Net Worth by Amelia Wilde
20
Charlotte
The first timeI met Mason, I had a strange dread that he’d do something impossible—that he’d make the windows of his office turn to nothing and let in the thunderstorm that roiled in the clouds around his building.
I was mistaken. The rain and the lightning outside were no threat.
The storm was already in the room with me.
It was still contained that day behind all his self-control. He deployed his cruelty with precision. I expect him to be precise now, but his fury is out in the air. It feels like gathering electricity. The kind of friction that builds and builds until it tears apart, and all at once, you see how weak the seam was.
His words are like sharp gusts of wind, here in this silent space, and they make it hard to breathe. Hard to think. My father was at Cornerstone. Mason gave him a black eye. No one told me. I stayed late at Van Kempt today. I didn’t want to risk another conversation with my mother or another status report in my father’s office. I brought all my clothes and my things to the office and used the small employee gym to get ready. They didn’t call. No one called.
My heart beats out of time. A part of me thinks I should go home to make sure my father’s okay, but that would mean walking out on Mason.
I won’t do that.
I can’t.
And maybe the scariest part of all is that I don’t want to. My curiosity is too strong to let go. It’s like the feeling I get when I see a garment I need to make or a pattern I need to put together—I need to do it, almost like a compulsion. Fresh air in my lungs and a tug at my core. It doesn’t matter if I have to save my pennies and hoard coupons for the fabric store and stay up late to do it.
I wanted some of his pain in exchange for mine. I wanted that.
I’m going to get it.
Mason watches me, impassive. He takes in my trembling, my shaking. I’m within reach of the elevator. I could reach behind me and push the button and try to escape. But there is no escape—I see that now. He’ll live in my mind. The question of what we might have done will never leave me.
“Everything off,” he says.
“Here?”
A vicious smile. “I’ve been too lenient with you, Ms. Van Kempt. No purse. No clothes. Not another step until those things are on the floor.”
Heat floods my face at Ms. Van Kempt. It’s worse, somehow, to have to undress in the foyer. But there’s no getting around it. The promise behind his words is that he’ll take my dress for me. It’s purple and summery and soft. I don’t know why I keep making things for him. Every Friday seems to demand something new for him to see. A fresh layer of armor.
I reach for the hem and pull it over my head in one motion.
Mason laughs, and I could cry. It’s the meanest sound. Beyond that, he’s right to laugh, because of what I’ve done. “Nothing on underneath, Charlotte? Did you think I would be impressed?”
“You tore them last time.” I drop my purse onto the dress and step out of the shoes. It’s a relief to let it drop. I couldn’t stop shaking if I wanted to. I step out of my shoes next. “I thought it would make things easier.”
His smile is beautiful and dark. “Nothing will be easy for you tonight.”
Mason puts his hand into his pocket and takes something out. A necklace—one I haven’t seen before. A medallion made of diamonds in light colors, radiating out from a center diamond in white. Even the chain is a delicate twist of diamonds.
He puts his hands around my neck and I stop breathing. His fingers work at the clasp and it seems so final, this necklace going on. My last chance to escape sails away. The medallion makes contact with my skin. It’s heavier than the other pieces. It must have cost a fortune. Worth more than I am. The cold of the metal sends goose bumps racing down my ribs. It makes my nipples pull tight.
Mason makes a sound—a noncommittal, observational one—and takes the medallion in his fist. “Keep up,” he says, “if you deserve to wear this.”
As if I have another choice. I know how much necklaces like this cost. If it snaps, it won’t be because of me.
Shame is cool metal on hot skin. I get ready to go left out of the foyer, toward his enormous great room with its living area and sitting room and dining table, but he goes right.
Toward the bedrooms.
This is where he found me snooping last Friday. This is where he sleeps. He’s never taken me to his bedroom before. Mason pulled his sister’s door shut tight in front of my face. He doesn’t hesitate for even a second. An abrupt left turn and then, on the right, a set of double doors recessed into the wall. He throws one open and drags me inside.
More hallways. It should be simple to keep up with him, but I’m off-balance with this pressure around my neck, in these unfamiliar rooms. My lungs are on fire with a wild, ridiculous curiosity. A desire? I don’t know. I want to be familiar with these rooms. I’m desperate to know more about him. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so afraid. But I don’t know, and I am afraid.
Another turn into a huge walk-in closet that’s bigger than mine at home. Through a wide archway is a gleaming bathroom, but he doesn’t take me there. He stops at a drawer and opens it. Takes something out.
It’s one of his ties.
More fear. I begged him not to tie my hands last time, and I want to do it now, but I know he’ll do it anyway. I press my lips closed to keep from doing it.
Mason’s eyes on my skin are intense and unreadable. “You’ll do one thing before I bind your hands, Ms. Van Kempt.”
Anything, I almost say. “What?”
“Reach down and put two fingers inside yourself.”
This is what it must be like to burn alive. “I—but—”
He narrows his eyes. “If you’re going to insist on wasting my time with bullshit protests and cute questions, I’ll insist on a gag, Charlotte. I’m running out of patience.”
And so I have to do this horrible thing, I have to inch my thighs apart in Mason Hill’s walk-in closet so I can push two fingers into a tight space that’s dripping wet and so sensitive a sound escapes me at the contact.
A moan.
I can’t look at him.
Mason leaves me behind the dark of my eyelids for long enough to feel my fingers there, for long enough to feel myself contracting around them, for long enough to want to die.
“Take them out,” he says. “And hold out your hands.”
I only open my eyes again because I know he’ll make me, and when I do I find him stepping closer. His eyes burn with a dangerous satisfaction. My hands shake in the air between us. Mason takes my right hand in his and holds it between us. In front of my face.
“When you’re crying and begging me to stop, Ms. Van Kempt, remember that you wanted this. Here’s the proof.” And then he takes my fingers into his mouth. Wraps his tongue around them. Licks the evidence of my humiliation off. This is how I die. This is how Charlotte Van Kempt leaves the earth. Here in Mason Hill’s closet.
Somehow, I’m alive when he pulls my fingers out of his mouth with an audible pop and binds my wrists together with his tie. I’m too mortified to fight it, but then my brain catches up with the situation. It finally puts all the pieces together. The tie, instead of his belt.
He has other plans for the belt. He told me about them, and I imagined his hand, I imagined—I don’t know what I imagined. My mind was all overheated by him, my body overheated and need—
I make a motion toward the door, but Mason has his hands on the tie and he jerks me back toward him. Turns me around. “You had the right idea, you sweet little thing. I need more room for what I’m going to do to you.”
Back out into his bedroom. A single lamp glows on his bedside table. I resist him with every step, pulling back as hard as I can, but it’s not just him I’m resisting. It’s myself. Because part of me wants to go forward. Part of me wants to go with him, to see what he’ll do. To know him like this. Whatever happened with my father wounded him somehow and I want to know why. It’s so sick. It’s so wrong.
Mason doesn’t seem to notice the fight. He drags me out to a sitting area in front of a fireplace. There are glass doors opposite, but I only catch a glimpse of the skyline. One final pull on my wrists and I’m over the arm of the chair. The diamond pendant lands first. I can feel it there, underneath me.
This won’t be like last time.
This won’t be like when he bent me over the arm of his sofa and licked me. Mason shoves my hands into the side of the cushion, the end of his tie spilling out like a loose thread. “I’d suggest holding on tight. Too much thrashing, and I’ll have to tie you down.”
“Don’t do that,” I plead. “You don’t have to do that.” I’m already gripping the cushion with all my strength and oh, Jesus, I shouldn’t feel this torn. This terrified and hot. This ashamed and aroused.
“We’ll see.”
It’s new upholstery, the cushion firm, so it pins my hands better than I would have expected. And here I am, helping, my fingertips wrapped around as far as I can get them. Mason traces a path down to my spine. Everything seems supersaturated and intense, even the pad of his finger on my skin, and I shake under it like he’s already keeping his word.
Like he’s already leaving marks.
He pats at the curve of my ass.
Too late. I’m too late in realizing what that pat was for. It was a small kindness—to tell me where the first blow was going to fall.
Mason’s hand cracks against my ass so hard I cry out. It stings. Oh god, it stings. It burns. And he doesn’t stop, doesn’t hesitate. He does it again, on the other cheek. A pressure on the small of my back intensifies as he spanks me—his free hand, holding me in place. I’m trapped by the chair but the rest of my body doesn’t know that. I lose count almost immediately. It’s such a shock, this pain—it’s so different from anything I’ve ever felt. His hand feels so enormous but his power seems even larger. It fills the whole room. The whole world. “Why?” I gasp. “Why?”
He lands ten more—ow, ow, ow—before he answers. “For you, sweet thing.”
My heart is wild in my chest. Mason rubs his palm over the places where he spanked me. He laughs when I gasp. Every touch is heightened. I’m shaking like a leaf torn free in a storm. He slips his fingers between my thighs. Nudges them apart. Strokes through the center of me with one finger. “I’m not,” I whisper. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re soaked. Which is it, Charlotte? Do you like being the sacrifice, or is it the pain?” I open my mouth to answer, but then his other hand covers my lips. “Tell me when I’m finished.”
He takes his hands away and steps into view. I can’t crane my neck far enough to look up into his face. I’m too embarrassed to do it anyway. But adrenaline beats down the door to my veins at the sight of his hands on his belt.
On the heavy belt buckle.
It’s out of his belt loops in a second. The supple leather never catches, never hesitates, and then I can’t see what he’s doing. When I can bear to look I can only see the side of him. Only see the perfect line of his waist meeting his hip. The expensive slacks.
He returns a hand to the small of my back, and new panic comes. “Please. Please.”
Mason reaches underneath me, takes the pendant, and slides it between my teeth.
I bite down on it through a blaze of shame, tears already falling.
“Stay where you are. And don’t let that necklace drop.”
Then he’s not touching me, and that’s scarier than everything else, because I don’t know what will happen next, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t—
The belt lands.
It drives a shocked howl out of me around the metal in my mouth. Jesus, it hurts, and it hurts in such an entirely new way. It’s a wide, deep pain. It goes through my entire body. And my entire body reacts.
The belt comes down again and I burst into tears. I’m not in control of myself. Not at all. He’s in control of everything. Why do I like it? Why do I like this even a little bit, feeling him towering over me? I’m so terrified. I’ve never been so terrified. And it’s hard to cry when I have all these diamonds between my teeth.
Again.
My legs kick up and it’s the fight of my life. It’s the most I’ve ever fought, because I’m fighting to do two things at once.
To get away.
And to hold on.
Again.
It just keeps coming, that long snap of pain across where he already spanked me. Over and over. Tears stream over my face and I can’t wipe them away. They drip down onto the cushion beneath me and keep coming. “Please,” I say once, the sound distorted by the necklace. I say it a hundred times. “Please.”
“That’s better,” Mason says, as cool and casual as he would be if he were standing in his office. “That’s begging. But I’m not going to stop until you learn.”
Learn what? I want to say. I can’t. I can’t let the necklace go.
Again.
He doesn’t tell me, and it’s the most difficult problem to solve in my entire life. Harder than how to run a company. Harder than how to pay the bills. I’m naked and bound and trapped and fighting—
Fighting.
Kicking. Pulling. Trying to get my body away from the chair. Away from him. The belt strikes and—oh, god, oh shit—I see what I have to do. I see.
Again.
Again.
Nothing is harder than putting my feet on the rug. Nothing is harder than pressing my cheek to the cushion and promising silently to keep it there. Nothing is harder than taking a breath to steady the quaking in every muscle.
“Good girl,” Mason says, and then I feel him draw the belt back. I feel the movement of him in the air.
I feel it land.
My lungs crush another sob out of me, but I don’t fight it this time. I just keep my ass still, where he wanted it, and wait for what comes next.
Which turns out to be the soft impact of leather on rug. The muted clink of his buckle. “Fuck. I can turn your ass red, but look what you do to me.” I blink more tears away. Turn my head until it hurts. Bent over like this, I can just see his pants. The rigid outline of him beneath. “How am I supposed to give this up? We’re running out of Fridays, you sweet little thing.”
Pure heat between my legs, intensified by the heat of my ass, the bruised flesh that he’s left. I don’t mean to moan. It just happens.
In answer, Mason makes a sound like he’s in pain. I’m the one bent over and belted, but his groan is all ache. “I have to have you.” I lift up on tiptoe, mind hazy from pain and want. He curses under his breath and reaches between my legs. “So fucking wet,” he comments. “Jesus.” Then he pulls me upright by the tie around my wrists. Takes the pendant out of my mouth. My jaw was so tense, my god. I haven’t been lifted in someone’s arms for a long, long time, but he does it now, and he carries me to his bed.
My back meets the comforter and I let out a hiss—he’s just punished me, and it still hurts. The pendant swings around behind me, the chain tugging at my neck. He makes another sound like he can’t stand to wait. Like it’s hurting him to wait even more than it’s hurting me. Mason pushes my arms up above my head in a silent command. Clothes hit the floor, and then he’s over me, shouldering my legs apart, spreading them wide. Lowering his head.
His tongue feels so good it brings on another sob. I don’t know what he’s done, only that it’s too much, too good. He pauses. “How much does it hurt, Ms. Van Kempt?”
“A lot,” I gasp. “But when you—when you—”
“Say it.”
“When you lick me it feels better. It feels so much better.”
He glides his tongue along the crease of my leg. So close and so torturously far. “When I lick you where?”
I can't say it. I can't.
“My pussy. My cunt. Please.”
The sound he makes is half growl, half groan.
He gives me more of this, and it’s beginning to feel not like a punishment, not like anything but pleasure. I should fight this too. I shouldn’t let him make me come after what he did. But I want to. I have to let him. I’ll die if he doesn’t. So when he drills into my clit with his tongue and wrests a shaking orgasm from me, I submit to it. This time, I feel the sound he’s making through my pussy. Through all that shameful wetness he’s created.
Mason’s limit arrives. He crawls over me and if I thought he was like a god before, I was wrong—this is it. This is it. He blocks out everything in the room. A lick to the side of my neck. I let my eyes close. My pulse is quick as a sewing machine, quicker than the fastest setting, and I am afraid, I am, but I’m more than that, too. I spread my thighs wider for him, to give his hips more room.
He reaches between us and takes his cock in his fist, and then the wide head of it is pressing against me. It’s as intimidating as the belt. I try to breathe through it. It’s a lot. Taking the first inch feels like victory. When he’s taken a little more of me, Mason comes back. His hands go to my face, my hair, and I’m shaking so hard now. Tears run down my cheeks but they’re more from frustration than anything else—I want to be fucked by a man with this much power. I want to be fucked by a man who can hurt me like this.
That man, that god, gives an experimental thrust, and I gasp.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” he says into my ear. He kisses my earlobe. Strokes my hair back from my face. “Fuck, you’re tight. Would it be better if I forced you to come on my cock?”
All I can do is moan.
His hand glides between us again, and it’s mortifying how fast it happens—barely any contact with his knuckles on my clit, and I’m there, pulsing around the invasion of him, my muscles out of control.
“Good,” he says. “Your cunt feels so good, and I haven’t taken all of you yet.” A shiver moves through him, and somehow he’s even bigger inside me. “Tell me, sweet thing, do you regret signing this pussy over to me? Are you sad that no other man will be able to hurt you first?”
I look into his eyes, my voice taken from me. It won’t cooperate. “No,” I say. He reads the shape of the word on my mouth. “I’m not sad.”
He kisses me with another anguished groan. I can taste myself all mixed up with clean mint. Mason pulls away, breathing deep. Emerald eyes search my face. Whatever he sees there makes him circle my throat with his hand, push my head up, and lean down to speak directly into my ear. “Then break for me. Bleed for me. Show me how much your sweet little virgin cunt loves my thick cock.”
Oh, I want to.
I spread my legs wider, trying to let him in, but a bolt of fear shoots through my spine and escapes as a whimper. His body settles heavier against mine. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “It’s happening, Charlotte. Nothing you can do to stop it. Ready? Here it comes.”
An unforgiving thrust, and my virginity is gone in a sharp pain that makes tears spill. I’m babbling, but I don’t know what I’m asking until he answers. “Good girl. Give it a minute. Keep those legs spread…”
What was I saying? It hurts. Make it feel better.
Mason fucks the pain away. It dissolves into an ache that turns into a pleasurable stretch and then real, liquid desire. Blood, I think. And juices. I’m bleeding for him. All over him. It’s the wettest I’ve ever been.
“Your perfect pussy is so greedy for my cock she’s crying for me, just like you,” Mason says, an edge to his voice. He runs his thumb through my tears while he fucks me. Hard, then harder. “Yes. Fuck. I can feel you getting tighter. Come again for me, sweet thing. I want it.”
It hurts to come, but it feels so good this way. Looking up at the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Feeling him stretch me. Hurt me. Pressure on my throat. The weight of his body over mine. I come one more time from the sight of him. He fucks me with total abandon, like I’ve always belonged to him, all the way up to some hidden peak.
And then Mason’s green eyes close. He whispers fuck fuck fuck and then he pushes in so deep it makes me sob again. I’ve been taken so thoroughly. With such force. Heat spills into me in waves and violent thrusts of Mason’s hips until he slows.
“Your cunt was made for me to break.” His voice is a million miles away and the closest thing. “It made the sweetest sounds on my cock while you bled for me.” He bends his head and kisses me. Tastes me. “It’s mine now, Charlotte. You can never take it back.”
