Page 42 of Three, Two, One [321]

“What will you give me?” he asks.

I huff out a long breath of air. Why won’t he just take what I’m already offering?

“I’ll spell it out, then. I want to know where you came from. Who were you with the day you ran away?”

I bite my lip and weigh how much I can say.

“Let’s play a game, Blue.”

I look over at him, confused. What kind of man turns down a naked girl in his bed? And he’s not gay, he made it pretty clear he was not interested in JD.

“Twenty Questions. Ever play that game?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s play now. Think of your first kiss. Picture it in your head. Picture where it was, who it was with, and how it felt. Now tell me about it.”

“That’s not how you play the game. I think of something and you guess by asking questions. You get twenty in all. That’s why it’s called Twenty Questions.”

He’s shaking his head the whole time I’m talking. “No, sorry. The game we’re playing, also called Twenty Questions, is played by me asking you twenty questions and you giving truthful answers.”

I laugh at him. “That’s stupid. It’s not a game, it’s an interrogation.”

He shrugs that off. “Maybe it is, but let’s play anyway. Question one, what was your first kiss like?”

I open my mouth to protest, but his finger is suddenly there, tracing my lips. My heart beats faster at his touch. God, I need it. And then he slips it inside and my lips wrap around it automatically.

The throbbing between my legs is back and I’m just about to start masturbating when he withdraws his finger and drags it over my chin, down my neck, and then rides the crest of my breast until he stops on my nipple.

He squeezes it very hard and I arch my back a little.

“You talk, I’ll get you off.”

I look him in the eyes to see what this is about, but he’s stoic. Why is he so closed up? “Why do you want to know that stuff?”

“Because we’re going to start from the beginning, Blue. So long as you keep talking, I’ll keep touching. And if your story rings true, if you tell me real things, I’ll give you what you want.”

I swallow hard again. “How do you know what I want?”

“I sell sex, Blue. I can recognize a masochist when I meet one.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.” He says it definitively, like he knows this to be true. “Maybe you’re just realizing it. Maybe you’ve known it for a long time. But I’m stating the obvious. And I’m gonna go ahead and give you a little warning about JD. He’s a lot better at dishing it out than you might expect.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means he can get carried away.”

“But not you, right?” I glare at him. “Not Ark, the man in control, right?”

“Not me. You described me perfectly. The man in control.”

I let out a long breath and turn away from him. “I want more than a release. If I tell you true things about my past, then I want you to be invested.”

“Invested?” He laughs. “You’re in my house. You’re on the run. You want me and my best friend to give you what you need.” I start to protest, but his hand cups my mouth. “Shh,” he commands. “You want more than sex, I get it. You want protection. You want a place to hide. You want a place to decompress and understand whatever happened to you. Maybe you want allies?” He stops to watch my face after that declaration. “And we’re willing. JD might give it away, but I don’t. JD doesn’t know what’s good for him. I do. So I’m going to take control of this situation and put things in order right the fuck now. You have no idea who he is. You have no idea what he’s doing when he leaves here.”

I slap Ark’s hand from my mouth. “And neither do you, from the sound of it. You didn’t know where JD was yesterday.”