ChapterOne
PHOENIX
I need a sugar daddy.
Right now.
Because my life is bleaker than the sunset dimming the sky. I trudge down Marina High Street, numb with shock to the rumble of Saturday evening traffic.
He really did it.
After years of threatening to abandon my spoiled ungrateful ass, Dad finally left. I went back home this morning to find the house empty. No car in the driveway, no furniture through the window, no note on the doorstep with a forwarding address.
Just a key that would no longer turn in the lock and a head buzzing with confusion. Dad is too well-connected in the underworld to be dead, and he’s not offensive enough to get himself killed. He’s an accountant, at least that’s what he claims, and I’ve never seen him carry a gun.
Couldn’t he have given me a clue last week or at least a final warning? How am I going to fund my studies now that Dad just upped and disappeared on me, and I can’t even reach him by phone?
I sound selfish, but Dad is an asshole. He’s sexist, petty, and has a hair-trigger temper… At least around me or anyone who can’t fight back.
He took custody of me when I was five out of spite, then spent every spare moment ranting at me for the crime of being a woman.
My mouth pinches with resentment. He provided me with a roof over my head, but it was leaky as shit with falling tiles. That’s why I can’t muster up an ounce of concern about his sorry ass.
He’s also made me homeless because the only assets I have are my books, my mobile phone, and whatever’s left in my bank account.
Actually, I’m overdrawn. That makes my situation even more desperate.
I pass all my favorite places on the high street: the Colombian coffee shop, the boutique that sells students’ creations, but as I approach another store with red-tinted windows, my steps falter.
There’s a silver Maserati parked outside the Red Room. And it’s the exact kind Dad always wanted but could never afford.
The Red Room is one of those edgy independent shops on the high street that sells smutty books, kinky toys, and exotic lingerie. Even their sales assistant wears fetish clothes.
Every instinct calls at me to walk inside and drown my sorrows in a steamy story, but my reading days are over. Books are now a luxury I won’t be able to afford.
My better instincts tell me I should get a job. I remind those voices that I owe the university a five-figure sum. There’s no way I can work and complete the final year of my degree. At least not legally.
As I place a hand on the window, one of the customers walks into view and stops at the display of leather cuffs. His deep mahogany hair is styled to be short at the sides and swept back at the top. He’s turned away from me, so all I can see of his face are sharp cheekbones.
“Bloody hell,” I whisper, the butterflies in my stomach stirring awake.
The man is about six-foot four, wearing charcoal gray jeans with a black blazer, and carries himself like one of Dad’s colleagues. Shoulders back, body angled a little toward the exit, and his presence somehow filling the entire space. It’s the standing equivalent of manspreading, only he’s doing it with his aura.
My throat tightens, and all sentiments of abandonment evaporate in the heat of my excitement. He’s dark, dangerous, and donning designer clothes.
And I’ve read enough dark romances to realize I could be on the brink of attracting a sugar daddy.
What? Don’t judge me.
My real dad just disappeared without so much as a text to say ‘fuck-you,’ and I’m not about to wrangle with loan sharks.
A shudder runs down my spine at the thought of what those men do to girls who can’t pay their exorbitant interest rates. That’s never going to happen.
“You can do this,” I say to myself because there’s no one else to give me a pep talk. “Go in there and flirt like your life depends on it.”
(Because it does.)
I shove that last thought into the recesses of my mind. Desperation is not attractive, and I don’t want to give off the air of an impoverished student looking for a man to pay her bills. Besides, Mr. Tall, Decadent, and Morally Grey looks tempting. A tad older than the guys at university, but exactly what I need.