Net Worth by Amelia Wilde
3
Charlotte
The town cartrundles through the gates of the parking garage underneath the building where Mason Hill lives, and the first thing I’m confronted with is a sign that says VISITORS MUST STOP AT SECURITY STATION.
It should make me feel more comfortable. We have a gatehouse in our neighborhood, and I’ve been waved through every time I came home since I was sixteen. My heart continues racing. I ease past the sign and pull up next to the guard station. A man in a dark uniform steps out and motions for me to roll down the window. I do it.
“Do you have a pass, miss?”
“I—yes. Yes. It’s right here.” I meant to have it out and in my lap before I got here. It arrived to my house by courier with a note that read Sunset. I get it into the guard’s hand without dropping it. A small miracle.
He checks the pass, then peers into my face. It feels like everyone in the world knows what’s going to happen to me in Mason’s apartment tonight. I’m the only one who doesn’t know. All I know is that it will be all right, in the end. It might be…embarrassing. It will be embarrassing. It’ll be out of my comfort zone. But I’ll be saving my family. I’ll be saving myself.
It will be worth it. I know it will.
The guard directs me to a spot in a near-empty row and I take the elevator up to the lobby of the building. It lets me off in the front corner of a wide, modern space with a gleaming tiled floor. A swath of carpeting runs along the center. On the right-hand side of the space, a wide archway leads to a bar. The Middlegame, according to the black marble sign above the archway. An outline of a chess piece decorates the sign next to the elegant letters. A floor sign near the archway points to a hallway. Dining, it reads.
Voices drift into the lobby on the air. I can only see one man sitting at the bar, but it feels like a crowd is watching.
Two doormen wait behind a small counter on the other side. Their conversation blends with the soft noise from the restaurant. None of it is louder than my own racing heartbeat.
One of them lifts his head and waves me over. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he ended this now. If he said he had a message from Mr. Hill that I’d proved myself to him, and we didn’t have to play this game.
“Good evening, Ms. Van Kempt.”
My face heats. They’re waiting for me, then. Everyone knows what’s happening. They all know what I am, and what I’ve done. I put on a smile anyway. “Hi. I’m meeting Mason Hill.”
“You’ll need the private elevator. The main one won’t take you to the penthouse.”
Of course.
“Do I need—” Oh my god. This is not the first nice building I’ve been inside. I grew up in a mansion. And I feel like I’ve never visited the city before. I feel small. Unsteady. “Do I need a pass for it?”
“You’ll need a code, provided to you by Mr. Hill.”
At that moment my phone vibrates in my purse. I reach for it like a lifeline. Mason’s name is on the screen, along with a code. 0-6-0-7. Relief thunders through me at the name. At the numbers. Relief, and a flash of anger. He’s in control of every moment. He decides if he wants to save me or let me dangle in front of the doorman.
“I have the code,” I announce brightly while I read each of their name tags. “Thanks so much for your help, Derek. Steve.”
They go back to talking as I go over to the elevator. A keypad by the side lights up when I’m close enough to touch. The doors don’t open until the code is in. I’ve never been more relieved to have those same doors slide shut behind me.
On the inside panel there are four buttons, three unlabeled, one that has a slim metal plate that says PENTHOUSE. I pick that one. I try not to think of the fact that Mason Hill not only owns the penthouse, he owns the top four floors. He probably owns the entire building. Pays the men at the counter. Everything I can see and touch belongs to him.
Including me.
My pulse is racing too fast to feel individual heartbeats by the time the elevator doors open.
Directly into the foyer of Mason’s penthouse.
That explains the code, and the two doormen. There’s no outer hall. The elevator itself is the only transition between the rest of the building and his private space.
And him.
He stands in the center of the foyer on shining marble my mother would approve of. Feet planted, but there’s possibility in his stance. He could do anything.
Run. The instinct hits at the same time the cool air does, all over my skin. I give in to it, but the only place to go is toward him. Into his house.
It smells good in here. Fresh. New. Like someone might have painted recently. Like someone took great care with every part of this place. Including the man in front of me now. He’s tall and strong, nothing like those thrashing trees in the storm, but that same energy fills the space around us. Is it him or me? Or both of us together? It’s one thing to look at slicing branches from the safety of your bedroom. It’s another to stand below one while the lightning cracks.
Mason looks me up and down. “How was traffic?”
Three words. It should be a simple question, the way it was when Leo Morelli asked it. In Mason Hill’s mouth it’s a challenge. Every syllable is another reminder that I’m here in bargain-bin cloth and cardboard shoes. No jewelry. No armor.
“It was terrible,” I tell him. Mason looks just as gorgeous and cutting as he did at his office and at Cornerstone, but he’s changed out of his suit. Slacks and a button-down, all of it crisp and perfect, even the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show off strong forearms. Those are the arms he’ll use to…do things to me. “Mid-morning would be a better time to meet in—in terms of the traffic.”
He laughs, and the sound gives me shivers. It’s mean and beautiful and makes me feel like I’ve lost a layer of clothing or a beloved necklace. Something I came in here expecting to keep. Maybe it’s my dignity. But no—I still have that, for the moment. “You’d rather me cancel meetings for you?”
“I’m sure you’re in charge of your schedule. You could make it work.”
“This works for me.” A gesture in my direction. He takes in my clothes. My shoes. My burning cheeks. “You, struggling through traffic and fumbling your way past the doormen. I like it when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
Mason takes a deliberate step closer. Then another. Fine. Okay. I’m nervous. I’m terrified. The back of my neck goes hot, then cold, then hot again. How long is it going to be before he makes me get on my knees? There’s a dark suggestion in everything he says, and I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all. I’m not sure whether he’s the kind of man who will want to drag out my humiliation as long as possible or get right to it.
“What about now? Is your heart beating faster?”
It is. “No.”
“Really? Your pupils are enormous.”
“Really,” I insist, and it sounds like a breathless lie, because it is. “I’m not afraid.”
He’s close now. Close enough to smell him. And I’m mortified to find that he smells so, so good. Clean. Masculine. Something vaguely spicy I can’t name. I haven’t taken another step but adrenaline runs rampant through my veins. My heart crashes like I’m being chased through those storm-laden trees. This scent would be in the air seconds before he caught me. I remember what he said about looking him in the eye and I do it. His eyes make me think of those trees. All that violent motion. It’s a clear night. No sign of rain, or lightning. His focus has the same intensity as that storm.
Worse than the storm.
He wouldn’t take off his jacket and cover me with it, if we were out in a storm. He would let me get soaked to the skin.
“Not afraid,” he echoes, like he’s testing the shape of them. Tasting my fear on the air. “I’ll fix that.”
How?
One step takes the last of the space between us. I don’t ask the question. I’m fighting for every breath. God, they’re so loud. It’s so obvious that I’m afraid.
“Look at that,” Mason murmurs, almost to himself. “You think you’re terrified.”
“Fine. I am. I admit it.” A new wave of shame heats my cheeks. “I’m terrified. But I’m still going to do this.”
“Of course you are. You don’t have any other choice.”
“Doesn’t that—doesn’t that bother you?”
He cocks his head to the side and his perfection is like a hem done by a master tailor—once you see the best, everything else looks ragged and less-than. It makes me jealous. It makes me hate him even more. It makes me wish—
I won’t get into what I wish.
“Does what bother me, Ms. Van Kempt?”
“That I obviously don’t want to be here?”
A noncommittal noise. “You very much want to be here. You’re desperate to be here. You’re so desperate for it that you’re panting.”
“I’m—” I force a few slow, deep breaths. “I’m not panting. I’m nervous. I already admitted it. What more do you want?”
He laughs again. It cuts into me. Double-edged. It hurts, to be laughed at like this. It hurts that he’s enjoying my fear so much. And I want to know what he sounds like when he’s not being mean. The curiosity comes in an embarrassed ache. I shouldn’t want to know more about him. It’s because he’s standing so close. It’s because he’s so handsome. There are other reasons. If I keep breathing, I’ll have time to think of all of them.
“I think we’re past what I want, Ms. Van Kempt. At this point it’s more about what I’ll take.”
Mason has already taken all the space in his foyer, and now there’s nothing left but me.
I can’t do it. I can’t look him in the eye for this. For whatever’s about to happen. So I end up looking at his chest. At the beautifully sewn buttons of his shirt. The movement of his arm as he reaches for me.
His fingertips burn across my forehead, brushing a lock of hair away from my face. Gentle but perfunctory. Getting it out of his way. I hold my breath. There are other things in his way, like my dress. Like my panties and bra. I’m still standing in his foyer.
He follows the line of my jaw with a fingertip, then digs the pad of his finger under my chin and forces my face up. “You’re free to lie to me about being afraid, Ms. Van Kempt. I like the way you sound when you try to convince me. You’re not free to hide.”
The terrible thing is, he’s beautiful. It’s not just the soft, expensive lighting in his foyer. He is just absolutely gorgeous. Mason Hill could have stepped out of a fashion magazine, with all his lean muscle and elegant bone structure. “It’s hard to hide from a person who’s touching you.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You’re trying to do it right now.”
His fingertip moves down over my throat. Over the hollow. Down to the neckline of my dress. My brain skips ahead along the path he’s following. Down and down and down. The space between my legs is unbearably hot, but I can’t move. Moving my thighs at all would tell him that I’ve thought of it. That here, in this moment, I’m imagining his hand there. He has big hands, and I’d have to spread my legs to let him—
A palm on my hip startles a gasp out of me. He makes a sound that’s almost like approval, and part of me bursts into flame. This is bad. This is worse by the second. I can’t want his approval. I can’t want any part of this. I don’t want it.
“Yes,” he says, like he can hear my thoughts. “You hate it when I touch you. Aren’t you lucky?”
“Why—” It takes so much energy to stay standing. It would be better to fall. At least then I’d be on solid ground. “Why would I be lucky?”
He bends, and something about the movement—I notice something about it but it’s subsumed in the scent of him. In the heat of his breath against the shell of my ear. “You’re lucky, Ms. Van Kempt, that the contract doesn’t require you to want this.”
“That’s absurd.” His lips brush the soft skin behind my earlobe and my whole body tenses. It feels good. It’s not supposed to. Somehow he’s angling me against him, angling himself against me. Every time I think he’s touching me everywhere, it changes. “You couldn’t control my feelings even if you wanted to.”
“I don’t need to control your feelings. You loathe this.” A kiss to my jawline. “And I don’t fucking care.”
I open my mouth to argue, to fight, to say something, but I never get the chance.
Because he kisses me for real.
All the rest—I don’t know what that was. The kiss bowls it all over. He’s all power and strength and possession, a hand locking around my jaw, another one warm and solid on the small of my back. A cage. I’m caged in by him and he’s not using anything but his body. But it’s worse than that, because everything with Mason Hill is worse than it seems. It’s worse. Because I want to be kissing him. He kisses me like he’s known me forever. Like he’s demanded entrance to my mouth with his tongue a thousand times before. Like he expected me to react by letting him in.
Which I do.
I do.
It’s terrible.
It’s wonderful.
I hate it.
I want it.
I’ve never known anything to be so good and so cruel at the same time. He’s playing with me, proving his power over me, and I just have to stand here and take it. His tongue. His teeth. The cold, clean taste of him. I don’t know I’ve put my hands to his chest until he moves and I feel him there, all hard muscle and control.
His grip on my chin tightens. Mason takes one last, desultory lick of my mouth and then he breaks the kiss off. “No,” I hear myself say.
I have the impression of glittering green, and then he kisses me again, laughing behind it, the sound so dark it makes my vision shadowy. Unclear. He’s moving us and I can’t make sense of the direction. He’ll take me inside. To a bed. A couch. A carpet. He’ll take my dress. He’ll take everything.
I feel the wall, inches away from my back, but his hand keeps me from touching it. His teeth graze my lower lip. Tease at sinking into the flesh. A warning of what he could do. Of what he’s probably going to do. Fear and confusion and desire braid themselves together down my spine. A movement. A sound.
And then he pushes me backward into his elevator.
I catch myself on the railing, barely upright. “That’s all?”
He’s pushing at a button on the outside, but when he steps in front of the open doors, there’s no sign he was ever kissing me except a glint in his eyes and a lightning-storm energy about to crest.
The expression that comes over his face is the same one he wore when I saw him in Leo Morelli’s meeting room. Cruelly satisfied. “That’s all you get tonight,” he says, and then the doors close.
