Page 6 of The Cruel Heir

He leaned in, voice like a dare. “Then let’s make sure it stays that way.”

He let me go.

But the heat of him stayed, curling around my skin like smoke I couldn’t scrub off.

I walked away, chest tight, breath shaky.

Let him watch me retreat. Let him think he’d won.

I just needed to make it through this shift.

But finishing wasn’t enough. If I left with less than ninety-seven dollars in tips, I’d be crawling back tomorrow. So I recounted the twenties, folded them flat against my palm, and pictured a one-room sublet, three bus lines away, where Kingsley ghosts couldn’t follow. Every tray I lifted tonight bought another square foot of the sublet Dad’s trust no longer covered.

The industrial dryer hummed,detergent thick in the air like fake peace. My blouse tumbled inside, still wet from scrubbing red wine out of a tablecloth, that I hadn’t even spilled.

I’d stripped it off, tossed it into the machine, and wrapped myself in a towel, praying no one walked in and saw me in my bra.

The room was cold, so I climbed on top of the dryer, and let the warmth sink into my thighs, let the vibration soothe the tension that had carved itself into my spine.

I thought I was alone.

I wasn’t.

The dryer shut off. I slid down, cracked it open, and started to reach inside…

And stopped. I felt it in my bones, before I heard the door latch click. Before I caught the cologne: dark spice, money, sin.

Then the footsteps.

Slow. Measured. Like a man approaching a meal.

My heart stuttered.

For a second, I thought it was Chadwick.

His voice slid down my spine, like silk dipped in gasoline. “What a strange little gift.”

Sterling.

I sagged in relief, and then in horror.

Not again. My breath caught as he pressed into me, hard and hot, through the thin fabric. No violence. No screaming. Just pressure. Possessive. Predatory. I heard the snick of something behind me, and then my pants were cut away.

I felt the air on my backside and shuddered. His cock pressed against the thin cotton of my panties, hard and heavy, and unwelcome. I tried to twist out of the drum, but I was trapped, my shoulders wedged, my towel slipping.

“Go away,” I whispered. Weak.

“I don’t think I will,” he said. “Not when you look like this.”

His belt rustled. Pants dropped.

I whimpered.

He rubbed his length against the soaked strip of fabric between my legs, and I hated that my body reacted. I hated the flutter in my stomach. The heat that was coiling low. The war inside me between fear and… God help me,need.

“W-what are you doing?”

“I can’t let this dark berry go to waste now, can I?” he rasped, voice thick with hunger.