I gave her only a second to recover before I thrust into her mouth, her body pinned in place against the wall. I gave it to her deep and hard, punished her for the bullshit she’d just pulled. More tears. More coughs. Her hands gripped my thighs to hold on because her body was being jerked by my thrusts. “Eyes.”
She resisted at first. Didn’t want to give up her last shred of dignity.
“Eyes.”
Her eyes flicked up, locked on mine with self-loathing, and she took my dick like the servant she was.
Camille avoided me for the next few days.
She never left her room. Took all her meals in private.
I let her sulk in her humiliation. Maybe she could run her mouth like that to Grave and her other clients, but not to me.
Not her master.
On the third day, she finally emerged in the morning, in dark-blue silk shorts that were small enough to be underwear and a loose-fitting white top that fell down one shoulder. Her hair was in soft waves, scattered across her shoulders. First thing in the morning, her face was free of makeup, her smoky look absent and a natural one left behind.
I liked the natural look. She was so beautiful she could pull it off.
I sat at the dining table and read the newspaper as she dropped into the chair across from me. I ignored the news and looked at her straight on, remembering how good it felt to skull-fuck her right against the wall in the parlor. I choked her with my fingers and my dick at the same time.
As if the same memory came to her, she grabbed the cream and poured it into her coffee, her eyes focused on her movements. “When are we returning to Cap-Ferrat?”
I turned back to my newspaper. “Tomorrow.”
“Thank god.”
“Our accommodations have been more than luxurious.”
“It’s not the accommodations.” She grabbed the spoon and stirred the contents of her coffee cup slowly.
I lifted my gaze from my newspaper and watched her lean over the table, elbows on the surface, looking down into her coffee as she continued to stir it like she had no intention of drinking it. “I don’t waste my time thinking about my enemies. You shouldn’t either.”
Her eyes flicked up, and she set her spoon down. “Easy for you to say.”
I closed my newspaper and set it on the table. “How so?”
“I’m not a billionaire with a security team everywhere I go.”
“You don’t need those things.”
“Ha.” She released a sarcastic laugh. “It’s always the rich people who say you don’t need money.”
“What you need are balls.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, her eyebrows hiked up her face.
“You said you lived with him for years. In all that time, you couldn’t steal a knife from the kitchen and slit his throat in the middle of the night?”
“I didn’t want to kill him until he asked me to marry him. And by then, everything was different. I didn’t have a chance.”
I still felt no pity for her. “Let me tell you the difference between people on top and people on the bottom. Things happen to those at the bottom. And people at the top happen to things.”
Her fire was bigger than ever before. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, you privileged motherfucker.”
I held her stare, tempted to choke her again. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“You can be self-made and still be privileged.”
“And you can end up a powerful man but start as a traumatized boy.”
Her hostility waned just a bit.
“You don’t know me,” I repeated. “And you’ll never know me.”
TWELVE
CAMILLE
I put on the teal dress, mermaid style with a sweetheart top with straps that hung off the shoulders. Every dress that was given to me felt like it had been altered to fit my proportions perfectly. There was also jewelry—more diamonds.
I didn’t want to go wherever we were going, but at least tomorrow we would return to his private estate in the South of France. Paris would be behind us, and I would be hundreds of miles away from that asshole.
Cauldron was an asshole too, but he was still preferable to Grave.
I stepped into the parlor, finding Cauldron looking at the city through the windows. His hands were in the pockets of his slacks, and his weight was shifted to one leg. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and checked his watch before he slipped it back inside.
“Another business meeting?”
He took a second before he turned around and faced me, handsome in his tux. If he weren’t an asshole, he would be the most desirable man in France, if not the world. His dark eyes looked me over like I couldn’t see what he was doing. His deep dislike had no effect on his desire for me. He wanted me just the same, whether he loved me or hated me. “That dress looks nice on you.” He said the words as he stared at my tits, which were pushed together in plumpness.