

I haven’t seen or had any contact with Liza in years. I didn’t know she was in town.

And she can’t know that I am.

I manage to get to my feet, and he’s got to be a good foot taller than me. Even with my pumps, the top of my head barely reaches his chin.

Heads turn as Hawk, his presence at my back enough to guide me, leads me toward a door at the back of the room where a man stands sentry. He opens it at our approach.

I hesitate.

“Go on,” Hawk says from behind me. He’s standing closer than I realize and a shudder runs through me at the feel of his breath on the back of my neck.

I hear the faint hint of his accent. I heard it throughout our conversation, stronger sometimes than others. It’s in the way he says his r’s.

I walk inside and the lights go on. I realize I’m in his office.

I don’t want to be impressed or amazed, but this is spectacular. The walls aren’t walls at all but windows overlooking the Las Vegas strip. Tonight is clear, and the lights blink in a rainbow of colors. This view, it’s something out of a magazine.

His desk is huge and modern, set at the far corner facing the entrance. There’s a sitting area in another corner with sleek leather couches. Everything is top quality. I can tell.

“This way,” he says, beckoning for me to come.

I follow.

He opens a door and I don’t know what I expect, a bedroom maybe, but it’s a bathroom. A large and luxurious bathroom and the walls here, too, are glass.

I glance back at him.

“No one can see inside,” he says and when he goes to close the door, I stop him.

“Wait.”

He looks down at me and I think how strange his eyes are. Different colors. One is a mossy-green, the other half green and half crystal-blue. The green is warm, the blue ice-cold.

But I know any warmth I think I see is in my head. This man, he’s all sharp edges. It’s like someone took a beast out of the wild and put him in a thousand-dollar suit thinking it would somehow tame the animal inside. Somehow contain it.

“Melissa?” he says my name and I realize I’m staring.

“She was going to do that? To pay you back?”

He nods.

“You want me to do that? Like those women? Because she can’t?”

“I’m merely giving you an option. It’s your choice entirely.”

“You want to strip me, put me on that stage and sell me to pay a debt that’s not my own?”

He cocks his head to the side like he’s a little annoyed. “Like I said, I’m giving you an option. I thought you’d want to help Liza, considering you grew up together. She was certain if I could find you, that you’d want to help.”

“How did you find me?”

He studies me and I see his eyes narrowing. He’s remembering the driver’s license, putting two and two together.

“Should it have been hard for me to find you? I mean, the house is under M. Doe. Although I am curious about the driver’s license.”

I need to relax. Think. “I just…what you arranged with Liza, you obviously took advantage of her—”

“Don’t push me, Melissa. My kindness only goes so far.”

“Kindness?”

“Yes, kindness. Besides,” he pauses as his gaze drops to my mouth, my chest. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you drew more than what’s owed.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? To make this sound somehow more appealing? Not like what it is?” My voice is quaking, it’s as unsteady as I feel.

He shrugs a shoulder like he couldn’t care less and checks his watch. “Let me know in the next five minutes.”

With that, he takes his phone out of his pocket and turns his back to me to walk toward his desk.

I close and lock the bathroom door and lean my back against it.

Five minutes.

I have five minutes to decide this.

Liza’s here and she knows I’m here. But why hasn’t she approached me?

I hold my hand out and realize it’s trembling.

I walk to the sink, turn on the cold water and splash handfuls of it onto my face, then dry it. The towel smells like him. I wonder when I noted what he smelled like.