Page 10 of Skin Trade

Chapter Eight

Payton's skin still tingled with the raw energy from her meeting with Seth, and it had been a good hour since he'd left her room. She found herself sitting on the edge of her bed, staring out into darkness just beyond the window. The sounds from below rose through the doors she'd left open.

There was a gentle hum of chatter filtering up, but as daylight rose outside the walls of Seth’s building, the people below shut down for the day and settled into their quiet. Even the non-vampires went dark when light came up.

Flopping back onto the bed and lying with her arms out at either side and her feet still on the cold floor, she let her mind wander. She regretted it an instant later because her mind was so filled with him, so sucked into all that he was, and all that he gave, yet she didn't open her eyes. No.

He was in the room next door, in his bed. Was he alone? Sleeping? It was hard not to fall into the images of Seth with Tasha in the room next to hers and what they would be doing. Teasing, playing, squealing with delight as he did things that would set her skin on fire.

Creven had cold hands with calloused skin that scratched her flesh when he touched her. The coldness of them was uneasy with the selfish touch of a man who only took what he wanted and gave nothing back. Oh, he had tried. It just hadn’t been in Creven’s nature to do anything that would serve another, other than himself. But Seth …

She pressed a hand to the centre of her chest where his fingers had grazed her flesh, except in her mind, his hand didn’t go down to her navel, but to the side. Firm, cool fingers slid with confidence across her chest and cupped her breast. Even that image was enough to heat her skin, and she let her own hand mirror everything in her head. One touch, one grasp and his eyes were on hers, probing her like he could see everything about her. She moved her other hand down her body, slipping it across her thigh as she lifted her leg onto the bed, and when her hand was at the bend of her hip, she stopped and snapped her eyes open.

A deep laugh resonated in her ears, but it came from inside her, inside her mind and she shot a glare at the door of the bathroom between their rooms.

“Get out of my head.”

He was in there now, wasn't he? He was in there, and he was fucking with her mind because he could.

Sitting up, she gripped the edge of the sheet and forced her head to fill with the most grotesque images she could conjure, rotten food, an old haggard woman, the things Creven had made her see and do. She’d fucking teach him to try that shit on her. She wasn’t having it. Not a chance. She slammed everything she could think of against the wall of her mind and at him.

“You may have bought my body, but you didn’t buy my mind.”

Her heart raced, though, and she could blame it on anger, or on him and his antics all she wanted, but the memory of him just touching her was enough. She shook her head. “I’m not doing this. Any of this.”

A second later, someone knocked on her door, and she let out a non-too-happy yelp at yet another intrusion, even though this one was physical, and not the game playing shit he did. The door opened a crack before she was off the bed to answer it, and a young, smiling woman poked her head around the door. "I brought you fresh clothes," the girl said. She had a tumble of blonde curls pinned up at the back of her head. They probably went all the way to her waist when she let them down, but she only had odd strands hanging here and there.

When she stepped into the room, Payton couldn’t keep the reaction from her face, or her head. “Is no one in this place ugly?”

The girl had delicate pale lips. Freckles ran across her cheeks and gave her an attractive look that wasn’t stunning, but something …. She was tall and slender, and like Tasha, she had curves in all the right places, though this girl’s were a little flatter, a little weaker, like she still needed to grow into herself and everything that would make her a woman.

“Sir has good taste,” she said, eyeing Payton up and down. “I can see why he likes you.”

“Sir? You mean, Seth?”

The girl carried a small pile of clothes to the dresser near the end of the bed and rested them in two neat piles. Bedwear, and daywear … or nightwear as it were. “I mean Sir. I brought you some clothes. Sir told me you requested undergarments.” When she spoke, the words came out with hisses tagged on the end of some letters where they didn’t belong, and there was an odd way to how she spoke. The tips of her fangs flashed when she smiled, and she had that same glow as Seth around the irises.

"You have not been here for long?" Payton meant as a vampire. She'd been around them enough to know the newly turned had problems with their words and letters. The fangs made everything challenging, but eventually, this girl, like many before her, would learn how to adjust.

“Six months. Do you need me to help you change for bed?”

"I'm not sure I'm tired."

"You will want to sleep. Once Sir wakes, no one can stay in their beds, and he wakes the moment the sun goes down. You are to join him."

For a second, Payton thought the girl was going to leave because her eyes widened and then she dashed back to the door, but she came right back, with a dress wrapped in plastic.

"Forgive me. I almost forgot. Sir requested you to wear this when you join him for dinner tomorrow. I will come to show you where to go before the sun goes down, so you are ready when he wakes.” She went to hang the dress from the back of the door, but Payton rose from the bed and took it for inspection.

“He expects me to wear this?” It was even more revealing than the gown he had dressed her in from the auctions. She put her hand inside, and the colour of her flesh shone through. “I might as well be naked for all this will cover. Is there nothing else?”

“That is all there is.”

It was beautiful. Perhaps something she would have chosen in her former life if she'd been allowed to stay in it and grow up. The women around her father had all worn these kinds of garments: long legs, long nails, and cigarettes on long back plastic extenders. Her father's women were elegant and luxurious, and their sense of confidence entered the room before they did. She always thought she'd grow up to be like them. "It's fine." She tossed it on the bed in a mess. The girl notably flinched, stared at it, but said nothing about it.

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

"A way out," Payton said half joking, half serious. Mostly it was just testing what Seth had said. It was one thing to say she could leave, but it was another thing entirely to prove it.

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