It wasn’t as simple as that. Not with the kind of power and money they wielded.
 
 “See, you think I’m being dramatic again.”
 
 “Ash,” he said, taking hold of my biceps. “Think about what you’re saying. Your father is going tosellyou?”
 
 “Or force a marriage. Which is pretty much the same thing.”
 
 His hold tightened. “You’re not marrying anyone. No one can force you to do that. This guy is poking around and giving you the creeps. I get it. You do everything in your power to stay away from him. We’ll tell George. This guy tries anything with you, touches you at all, and George will rip out his throat. You know that, right?”
 
 I did. George would do anything to protect me, but at what cost to him?
 
 “You can’t go to work for my father,” I insisted. “If you do, that will just put you further under his control.”
 
 “Too late. The deal has been made. You don’t have to go back to Switzerland, and I give him what? A year of my time? If he threatens me again as a way to manipulate you, I’ll quit. It’s not the same thing as getting expelled from Princeton. Besides, I told George maybe it’s a good thing for me to get in there and find out what’s really going on. George said your father’s changed in the past few years. Don’t you want to know why?”
 
 He had changed. But no, I didn’t care why. I only knew the night he hit me, then sent me away the day after, that he didn’t love me. That’s all that mattered.
 
 I was an object in his household. A pretty girl to be dressed up and told to behave properly. To be controlled, isolated and restricted from any freedoms. The second I stepped out of line, I was shown a leash I hadn’t realized I’d always worn.
 
 Poor, sad, little, rich girl.
 
 “…your life is his, until he says it isn’t.”
 
 “No. I don’t care why. But let’s not think about that now. You’ve still got a year at Princeton. Anything can happen between now and then. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s just go sit in the Jacuzzi until we turn into prunes.”
 
 He hesitated before letting me go. Like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know how to say it.
 
 “Yeah. Okay. Anything can happen between now and then. You going to wear a skimpy bikini?”
 
 “Will it make you hard if I do?”
 
 He snorted. “Probably.”
 
 I beamed. “Then absolutely.”
 
 * * *
 
 Later that night
 
 Marc
 
 I gathered up her hair in my fist so I could watch. Her hand was slowly jacking me off, her tongue was swirling around the head of my cock. Sometimes she sucked the head into her mouth, and sometimes she just licked me like I was her own personal ice-cream cone.
 
 The torture of staying still, of not thrusting a little deeper, was fucking delicious. But I wasn’t doing a damn thing that would, in any way, turn her off from sucking dick. Whatever she figured out, she had to do it at her own pace.
 
 So when she took me farther and deeper into her mouth, I hissed.
 
 Immediately, she backed away. “Did I do something wrong?”
 
 “No. It feels incredible. All of it. You did excellent fucking work studying blow jobs.”
 
 “I know, right? I think I’m pretty good at it. Well, at least based on the number of your grunts. I sort of love it, too. Like I can feel all of you in my mouth. Tongue your veins, feel your pulse.”
 
 She was going to kill me. “Will you please stop talking and start sucking?”
 
 She did, and that killed me a little, too. I watched her sink her mouth down on me. Felt the swirl of her tongue along the edge of my cock.
 
 I thought about her swallowing my cum.