Words fight to escape my throat, wasting vital oxygen. “I-I don’t—”
“Tsk tsk, Ms. Hollings.” He slams his fist against the desk a second time, which makes me jump in place. “Or do you merely dangle your body before men with no intention of offering it completely?” He’s angry again. Not indignant, like someone impatient with a cock tease, I suspect, but offended.
Like someone who’d expect more from me would be…
My chest aches. It’s a foolish thought—I know as much. But hope poisons my perception. Stern features meld and soften. He almost looks like Brandt again—a Brandt who hates what I’ve become, and God, I’d take his loathing over his absence. The only time my boy ever looked at me in disgust was the one moment I attempted to show him just how much I loved him.
Rasping, my throat works to churn out words. “I…”
“I suppose you do,” he says coldly. “Frankly, Ms. Hollings, I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.” He waves a dismissive hand toward me and nods to the door. “Now, I’ll ask you to leave—”
A forced exhale renders him silent, but I’m terrified to know why.
Not that I can avoid the truth for long; like the whore he insinuated I am, I’ve undone the second button of my blouse. My fingers still cling to it, quivering at the base of my throat and obscuring the same strip of flesh I’ve exposed.
Daniel has seen me naked. I’ve allowed him that much.
His heavy-lidded gaze never set my body alight the way one searing glare from Blake Lorenz does. He strips me bare, my outer layer singed to nothing. In his gaze, I don’t find the same lustful admiration most men direct toward me. I see hollow irises and pinprick pupils.
I see hate.
“Another,” he commands, tightening the screws on this figurative bear trap. “Is this meant to entice me?”
But he’s a step closer now, his shoulders hunched, his hands flexing at his sides. In this moment, he can’t suppress all emotion. He’s furious, a fact that confounds me more than anything. I find myself leaning forward, hunting through his gaze for… I don’t even know.
Ten years ago, I bared my soul to a younger man only for him to cringe back in horror. Stop, Snow!
I don’t know how to respond to silence. My body moves on autopilot, unfastening another button. That muscle in his jaw lurches again, throbbing against his skin.
“Another,” he commands.
I stiffen as he grips the armrests of my chair, each knuckle whitening against the dark leather. The kiss of his heat raises goosebumps along my arms, rasping against the silk of my blouse and another exposed strip of flesh.
“Another…”
No. Every fiber of my being warns me not to. I should run. Concede this problem to Hunter like he asked and leave Blake Lorenz to a much more formidable opponent. But my brother isn’t the only Hollings to sacrifice: I’ve traded parts of myself in exchange for favors that make my skin crawl to recollect. I’ve done despicable, horrible things. None of them have made me feel like this.
Like I’m dangling on a tightrope, one wrong move from plunging to my doom. There’s not even a clear, distinguishable reward for my troubles. Just this gnawing suspicion that something awaits me at the end of this torturous game—but only if I continue to inch along.
My fingers twitch against the material of my blouse, but a harsher grip keeps them from undoing the next button. Helpless, I look up only to find myself paralyzed by a probing expanse of blue. He studies me. He stuns me, twisting his mouth into a menacing scowl.
“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” His voice is hoarse. With disgust. With…shame? I don’t miss how his eyes flicker down to my partially exposed breasts before meeting mine again. “You would.”
Do what? He doesn’t say. Suddenly, he bats my fingers away and a newer force cinches the fourth button of my blouse, tugging on the already taut fabric. I gasp and he waits, still gripping tight. It’s like he gives me a second to protest. When I don’t, his thumb easily unhooks the next button.
“Look up,” he commands before I realize I’m staring at the gaping neckline of silk, watching my skin flush pink against his slightly darker-toned fingers. “Up, Snow.” There’s a sharp noise, the fingers of his free hand snapping together, demanding my obedience as I flinch.
That name…
“I told you to look up.”
When I comply, his eyes are on fire. Flames lick beneath the blue, reminiscent of an inferno viewed through a layer of ice.
My breathing hitches as warning tendrils of heat brush my skin, and cool air tickles the flesh above my navel. Another button easily comes undone.
But stripping me naked out of lust seems to be the furthest thing from Blake Lorenz’s mind. Irritation emanates from him, so potent that I can smell it. It’s smoke, invisible but no less dangerous. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s testing me. And I’m failing. Miserably.
Something unreadable pierces his otherwise cold expression: a slight wrinkling of his mouth. A deliberate swallow. Suddenly, he withdraws his hands and nods toward my lower half. “Take it off.”
His tone conveys not an ounce of desire. I’m a whore at his command, nothing more. Nothing less.
And I should slap him to hell and back. Scream. Lurch from this chair and storm from this room.
Anything but stare, haunted by fleeting remnants in his features that shouldn’t exist. He isn’t the ghost of Brandt Lloyd; the man is a demon—a tormented, twisted shell, mocking everything of the boy I knew. Their wry frowns of disgust are similar, but their reactions are night and day. Brandt never suppressed his anger. This man thrives on it.
“Do you want my time or not?” he warns, his eyes narrowing. “Take off the fucking shirt.”
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. My entire being warns me that I’m delirious. Desperate. Delusional. I see what I want to—no, what I’m terrified to—see. But if my eyes fail me, then my ears must as well.
“Why…why did you call me Snow before?”
His brow furrows. “It’s your name.”
“No one calls me that.”
For the past ten years, I’ve insisted on being addressed by my full name. I can’t bear to have it shortened by anyone—not even my brothers.
“No one calls me Snow—”
“And what should I call you, then, Ms. Hollings?” he questions gruffly. “Or should I say the future Mrs. Ellingston? Why are you here?”
He’s turned the tables again. I know what he wants me to say: I’m here to save my family from ruin. Maybe I am—or was.
Tears stab their way out, coating my cheeks in wetness. I feel like I’m in a dream. A nightmare. One of those twisted, seemingly never-ending ones I can’t wake up from until I say the magic words. A name.
All the king’s men, Snow.
The knot in my throat won’t let any words come past it. Just frantic, shallow breaths.
“Say it.” He cocks his head, staring down at me from an aristocratic nose. “Say it out loud. Why you’re here.”
To negotiate.
To beg.
None of those reasons leave my lips. Instead, I obey his earlier request. My fingers skim the edges of my blouse. Quickly, I make work of the last button and then start to slide my arms from the sleeves. The entire time, I watch his face, holding my breath.
Shock makes itself known over his features, despite how he tries to disguise it. His mouth flattens into a hard line. A second later, those blue eyes creep along my bared shoulders, and more tears fall to drench my cheeks.
It’s the same way I felt last year when I stumbled across an old box of trinkets I hadn’t remembered hiding. Those old smells and memories had struck at full force, all at once.
Now, I remember Brandt the night I told him that Jeremy Caulings II had offered to date me if I sucked his cock under the bleachers. Unbeknownst to Brandt, I’d come close to doing just that. I wasn’t proud of myself, but neither did I think I could survive another day of being Humpty Dumpty Snowy, the social pariah. Acceptance was a tempting prize in those days, worthy of even the most demeaning tasks.
Or so I’d told myself. Maybe I even believed it—until I saw Brandt’s face the following day when Jeremy approached my locker once he thought no one was looking. With one searching pass of his gaze, Brandt Lloyd had me sussed completely. He told me without words just what he thought: I was better than that. I was too good to debase myself. While he may not date me in exchange, I would never have to debase myself to earn his friendship.
Within the frigid gaze of Blake Lorenz, I see nothing of that reassurance. All I find is dark, stormy blue. And…relief?
“You don’t have the balls to go through with it,” he mutters.
To himself or to me? I’m not sure. My head is too busy spinning to process anything more than the conflicting sensations assaulting my body. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Pain. Recognition.
Memory is a faulty mirror, showing me hints of the boy I loved one minute and a monster wearing his face the next. It’s a resemblance even the cruelest God wouldn’t devise. Yet my Brandt could never be so cold.
“Get out,” he tells me. “I won’t have you waste my time—”
“What do you want?” My words are hoarse and whispered. I’m still holding the edge of one sleeve, exposing my midriff and my lace bra. He does his best to avoid the bared flesh, but his eyes dart down almost too quickly to catch, igniting my nerves with every stolen glance. “Tell me what you want from me.” Something dark crosses his features, and I find myself croaking out, “In exchange for our shares.”
He laughs, and there’s no mistaking it now. His hostility toward me is personal. Why? I don’t recall the name Lorenz among our family’s enemies. But it is a long list, and Hunter’s sure to have added to it since Papa died. Maybe he’s a scorned investor or a bitter ex-partner?
A part of me doesn’t buy it. I’d remember this face.
I can’t stop the words from forming in my throat. “D-did you know…” The full question refuses to leave my tongue, and seconds creep by without a response. “Just tell me what you want from me.”
He watches me, peeling me apart with those uncaring eyes. It’s only when he finally directs a pointed glance at my breasts that I realize what I’ve said. What I appear to be offering him. Am I? Anticipation consumes my every nerve, making it impossible to rationalize anything else. I need to hear the words come from his mouth. I need to hear him say it.
A proposition my Brandt would never make.
He sighs, drawing himself to his full height, and shakes his head. “You think you’re worth so much?”
“Some men would think so,” I softly admit.
Our family has other investors, and I know my brother. Hunter probably has them all lined up next if his plans for convincing Lorenz fall through. We’ll go over the same song and dance we did this morning, but in the end, I’ll cave. I’ll offer myself to another banker or tycoon. One of them will say yes…
“I suggest you go see one of them,” Blake Lorenz says as if reading my mind. “But first, tell me exactly what you’re offering. Say it.”
I have no choice. “M-myself.”
He flinches. Physically. Before I can even marvel at the reaction, his anger sets in, consuming his features like an inferno. “Say it again.”
“I’m offering myself.”
His upper lip curls back from his teeth. Finally disgust—but it’s nothing like Brandt’s would be. Blake Lorenz doesn’t believe I’m above debasing myself; he thinks I’m not worth the amount I seek.
I blink and the thread holding me captive snaps. I see the man for who he is: a stranger. Then I look down and register the fact that I’m half-naked before him, claiming that I intend to offer my body in exchange for my family’s fortune. Embarrassment washes over me, turning my skin pink. Slowly, I wrench the sleeves of my blouse up and fumble for the buttons.
“I should go—”
“And if I were to change my mind?”
I look up and find him leaning back against his desk, a hand propped under his chin. He observes me the same way I figure another man would a piece of real estate he’s considering to buy, tallying up all the flaws and weighing the potential windfall.
“Right here and now. If I were to offer you a single share in exchange?”
“Frankly, Mr. Lorenz—” I look him over and swallow down the knot in my throat. His gaze only conveys malice. “I’d refuse.”
“You would?” He watches as I clumsily button my blouse and rise to my feet.
“Yes,” I insist over my shoulder. “Goodnight, Mr. Lorenz.”
“You called me a name earlier,” he says, and I pause near the doorway, rigid and tense. “Why?”
I inhale raggedly, composing what little dignity I have left. “I thought you looked like someone, but I was mistaken.” I glance back, meeting his gaze for a split second, before turning away. “You’re nothing like him.”
Once I’m alone in the hall, I stagger toward the foyer only to find the butler already opening the door to darkness.
“Goodnight, miss,” he calls as I race down the steps and into my car.
It takes everything I have in me not to look back.