His Pretty Little Burden (Kids of The District, #4)

by Nicci Harris

Drumming my fingers on my leg, I try to redirect my mind while my stomach twists in hunger. The peanut butter sandwich I had back in the motel wasn't enough after the train, two buses, and two kilometre walk here. Fucksake. I don't want to ask for anything here, though. I hate owing people shit. I'll feel that tether of debt regardless, but for Benji, I can handle it. “Here’s a sandwich.” I laugh out loud, spinning to find Henchman Jeeves approaching with a plate. “Thank you, you are fantastic at your job, but I can't accept that." He sets the food down despite my refusal. I peer at a toasted Caesar sandwich, my stomach growling, my mouth salivating. That smells epic. “Your empty stomach just had a conversation with me in the car. So, yes, you can accept it,” he notes, his words circled in humour, his tone surprising me. I chuckle, snubbing out my embarrassment with a joke. “Well, thank you. But you know what they say, malnourished is the new sexy.”

“You understand I need to make sure you are Dustin’s daughter, don’t you?” When the words leave his mouth, I sink further down onto the cold, hard chair because I have no proof. Just a dead woman’s bedtime stories. I glance to my lap, worrying my lip. “Fawn,” he says, and as though he has a direct line to my chin, my head rises to meet his stern gaze. “When I talk to you, you look me in the eye.” Fuck me. Forcing the dryness from my throat, I swallow and nod. His glowing blue eyes dart to watch the roll of my throat. “And you answer me. Do you understand?” “Yes,” I say straightaway, his tone stoking the little flame in my abdomen to a full-blown fire. “I understand. It’s just... I have no proof.” He twists his knees to face away from me. “Come over here. Let me get a good look at you.” I blink at him. Once. Twice... Oh my God, he's serious.

My mind drifts to the feel of his hands, to how those hands have probably taken a life... or two. How he could probably throw my head to the side, snap my neck, and not break a sweat. And no one will miss you.

Do politicians have this many henchmen? No, this all screams organised crime to me.

A little deer. One grey eye. One green. I'll kill her if I must.

"It’s okay, Fawn. Just breathe."

I've never wanted to lick a man before, but right now, I want more than anything to know what his sweat tastes like.

Shuffling, I manage to whisper, "Sorry." I don't manage to elaborate, but that's okay. Sorry will suffice. Sorry for being in the same space as you. For catching you half-naked. For being here. For⁠— "Sorry for what?" he says, his voice unaffected. I'm trying to work that out. "Um, for... being here?" Staring at me, a soft grin moves across his lips, and it startles me, because he's calm in our encounter and I'm ready to explode. "She doesn't eat. Hardly sleeps." He pauses, and my heart becomes an erratic drum between my ears. "If you were my property, I'd bend you over my knee." In shock, my lips part. Then he walks off, and I'm left speechless. Wordless, confused, with a barely functioning body that is uncomfortable and wrapped in burning skin. "Sorry," I whisper as he disappears.

"I'm not being picky." I hand her the sheet. She wants it, can’t stop looking at it, as though her longing gaze has telekinetic powers. "I'd foam at the mouth over two-minute noodles." Henchman Jeeves laughs. "Please don't foam at the mouth; it involves a lot of paperwork."

"Okay! Well, you should alternate between honey oats and an omelette for breakfast, but it looks like he won't let you have bacon⁠—" "It's processed," Henchman Jeeves calls down. I gaze up at him, lifting my hand to umbrella my eyes, the sun overhead creating a glowing hue around us. "Do you like that I have a mandated feeding schedule?" "Oi, you up there, you're missing your calling as a house-wife." She tries to dodge a tablecloth that comes hurtling at her, but it hits her shoulder. She brushes it to the side. I smile, liking their playfulness. We are an odd threesome. We'd make a good joke. A teen mum, a thirty-year-old butler on steroids, and a peppy maid walk into a bar⁠—

"Eww. He is making you have fish. Salmon or Cod." "High in omega threes," Henchman Jeeves chimes in again, still the hint of amusement dancing through his words. "And I think a feeding schedule is a good thing for you. I read in a magazine the other day that malnourished is not the new sexy."

"she's fucked, man"

"You are my responsibility. While you are under my roof, you will eat three meals a day. You will make yourself comfortable. If you don't like something, use your voice, say it. You will not apologise unless you have done something wrong. The word sorry carries no significance when it's used to hide a lack of confidence."

"No cake, Fawn. Not without having had dinner." I sink my teeth into my bottom lip—where there should be shame, annoyance, I feel immensely seen. I wrap my arms around myself. "That seems fair." "I'm glad you think so."

I smile wider, breathing with excitement and rapture, knowing he feels it aswell. He smiles too. That. Is. Everything. And for the first time, the mystery in his usually impassive gaze dissolves in a deep pool of sentiment, meeting my soul on an equal plane, no longer the enforcer. I see him a little raw. Hi, Clay. I feel like there is a single moment in time while holding eye contact with someone that can change a relationship forever. The moment has risen for us. We both are met with the choice to look away. It’s an itch in my throat, a shudder in my heart—it's time to look away, Fawn. It's time to stop smiling at him. To remove his hand from my stomach. Yet... I don't. And neither does he.

"Silly girl. You're reading into things." My foster mother's anthem chants inside my mind. Hail the queen of gaslighting. In this case, she's right, though.

When he reaches down, covering my body with the silky gown, lacing it up himself, I chant her words and close my eyes. "You're reading into things." Ignore the way you feel seen. Ignore the way his eyes narrow, his lips look good enough to kiss. Ignore your heart. What concerns him is not the same thing as what it beats so violently in your throat for! It isn't.

"Love, baby, is feeling invincible." My mum told me as she ran out the door after her fourth husband. I was only seven. Left alone that night and so many before because love is a drug with a mighty grappling high and a brutal bludgeoning low—and she was an addict.

For a moment in the kitchen, I felt as though belonging to someone—to that man—would be the sweetest of existences.

I envy his wife for the right to say she belongs to him. For her last name. Her elegance. Jealousy is like a bitter taste tingling my gums. Even her attitude towards our closeness was graceful. My mind wanders... Perhaps they're in an open marriage? Or maybe I'm grasping at straws, or maybe she just knows a man like him would never be interested in a scrawny, uneducated girl like me.

"Mine," I hiss. Mine. Mine. A word I didn't know I would use, but now that I have, it takes root inside me. My responsibility. Mine to protect. Mine to care for. To clothe. To look at. Mine.

"Now be a good girl, and let me see these lovely lips say, 'Yes, Sir.'"

I squeeze my eyes shut under the warm sensual spray... Mine. Many misguided feelings spar inside me, making me question my reality. “Mine.” He said that loud and clear, but for what purpose? The word is an elixir, dousing me with a burning neediness. Dropping my legs to the tiles, the water pooling around my body, creating a rippling, fluid outline, I spread my thighs and feel a blush hit my cheek. I press my palm between my legs to ebb the ache. Rolling my hips off the floor, I grind myself against my palm, hearing that word. Mine. Mine. God, it sounds so good.

pull a towel from the rail, wrap the soft white material around me, and pout my way into the bedroom. Fuck. My eyes hit Clay. I fist the towel at my chest, holding it high, feeling my heart a frantic tattoo vibrating on the other side. I stare wide-eyed at him sitting on the edge of the mattress, intensity consuming his gaze. Dressed in a black suit and smooth black silk tie, he continues to stare at me as though his gaze was drilling holes through the door moments before I entered. “You didn’t finish,” he says, his tone strained and rough. I gasp. He can’t mean... Did he hear me? Blood pumps into my cheeks, the heat radiating like fire directly beneath my thin layers of skin.

I feel him come up behind me, and I immediately straighten, before the expensive material of his suit touches my shoulder, and a big warm hand feeds up through my hair. It wasn't in my head. I'm not just an obligation. Not just his responsibility.

God, air. I need it.

“Why can't you touch me? Why?” I breathe the last word, a panting sound that is now my chorus. Remember those red flags, Fawn? He has a wife. He's twice your age. He's dangerous... God, I could write an extensive list, and yet, I don't give a shit. "Because of your wife?" He chuckles, the rumble deep and delicious, and God, I love that sound more than any other. "No, Fawn. Aurora doesn't care who I touch. We don't have a physical relationship."

“I came here to gift you a dress to wear tonight. To check you were... feeling better. But now I need you to finish what you started in the shower.” Is this really happening?

“Do you want me to help you come?” Panting fiercely, I nod my head. “Do I accept a nod as an answer?” “No. Sorry, Sir.”

"Good girl. You’re such a good girl for listening. Do you enjoy fucking yourself in front of me, my pretty deer?"

God, this man is walking sin.

Then he strides from the room. Leaving me on my knees. Wrecked from my very first orgasm.

Did he enjoy watching me? Will we do that again?

Invincible. My mother was wrong. Falling for someone does not make you feel invincible; it makes you feel the opposite: fragile, transparent, cut open. Quite frankly, the feeling sucks.

She's jealous, I think. Great, another one.

"I'm not Cinderella. She becomes a princess. I'm the pumpkin. At the stroke of midnight"—I touch my lower stomach—"It'll all be over."

It's silly. The last time I thought someone cared, that someone might want me as their own. Well, that person is dead.

I'm the pumpkin.

I'm on show again. The monkey, right?

I roll my eyes. "Seriously, Henchman Jeeves? I know it's there to hold on⁠—" "Wait," he splutters the word out on a single short chuckle, and I blush like a drag queen with an unskilled makeup artist. "What did you just call me?" My cheeks prickle. "Ah... I've been calling you Henchman Jeeves in my head." I cringe a little, an apology all over my face. "Sorry. I should sto⁠—" "It's perfect. I might make it official. Now, take my arm, Miss Harlow," he orders softly, straightening, a quirked grin etched on his mouth.

Fuck me. This man is a whole world of intense.

I worry my bottom lip to stop my mouth's predisposition to smile at him as if we are lovers. Which we aren't and yet... there is intimacy now. Far more intimacy than I've ever felt with anyone, and it's not just that hours ago he watched me come—made me come. It's the small conversations while the rest of the world sleeps. The looks. Touches.

"You shouldn't look at me like that." His jaw clenches, and my heart stops beating as he leans down, his lips a whisper away from my ear. "I like looking at you. I'll look at you however I please, and you will like it, too. If you ever tell me what I shouldn't do again, I'll spank that perfect arse of yours until it's raw." I exhale in a rush, unable to stop myself from turning into his mouth, causing his lips to skate along my hair. "Is part of your hospitality to also help me come because that is definitely something you should put on the brochure." Oh. Fuck. Kill me. The breath from a small chuckle hits my ear, his lips skating my flesh as he says, "You need to stop that pretty head from overthinking. I don't offer such an itinerary for all my guests, but your perfect little body is hard to ignore." There it is. He acknowledges it. I don't know why I needed that so much, but I did.

He steps back, putting space between us. "Are you besotted by him? By a man you don't know." "I am. He's the only person in my life who impresses me," I lie, but the person who actually impresses me is regarding me, my words displeasing him, and it feels all wrong... and right. I can't think straight. "Even if he is a bad man," I bite out, observing his reaction to my words, "he's better than my mother, than my foster mother. I bet he's never been the victim." He smiles, but it's unfriendly. "Your father doesn't know your dress size. Or that the only time you clean your plate is when you're given sweets. That you use humour to deflect. That you have nightmares about the television." Air catches in my throat. How did he know that?

"Madonna Mia," he mutters to himself.

"I'm sorry if I disappointed you by falling over in front of that man, but I didn't ask to be invited to the party, or dressed, or anything. I just want to find my dad. But I'm here, and I don't know what to do or say from one moment to the next, and you are confusing me."

"I'm not a clumsy person at all. The smoke was really⁠—" "That was poor judgement on my part. I apologise for that," he states, and my eyes widen as he says sorry without saying sorry, despite his dislike for the convention. "I didn't consider the tobacco... and your condition. I'm very rarely careless with my property. It won't happen again." His property.

Opening my eyes again, I step a little closer to him. "How did you know about my nightmares?" "You talk in your sleep. Jasmine was concerned." Oh. I nod slowly, absorbing his words. Hating them, too. So, she's not my friend. Well, that's fucking fine. And he doesn't trust me? Well, I don't trust him, either.

"Why not make this home?" I ask. "Why aren't there pictures on the walls? Why aren't there books left on couches and towels draped over sofas, comfortable seating outside?" I glance quickly at the wrought-iron table that now symbolises so much about this man; I hate it more than I did a week ago when I first saw it. "Why do you have this horrible wrought-iron table?" "You have a problem with my table?" "It's horrible." He almost smiles.

"I don't want to get comfortable." That's crazy. My brows pinch as I ask, "Why not?" He steps closer to me. Now, I can smell him—cigars and whiskey, earthy and sweet. "It's what I'm used to." I laugh once. "Discomfort?" "We operate best under a level of duress." "If that's the case, then I've been operating at my best my entire life," I say with a cynical laugh.