Burning Offer (Trevor's Harem #1) (10 page)

“Doesn’t he strike you as — ”
Oh, just say it.
“Overly sexual?”

“He’s definitely hot,” Erin says with a shy smile. “Very professional. Businesslike. Cold, I guess. But … ” She gives a little shiver. A pleased thought running through her, like a schoolgirl’s fantasy.

“But he’s obsessed. Didn’t he tell you about Trevor Ross’s business? And what about … ” There’s no good way to ask someone you just met about how things went when she fucked a stranger during tryouts.

“What about what?”
 

“You know.”
 

“What?”
 

I let it go. It’s too personal, and if Erin gives me
quid
, she’s going to expect some
quo
in return. We both look out the window and watch the clouds pass.
 

“So do you think that’s what it is? Like a reality show?”
 

“Maybe,” Erin says.
 

“But wouldn’t they have to tell us if it was?” My mind flashes back to the web page about Milgram’s experiments, the link provided helpfully to me by Daniel, or whoever made the invitations and built the page. Milgram once put people in a plane and had the only pilot fake a heart attack, just to see what the passengers would do when they thought they were going to crash. The test subjects weren’t told ahead of time. Doing so would spoil the results and ruin the fun.
 

“I guess?”
 

Erin is obviously nervous, but I don’t understand why she’s not bothered like I am. Her answers strike me as simplistic, maybe naive. She’s missing too much that could go wrong — that’s
already
going wrong. Or maybe I’m paranoid.
 

“If it’s a contest,” I say, “what’s the goal?”
 

Erin shrugs again.
 

“Do you think we’ll stop somewhere else? There can’t just be two of us.”
 

“Maybe it’s not that kind of contest. Maybe we’re just going to have dinner or something. To meet him. Trevor Ross, I mean.”
 

“But why? Who the hell are we?” But that’s something to ask, something I hadn’t thought of. “What do you do for a living?”
 

“I’m a dental hygienist.”
 

“But what makes you special? Are you remarkable in some way?”
 

“I don’t think so. Are you?”
 

I don’t shake my head so much as stand up and sigh. My
No
answer is clear, but mostly I’m frustrated. I’ve been twisted by conflicting thoughts every step of the way, my strings yanked by emotion and lust. Now that Daniel’s said he’s done with me and I’m trapped in a flying tube high in the sky, my head is returning to its usual cynical state. Why did I agree to this? What could have possibly possessed me?

In my memory I see Daniel’s arms. I feel his hand gripping my breast, his cock in my mouth, the waves of pleasure between my legs.
 

I pace, as much as I can in the small space. Daniel doesn’t turn, and I stay back from where he’s sprawled in his oversized chair. Then I sit, away from Erin, staring out the window.
 

It’s a while before I see ground through the clouds, but eventually there’s a tiny airstrip in the distance, nestled between a pair of neat little mountains. And although it’s hard to say for sure, I think I see the lights of a sprawling mansion not far beyond in the approaching twilight.
 

Somewhere I’ve never been. Where nobody but a select few ever has.

Somewhere private — an airstrip that’s never seen commercial traffic.
 

Somewhere, I’m sure, where no one will ever be able to find me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The plane lands, and the pilot throttles it around toward a series of hangars I hadn’t noticed from the air. Inside, I see all sorts of rich-boy toys: a second jet, much larger than the first. A corporate-looking helicopter on some sort of enormous wheeled platform. A few boats on trailers, although I’ll bet all of them are warm-ups for the inevitable yacht.

The plane passes the first hangar, and then the second, where I notice another limousine ahead with a driver standing beside it. The flight attendant opens the door and lowers some stairs. Daniel is waiting in the cabin in front of us, his blazer back on, hands clasped in front of his waist, staring at me. Unabashedly, flat-out
staring
. He sees me see him but doesn’t avert his eyes or crack a smile. He just keeps looking me over, like meat. Like a possession.
 

Daniel exits first. Erin follows. He waits at the bottom of the stairs until Erin walks past then holds out his hand when I still have five or six steps left. Without thinking, programmed by habit, I reach out to take it. He escorts me safely to the tarmac then toward the car. I look at him when he opens the door, but his eyes give no clue as to how odd this chivalry is, coming from the fucker he’s shown himself to be.
 

“You clean up beautifully,” he tells me.
 

I don’t know what to say, so I get into the car. The driver has already let Erin in on the other side, and I only realize that Daniel isn’t coming after the door is closed.
 

“What did he say to you?” Erin asks.
 

“Nothing,” I say.
 

The drive to the house is so fast, it feels almost unnecessary. Less than three minutes later, we’re winding a large round driveway, and the driver is out, again on Erin’s side, taking our hands to help us stand. He’s wearing gloves rather than the rougher, steadier hand offered by Daniel when I got off the plane.

I hear a low rumbling then turn to see the jet reclaiming the sky. I guess Daniel is only the errand boy, and now we’re on our own.
 

Nobody around here must trust the uninitiated with common sense because no step of our journey occurs without an escort. The chauffeur hands us off to a tall man with a pencil-thin mustache that was surely grown to make him look more like a butler. Alfred, or whoever he is, takes us to the front door. Then a doorman takes us the arduous eighteen inches across the giant entrance threshold and hands us off to a totally different manservant, this one in a tuxedo.
 

I take another look around at the mansion’s outward-curved wings before the door closes. Much of its front is glass. Many terraces and levels, stairways curving from here to there like an Escher lithograph. Gray stone with varnished wooden railings and accents — a perfect architectural match to the surrounding pines and snow-capped mountains beyond.

“Please.” The manservant is smiling, his every affect meant to convey manners and servitude. But I can read the true purpose behind that single word, too: come inside so we can close the door, you silly little girl; you’re bleeding all the heat.
 

Only once the tall wooden doors close do I notice the heat, and that it was chilly outside as light bled from the sky. We’re high up. Here, spring hasn’t entirely sprung. If I remember the mountains correctly from my trip a few years ago, it’ll be warm during the day but cold as hell at night. Not snow cold, but enough to make me appreciate the crackling fire.

Which, I see turning, would dominate the room if it weren’t otherwise indomitable. It’s the wood-and-glass room Daniel showed me, with the double-high ceiling and the spectacular, apparently west-facing vista where I now see a blood-red sunset. I notice the same oversized, modern chandeliers hung above the dark wood paneling, but somehow none of Daniel’s pictures showed the fireplace. It’s in the room’s center, and titanic. From here, where the foyer leads to an anteroom and then to a massive arch opening into what I suppose is a rich man’s living room, the fire blazing in the middle looks like something gone wrong. I attended high school bonfires that were smaller, and it’s completely unprotected. There’s no wall around the fire. No fence or grate. Just a blaze in the middle of a brick pad, with a chrome-and-wood chimney suspended from above like a restaurant’s exhaust hood. Space is the only thing keeping fire from the room’s occupants. The brick pad is twice the fire’s size. You can walk right up to the burning logs if you want, but nobody and nothing can catch fire by accident.
 

And the people.
 

The room and view took my usually jaded breath sufficiently away that I’m only now noticing them on the couches and chairs, divans, and love seats. Erin is still beside me and I realize we’re holding hands, but we’re the only two here who seem remotely out of sorts. The rest look like paying guests at an exclusive hotel. Without counting, I’d say there are seven or eight women and at least three men. The women are all dressed like Erin and me, in formalwear that’s not over the top. The men are the opposite. They’re in jeans, two barefoot and one still wearing scuffed leather biker boots. Fine casual button-up shirts, all unbuttoned. Every chest looks like something from a fitness magazine. I didn’t think men in the real world had chests and stomachs like that, tan and high to match their broad shoulders. Abdominal muscles I can count from my side of the room.

The second it takes for the weird standoff to shatter feels like forever, and in that pregnant pause I think of the moment, in a movie, when someone says the wrong thing and the music stops to turn everyone silent and staring. But it’s only two heartbeats. One of the men stands. Comes forward. Takes Erin’s hand and then my own. He kisses each of them. A mountain of masculinity. Even with my heels on, he must be a foot taller than me and three times as wide. He must be three hundred pounds, but without an ounce of fat. Dark skin, like a Pacific Islander. Shaved head. White teeth and a smile that makes something inside me sigh, then awaken.

“Bridget,” he says to me. “And Erin.”
 

Erin and I look at each other.
 

“My name is Tony. We’re all glad you’re here. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”
 

I look around the room. One of the other men has sandy brown hair, is average height, and has a boyish face with a few days’ stubble — and an immaculate body. The other is about the same build but with dark hair. What strikes me about this one is his smile. I can’t tell his eye color from here, but I think they might be as blue as Erin’s. The eyes plus the devilish smile paint a sexy picture. While the first man looks like an all-American, this one looks like the troublemaker you should stay away from, but can’t.
 

The women are a different story.
 

They’re all intimidatingly beautiful. The kind of women that only exist in photo shoots. The male-approved feminine ideal that makes self-esteem rare for the rest of us. My toughness usually comes off as confidence, but seeing these girls — on their sofas, some possessively stroking the men’s’ chests — shrivels my assuredness to a trembling little ball.
 

Most are smiling. All but one, who looks like she smelled something foul — a girl with dark features, a model’s face, straight brown hair, and a sharp nose with a tiny silver stud in one side. But really, none of the smiles seem genuine. They’re all put on, pleasant to meet expectation. Yet transparent, with something sour lurking beneath.

It’s a contest, all right. I don’t know what kind it might be, but scanning the room I see only the false civility of rivals.
 

Good thing I’ve already made up my mind to leave as soon as I can find someone to ask. Or to stay only one day and not a moment longer.
 

Because Jesus. If these girls are my competition, I don’t stand a chance.

The big man points at the girls around the room one by one. He says their names, but I can’t follow them all. I hear Ivy, Kylie, Blair, a handful of others. Each time he says a name, one of the girls nods, smiles, or waves in acknowledgement. All except for the straight-haired bitch with the nose stud, who seems to have something up her ass. Her name, I definitely catch, Kylie.
 

“They’re your fellow contestants,” he finishes.
 

Again, I exchange a look with Erin:
contest. Reality show. Some twisted billionaire’s game, with human chess pieces.

“I’m Tony,” he says, touching his massive, mocha-colored chest. He indicates the dark-haired guy with the troublemaker’s smile. “Logan.” Then the all-American quarterback. “And Richard.”
 

I find my voice, even though it feels lost.
 

“And who are you, if we’re the ‘contestants’?”

Tony gives me a dead sexy smile. “We’re whatever you want us to be.”
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tony takes me and Erin on a tour, leaving the others behind. They seem so ensconced on the plush furniture, part of me doubts they could be dragged away, at least not without a lot of kicking and screaming.

We follow Tony out of the big room, but at the last moment I look back. Logan is looking right at me — almost
through
me. He has a dark-haired woman on one side and a blonde on the other. He grins while I watch, and the blonde’s hand slips down the front of his jeans. Logan’s hand, in turn, slides up the brunette’s leg, high enough that I see panties. Or where panties would be, if she weren’t bare.