Richer Than God Read online

  The truth—a memory. More than one memory, stacked like cards. One after the other. Cronos would make me feel this way; he would drive me to the very edge, and then we would visit a brothel. He only had to help me the first time. The test, he would say, is to hide it so well afterward that no one will ever suspect you. I learned to pass his fucking tests.

  And now I’m failing it.

  I thunder through the whorehouse, searching for her. It’s after lunch, and the dining room is clear. A pit at the bottom of my stomach spins stories about the quiet. One of my staff sees me coming and disappears.

  I shouldn’t have gone.

  The spa. Yes.

  I throw open the door so hard the glass shakes but doesn’t shatter. “Brigit!”

  She stands up at the other end of the room, face white. In the frozen silence of the room, I swear I can hear her breathing. Relief goes out like the tide, and bloodlust rushes in. “You don’t have to shout,” she manages.

  I laugh out loud. The funniest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. “You’re done here.”

  Eyes follow the volley of our conversation. “My mascara isn’t dry.”

  She catches my eyes, and the thought that fills my mind must make it to her, because she lays down her mascara wand with infinite gentleness and hurries for the door. It was that or drag her out by her hair. Good decision.

  We go out of the spa and to my private elevator, which waits for me on the first floor. A proximity sensor on my phone makes the door slide open for us, and I lead her in. The door slides shut. Brigit’s breathing quickens. She’s right to be nervous, rubbing at her thumb like that. Is it me or the elevator or both? I probably won’t find out. These obsessions never last long. They can’t, because they can consume a person.

  On the top floor, the elevator lets us off directly into my rooms, which take up the entire penthouse level. Brigit sucks in a breath. “This is where you live?”

  “What did you expect, a whore’s bedroom?” When I bought the building, I had the whole thing gutted. Nothing my father ever touched exists anymore. It’s all been destroyed. Burned. The only remaining piece of his influence is me, and I can feel it at the core of myself, threatening to surface. “We’re going this way.”

  Brigit follows, as obedient as I’ve ever seen her. Wherever she came from, it wasn’t a place like this—all white, with sleek, dark furniture. The farmhouse I grew up in was all peeling paint, a pretense of homey shabbiness, and fuck that. Everything here is clean. It makes for good contrast to the monstrosity of my soul. In the city, empty spaces are the most luxurious. They also have the benefit of making it easy to see if something is lurking. There are very few shadows here. Only my paintings, and a few other objects. No clutter, no dark spaces.

  Which will make it easier to see when I break her.

  A switch on the wall opens the blinds to their full extent, letting in the maximum daylight. Brigit shields her eyes with her hand. “Does it have to be so bright?”

  “Yes. I want to see what you look like when you’re performing for me.”

  She drops her hand. “Again?”

  “Again. Only this time, it’s going to hurt a lot more.” I put a hand around her neck, letting my thumb wander up to the underside of her chin and tipping her head back. “Some men like a scared little rabbit in the bedroom. That’s fine. You’ve already proven that you can come while you’re being finger-fucked. Show me how much pleasure you get out of a thick cock splitting you in two.”

  She swallows, and this time it nearly undoes me. “And if I don’t... have any pleasure?”

  “Then you won’t pass your inspection. And if you’ve wasted my time, then you’ll owe me for it.”

  Her eyes widen. “I don’t have any money. You know that.”

  “Then I’ll extract payment in whatever way I see fit.” Something about her eyes tears off the last of the façade I’m always wearing like a mask. I’m more of a monster with every second I touch her.

  And I’m not going to stop myself.

  The reality of this seems to sink in. Fingers were a fucking walk in the park.

  “What do I do?” she whispers.

  I unbutton my jacket and fling it over a chair, then the cuffs of my sleeves, and then I roll them up so they’re out of my way. “Impress me.”

  “But what if—” Her sentence dissolves into whimpers as I twist my hands into her perfect hair and drag her across the floor to my bed. Yes. I’ve spent every moment since I first saw her waiting to do this, and now the door is locked behind us and there are no witnesses. It makes my blood heat to throw her onto the covers and turn her over, shoving her hands up above her head. I’ve successfully torn away her pretense too. She’s panting, wide-eyed, gorgeous. “Please—”

  “Please what?” I snap. “Did you come here for candles and flowers, or did you come here because you wanted to be a whore?”

  Tears glint at the corners of her eyes. “Because I wanted to be a whore,” she admits in a clear voice.

  My cock has been aching for hours, and now a drop of precum leaks out against my boxers. No turning back now. “And now look at you.” I put both hands at the neckline of her dress and tear it in two. The delicate lace underneath is another invitation to destroy, so I do. The fabric coming away leaves red marks on her skin.

  A pressure grows behind my ribcage. It’s something deeper than want. More animal. And if I let myself feel it for Brigit, she won’t survive. So instead of letting it free, I lean down and bite one of her breasts. She gasps then pinches her lips shut.

  “I said impress me. Show me how much you love this.”

  “I…” I take her nipple in my teeth and increase the pressure by increments until she’s squirming, trying to get away. “I can’t.”

  “Fake it,” I growl into her ear. “You said you weren’t naïve, sweetheart. Show me you’re not.”

  Her moan this time is tinged with fear, and I reward her for it by teasing her other nipple with my teeth until the sound is very nearly authentic, a delicious cross between pain and pleasure. Brigit has her thighs clamped tight. She’s no match for me. I spread them open and deliver a slap to her thighs. Another gasp, another moan. I’m dying to fuck her. I’m so hard it hurts. Every move I make scrapes the sensitive head of my cock against fabric in a torturous tease. I bite her shoulder next, then taste the inside of her wrist.

  Fingers between her legs confirm what I suspected from the way she’s writhing on the bed.

  Brigit is very, very wet.

  I drag two fingers through her juices and push them into her mouth. She tries to say something around them, but all I can feel is the rough slide of her tongue and the drag of her breath. “Make me believe it.”

  She’s still trying to argue—or beg, I don’t fucking care, and I care too much—so I shove the fingers back until she gags. And that—that—is what coaxes another moan out of her. I feel it from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes, nerves lighting up every inch of the way. I haven’t been this alive since my head went through that window. I haven’t been this close to dying either. Circuit overload. Brigit gets into it, sucking harder on my fingers while she thrusts her hips up into the air. Her moan breaks apart, and something inside me snaps too.

  My vision goes dark around the edges, the beat of my heart drowning out everything except the panting whimper she’s making. I pull my fingers out of her mouth unceremoniously so they’re not blocking the sound. Real, fake—it doesn’t matter anymore.

  I believe it.

  I reach for my zipper and shove layers of fabric out of the way, and then I shove her out of the way, pinning her back on the bed and pushing her legs up toward her chest. Brigit’s still making little noises, still trying her very best, and I can’t see anything but how glistening she is. How fucking perfect and pretty. How ready she is to be destroyed.

  She’s helpless in my hands, and I edge myself against her opening. Brigit blushes again, pink reaching all the way down to her belly button
. I enter her with a vicious thrust. Ah, fuck, but she’s a fighter to the last, and her body resists me. It takes another to break through, and the hot rush of her virgin blood calls to my worst impulses.

  I fuck her like she’s prey, trapped under the weight of me, lost in the unbelievable tightness of her and the gripping, primal glide of flesh on slick flesh. A flash of green, the color of her eyes, begs for red. I reach between us and find some on my fingertips then trace a jagged path between her breasts. She’s breathing fast, hard, air forced out every time I take her again. I trace the line of her jaw, the front of her throat. “I don’t believe you,” I tell her. “I don’t fucking believe you.”

  She cries out, trying and failing to keep her hands above her head, and Brigit wraps her small hands around my wrist. It’s like she’s trying to help me, and that sets off lust like a bomb. It has to be hurting her, fucking her this roughly, with this much abandon, and nothing can stop me. Even Brigit isn’t pushing me away. She’s pulling in, her hands tight on my wrist, her body begging.

  I give her what she wants.

  She disappears into herself, panting, those sharp little breaths that give her away. This is worse than performing. This is what she hated so much in the lounge.

  I don’t let her stop.

  I take my hand away and thread it through her hair again, pulling tight enough to bring more tears to her eyes. Her hips work against mine, coating us both in her blood and her desire, and I’m a fucking animal, biting her, fucking her with deep thrusts and pulls that make her moans pitch higher and higher until it’s time.

  Her eyes fly open at the shift in my hand, trying to follow it—but she can’t because of the frankly obscene way I have her pinned on the bed. She jumps when my knuckles make contact with her clit. Jumps again, then freezes.

  I trace a slow circle on her swollen nub, then another, stroking so deep with my cock I bottom out. “No,” she manages. “Not again, please not again, don’t make me like this—”

  “Yes.”

  A twist of my hand and I get the pad of my thumb there. The lightest possible pressure. Relentless circles. And my newest little whore can’t help herself. Her hips rock up into my touch, even though it hurts her. Her moans become something else entirely, something low and raw and more panicked by the second. This is what she didn’t count on. It’s confusing. Humiliating. I won’t stop until it happens.

  Brigit puts a knuckle to her teeth, and I bat her hand away, pinning her arm above her head while the other hand scrabbles for purchase on the comforter. Her hips jerk out of rhythm, and she tightens around my cock—impossible, it should be impossible—and then she comes in a wash of heat and a cry that is so pure it almost kills me.

  Instead of dying, I empty myself into her with abandon.

  It’s the first release in years that’s given me anything, and I reward Brigit for it by forcing her to come on my cock a second time. This one’s tougher—she fights me on it, trying to get my hands away from oversensitive skin. I make sure she hears me laughing while the pleasure builds. “Make me believe it,” I whisper into her ear.

  She comes hard, gritting her teeth, giving in.

  When I’m finished with her, I pull out and drag my cock across her legs, marking her again. Brigit gets herself up onto her knees, and I realize it’s because she’s preparing for what’s next. She’s not going to be caught lying down.

  I can’t let her believe her own delusion. On her knees or not, she’s mine.

  Brigit doesn’t flinch when I edge closer, and not when I wrap a hand around the back of her neck. Not when I test between her legs with two fingers, though she hisses with pain. I use those fingers to play at her newly fucked entrance and put my thumb to her clit again. Such a good girl. She must truly need the money. Her legs shake, but she keeps them apart while I bring her to a third, ragged orgasm, fucking her casually with my fingers until she leans her forehead into my shoulder, her fingernails carving crescents in my arms, and comes. Brigit rides the high as best she can—it hurts; it’s good.

  When it’s done, she bursts into tears, still holding on to me.

  15

  Brigit

  It’s over, and I don’t know why I’m crying. The release, maybe. Or the pain. Or the foolish agony of it being over at all. I push myself away from Zeus’s hard body and search for the edge of the bed. I get my feet on solid ground to the sound of him zipping his pants. A hand moves around the back of my neck, and for an aching heartbeat, I think he might pull me in and hug me.

  The thought is laughable a moment later as he’s walking me to the door, naked and bloody, like he’s turned me inside out. It’s so clean in here, so white, and I can only hope I’m not getting anything dirty. As if it matters—he could replace it all. Burn down the building and start again.

  At the elevator, he pulls me up onto my tiptoes, stretching me out. I gasp with it, but he cuts it off with a hard, desolate kiss.

  And then he pushes me into the elevator.

  “No.” I’m buzzing, humming, detached from the floor, and I can’t let go of the wall or else I’ll fall over. I’m weak in the knees. Weak in the body. Weak in the soul. This is not how it’s supposed to go when you lose your virginity to a beautiful man. Zeus unrolls one of the cuffs of his shirt and tugs it back down into place, watching me like I’m a living art exhibit. “I don’t have any clothes, please—”

  The door shuts on his impassive expression.

  I lurch for the buttons, stabbing them one by one with my thumb, but none of them do anything. Oh my God. He’s sent me down in an elevator to where—to the first floor? What am I supposed to do, run for the stairs and hope nobody sees me? There are people down there. Savannah is down there. She’ll know. Everyone will know. My stomach drops faster than the descent of the elevator. I’d scream, but there’s no point.

  It comes to a halt before I’m ready, on the second floor, and I back up against the wall and pray nobody’s there when the door opens. Prayer has been useless to me up until now, but if there’s ever a moment for a higher power—higher than Zeus—this is it.

  The door opens.

  “Come here,” says Reya. She holds out a big, fluffy robe, and I realize I’m still crying, tears tracking down my cheeks. She bundles me off the elevator and down a series of turns. “He’ll want you dressed for dinner.” Her tone is mildly reprimanding. I can’t tell if it’s me or Zeus she’s scolding.

  “Dinner?”

  That can’t be right. I’m only good for pulling the blankets over my head and blocking out this day.

  And... something else.

  There’s a tug beneath my belly button, a glow of desire. It makes another sob catch in my throat. How could he?

  How could he stop?

  Reya rubs briskly at my back as we walk. “Your hair still looks fine,” she murmurs, assessing. “Makeup, not so much. What a waste of mascara. But I can make it look like you were never crying. Come on, this way. There’s another space we can use.”

  I keep waiting for it, all the way down to a smaller version of the spa, with one salon chair and a more limited selection of makeup. I wait for her to say it while she hands me clean clothes and shuts me into a bathroom. While she fixes the fall of my hair. While she makes delicate sweeps of eyeshadow on my eyelids.

  I wait for it, but Reya never says that it will be all right.

  16

  Zeus

  There is bookkeeping to be done tonight.

  Savannah needs a bonus in case Morris really does show up here tomorrow. I doubt he will. He likes a spectacle, and if he can go off with Savannah in front of his men, it will be all the better for him. I’ll have to pay her now and after. Once for her fury and once for her tears. Then we’ll be even.

  I hesitate over the ledger on the next line.

  Technically, Brigit owes me. And here I am, trying to come up with adequate compensation for what I’ve taken from her.

  Which is everything.

  And I want more of
it.

  Fuck, I want more of it. I toss the pen down and close my eyes against the afternoon light. It’s been two hours since I took her in my bed, and I’m so hungry for her that the emptiness grates with every breath. I’m not going to make it through dinner and this evening if I don’t calm the fuck down.

  Foolish.

  I abandon the ledger on my desk and shut myself in the attached bathroom. I’m too hard to ignore it any longer, the skin stretched tight over my thickness, and unzipping my pants and freeing my cock only gives me the slightest relief. A little more when I take it in my fist. The most when I pump myself to release in five desperate strokes. It’s still not enough, but it will have to do.

  When I go back out, Reya is waiting with a manila envelope in her arms. “Zeus,” she says.

  “Is that from the police station?”

  She watches me, wary, as if we haven’t known each other for years. “It is.”

  Reya’s waiting for me to ask about Brigit. I’m not fucking asking. If I say her name right now, I won’t be able to bear being away from her until dinner. I doubt she could handle more of me right now. I doubt I’d care. “Give it.”

  She hands over the envelope, and I tear into it. Reya waits a minute longer, and when I don’t say anything, she leaves without another word. I’m not particularly invested in whether she’s angry with me or not. Her emotions have nothing to do with Brigit and my plans for her.

  The contents of the envelope include a stapled packet of papers topped with a photo of Brigit. The photo is as arresting as she was the first time I saw her, and my heart stops to see it. It was taken from outside the window of a restaurant. Brigit sits at a table, her hands in her lap. She wears a smile I recognize as fake, forced. Part of her face is obscured by the head of the man she’s sitting with.

  I flip it over, but there’s nothing written on the back. The explanation had better be in the report.

  I skim the cover page, which is mostly details that don’t matter—her eye color. Her height. Last known address.