“Do you know Evan Sanderson? Or the Sanderson family? They’re older than you and you wouldn’t have gone to school with any of his brothers. But you might have heard of the family.”
“There was a Richard Sanderson in my class.”
I nodded. “I’m sure he’s related. Maybe a distant cousin. All the Sandersons in Harborview are. They come from seriously old money. Like, founding fathers of New Jersey old money. I’ve known them peripherally for years, but, lately, Evan has been showing up at places, calling himself one of my father’s clients.”
Marc held up his hands. “Your father manages a hedge fund. That’s entirely possible.”
I shook my head. “The Sandersons don’t need people like my father. As wealthy as Arthur is, he’s small potatoes compared to them.”
Marc’s jaw dropped a little then, and I nodded. “You’ve lived on the periphery of this world. And I know you want to be part of it, but to do that you have to understand how it works. There’s old money, new money. Flashy money, private-jet money and own-a-private-island kind of money. My father has always been one of the flashy, new-money types. Buying the estate in Harborview, he wanted to make a statement. But I’m not sure it ever worked.”
Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Back in high school, girls used to make fun of you for your shoes. The kind of money you’re talking about, I would think five-hundred-dollar shoes were to be expected.”
I smiled gently because it was clear how much of my world he didn’t see. “Harborview High is a public school, Marc. The people I’m talking about don’t go to public school. They go to private academies with other people who have just as much money as they do. That’s why those girls were making fun of me. They didn’t think I belonged there because of the estate we lived on. They thought I should be with my own crowd.”
“You’re telling me your father is considered low rent among the Sanderson crowd?”
I nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. My father has plenty of money. He’s just not at their level.”
“So why is this guy hanging around?” Marc asked.
“I don’t know. He came to the house a few times for dinner after you went to Princeton. Then he showed up in Switzerland—”
“Switzerland?”
I nodded. “When my father was visiting. They just happened to be doing business nearby.”
“And you think these visits are what, exactly?”
I sighed and crossed my arms over my stomach. “I don’t know. He’s never been creepy. He doesn’t leer at me or try to touch me, ever. He’s polite, charming, very formal. Of course, I’m polite back. But it just doesn’t feel right. Like he’s biding his time before he makes his move. And all these visits are just to show me he has my father’s approval already.”
“So he makes his move and you say, back the fuck off, asshole.”
It wasn’t as simple as that. Not with the kind of power and money they wielded.
“See, you think I’m being dramatic again.”
“Ash,” he said, taking hold of my biceps. “Think about what you’re saying. Your father is going to sell you?”
“Or force a marriage. Which is pretty much the same thing.”
His hold tightened. “You’re not marrying anyone. No one can force you to do that. This guy is poking around and giving you the creeps. I get it. You do everything in your power to stay away from him. We’ll tell George. This guy tries anything with you, touches you at all, and George will rip out his throat. You know that, right?”
I did. George would do anything to protect me, but at what cost to him?
“You can’t go to work for my father,” I insisted. “If you do, that will just put you further under his control.”
“Too late. The deal has been made. You don’t have to go back to Switzerland, and I give him what? A year of my time? If he threatens me again as a way to manipulate you, I’ll quit. It’s not the same thing as getting expelled from Princeton. Besides, I told George maybe it’s a good thing for me to get in there and find out what’s really going on. George said your father’s changed in the past few years. Don’t you want to know why?”
He had changed. But no, I didn’t care why. I only knew the night he hit me, then sent me away the day after, that he didn’t love me. That’s all that mattered.
I was an object in his household. A pretty girl to be dressed up and told to behave properly. To be controlled, isolated and restricted from any freedoms. The second I stepped out of line, I was shown a leash I hadn’t realized I’d always worn.
Poor, sad, little, rich girl.
“…your life is his, until he says it isn’t.”
“No. I don’t care why. But let’s not think about that now. You’ve still got a year at Princeton. Anything can happen between now and then. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s just go sit in the Jacuzzi until we turn into prunes.”
He hesitated before letting me go. Like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know how to say it.
“Yeah. Okay. Anything can happen between now and then. You going to wear a skimpy bikini?”
“Will it make you hard if I do?”
He snorted. “Probably.”
I beamed. “Then absolutely.”
Later that night
Marc
I gathered up her hair in my fist so I could watch. Her hand was slowly jacking me off, her tongue was swirling around the head of my cock. Sometimes she sucked the head into her mouth, and sometimes she just licked me like I was her own personal ice-cream cone.
The torture of staying still, of not thrusting a little deeper, was fucking delicious. But I wasn’t doing a damn thing that would, in any way, turn her off from sucking dick. Whatever she figured out, she had to do it at her own pace.
So when she took me farther and deeper into her mouth, I hissed.
Immediately, she backed away. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. It feels incredible. All of it. You did excellent fucking work studying blow jobs.”
“I know, right? I think I’m pretty good at it. Well, at least based on the number of your grunts. I sort of love it, too. Like I can feel all of you in my mouth. Tongue your veins, feel your pulse.”
She was going to kill me. “Will you please stop talking and start sucking?”
She did, and that killed me a little, too. I watched her sink her mouth down on me. Felt the swirl of her tongue along the edge of my cock.
I thought about her swallowing my cum.
If I asked her to do it, she would. If I told her to do it, she would.
She would do it for me because there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for me.
How the fuck did I deserve her? What had I ever done in my life to make it possible I had her absolute faith and trust in me?
I could feel my balls get tight and knew I was close.
I could just come and fill her mouth with my spunk, watch her swallow it, or watch it dribble down her chin. A new claiming. Just liked I’d claimed her pussy and marked her tits.
She would take it. She would take it all…for me.
“Enough,” I barked, and started to tug on the hair still in my fist.