Richer Than God - Amelia Wilde Page 0,21

my head, high and shrill. Sweat beads on my forehead. Shit, it’s hot. It’s so hot, and Lydia isn’t stopping. She has a job to do. Embarrassment crawls up the sides of my neck and turns my ears as hot as the wax. She rips it off again, and—no. There’s nothing enjoyable about this.

And yet….

Savannah whispers in Delly’s ear, pointing, and Lydia says, “All fours.”

“What?”

“I need you on all fours.”

It dawns on me what she’s asking, and I move into the position through a numb haze. Savannah taps the small of my back, and I arch automatically, which makes me wish I died in Zeus’s office. Anything would be better than hearing her laugh.

More hot wax, this time on skin that should never be exposed to daylight. Oh, God. Oh no.

Lydia rips it off.

I’m shaking, trembling, trying to hold myself up, but I’m not going to make a sound. Even if this lasts all day. And all night. And forever. I won’t give Savannah the satisfaction.

They keep watching. Jealous, I remind myself. They’re jealous of me. I’m terrified, but at least they’re jealous.

I wish he was watching instead.

It’s the most horrible thing to cross my mind yet, and I struggle to block it out, but Lydia is relentless, and every strip of pain reminds me of Zeus. It’s not really Lydia who’s doing this to me. It’s him. It’s going to be him until I walk out of here again. All of this belongs to him. The room, the table, the wax... everything.

“She’s turning pink,” comments Delly in a searching tone.

“She likes it,” Savannah answers flatly.

“I can hear you,” I snap, and it makes them both laugh again. But it’s broken the spell, and by the time Lydia goes to work on my legs, they’re gone, off in front of one of the clothing racks. Savannah reappears as I’m stepping off the table. My legs feel weak, shaky, and Savannah looks irritated. I’m sure she was hoping I would faint or die, and now that I haven’t, she has to carry out the rest of Zeus’s instructions.

“Here.” She thrusts a dress at me. “There’s a dressing room in the back.”

I hold my head up high and go toward the only direction that seems like “the back.” It’s behind the dress racks—one single, wide door. It’s surprisingly light when I pull it open and throw myself inside.

Alone.

The door catches me as I sag against it, the dress crumpled at my chest. My skin still stings from the waxing, all raw and pink. As pink as the room I’ve just entered. Savannah undershot it by a lot when she called this a dressing room. It’s no single mirror with a curtain and a set of fluorescent lights. Blush pink walls surround sunken shelves, and the shelves themselves are full of lingerie sets.

New. With tags. In every color, from one side of the room to another. There are bras and panties and beneath that, shoes. I’ve walked into an upscale boutique hidden inside a spa inside a whorehouse. It makes sense, I guess; they have to look pretty.

We have to look pretty.

I shove away the thought of what’s to come and shake out the dress in my hands. Savannah’s terrible, but she’s chosen a good color for me—black at the top, transitioning to a deep purple on the bottom. It’s a gown, really, and feels unspeakably expensive.

I’ll need a bra for this.

I choose one of the sets, double-check to make sure it’s my size, and hang up the gown while I put it on. I’m trying to zip up the dress behind my back when the door flings open.

“Are you ready?” Delly’s voice is not what I expected to hear. “Oh, let me get that for you.” She does, and our eyes meet in the mirror. She’s still deciding about me. “Savannah says the girls are waiting to help you with your hair.”

I could almost cry with relief. “I’m sure I could figure it out.”

She shakes her head. “We’ve got it.”

We go back out into the cloud of hairspray, and someone sits me in one of the salon chairs, and then I’m lost in a forest of hands and voices and featherlight touches. Makeup brushes and blush. The practiced tug and pull of a curling iron.

When I open my eyes again, I’m not waiting in the mirror.

It’s another version of me. Beautiful. Sophisticated.

Not a virgin.

9

Zeus

I’m early to the dining room. It’s the one I reserve for my private use, built specifically without a