Insurmountable (Serpentine #1) (6 page)

The fabric around my neck loosened, and I inhaled sharply through my nose.

Kat stood over me, her face inches from mine until it was all I could see. “Such a lucky, lucky girl, aren’t you?”

I tried to shake my head, but she held it in place. I didn’t dare make a sound or draw the attention of the guards. It’d all only make the situation worse.

Backing away slightly, Kat held my head steady while another girl pressed two strips over my eyebrows. They were thick and sticky….

Fuck. Wax strips.
I struggled against all the hands holding me against the table and yelled against the hand on my mouth, but Kat jerked my head back, busting it against the table. Then she ripped off the first strip.

“Wonder what he’ll think now.”

“I thought we were just going to scare her,” one of the girls said, loosening her grip on my ankle.

“Shut up, Lux, and hold her down.” Kat ripped off the second strip. My eyes watered until I couldn’t see the ceiling or the faces of the girls around me anymore.

“Kat, we’re going to get in trouble,” another girl said.

“You going to run upstairs and tattle to your Master?” Kat asked, yanking my hair again.

I shook my head, but how the hell was I supposed to explain it? He was going to notice.

Instead of releasing me, she gathered my hair, pulling it all above my head.

“Please stop. I won’t tell him anything.”

She pulled up a huge pair of scissors and started chopping at the handful of hair she held. Then, she pressed the blade of the scissors to my cheek. “He’ll get tired of you, bored of you, and he’ll come to us. Remember that.”

I sobbed and curled up as they released me, leaving me alone again in the laundry room. The locks of hair they’d cut from my head laid on the table next to me. Unable to bear the sight, I shoved them off the edge of the table, into the trash can of lint. Then, I slid off the edge of the table and pulled the clothes out of the washer, stuffing them into the dryer as I caught my reflection in the window of the dryer door. No eyebrows. Fucked up hair. Nothing would fix this. And Miles would be pissed. Beyond pissed.

What if he sends me back
?

What if
….

I curled up on the floor next to the dryer to wait for the clothes, pulling my knees up to my chin and trying to figure out how to make all of this go away.

“Alley,” I called as I entered the quiet and seemingly empty apartment. I’d slipped away early when Drake messaged me that something went down in the Commons while Alley had been doing laundry.

The bathroom door was closed, so I tried the handle. Locked.

“Alley.” I pounded on the bathroom door. When she still didn’t answer, I slipped a pin into the hole and pushed the door open.

Alley sank down into the full bathtub until only her face remained above the water, half concealed by her messy hair.

Not messy.

I squinted at her. “What happened?”

A tear rolled down her face and she slipped completely under the water.

“Alley.” I reached into the water and pulled her above the surface. She bit her bottom lip for an instant before a sob broke free. I pushed the hair out of her face and noticed that her eyebrows were gone, and her hair was half chopped off. “What happened?”

She shook her head.

“Did the other girls do this?”

She shook her head again, refusing to answer. We’d come so far, and suddenly we were back to this shit.

“Did
you
do this?” I knew she hadn’t, but I needed her to give me
something
.

Again, just a shake of the head.

“Then, who?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t tell me or you don’t know?”

“I’m sorry.” She tried to slip away again, but I held tightly to her arm, making sure to keep her above water.

“If it happened on the Commons floor, all I have to do is pull up the footage. I’ll know who did it.”

“No,” she sobbed.

I wished I could just drag the answers out of her. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“That’s just the point.”

I clenched my teeth. Nothing was more frustrating than trying to get answers from someone afraid to give them. Against my instinctual anger, I kept my voice calm and steady. “Start at the beginning and tell me what happened, Little Dove.”

“They wanted me to know I’m not better than them. If you go after them, they’ll blame me for that, too.”

I ran my fingers through her wet hair and kissed her forehead. “They’ll get over it, but I can’t simply let them go.”

The water in the tub was barely warm, so I released the plug.

“I’m not ready to get out,” Alley said.

“You’re going to turn into a very wrinkled Little Dove if you stay in the water much longer.”

“Are you going to send me away?”

“You think I would have bothered to get you settled up here if I intended to send you away.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” she muttered. “We’re all replaceable.”

“Don’t fucking listen to Ross.”

“It’s not just Ross. It’s every man who walks into one of these places. We’re all the same. They’re all the same. Another day. Another fantasy. We’re just swirling around the drain waiting to get sucked in and never come back.”

I hit the drain plug before the tub had emptied completely, but she continued staring right at the drain even when the water stilled. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Just another fantasy. Do I look like your dream girl now?”

“You look a lot better than the women in my dreams.” For the most part, they were usually dead. I didn’t know how to convince her, though. Where this life had left off in tearing her down, the girls had picked up. Some of them could be as bad as our patrons, but then, that’s exactly how they were molded and shaped. It’s the only way they coped with this life. I couldn’t even understand my own attraction to Alley. Why it pulled at me so deeply.

I’d been with more girls that I could possibly count. I’d brought them to my apartment, enjoyed them at parties, dinner meetings, in hallways, and corners. I started long before any man should—before I was even considered a man by most modern standards. I’d had a share of men, too. I’d been on Alley’s side of things for a short time. After my mother died, they descended around me like vultures. I knew exactly the length certain men would go to get what they wanted. They didn’t care that I was ten. They didn’t care that I knew nothing of the world or how to fight for myself—or even that fighting for myself was possible.

But I still managed to find myself. Even in that impossible situation, I discovered a way to make myself useful. They manipulated me, but I caught on and manipulated right back. I learned the business. I picked up on languages and I learned about people—what makes them tick and what their weaknesses are. For the bosses, that was money and power. There was always more to be had, and the greedy bastards wouldn’t leave any stone unturned. I found all the little holes and figured out how to seal them up until Milo couldn’t help but take notice. He covered up my past—no one wanted to listen to the son of a slave—but he’d never make me forget.

Maybe Alley reminded me of the few memories I had of my mother. Maybe she reminded me of myself. Maybe it was the countless girls I’d had to carry out myself after drug overdoses, beatings, and suicide attempts. Maybe all of that was catching up to me and I couldn’t turn away anymore.

I turned the hot water on, making sure it wasn’t hot enough to burn Alley and let the tub refill. I reached over her to the back of the tub and opened one of the bottles of bubble bath I’d had delivered for her, and dropped a cap full into the tub. Then, I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the tub behind her.

“You’re mine, Little Dove,” I whispered against the back of her ear. “Mine. Nothing anyone else does or says matters. If I wanted a temporary arrangement, I wouldn’t bother with the furniture or clothes, I’d simply go downstairs and pick a girl out. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Master.” Her voice shook and she refused to relax against me.

“I don’t think you do.”

She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against my shoulder. A small gesture, but at least she tried. “I wish I did. I wish everything didn’t….”

“Didn’t what?”

“I don’t know. I can’t make the thoughts in my head connect. Did you ever make those stupid paper houses as a kid—fold slot A into hole B? It’s like that inside my head, except I’m missing the instructions to put it together.”

“I think I get the idea, but no, we didn’t really have toys where I grew up.”

“Where was that?” she asked quietly.

“As far as I can remember, the Commons room at Boudoir Fetiche de Paris.”

“You lived with…?” she turned to me with her mouth hanging open. “You…? But you’re not—”

“I’m not a slave, no, but I lived there with my mother until she died. I don’t remember much—seeing her with different men. Seeing all the women with different men. When I was ten, my mother killed herself. I found her.”

“Is that why you decided to keep me?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “All I know is that I don’t intend to let you go.”

She let out a long sigh. “Then, I guess I need to figure out how to deal with the other slaves. I don’t want to.” She sank down into the water, finally relaxing against my chest. “I’m tired of it all.”

“I can’t take you off of laundry without making things worse.” The girls did all the laundry anyway—they were each assigned a day in the laundry room to keep them busy.

“I know. And if you track them down and punish them, they’ll blame me for tattling. Whatever happens, I lose.”

“Not anymore.” I pushed aside her hair and nudged the side of her neck. “But for now, maybe we should address your hair. The hairdresser won’t be back until Monday.”

“Don’t remind me.” She groaned. “At least I have plenty of new makeup to draw on some eyebrows with. I think I can fix my hair—not like I can make it any worse.”

I felt her take a deep breath, then tense. She turned and looked up at me with a strained expression.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, taken aback by the sudden change in her demeanor.

She looked away just as quickly. “I forgot,” she whispered, still so tense her body shook slightly. “I’m sorry, Master.”

“What did you forget?” Judging from her reaction, I expected it to be something dire.

“My place, M—”

“Your place is where I tell you it is.” I pulled her back against my chest, nibbling at the tip of her earlobe, then kissing her neck, while my hand explored her flat stomach.

“Your place is with me,” I whispered against her neck. “And when we’re here”—I squeezed her breasts, rubbing her nipples between my fingers until she arched her back— “like this. Alone. I don’t expect you to hold your tongue or adhere to formal protocol. Understood?”

“Yes, Master,” she said on a breathy exhale.

“Then, get dried off and see what you can do with that hair.” I kissed her again. I’d find who was responsible and make them pay in kind, but I was useless in helping to fix hair, and if we didn’t show up to dinner yet again, Ross would be the one handing down insane ultimatums.

“Are you going to pick out my outfit for the night, Master?”

“Would you like that?”

‘Yes, Please.”

“We’re getting a bit formal again.”

She gave me a faint smile but kept her head down.

Maybe I kept her because I wanted someone to talk. I wanted someone to take my mind off everything else—white noise in the background of my life. Someone as fucked up as me.

* * *

I laid out a lacy, black baby doll top with a black bow just below the bust and the matching boy shorts with an attached garter belt on the bed and pulled out my own suit for the evening. I didn’t even want to imagine what Ross had in mind for the night. It was always a show with him. It had to be. After seven years of working with him in one capacity or another, I still didn’t understand how his mind worked. And I didn’t want to.

At least I had some kind of excuse for my perversions—a weak one at best—but an excuse didn’t exist for him. He was a rich socialite who’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Although, maybe that was the best excuse of all. His parents were real estate moguls who made their millions making—and sometimes breaking—high-dollar deals in business real estate. Thanks to them, he had a sense of entitlement that made Texas look puny. Unfortunately, he hadn’t developed any business sense in the entire charade. He was headstrong, set in every idiotic decision he set his mind to and completely oblivious to the potential consequence, but usually, his shallow understanding of business made him easier to manipulate if I played my cards right.

I dressed in black for the evening—slacks and a long-sleeved button down shirt—boring, but fitting for the situation. I had no desire to participate in Ross’s theatrics, but playing to his whims kept me on his good side. And I’d need that side if I wanted to convince him to let me restructure the security team. I’d had enough of their insolence, and Drake’s failure to protect Alley in the Commons was only the topping on the cake.

Once dressed, I sat down on the edge of the bed, stretching my legs out and folding my hands behind my head to rest against the wall. I needed someone on the security team to help me crackdown—someone who cared more about security than getting his rocks off. Maybe someone who’d been castrated.

Alley peeked through the doorway, and I dropped my legs to the floor. Her hair now fell around her face in a long asymmetrical pixie cut that fell to her jaw in front and grew shorter and more layered in the back.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

She paused, clutching the front of the thick black robe I’d had delivered.

Beautiful.
It’d probably been a lifetime since she’d heard that word and longer since she’d believed it.

“I look like an eyebrow-less freak,” she muttered.

I waved my hand toward the dressing table. “You work more magic like you did on your hair, and no one will be the wiser.”

“My mom was a hair stylist, not a magician. I loved watching her cut hair.” She sighed and sat down at the table, tracing her finger along the engraved wood that trimmed the surface.

When I thought of this place in terms of mothers, daughters, or sisters, I felt sick to my stomach. It didn’t matter how long I’d been doing it. Or that I’d continued. I wasn’t a complete heartless monster, but sometimes, I wished I could be.

Like I almost had been. The years I’d let the rage dominate. The slaves I took it out on. Every night I’d see my mother’s face. She haunted me. Fueled the hatred. Until one day I realized that I was having exactly the reaction she would have hated. And then, I faced down two options—get the fuck out of the life and disappear, or use my new found position within the organization to do as much as I could to protect the slaves.

I didn’t even give a serious thought to the grandiose idea of setting them all free. That pie in the sky thinking didn’t bode well with my overinflated sense of reality. Between all of Milo’s clubs, retreats, whatever they might be called, he owned
thousands
of slaves in more than a hundred locations. He had more power and influence than the pope and more friends in low places than a cockroach. We’d never be free. None of us. Not his employees and sure as hell not the slaves. Following that line of thought merely became an exercise in futility and a path to depression.