Suddenly His - Jessa Kane Page 0,5

believe I’m as unscrupulous as they are. Or they’ll be threatened. They want me culpable. To sink as low as them. Or they’ll worry about me ruining their ongoing party. And in a lot of ways, I am unscrupulous. Hard. Demanding. A bastard.

That’s why I watch her from a distance. That’s why I don’t touch.

I smile at her—with teeth—and she sucks in a breath.

“Two million,” a man’s voice calls out behind me. “Haven’t had a virgin since I was in high school.”

“Gosh, Eisenhower must have still been in office,” I grit out, refusing to show my panic. Slowly, I turn on a heel to face my opponent. “How about ten million, you saggy-balled motherfucker? Remember, you’re retired. I’m still raking it in.” I clamp my cigar between my teeth. “I can go all night.”

There’s a long pause.

I can hear Maisy’s whimpering intake of breath behind me. The sound is an icepick through my chest, but I strive to maintain a cocky appearance.

It’s usually not so difficult.

“Do I hear eleven million?” Winston Creed asks behind me, his tone gleeful. “No? Ten million going once, going twice. Sold. I suppose it’s somewhat fitting that our freshest meat goes to the newest member, Jack Lincoln. Congratulations.”

Relief floods me, but I shrug, as if winning Maisy is no big deal. I turn around and meet her dazed eyes, wishing I knew how to be reassuring. She needs it, the poor girl. She’s trembling, for godsakes, her knees knocking together. At least I know I can ease her worries by getting her the hell out of here. Home where she belongs.

Feeling completely inept, I hold my hand out to her. “Come on, angel,” I say hoarsely. “You’re done here.”

“No, she’s not. Neither of you are,” Winston Creed croons, already guiding the next girl to the front of the room. “Perhaps you should have read the membership agreement before joining, Mr. Lincoln. The highest bid of the night is consummated in the viewing area.” His lips bend into a smile. “Where we can all watch.”

3

Maisy

I don’t know whether to be relieved or horrified.

Both. Definitely both.

My mother’s boss just paid ten million dollars to sleep with me.

I can barely wrap my mind around that fact. The fact that my twenty percent cut is going to make me rich at the end of tonight is something I’ll have to think about—to marvel over—later. Right now, I can only stare at Winston Creed in horror. Did he just say…?

The highest bid of the night is consummated in the viewing area.

Where we can all watch.

There’s no way. I won’t live through the humiliation. These men and the lecherous way they stared at me tonight will tax my memory forever. My skin is still crawling, the fear still weaving through my nervous system. To have my first sexual experience in front of them would not only tarnish it forever, but it would traumatize me.

“Yeah,” laughs Jack Lincoln, his eyes hard. “That isn’t going to happen.”

Cool relief coasts into my stomach and I step closer to Jack, recognizing him as my ironic savior. This is a man who pays my mother peanuts to clean his twenty-bedroom, eighteen-bathroom mansion. He’s the reason she can barely afford to put food on the table. The reason I had to take a job cleaning, instead of starting classes at the community college this fall. In our apartment, his name is synonymous with the devil.

When the man in the audience started calling out bids, claiming his client—Jack freaking Lincoln—was on the way, I thought it had to be joke. I’ve never even met Jack. And I definitely, one thousand percent would recall meeting this man. He’s nothing like the bitter old man I’ve been picturing. No, he’s young. Maybe thirty. He’s charismatic and wildly arrogant.

To say he’s good looking would be an understatement, with his wind-whipped black hair, a square jaw and piercing blue eyes. All that abundantly muscled height. If I didn’t know for a fact how poorly he treats my mother, I would call him a romance hero in the flesh, but facts are facts. He’s a romance villain.

He’ll pay to deflower a virgin, but he won’t pay the help a proper salary.

Those priorities tell me all I need to know about him.

However, he is the lesser of two evils here.

And he’s just told Winston Creed that there’s no way he’s collecting on his prize while this roomful of men watch it happen.

“It is going to happen,” Winston says, with deceptive calm. “This club has