The fact that he’d moved to a place with a temperate climate wasn’t by chance. He liked to be warm. Didn’t like to remember what it was like to sleep on cold cement or dirt, covered in cardboard.
It was the same reason he didn’t like to be hungry. The same reason he didn’t deal with relationships.
He didn’t like reminders. Reminders of how worn down he’d been when Claudia had found him. She’d seen him standing on the street, asking for work. And she’d offered.
Do you want a bed to sleep in tonight, sweetheart?
He still remembered her first words to him. The way her perfume smelled. How his skin had smelled after, her perfume clinging to him along with his shame. She had paid a lot of money for his virginity. She’d found it exciting to train him. And it had provided him with a week’s worth of food and a small hotel room. One night of sex, a week of comfort.
And when his money was spent, Claudia found him again.
I need you again, sweetheart. And when I’m done with you…I have friends, you know? Lonely. Neglected by their husbands. I’m sure they’d love a chance to get to play with you. If you say yes, forget staying in a little hotel. You can buy your own place. How does that sound? Independence? Heat?
Impossible to turn down. But every dollar earned cost so damn much.
“All checked in!”
He looked at Julia, at her figure, the way her clothes, even her down-lined trench coat, conformed to her body. She would be warm. He didn’t doubt that. Her skin was soft, he knew that already. And she would be warm.
He flexed his fingers, curled his hand into a fist, trying to get the phantom impression of her flesh off him.
A strange sort of heat fired its way through him. Just the thought of her warmed him when, a moment before, he’d been freezing from the inside out. Interesting. But not something he was going to pay attention to.
He followed her, wordlessly, to the elevator and let her push the buttons, taking them up to a high floor. A room with a view, no doubt.
The doors opened and he followed Julia down the hall, her shoes clicking on the wood floor. She liked to take long, hard steps. He’d noticed that about her early on. All a part of her armor. To seem tough. To seem impenetrable.
“It’s on the end,” she said, chipper, sliding her keycard into the reader and pushing the door open.
The room was, as she’d said, completely open with massive floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the lake and mountains. There was a couch, and one large bed, framed in wooden poles that looked hand-carved.
Most men would be thinking about all the activity that could be accomplished in a bed that size. He, in fact, started to.
Do as you’re told, boy. You’re not here for you. You’re here for me. For my pleasure. I own you.
That was the real Claudia. Not the woman who acted like she wanted to help a young man with no place to sleep. The woman who took pleasure in owning him. In selling him. That voice was always in the back of his mind, reminding him just how dirty he was.
No matter how much he tried to convince himself that none of it mattered, it did. It did.
Because there was no freedom from it. There was no escaping the fear of being cold, no matter how many years you’d spent warm since. There was no escaping the feeling that your body belonged to someone else. No matter how long it had been since you sold it.
The fact remained, he had sold it. And somehow, he had never felt that he’d gotten it back.
“Nice,” she said, “and, only the one bed, as advertised.” Her cheeks turned pink and he wondered if it was all down to embarrassment, or if she desired him?
If she desired him, the entire game they were playing would be easier. So much easier if one of them was feeling something genuine.
And he would know how to use that desire. To make it burn hotter for him. Brighter. He was trained, after all, to give a woman exactly what she wanted.
He rebelled at the idea, though. He had already played with her once, at the charity event he had used her emotion to bring on arousal, had used his expertise against her, to make her enjoy the kiss even though she loathed him.
He knew for a fact that with the right thoughts in mind, it was possible to be turned on even when you hated everything happening to your body. That it was possible to find a place deep enough that you controlled everything with your mind.