“I’ll have what he’s having,” Bellamy finally said in a softer voice, but she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin as if that was giving her some sort of secret power.
Mrs. H smirked and shook her head. “You two better get this shit figured out. I’m not going to be part of your games every mealtime.” She turned to me and pointed. “And don’t you think for one second you can boss me around.”
I gave her a toothy smile and nodded. “I would never think such a thing. Thank you, Mrs. H.”
When she left to get our breakfast, I took a deep breath and allowed the heaviness in the air to weigh down upon Bellamy. Maybe she expected me to chastise her or even yell, because her body tensed. My look said it all; I knew I had the ability to break down the strongest person in the boardroom with the intensity I could exude. And by how uneasy Bellamy appeared, my silence was only making the tension at the table worsen.
“I didn’t want eggs or toast,” she finally said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“I don’t need you to order for me.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms against my chest. “Take your panties off,” I commanded in a firm but calm voice.
Her eyes widened; her mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. “Excuse me?”
“I said for you to take off your panties.”
Her eyes darted to the door Mrs. H had just exited and then back at me. “Why in the world would I do that?”
“Bellamy,” I said with warning laced thickly in the syllables of her name. “I will tell you one more time. Remove your panties, now. If you fail to do as I ask, I will get up, march over there, and remove them myself. But if I have to get out of this chair and do so, there will be consequences.”
Pink tinged her cheeks as she nibbled the corner of her mouth. “Emmett, is this really necessary?” I began to stand, but she quickly motioned for me to stay seated. “Okay, okay,” she quickly snapped.
Glancing at the door one more time, she then reached beneath the table, hiked up her dress, and pulled her lace panties down to her ankles. She bent down and removed them as I’d ordered.
Lifting up and dangling them off her index finger, she asked, “And what would you like me to do with them now, almighty Master?”
Her renewed courage and sass made it very hard not to chuckle, but I clenched my jaw to control the urge.
“Set them next to your napkin on the table. They’ll sit there throughout breakfast to remind you to behave. I don’t tolerate being questioned in front of others. If I want to order for you, if I want to oversee the care for my submissive, and if I want to be the one in charge of what happens to you at every waking moment of the day, I will. Are we clear?”
She placed the panties down, but I could see she wasn’t happy—not one single bit.
“Am I clear?” I asked again forcefully. I could see I might have to have a session with her very soon to teach her exactly what happened if she tested the limits with me.
“Yes,” she finally said, her eyes silently telling me to go fuck myself as she did so.
“Yes, what?” I pressed, not paying attention to the defiance she clearly struggled to hold back.
“Yes, sir,” she bit out just as Mrs. H reentered the room with much-needed coffee.
When Mrs. H saw the panties on the table, she shook her head but didn’t say a single word. She silently left to go get the rest of our breakfast.
“Is embarrassing me part of this?” Bellamy asked.
“If needed,” I answered. “You clearly have been spoiled your entire life. You’ve never had someone tell you no or take you in hand.”
“Take me in hand? What exactly does that mean?”
I chuckled as I sipped from my coffee. “Oh, you’ll soon find out. Trust me on that.”
“And you don’t know me,” she countered as she crossed her arms over her chest, not drinking from her coffee—as if it was somehow tainted, because I ordered it for her. “You can sit there and assume you do, but you have no idea what kind of life I lived or am living now.”
“I’m going off fact,” I stated. “Not only do I remember you as the spoiled little rich girl at Darlington Prep, but I’ve also watched you flutter around from party to party and from one wealthy man to another, trying to land Mr. Rich and Powerful.”
She couldn’t hide the sneer on her face. I pissed her off, but I supposed that was what happened when she wasn’t used to having someone tell her the truth. Being surrounded by yes people her entire life had polished her up like a diamond but then made her unable to see the flaws.
Once upon a time, I’d been unable to see those flaws too. I’d been too dazzled by the sparkle, just like everyone else. I hadn’t grown up in the Darlington Prep school system from birth like all the other kids. I was a transplant in eighth grade from California. We hadn’t always been rich, but Dad struck it bigtime by building his business from the ground up.
He started with solar and expanded from there into electric cars, and the sky was the limit after that. Literally. We were building rockets now, joining in the space race. He was just less ostentatious than some of the other billionaire assholes out there and not as interested in media spotlight.
But back when we first moved here, he was just amassing his power and beginning to get into electric cars. That was why he’d moved. He’d built a factory outside of Atlanta. The Order of Silver Ghosts had barely even let him in, and it was only because he’d made a massive donation to the society that they agreed.
Fitting in had been just as hard for me. Montgomery and the other guys let me into their group, but I was undeniably an outsider. I was a skinny kid from California whose voice hadn’t even dropped yet. I liked math more than watching football or playing video games. I was a hang-along, but we all did a good enough job pretending that I wasn’t so I could mostly forget that it was only my father’s money that had effectively bought me these friendships.
Except when it came to Bellamy Carmichael. She was beautiful, popular, the girl every other girl wanted to be and every guy wanted to fuck. And she was just as untouchable. She only dated seniors, and when we were finally seniors, she dated college guys. She certainly never gave any of the guys in our school the time of day, though she did hang around with my friend group.
By the time we got to high school, the guys and I felt more like genuine friends. I’d accepted the five of them would always be closer to each other than they would be with me. It was inevitable, them all having grown up together since the damn cradle. I’d grown into my lanky frame a little, and I even dated here and there.
It was after Dad landed the contract with NASA and I was feeling more secure than ever that I finally got up the nerve to talk to her. Bellamy. The goddess I’d worshipped from afar for five years. She sat at the table with us every single day and never said a word to me. To be fair, I never talked to her either.
But this was my time.
She’d just gone on at length the week before about breaking up with her most recent boyfriend. And prom was three weeks away.
It was now or never.
After the bell rang signaling the end of lunch, I left my tray on the table and hurried around to intersect Bellamy before she could escape to her next class. “Hey, Bellamy,” I said, then swallowed hard. Jesus, why was my voice suddenly so dry? I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.