“You wanted me?” she asked, the anger gone from her voice as well.
“Yes.”
“You thought you could just take me,” she said. “Take me just like you’ve taken everything else in life?”
I looked up to see her slowly making her way toward me. I admired the sensual swing of her hips as she moved closer, closer.
“You thought you were owed me?” she asked in a low voice.
I said nothing as I watched her eyes turn from deep brown to almost black.
“You thought there’s no way I would say no? Because nobody ever says no to you?”
Her breath quickened as she stopped directly in front of me. She was so close she had to raise her chin to look up at me. Perhaps a robe wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, I realised as blood rushed to my groin. I slipped one arm around her waist and she leaned forward, her breasts pressing earnestly against my chest. She stretched up onto her tiptoes to whisper something in my ear. Her breath was hot like a dry desert wind.
“Well, I’m saying no, asshole.”
Before she could pull away, I quickly whispered something in return into her ear.
“Breakfast.”
She jerked back and her dark eyes looked like black vials of poison. She arched a dark eyebrow. “Breakfast?”
Her words were the rattle of a snake’s tail, low and threatening. I responded by leaning back against the bar cart and sipping my martini.
“We’ll start our lessons at breakfast,” I told her. “You have much to learn, so we must get a good, early start.”
She laughed, but she no longer had the confidence of just moments ago.
“What—what you do mean?” she said, eyes searching mine. “You said there was nothing to learn.”
I grinned. “Look, love. I wanted you to stay. I wanted you to come very, very close,” I explained, brushing my fingers along her arm till she jerked it away angrily. “And I got what I wanted by being exactly who you wanted me to be, a lucky piece of shite who finally admits he doesn’t deserve anything. I told you what you wanted to hear, that life was so, so, so unfair. I did exactly what you watched me do to the woman outside The White Room and you came to me just like she did, like a moth to a fucking flame.”
The sting of a sudden slap stung so deliciously. I drank in the heat like a sip of the finest whiskey money could buy. If I traced the pain, I’d have a perfect imprint of her hand, her hand I wanted in far more places than just my cheek. I smiled to piss her off.
The girl’s jaw tensed as she stared at me.
Finally she asked, “So you don’t believe anything you just said?”
I laughed till I had to swipe tears from the corners of my eyes. Through wavering vision I watched the girl spin on her heel and march away, huffing and stomping.
“Benson has your room ready,” I called after her.
“Fuck you,” she said, slamming my bedroom door shut after her.
I shook my head with a chuckle as I poured myself another drink. I hadn’t exactly made strides with winning the bet so far, but how was I expected to work with her when playing with her was infinitely more fun?
Delaney
Breakfast was served in a large sunroom off the east wing of the mansion. Morning sunlight sparkled off the drops of dew clinging to rose bushes in the immaculate gardens outside. Fine china was set up at an antique white garden table with matching chairs carved with vines and delicate blooms.
There was tea, coffee, blueberries, scones, and a wide array of biscuits. There was French toast dripping with golden butter and thick maple syrup. There were slices of bacon still popping and sizzling from the frying pan. There was fresh cream and strawberries and dustings of powdered sugar as perfect as untouched snow.
There was everything but Ronan.
“Anything else, mademoiselle?” Benson asked as he piled my licked-clean plates high on a silver serving tray. “Perhaps another hot chocolate? You seemed to have rather liked the first three.”
I frowned when I saw him eyeing my lips with an amused grin, his kind eyes crinkling at the corners. I swiped at my mouth with the sleeve of the pale pink silk pyjamas laid out for me at the foot of my bed when I awoke earlier that morning.
“Dear, there’s a napkin for that,” Benson chastised, tsking at the chocolatey stain left on the silk cuff. “And we don’t maul our face. We dab.”
“Ronan was supposed to meet me for breakfast,” I complained, waiting till Benson had busied himself again with the tray to dart my tongue out at the chocolate on my sleeve. “And he’s not here.”
“Nor is his food, it seems,” Benson noted, clearing away the plates set up for Ronan that I also polished off without a problem.
“I’m not going to be wasteful,” I argued defensively. “I sort of get the idea that he’s normally late for things?”
Benson lifted the tray onto his shoulder and looked down at me.
“If it makes you feel any better, dear, I awoke you a full hour later than Ronan requested,” he said. “Knowing, as I do, his…proclivities.”
I snorted. “Proclivities my ass.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and drummed my fingers along my arms.
“Why do you put up with his shit?” I asked as Benson turned to leave after excusing himself.
He glanced back over his shoulder with a smile, looking at me over the top of his tiny round glasses.
“Perhaps for a reason similar to the one that made you stay,” he said. “I want to see what happens next.”
I rolled my eyes as Benson slipped through the glass door, shutting it quietly behind him.
“Bullshit,” I muttered when I was alone.
I stayed because the king-size bed in the bedroom Benson led me to had a down comforter and silk sheets. And that was an easy pick over a cold, hard sidewalk. I stayed because the smell of sizzling bacon and freshly brewed coffee was more appealing than the foul stink of reality waiting for me outside the mansion doors, namely that I was penniless with no job prospects. I stayed because the sunlight in the greenhouse warmed my cheeks, and everyone needed more vitamin D.
I absolutely did not stay, in any shape or form, for the “intrigue” of that asshole.
And I was staying now only, only because I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. I was staying, forcing myself to stay, really, because he needed to know how fucking rude it was to promise something to someone and then stand them up.
That was it.
No other reason.
It had nothing to do with any desire I may or may not have felt for him.
None whatsoever.
With a groan at my overstuffed stomach, I got up with the intention of finding Ronan, wherever the hell he was. I left the greenhouse and decided to try his bedroom first. But finding it again among all the marble staircases and velvet-lined hallways seemed impossible.
As I wandered among white busts and onyx black sculptures, I pulled my cellphone from my pocket to call my friends. Bridget answered first.
“Delaney, where the hell have you been?” she shouted. “I went by your place after my shift and saw the eviction notice. I’ve been worried sick.”
Before I could answer, Aubrey jumped on. “Delaney, are you okay? Bridget said you’d been evicted!”
I gritted my teeth and chastised myself for leaving the eviction notice on my front steps. I hadn’t wanted them to know about just how dire my monetary issues were.