Burning Rivalry (Trevor's Harem #2) (8 page)

“Nobody knows what to think of you,” Kylie says. “You either think you’re too good for the rest of us, or you realize you’re out of your league and are covering up how obvious it is. You’re either an excellent actor, or that Poor Jane way you slump around is real. Either way, you’re going to ruin things here. Trevor won’t say, but I have ways of asking without asking. And I know you bother him, the way you sit there and judge.”
 

“I’m not judging anyone.”
 

“Don’t bullshit me.” She sort of puffs up, and I can tell she’s trying to be the bigger woman so she can try again. “You can’t just
be here.
They’ll kick you out. You need an ally if you want the money.”
 

I look at Erin. I think of Jessica, with whom I’ve already made a deal remarkably similar to Kylie’s proposal. I won’t do what it will take to make runner-up, but I’ll lie on the tracks until that first elimination, no problem.
 

“Thanks, but no thanks.”
 

Kylie’s manner snaps. “You think you’re keeping your secret. But you’re not.”
 

I want to say,
Nobody can prove anything,
but that’s just playing into this. So I shrug and say nothing.
 

When we enter the new room, I see the exact same setup I saw on the control room monitors: stacks of cards facedown, placards, sheets of paper and pencils. There’s an iPad on one of the tables, and Logan moves to retrieve it. He picks it up and starts reciting instructions as if we’re about to take a test.
 

Trevor is in the front. I saw him on the monitor, but what I didn’t see was the rather obvious erection tenting his pants. I think back to what Daniel said, about how the first half of this experiment was pure and how the second was bound, by force of the people in it, to degrade almost immediately.

Trevor is rock hard. His face is flushed. If I had to guess, he spent the last session exactly the same way the girls in this group did: frustrated, awaiting the inevitable.
 

All you need to understand is that the true competition is about to begin. Not because of anything we’re doing, but because of what the girls probably will.
 

I look around. The atmosphere in here is charged enough to burn me. Subtle shifts of bodies. Hair being touched and primped. Legs being crossed and uncrossed, as if uncomfortable. The men are acting professional, but the signs are on them. The name of this game isn’t waiting or testing. It’s resistance. Who can hold out. Who can make the other flinch.
 

It’s about foreplay. And restraint. And lack thereof.
 

Strange attributes for Trevor Stone to be seeking in a wife, it seems to me.

Kylie sits next to Trevor.
 

She puts her hand on his leg while Tony speaks to the group. She moves her hand to his bulge, but Trevor doesn’t react. Except down below as Kylie subtly brushes her hand back and forth. Light and casual, like she doesn’t know what she’s touching.
 

But Trevor still doesn’t acknowledge her.
 

What kind of competition is this? Is it really to find the biggest whore? Or is there something else happening?
 

Everyone is looking at everyone else. Daniel was right. The men are engaged in a farce, but we all know where this is headed. They won’t act first, because it will spoil the experiment if they do.
 

Eyes are on Trevor; Kylie’s hand now inside his pants.
 

Eyes are on Kylie, wondering how far this will go.
 

No one knows what to do.
 

I see someone sit next to me, in my peripheral vision. Logan. He’s between me and Malory, raven-haired and petite, her look decidedly hungry. She’s breathing in full, heavy sips of air, her chest rising and falling practically in rhythm will all the others. Her hand goes to Logan’s leg, just like Kylie’s went to Trevor’s. Then it’s higher. And higher. Logan looks at me as if inviting me to do the same.
 

Jesus. I’m still aroused. Even after the control room, the energy in here is making my heart beat, pushing blood to all the wrong places. Apparently, public sex turns me on. Apparently, I’m a voyeur
and
exhibitionist. And Logan’s piercing blue eyes are OMG fucking hot.
 

When I don’t touch him, he touches me.
 

One hand, lightly, on the shoulder.
 

Brushing my hair away from my neck.

I shake my head, and the hand retreats. Doing so doesn’t cool me down. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t even be here. But under circumstances that are more bizarre than normal and less bizarre than these, I think I’d let him keep going. When in Rome, and all. When hot strangers fondle you, it’s rude to not fondle them back.

But after turning Logan away with that small shake, my pussy feels more sensitive, not less. My tits want hands on them more, not less.
 

Don’t touch anyone. You’re mine.

Holy shit. It’s all I can do, thinking of those words, to not scramble for something,
anything
, to put inside me.

Whatever strange detente holds the room, it refuses to break. Kylie has Trevor’s cock out now, her hand slowly working its length. She’s looking right at me, the tip of her tongue running along the inside edge of her front teeth. While Tony keeps on explaining and everyone keeps shifting in their seats, dress hems rising, hands exploring, neighbor touching neighbor everywhere but the bubble in which I find myself, Kylie leans down. Still casual. And licks Trevor’s throbbing head. His dick twitches in response.

Don’t touch anyone, Bridget. You’re mine.
 

I sit. I wait.
 

Frustrated.
 

While everyone else crosses line after line, having fun all around me.

CHAPTER TEN

My shower is watched. My bed is watched. I’ve already done stuff to myself on the bed, knowing there was a chance I was under surveillance, but I won’t do it now. I can’t be sure who’s watching the mansion’s control room or who will watch a future recording, and I’m not eager to give them a show.

But there’s nowhere to go.
 

And that makes me wonder if this is also part of the test.
 

I won’t stand in the blind spot like I did with Erin, just to play my fiddle. I’m not that far gone. The other people here might have serious impulse control issues, but I’m still an entrepreneur with two distinct little businesses out in the real world, where people don’t suck dicks in a group and where, if you get a bit worked up, you have a choice other than succumbing.
 

I don’t want to take a shower, though I know that bit of rebellion is short-lived if I expect to stay here two weeks and still be tolerable in public. So I splash cold water on my face, then wet a washcloth with the same cold water and run it over my neck and the exposed part of my chest. I’m getting the dress all wet, so I change, quickly and with my back to the room. I’m still fucking turned on, but I think it’s probably from all the sneaking around. Which makes sense. If I enjoyed watching Erin getting railed by Tony and if the display downstairs cranked my motor, I guess I’m into freakier shit than I realized, like orgies and fucking in public. So if I’m paranoid of being naked here for the cameras and am doing my best to keep my parts covered, maybe the thrill of hiding is a flipped sort of hot in itself. Maybe I like feeling ashamed. Maybe I like the sense of humiliation. I don’t like the implications, but it almost makes sense. It’s not like I had a normal childhood, or any healthy relationships.
 

That’s when I decide this is ridiculous.
 

If I’m this
bothered
— and that’s bothered in the usual sense, though I’m apparently
hot and bothered
as well — by the ever-present eye in the sky, I should leave. I’ve never done anything for money. I make commercial decisions in my work, but they’re still projects I know I’ll enjoy. I did what I’ve done so far to help Linda, but I’d have stopped the instant I encountered something I didn’t actually want to do.
 

Which raises its own set of internal conflicts. It means that I’ve enjoyed all I’ve done so far.
 

But if getting naked for the cameras bothers me enough to start taking sponge baths, and change in the corner, maybe I’ve reached my limit. I should go. Find Tony or Logan or Richard or even Trevor and thank them for their time and help and money, but explain that this isn’t for me, which it very much isn’t. I can do it cordially. So long as I don’t have to say it to Daniel, the course of action here is clear.

I take a few slow, deep breaths. I inventory my room’s closet and drawers. There’s more fancy stuff in here than in even Inferno’s very best places, and nearly as much inventory. If the other girls’ closets are all stocked as well, we could put on a fashion show.
 

I count shoes. I line them up like soldiers.
 

I feel mostly normal by the time I’m done. I could be in a well-appointed hotel, not in this palace of freaks. I find some good old-fashioned paper books in one of the drawers and start reading something with a unicorn on the cover to kill the time.
 

I brace myself for dinner, but dinner turns out to be entirely normal — dishes with French names like moules marinières, blanquette de veau, and gigot d’agneau pleureur that I’m entirely too low-brow to appreciate. The meal’s normality is, in itself, odd. Everyone lines up at the tables and eats food. There’s no salacious behavior, no dicks or boobs out, no vibrators or dildos dangling from the ceiling, no parading of our hosts’ and servants’ bodies in front of the room. I don’t talk to Daniel. Trevor makes the rounds, circulating like the groom at a wedding reception.
 

I realize, as Kylie said, that I’ve never spoken to him at all. He must realize it too, because he sits across from me as dinner breaks up in an entirely mundane way, as we’re having rather ordinary coffee with ordinary half-and-half and ordinary sweetener, stirred with ordinary silver spoons. We weren’t assigned seats, so I’d been sitting with Erin and Jessica. Kat was two people down, looking at me funny. Blair was across from her and they kept chatting in Russian, and when Blair left, she said in a very businesslike manner, “Kat says she has boyfriend at home. Is acrobat and wears makeup like woman.” I wasn’t sure what to do with this information, so I just said thanks. Friendships here are weird. I guess I’m forming some, but I don’t have a friend here who I haven’t seen with a dick inside her.
 

Trevor, across from me, asks me if I’m enjoying my stay.
 

Yes, yes. Thank you.
 

And then he asks me what I do for a living.
 

I’m a voice actor.
 

He nods politely then asks a few follow-up questions. No mention is made of my phone sex sideline. Or that, by all rights, he shouldn’t need to ask a single one of these questions. They got the vibrator in my drawer and the Zone bars in my fridge right, so I figure they must know I record audiobooks and do general voice-over work for a living.
 

Or maybe not.
 

Because now that I think about it, Daniel seems to run the research part of this operation.
He
pre-guessed me at every stage. Daniel acts like he knows which color underwear I’ve worn every day for the past ten years and what I’m thinking before I think it. Makes sense that Daniel, not Trevor, would be the one to write my survey and interview questions, the one to stock my room.
 

Maybe Trevor
is
here to get to know us. And sure, he’s fucking us at the same time, but that makes sense for the Eros heir, doesn’t it? Trevor probably grew up in an open sexual environment. I almost laugh thinking about that, because it makes me picture him as a young man, having sex with his parents watching so they can give him tips on doing it better.
 

He certainly seems gracious. Nice, even. Definitely, unquestionably hot. Our conversation only lasts a few minutes, but I understand why people keep wanting to do business with this man. In those few minutes, I’m immediately at ease. I formed a few opinions about him those first days, but maybe I’ve been unfair. After all, what might he think of me, if he’s seen all that the cameras have?
 

If he’s seen that footage at all,
I remind myself, because Daniel implied that he’d erased our encounters. Or kept copies for himself, so he could beat off later.
 

It gets me thinking.
 

Does Trevor ever watch the tapes? If Daniel is the scientist in all of this — researcher, psychologist, and judge — does Trevor know half of what happens, other than what Daniel passes along?
 

Is it all even authorized?
 

I think back to my interview. To Daniel’s freaky knowledge. He acts like he’s known me forever, like how stalkers feel they know their oblivious victims. Maybe I
am
getting special treatment, like Kylie thinks. But it’s not special treatment to envy. It’s obsessive special treatment. And maybe what the rest of these girls went through to get here and are going through while they’re here? Maybe it’s not the same as my experience.