“Kiss me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. You deserve better than a bastard like me.”

“But you’re my bastard.”

I tsked. “I’m everyone’s bastard, Jesse, and therein lies the problem.”

“I don’t mind sharing. It’s not about you. It’s about me.” She was grinding against me so hard, and I was pushing into her more and more, my back against the wall. Technically, I wasn’t breaking any rules. I wasn’t kissing her. I wasn’t fucking her, and I sure as hell wasn’t seducing her. But in every other sense, I was neck-deep in shit, and it was the first time I actually acknowledged it. Because whether it was in the contract or not, the way my knee kept rubbing and pushing against her puffy clit was anything but professional.

“If you don’t kiss me now, I’ll stop,” she whispered into my neck, so much smaller than me.

I breathed through my nose, my lips pinched.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.

“Don’t stop.” The words fell from my mouth, strangled.

“Cut the beard.”

“Dafuq?”

“You heard me. Cut the beard, Bane. You’re not your father. Stop hiding.” Her thighs clamped against my leg, and I knew that she was close. I might as well have shot my load straight into her PJ’s, because that shit was more erotic than any fuck I’d had in the last three years.

“No,” I grunted.

“Then I’ll stop.”

“Do what you have to do.” I pretended to smirk. I wasn’t one to negotiate with terrorists, no matter how hot they were and how hard they made my dick. But when her thighs left mine, and I felt how damp and warm my leg was, how I missed her stomach pressing against my cock, I jerked her back into me.

“I’ll cut the beard.” What the fuck? Where were my balls? Probably in the same place I’d left my brain, because I was very clearly shitting all over six million dollars.

Her thighs were about to clasp my leg again when the door flew open, and I almost stumbled down. That’s what you get for letting a borderline-teenager dry hump you into oblivion and back. Jesse straightened her posture, her cheeks all flushed mid-orgasm-y, when Darren peeked sheepishly from the corridor.

“Jethy?”

I wanted to yank his tongue out for ruining one of the hottest moments of my life with his lisp and lemur eyes. Snowflake gathered her hair and blinked away the lust from her eyes, tilting her chin up.

“Yeah, Darren?”

“Dinner is almost ready. I wondered if…oh. Ah, Bane.”

Now he was inside the room, facing me, with Jesse in the middle, which meant that there was still some space between us, because apparently she didn’t allow her stepdad to come anywhere close to her, either.

“Do you guys know each other?” Jesse looked between us, her face falling. I didn’t know whether Darren figured out what we were doing or not. I was too busy mentally smashing his head against a rock for having the discretion of a fucking brick.

“Yeah. Darren and I met at city hall. I recently purchased a hotel, and he was there doing the usual rich asshole paperwork.” I recovered quickly, especially considering eighty-five percent of my blood was still in my dick.

That seemed to pacify her, and her posture eased. Ironically, that only made me feel like even more of a bastard. She turned around back to him.

“Thank you, Darren, but the answer is—as always—no. Now excuse me while I go to the ladies’ room.” Her cheeks pinked, and my fucked-up mind convinced me that she was going to go rub her clit to take the edge off. Also, this just in: I was going to jerk off tonight until my dick fell off. For the first time in years.

Darren leaned over the door, essentially shutting it and leaving us together in a closed room. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked less than contrite. Arms crossed, brows furrowed, he looked about ready for a war.

“What were you doing?” he demanded.

I shrugged, my unofficial mind-your-own-fucking-business statement.

“She looked cloth to you.”

“She is getting more comfortable with me. She started work at the shop today. And you’re standing here, shitting all over my work by acting like we know each other, when we’re not supposed to.” I pushed off of Snowflake’s wall, walking over to her Juliette balcony and cracking the window open while lighting a joint. I observed the view, realizing that her window overlooked Mrs. Belfort’s maze. The pieces of the puzzle came together with a satisfied click.

That’s why she knew her way around it by heart. Little devil.

“What’th that?”

“What’s what?” I took a hit.

“Why are you thmiling?”

Was I? Maybe I was. So what?

“I’m fulfilling my part of the deal,” I said, thinking about Jesse rubbing her little clit in circles in the bathroom, her mouth falling open in pleasure. Having a raging boner in the company of a sweaty, lanky oil tycoon was not my finest hour.

“You’re altho thpending a lot of money.” He took a step toward me, bracing an elbow on Jesse’s bookshelf and knocking down a row of Jane Austens. He seemed to have drunk from the confidence well, because I swear the fucker hadn’t been that nonchalant the last time I’d seen him. “Gutting and refurbishing the hotel? Breaking ground on the water park before the money ith even yourth? Do you know thomething that I don’t?”

The answer was yes. I did know. I knew that I was in deep shit.

The reason why I’d started spending the money was simple: I didn’t want to fail. My wanting to fail had nothing to do with the money. It had to do with Jesse. She needed to get away from this place, because her parents were as constructive to her future as fucking herpes.

I blew smoke out the window, fingering my beard. “Don’t pretend like I don’t own this money. She’s working for me and is already hanging outside more than she has the entire previous year combined. But if what makes you sleep well at night is me completing the entire six months, that’s not a problem, either.”

“Thtick to the plan if you want to get the retht of the money. It’th not yourth yet.”

“It is mine,” I gritted out.

“What’s yours?” a small voice chirped from the doorway. Both our gazes darted toward the door. Snowflake was there, looking thoroughly-orgasmed and oh-so-pissed.

Sonovofuckingbitch.

THIRTY SECONDS.

I forced myself to stare back in the mirror after making myself come.

The first time I’d come since before The Incident.

The first time I’d masturbated since that night.

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to at all. It wasn’t that I was not attracted to men, because I was. But it was in the same way you admired paintings and sculptures: from afar, knowing they were heartless, soulless, not to have, and definitely not to hold. As I propped my butt against the sink and spread my legs, however, the surge of heat and excitement I’d felt before The Incident came crashing into my body like a wave. I pushed my lips apart, looking down at my clit.

Swollen, throbbing, begging.

It’s been a long time. Touch me.

I did, but it didn’t feel as good as Bane’s thigh. His body was rough and callused, lithe, and male. My fingers didn’t hold a candle to his strong leg. Frustrated, I pulled a towel from the steam cabinet and dumped it across the bathtub edge. I hoisted one leg and straddled it, riding the edge like it was a mechanical bull.

I closed my eyes, imagining Bane.

The hard planes of muscles under his thin over-washed Billabong shirt.

His rough fingers finding my clit. Big, dirty, and inky.

His cinnamon breath and ocean scent as my thighs straddled his bearded face while I rode his mouth, my juices dripping down his chin. I moaned, squeezing my thighs against the bathtub, biting my arm to stifle my little yelps of joy—sheer, newfound bliss—as the first flood of pleasure washed my inhibitions and anxiety away. I was coming. Feeling. Falling. Breaking the chains of misery that anchored me down.

It wasn’t about my physical needs. Not all of it, anyway. It was about taking my power back. It was about reconquering my sexuality, a piece of land that had always belonged to no one else but me.

It was about finding my way back to the world.

I nearly skipped my way back to my room after washing my face and hands. Darren was still there, and that surprised me, because he usually barely had the guts to knock, let alone step inside.

“It’s mine,” Bane said conversationally, but his posture, tense and commanding, suggested that he was a breath away from tackling Darren.

“What’s yours?” I leaned against the door, folding my arms over my chest.

“The boutique hotel on the promenade. The one that’s being gutted,” Bane bit out, his voice manufactured and detached. His eyes were still hard on Darren, and the threat was there, stark clear and shining in his pupils. “Your stepdad has some very elaborate ideas of what I should do about it, even though I never asked for advice.”

Bane grabbed my hoodie from my bed and walked over to me, tossing it into my hands and looking back to my stepdad, who stood there, in the middle of my room, looking like a wounded soldier who’d come back home to find out that everything he knew and loved had been consumed in flames.

“Come on, Snowflake. Food, then we’ll take Old Sport for a walk.”

“Shadow is sleeping,” I muttered, still confused by the entire exchange.

“Dogs are always sleeping. We’ll wake him up.” He mussed my hair, like I was an adorable kid.

The way he touched me, so casually, as if it was okay, as if I was normal, made my heart skip several beats.

I stole one last look at Darren, trying to find the pity I had usually felt for him. His eyes were blank, his jaw tight.

Usually, looking at him losing another battle made my heart pinch.

This time it didn’t.