Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) Page 2

  But then I remind myself: Despite the debauchery, I don’t think I’ve seen Trevor partake since those first few nights. Why? Isn’t the point to find him a wife — the lady in the parlor versus the whore in the bedroom? We’re Trevor’s harem, and yet he hasn’t sat atop the orgy chain at all. He’s always struck me as ill fitting. Under different circumstances, we could have hung out. Change the setting, and I’d almost take Trevor for shy.

  “Did I wake you?” he asks.

  “Maybe a little. But it’s okay.”

  “You weren’t at breakfast.”

  There’s still a breakfast? It’s hard to imagine. Yesterday I just grabbed a bagel, before Kylie chased me through hallways that, in retrospect, I’m almost certain she laid out in advance. Before she sneaked up behind me, I’ll bet she closed all those doors, so she’d know where I’d run and where she’d follow. Nothing with Kylie’s an accident — as if she has life’s master plan and tweaks the details in her favor. Wherever you go, there she is. Maybe Kylie deserves the win after all, as queen of distorted reality.

  But breakfast? I don’t even know what that would be. Why that would be. Three are three girls, a trio of studs, Trevor, and Daniel. An intimate group that’s now anything but intimate. The idea of us sitting in the formal dining room is ridiculous. We haven’t done so for weeks.

  I’m about to say this when my foot kicks a white envelope on the floor. I pick it up but don’t open it. Thanks to Trevor, I know what’s inside.

  I shake the envelope before setting it aside.

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “Didn’t Sammy knock?”

  “I guess I didn’t hear because I was sleeping.” Bitterness enters my voice, and I add, “Don’t you watch every little thing I do?”

  Trevor sighs. I hear apology in the sound. Everyone’s sorry. Everyone wishes things were different. Except that things aren’t different, and those who pretend to be sorry never actually try to make the changes I’m sure they’re capable of making.

  “Can I come in?”

  I gesture for him to enter then close the door behind him. He doesn’t seem to know where to sit. Daniel would pick a spot and claim it, but Trevor is more considerate. He waits to see what I’ll do, where I’ll go.

  I sit on the bed. Trevor pulls out a chair and collapses on the seat. We sit in silence for too long. Trevor’s hands are in his lap, blue eyes on me.

  “Did you know?” I finally ask.

  “Did I know what?”

  “You know what.”

  He looks to the side. Evading my eyes.

  “No.”

  “Trevor.”

  He looks back at me.

  “Tell me the truth. I think you owe me that.”

  “Daniel told me he’d promised Jessica top three. But no, I didn’t know about what happened.”

  The dream knife reenters my heart. Knowing something is one thing. Hearing is another.

  “How can he promise her anything? I thought the selections were out of his hands.” My mind goes to what Daniel tried to get me to do in the garden. To the many little things he coached me through in the past. I didn’t get the impression he could choose, only that he knew better than most who might be chosen.

  “They are. But … it’s kind of tricky to explain.”

  This is the wrong thing for Trevor to say. I feel a snap inside and have to repress an urge to bolt upright and hit him. Everything is tricky. Everything is complicated. They’re responses you offer to avoid giving answers.

  “Try,” I spit.

  Trevor stands. He walks into the bathroom, and through the open door I get a peek at him pulling something from his jacket pocket. It looks like a cell phone. He does something on its surface, and a second later the lights dim a shade. Not as if someone turned them down but as if power to the room has decreased by 10 or 20 percent.

  “I’ll pay for that,” Trevor says.

  “What?”

  “I turned this room off.”

  “You can do that?” I’m thinking of Daniel. He was able to give us blind spots, but it was always so covert. Trevor seems to be carrying a master remote.

  “It’s an emergency thing. But because it can be abused, I can’t use it quietly. There will be a red flag on this segment of the footage. I’ll be asked why I did it.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  His eyes go to the bed. I get the idea, but doubt that anyone will buy it. If he wants to have sex with me and I agree, why would he need a blackout? Isn’t that the point of this contest — for him to defile us all so someone can take careful notes on our performance?

  “I’ll think of something,” he says.

  He glances at his chair, but now that the room is off, Trevor seems uneasy. He paces for a while then sits beside me on the bed.

  “What did Daniel tell you about the last challenge? The one on the day we talked, when Roxy was eliminated?”

  I’m not sure how to respond. Do I still have loyalties to Daniel? Do I care?

  “After you told me I needed to make sure I was eliminated, Daniel said I had to stay.” I swallow past the next bit because I realize how it will sound. “And he said that to do it, I needed to be … uninhibited.”

  “With him.” Trevor is just saying words, but there’s something in his eyes that I’ve seen in Daniel’s many times before. I can tell he doesn’t like imagining what I did with his right-hand man. Or, as it sounds now, his rival.

  “Yes. He said the challenge was about how sexual we could be. He … ” I stop, unsure how to continue. It sounds like coercion, but it wasn’t. Daniel magnified my natural drive; he didn’t manufacture it. I wanted him more, but I wasn’t forced. No matter how I say it, it’s going to sound weird. Make me feel like the deviant. Maybe that’s just victim’s guilt, the way abused kids sometimes assign blame to themselves.

  “He habituated you, didn’t he?”

  I nod.

  A cloud crosses Trevor’s face.

  “I’m not even sure what happened when — ”

  “I don’t know what he’s up to,” Trevor cuts me off, looking around the room as if in search of an answer. “I know it’s something, but I can’t figure out what. Or why. If he wanted to have sex with you, he could have just … ”

  He trails off and looks at me apologetically. He was about to say something like, He could have just waited because it’s not like you haven’t been fucking him all along. Maybe not in those words but surely with that intention.

  “But I didn’t do anything with him,” I say, somehow eager to prove that I’m not just a slut for mnemonic triggers. “He had some sort of full assault lined up: things he wore, sounds, smells. But I said no.”

  Trevor looks over at me. His eyes narrow. This seems to be news to him.

  “It was more than those things, Bridget. Most of it is words and sensations. You wouldn’t even know he was doing it. Are you sure?”

  Is he seriously asking if I’m sure I said no? Really? I’ve never fucked a guy without realizing it. I’m not Roxy.

  “Hold out your arm, Bridget.” I do, and then he says, “He would have done this.”

  Trevor runs his fingers up the inside of my arm, from my wrist to the pit on the underside of my elbow. I shiver, immediately wet. Instantly, unquestionably aroused — from zero to sixty in half a second. I look at Trevor and blink, wondering if this is how things are between them. Do they trade us off like favorite sports cars, loaning them back and forth? Why don’t you take Bridget for a test drive, Trevor? Daniel might say. Here’s the code to get her motor running.

  I pull my arm back, equally alarmed and aroused. The feelings echoing through me are strong. I want to lean in. I want to kiss him. My nipples harden more, and I want his hands to pinch them. My legs open a little, and if he reached for me, it might take me half a second to stop him. Or several minutes, or hours.

  Once my arm is my own again, sense returns. I’m staring at Trevor, who for some reason is giving me a bitter half
smile.

  “It’s not hypnosis, if you’ve been wondering. It’s just a shortcut to things you’re already capable of feeling. We all develop triggers like that. It’s not much different from how you might think of your grandmother when you smell apple pie.”

  “I never knew my grandmothers,” I say, knowing that’s not the point.

  “It’s all wiring. This thing cross-connects to that thing. It’s one reason why Abbie was here. Her cross-connections were unusually strong.”

  Abbie. She’s the one who had that condition that scrambled her senses. Months had colors. Tastes had sounds.

  “Why are you here, Trevor?”

  “Because I’m worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  He stands, looks away from me, starts to pace. I remember that the cameras and microphones are off, but a cynical voice inside me wonders if this is all another game.

  “I don’t know how much Daniel told you. I imagine he mentioned that we conduct tests. Each is directed at one contestant, meant to challenge their special ability. The thing that makes them unique. Sometimes, the tests select for the targeted contestant, and sometimes against them. We knew Ivy had trouble parsing fantasy from reality. So Ivy’s test — setting Richard and Kylie up then putting them in front of her right after she had a dream about herself and Richard — was intended to select against her talent.

  “You said she was schizophrenic.”

  “Yes.” He nods. “But each blade cuts two ways. The test was meant to determine which was dominant: the negative aspects of her disease, or the positive aspects … which we’d consider a talent.”

  “I don’t see how schizophrenia could possibly be a talent.”

  He looks at me for a second, and I know he’s forcing himself not to say, It’s complicated.

  “It should be clear by now that we’re not really looking for my wife, but in a way, it’s still true. We’re looking for something different — something the board wants — but she’ll still slot in as my spouse. Publicly, I mean. She’ll need to live here, with me. Who knows? This might actually turn out to be the best dating process ever.”

  He smiles, but I can’t smile back. It’s too fucked up. I still have the remnant of shivers from when Trevor triggered me; I’m definitely attracted to him; I’m eager to hear more of what’s been kept from me; I’m seriously freaked out. It’s a mess inside me.

  “What the company is looking for … it comes with the need for a particular constellation of attributes. Each of the contestants embodied something we perceived as valuable. For Ivy, it was a certain talent — yes, talent — for bringing the nature of sexual fantasy into reality. If something like that could be properly harnessed, it would be … worthy of our attention.”

  Trevor crosses to the window. He looks back at me and continues. “Or consider Kylie. On the minus side, she’s incredibly devious and manipulative. But on the plus side, Kylie is able to pre-guess just about anyone. She’s always a few steps ahead, often many steps ahead. She’s essentially able to hack people. To see what they want, what they need, what they fear, what turns them on. Someone like that would be the ultimate seducer. Just as she’s blindsided you again and again, she could blindside a man who doesn’t even know what gets him worked up. A man who says one thing but secretly wants another.”

  “So you’re looking for a prostitute?”

  Trevor sighs. “I’m trying hard not to put you off, Bridget. I need you to believe me. No, we’re not looking for a prostitute, but I don’t know how to explain what we are looking for. Partially because there’s too much you don’t and can’t know. But mostly because we don’t even know.”

  “But you want a woman. A woman who’s willing to … ”

  “A woman who can be modeled, maybe. Studied. Trained, or act as a trainer. We have equipment that’s not publicly known, able to map neural connections. It’s a private joke at Eros that we’re looking to find God in the machine … or possibly to put God into a machine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Trevor shrugs, and I see the truth: He doesn’t understand, either. Maybe nobody does. Perhaps Trevor, Daniel, Eros as a whole, and whoever else is involved are all stumbling through a pitch-black room, holding an electrical cord, stabbing blindly in hopes of plugging prongs into a socket out of dumb luck.

  “Everyone has something. And at the last test, we were trying to select for Roxy’s something: specifically, that she has no sexual boundaries. We assumed sexuality was an obvious strength. Eros is in the eroticism business. Maybe we’re looking for better toys or maybe we’re looking for Porn 2.0. I honestly don’t know; nobody does. But sex, for sure. Maybe we needed fantasy/reality blending, as Ivy might have offered. But of course we needed sexual adventurousness in the pool. By trying to trigger you, Daniel was hoping he could force you to pass. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but your time together must have made him feel that under maximum arousal, you’re plenty capable of impressing the algorithm.”

  Algorithm? I flag the word for later as a more pressing question reaches my lips.

  “But we didn’t do anything. I walked away from Daniel and went to bed.” I don’t mention the part where I painted the secret brick room with my bounty of orgasms. Supposedly, nobody knows about that … except for Daniel and Jessica, who maybe christened it together before I ever saw it.

  Trevor returns to my side. He sits.

  “And Roxy did the opposite. You should see the tapes, Bridget. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “So why was she eliminated, and I wasn’t?”

  Trevor gives me a boyish shrug. Somehow, it’s incredibly charming.

  “Daniel? Did he somehow … I don’t know … push me through?”

  “He can’t do that. Nobody can.”

  “But you said he promised Jessica top three.” Saying the words isn’t easy. Blood wants to fill my face, make my tongue sluggish.

  “That’s different. I can imagine ways he could influence trends, but never hotwire results.”

  “Why can he do one but not the other?”

  Trevor sighs.

  “It’s complicated, isn’t it?” I say, resigned.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what about Kat?”

  Trevor seems surprised. “What about her?”

  “Kylie said she was kicked out. Not eliminated in the normal way.”

  “Yes. I authorized it. Decisions like that, at least, are mine to make.”

  I stare daggers.

  “Bridget, she was gay.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as wrong? Kicking someone out just because she’s a lesbian?”

  “Not in this case. Preference matters. It’d be unconscionable for us to keep her here, doing things she doesn’t want to do. Desire trumps all. It’s the superpower that all of you were supposed to have. It’s why we gave you so many outlets. Made you comfortable enough to explore. Never persuaded or forced.”

  I think of the mind games. I’m not sure that’s true.

  “She’s not bisexual. She actively dislikes men sexually, Bridget. It all became clear once we started … ” He trails off.

  “After you started spying.”

  “Researching,” Trevor clarifies. “Research that was unforgivably missed. Kat kept an excellent disguise in place. But she has a hard history. It looks like she was raped repeatedly, and unwillingly coerced many other times. She seems to have shared straight porn with her boyfriend but kept her true affairs strictly to the flesh.”

  I don’t know what that means, and don’t want to ask.

  “Bridget.”

  Trevor puts his hand on my arm, but I shake it away. I’m so frustrated. So angry. Trevor acts like my friend, but he cut Kat. I have no friends.

  “Bridget, there was no choice. Keeping her wouldn’t have been fair to Kat. And it would have contradicted the purpose of everything we’re trying to do.”

  I look back at hi
m. I stand. My eyes are wet with fury, but I’m wearing an angry smile.

  “What?” he says.

  “They got you. They got all of you.”

  “Who?”

  “Kylie. Kat was a threat to her. Do you know about her and Caspian White?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “I guess we’ll never know, will we? I could tell you. I could even tell Caspian. But something tells me it won’t ring true without Kat to back me up. Something tells me convenient lies and excuses have already been put in place. She’s always ten steps ahead, isn’t she? After all, that’s her fucking superpower, isn’t it?”

  “Bridget, what are you talking about?”

  “And Jessica. Because second place wasn’t good enough for her. She wants to win it all. Is that what Kylie promised her? That she could come in first place once Kat was gone?” I give a cynical little smile. “I guess we’ll see what Kylie’s promises are worth with a knife in Jessica’s back.”

  “You’re making too much of this. Once I learned Kat’s situation, I took care of it. It was just me. Nobody else — not Kylie, not Jessica.”

  Then it hits me. My hand goes over my mouth, and I actually laugh.

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “What?”

  “They’re playing you, too.”

  “Nobody’s playing me.”

  I sit back down. I can’t help myself. I grab Trevor by the upper arms and look him right in his sweet, almost innocent eyes.

  “This is about you, Trevor. Not me, not the contest, not the company. You. Kat was eliminated because you never had a choice. She backed you into it.”

  “Who?” He’s getting annoyed, his face twisting.

  “This whole thing is on you. It’s your name. Your company. Everything is being done for Trevor Stone.”

  “So?”

  “So if it fails? If it goes horribly wrong? If someone can convince some other people that certain big-name billionaires should be squeezed out?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  But I’m not. I see it clear as day.

  Trevor stands, brushing off with an air of finality, as if these last thirty seconds have made him sorry for coming to see me.