Net Worth by Amelia Wilde

17

Mason

She’s just as afraid,just as ashamed, as she was the night she fled the penthouse in tears. Only now she’s given into it. She’s submitting to the fear—and to me. Charlotte trembles on the floor at my feet, looking up at me with enormous blue eyes, and goddamn.

She’s never looked more glorious.

I should send her away right now. I should walk her to the elevator myself. Taking her throat wasn’t the plan for tonight. I wanted her to fear it. I didn’t want her to offer it to me because she thinks I need comfort from her.

I don’t need comfort from her. From anyone.

But I do want to fuck her mouth. So much it hurts. My abs are tensed with it. My erection has never been so hard. It’s already leaking. I’m trembling with how badly I want her heat around me, her tongue against the crown of my cock.

The diamonds wink around her neck. I haven’t taken it off her yet. So there’s time. And I’ve been waiting so long. It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole goddamn life for this.

Decision made.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

Her tongue darts out to wet her lip. “Are you going to tie them?”

Part of me wants to say yes. It would probably scare her into backing away, scare her into leaving the penthouse. That’s what I want, isn’t it? “Only if I have to.”

I see her resolve to be obedient in the set of her shoulders. Fuck me. Maybe I should wrap my belt around those wrists to teach her a lesson about asking questions like that.

Another time. I need that mouth.

I free myself of my pants and Charlotte sucks in a breath.

“More than you bargained for, you sweet little thing? It doesn’t matter. Breathe deep while you still can. You offered me your throat, and I’m going to take it.”

I see the tiny shift in her body toward the door—she wants to run, and her instincts are on a hair-trigger. Go, go, go. Leave for your own good.

Charlotte stays on her knees. No words, only the sound of her breath. Too quiet, so I fist a hand in her hair and twist. She cries out, which has the fortunate side effect of parting her lips for me. It turns into a noise of shock. A noise of intoxicating fear. The soft slide of her tongue is so good I could come now.

“This is a kindness,” I tell her, breath hitching with the effort of not fucking her as hard as I want to. I want to shove all the way inside. “I’m being…patient. Make it worth my time. Lick.”

She does, tentative until I use my grip on her hair to force her in closer. Then Charlotte licks me like she wants to be the society queen of cock-sucking. I won’t let her use her hands, so it’s hard, it’s messy, and Jesus, I love it.

That sweet little thing starts sucking on her own. Ah—fuck. She’s frantic to avoid a brutal throat-fucking. And maybe I could go easy on her. Maybe I could—

Charlotte does something with her tongue at my base that yanks a grunt right out of my mouth. “Be good,” I order her, and then I have both hands in her hair, I have her pinned. I shove my cock down her throat like I own it. Which I do. I own her entire body.

She gags on the invasion and I pull out for just long enough to keep her from suffocating. Tears streak down her cheeks. I gave her a chance to run. She didn’t take it. And now this is mine, the tight hold of her throat, the slip of her tongue, the panicked crying sounds she makes around me. I hold her hair tightly in my fist, using her the way I need.

A panicked moan.

Another one.

I thrust harder. She can’t breathe, she can only cry, and that cry has turned into begging, but it’s not begging for me to stop. Charlotte doesn’t turn her head. Doesn’t pull away. No, she leans in closer.

And then—

Hands. Hands on my thighs, holding on. I’ll give her this one. I won’t punish her for this because I’m fucking her with all the intensity I’ve kept bottled up for years. I’m making her cry. Her touch makes my knee seize, makes the muscles react, but I don’t care, because Charlotte works harder to make me come.

She’s doing her damndest to let me have this.

My cock jumps. I want to do this all night, but she makes a sound when it happens and that sound curls my toes. My balls draw up.

I pull myself out of her, fuck me, fuck being nice.

“Breathe.” My voice is so rough, but Charlotte’s already doing it. She’s already gasping air into what are probably burning lungs. The image of her this way, with tears silver on her cheeks and my diamonds around her neck and her mouth open to take me, burns into my mind.

I’ll never forget it. Fucking never.

Not even when the contract is over. Not even when Cornerstone is built. Not even when I’ve had my revenge, and this night should mean nothing to me.

Can’t wait anymore. Charlotte struggles beneath me, choking, crying, and I hold her head in place and spill myself into her mouth. The orgasm clenches my entire body. There’s a roaring sound. It’s in my head. No, it’s me, filling the penthouse with pleasure. With pain. With a pent-up anguish that comes out in a gush.

“Oh, fuck.” The swallowing while she tries not to drown in me, audible and hard, tears leaking from her eyes. “Fuck, Charlotte.” Again. Again. Again.

Her hands inch up my thighs. She’s at her limit now, but I don’t let her go until everything has drained out of me. I make her take every single drop.

Charlotte sits back on her heels, shaking fingertips to her lips. I want to kiss those lips. I want to lay her down on the leather couch and taste her pussy again. And worst of all, I want to drag her into my bed and hold her. Hold her, as if she’s a lover. A girlfriend. Not a woman I’m taking revenge on. This is a disaster. I feel too exposed. Too intimate. Rough sex would have been fine, but this was something else. It was a goddamn communion.

I have to get away from her. Have to walk away. Have to put some distance between us, because otherwise I’ll screw everything up. It felt wrong to send her away.

But I can’t do the things that feel right.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that her innocent curiosity would make me want so many things from her. Not just from her—with her.

It’s a problem.

“I’m going to shower.” And catch my breath. I’m being a bastard. I know that. Even for a revenge fuck, she deserves better than this. A napkin for her lips. A drink of water. At the very least a thank you. But I can’t give her any of that. I can’t give her anything, because I’m feeling too raw right now. “Stay. Go. I don’t care.”

My knee puts up a fight all the way down the hall and through my bedroom and has a problem with every move I make to strip off my clothes. Hot water is an improvement, but it doesn’t solve my second problem, which is that I’m already hard for her again.

Too hard to ignore.

I wrap my cock up in my fist and brace one hand against the wall so I can get some of the pressure off my knee.

Jesus, her mouth. Fuck, her throat. How am I supposed to live without her on her knees for me after this is over? It was hot, of course, but it was more than that. It was… sweet. It was a dark, sensual comfort that I’m already addicted to.

It takes less than a minute of fucking my fist to come again. Just remembering her lips stretched around my cock is enough to send me over. My abs were already tense before I got into the shower, but now every muscle is shaky. My heart is an earthquake.

Not only because that sweet little thing has a mouth I need wrapped around my cock again, but because my want for her has burst like a diamond into a million cutting shards. Each one of them refracts things I can’t want and can’t have.

Shampoo. Soap. Both of them follow my cum down the drain, and I try not to think about what I want from Charlotte Van Kempt. It’s impossible. If I’m going to go back out there and look her in the eye, I have to let it happen. Imagine it so I can discard it.

I wanted to lift her off the floor and kiss her hard. Not so hard she bleeds, but softer, so I can tell her how much I loved her lips on me and her struggle and her tears. I want her to be in here with me now so I can work shampoo through her hair and let her lean on me while I rinse it out. I want to dress her in my clothes. Sit on the couch with her in the den, not the living room.

I want to take her to bed.

My bed, so I can take her some more. I want to own every boundary of hers right now, tonight, and I don’t want to wait another second. I want to make her cry. Make her sob. And then I want to hold her afterward and tell her what a good girl she was, what a sweet little thing.

I want her to sleep next to me.

But I can’t.

I definitely can’t let her stay here. Not now. Not ever. It would reveal too much. I don’t have women spend the night at the penthouse. Not the women I’ve dated and left behind, and not Charlotte Van Kempt, whose body I’ve bought.

It can’t happen. She can’t ever spend a night in my bed.

None of it can happen, because this isn’t about her feelings, or even mine. This is about making things right in a world that’s taken so much from my family I can hardly think about it. It’s good, though. If I’m going to imagine Charlotte breathing peacefully in the night next to me, then I also need to remember what got us here in the first place. Both of my parents are dead. The way they died fucked all four of us up in various terrible ways. In their absence I’ve had to fight to take their place and I’ve done a terrible job. It’s possible Gabriel and Jameson and Remy might never recover.

My knee aches, deep in the muscle. I’ve been standing too long. All day at the office. All this time with Charlotte. In my shower. I’m still shaky. Shaken. I’m rough with the towel so I can get a grip. I can’t tell if it works or not.

Another problem—an aching desperation to look at her again. To have her in my sight. I make myself dress at a leisurely pace. Slacks, though I have no interest in pulling them on over my aching knee and would prefer pajamas. A henley. I’m not putting on a dress shirt again. Socks. I shove the sleeves of the shirt up to my elbows and let myself lean on one of the shelves in my walk-in closet. The bed has never been so tempting.

And yet.

There are things I need to do before I go to bed.

It doesn’t matter that I can’t touch her again. The electric need to fuck her until she’s out of tears and out of words would be impossible to deny. It would be like snapping the clasp on that necklace. Once I started to pull, breaking it was inevitable. I had to feel it come apart in my fist. I can’t wait to feel Charlotte come apart under the invasion of my cock, but—

Patience.

I’ve wanted to fuck her since she took that first step into my office. But doing it now will take away her fear of it, and I want her to be fucking terrified.

One step out of the bedroom, and I discover the night’s not over yet.

Charlotte didn’t leave.

Well, isn’t that a surprise.

She’s at the end of the hall, peeking in to the half-open door of Remy’s bedroom. I meant for her to get into the elevator and go. She had to summon some bravery to go snooping through my home while I was in the shower.

From the looks of it, she washed her face in one of my bathrooms, and then she went to make coffee. One of my sister’s mugs is cradled in her hands. It features a cartoon drawing of a pebble with a big smile. A script font reads My life is in ruins! An archeology joke Remy grins at every time she sees it.

The delicate flesh of Charlotte’s wrists is pink from my belt.

All the muscles around my knee clench like a fist, and my heart does the same thing. Charlotte could be coming home from a night out in that dress. She’s kicked off her cheap heels so she can go barefoot through the penthouse. I ruined her hair, bending her over the arm of the sofa and keeping her there, but she’s done her best with it.

Home from a night out with me.

Fuck—no.

I take another step into the hall and she jumps a little, controlling it in time to avoid spilling the coffee. For a split second, there’s pleasure in her eyes—I’ve caught her, and she’s pleased to see me.

Then she remembers.

It’s like a gem tumbling away from the jeweler’s light. That pleasure becomes opaque. It’s hidden behind her nerves and her shame and her desire. It’s separated from me by the loops and falls of her signature on our contract. There’s no such thing as Charlotte Van Kempt taking simple joy in me stepping into a room.

“You didn’t leave.”

“No.” Charlotte glances down into her coffee, then back up—always back up, like I told her. “This—” A motion toward the door with the coffee mug. “This is your sister’s room?” Her eyebrows lift, and I see why she was looking into the bedroom like she was.

I don’t want to talk about Remy. It’s too personal. That may be a joke, considering I just had my cock in her throat, but I don’t care. “Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

I’m not going to have a conversation with her from this distance, so I go down the hall to meet her. Every step hurts like a hairline fracture, sharp and thin. Charlotte stays in her place as I brush past and pull Remy’s bedroom door closed. For her privacy, yes, but also for mine.

And for the excuse to be near Charlotte.

She backs up a step when I’m finished, and there’s plenty of space for us where the hall makes a turn and keeps going. “Remington,” I tell her.

Charlotte nods, her eyes wide and curious. “There are textbooks.”

“She goes to NYU.” I should shut up about my family, but something about the intimacy of the night keeps the words flowing. “She was the oops baby. My parents weren’t expecting her. And when my mother found out she was pregnant, she was sure it would be another boy. Even when they found out she was a girl, the name stuck.”

A small smile. “It’s sweet that she still stays with you.”

“My brother Jameson has the room next door.” I gesture down the hall. “That one used to be Gabriel’s. He moved out as soon as he could.”

Of all the things I’ve said and done to this sweet little thing, naming my siblings and their living situations seems to shock Charlotte the most. “But Jameson lives here?”

“He has a room here, but he barely sleeps in it.”

“But he is here…sometimes.”

“Yes.”

Charlotte’s cheeks turn red. “Are your siblings ever here on Fridays?”

“Oh, look at you. Worried someone might have heard you choking on my cock. No, those sounds are only for me, unless you need an audience.”

A quick shake of her head. “I don’t need that. I just didn’t want to leave yet.”

“You wanted to snoop.”

She smiles, and I can’t believe it—smiling when I just fucked her throat until she was in tears. “Yeah,” she admits, looking sheepish and beautiful. “I wanted to know more about you.”

And I want to take you to my bed and make you cry all night. I want to ask you a thousand questions about why a girl like Charlotte Van Kempt is curious about me, of all people. I want to know everything about you.

“You’re making a mistake, Ms. Van Kempt.”

“Because I made coffee?”

I take the step toward her I’ve wanted to take all this time and take her chin in my hand. Lift up her face. “There’s nothing about me you need to know,” I tell her. “You don’t worry about that. You worry about surviving this arrangement. Don’t worry about me.”

She shivers. “Okay,” she agrees, because she’s like that, because she fights me and gives in. “I won’t worry about you.”

I don’t believe her, but I don’t know what to do about it. It occurs to me, as we stand outside Remy’s room, that they’re almost the same age. I would kill anyone who treated my sister the way I’m treating Charlotte. Unlike Remy, no one’s around to protect Charlotte.

It’s a goddamn shame.