“I cannot believe it’s really you. I’ve been waiting until Bradley was gone to approach you. Didn’t think he’d take too well to having me steal you away.” He gave me a boyish grin that reminded me of how adorable he had been when we were younger. Not that he wasn’t still good looking, it was just more in a sexy, manly type of way.

“Oh, so you thought you could?” I teased with a tilt of my head.

“Well, I hoped,” he said bashfully.

I pushed his shoulder and rolled my eyes. “Sure you did.”

When we lived together, I flirted with Spencer all the time. I had such a huge crush on him, but he always treated me like a little sister. At the time, it had broken my heart. Looking back on it, I was grateful that he hadn’t taken advantage of my girlish fantasies like so many other boys would have.

“Hey, how about we go outside and catch up?” he suggested with a hopeful look on his face.

“Oh, um. I don’t really want to go outside like this.” I gestured my hand up and down to indicate my lack of clothing—I was in a bra and G-string after all.

“Here.” Spence grabbed a throw blanket from the back of a leather sofa and put it around my shoulders. “That should work.”

“Thanks.” I followed him through the house and out the back door where we sat on the stone steps leading out to a massive patio and Olympic-sized in-ground pool.

I wrapped the blanket tighter around my shoulders to ward off some of the night chill courtesy of the cold front that had moved in earlier in the day. “What have you been up to?”

I hadn’t seen Spencer since the day he turned eighteen and was kicked out of the system. He had to have done something right since then, judging by his fancy suit and the company he was keeping.

“A little of this. A little of that,” was his vague response. “I have to admit I was surprised to see you in there.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” His judgmental tone had my hackles rising.

“It means what the hell happened to the girl who had dreams of being a dancer some day? How the hell did you get mixed up in all this?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I clipped out in offense. No one knew what it was like to walk in another person’s shoes, and until someone fit in mine, they didn’t have the right to judge the hard choices I had been forced to make.

“Like fuck I don’t,” he yelled and angrily swept his hand through his hair. “You know better than anyone the shit I waded through for most of my life.”

“Everyone’s story is different,” I reminded him, the earlier fight out of my words. Spencer had been thrown in the system when Child Protective Services finally pulled him from his abusive home. One night after he’d fought off another foster boy who’d almost raped me, he’d trusted me with his story as he held me while I cried. Beatings and rape were something he understood too well.

“Then tell me yours, Alyssa. Tell me how the fuck you ended up demeaning yourself so thoroughly.”

If his words earlier hadn’t pissed me off, his description of my choice in profession successfully did it. I saw red as I turned towards him with fire in my eyes.

“Waking up one day to find your husband in jail will do that to a girl,” I seethed, releasing all my frustrations into each punctuated word. “And let’s not forget being evicted after you find out your rent is past due and you had no idea that was the case because even right until he went to jail for good, the man you trusted was taking the rent money for drugs.”

My chest heaved as I fought off tears, remembering the betrayal I felt that day knowing he didn’t give a shit about Sophie and me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have screwed us as badly as he had. “Or I know,” I went on after I composed myself enough to speak again. “When you’re struggling just to stay afloat, so close to giving in to the bone-crushing defeat you feel right down in your very soul, and then the world throws you an even bigger fuck-you when you find your daughter all alone in her bedroom, crying because she’s hungry.” My voice rose with each word even as it cracked under the weight of guilt that haunted me day in and day out. “What would you do if that happened to you? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the ones you love.”

“I had no idea,” he whispered empathetically.

“No, you didn’t.” There was no disguising the hurt in my voice that after all this time he could so easily judge me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. His hand laced with mine in a silent show of support.

“What. The. Fuck.”

Spencer and I both turned at the clipped voice and hostility assaulting the air. Ghost’s eyes were honed in our entwined hands, a look of disgust crossing his face before he hid it.

“Ghost,” I started, but Spencer talked over me.

“Is there a problem?” His words were polite, but his tone was firm, almost jeering.

Ghost looked pointedly at our hands and then back up at him before sneering, “Boss doesn’t like it when you touch the merchandise.”

I tried to pull my hand from Spence’s, not wanting Ghost to think I was doing anything wrong. They really did need a manual for prostitutes to know what was acceptable and what wasn’t. When Spencer tightened his hold on me, not letting me go, the air went from hostile to downright lethal.

“How much for an hour?” Spencer asked in what I assumed was an effort to placate Ghost and diffuse the situation.

“Aurora is off limits,” Ghost informed him.

“Aurora? Nice,” Spencer mumbled under his breath. “I’ll give you five thousand.”

My breath caught in my throat at the large sum of money he so carelessly offered up just to talk to me. Or at least I hoped that was all he expected. Servicing Spence would be awkward at best. I wasn’t sure I could do it.

“She’s. Not. Available,” Ghost said through clenched teeth. “Either take your hands off of her or you’ll have X to deal with. And I think we both know you don’t want that.”

Spencer contemplated that for a moment. Then he squeezed my hand before raising it to his lips and placing a kiss to my knuckles. He took a step to the side, letting my hand drop, and turned to address me. “I’ll see you again, soon,” he promised, then nodded at Ghost and disappeared into the darkness that shrouded the side of the house.

“That was rude,” I told Ghost, forgetting that my yelling at him could constitute insubordination. “We were just talking.”

“I don’t care if you were giving him fucking directions. You’re off the menu.” His passive comment had me clenching my hands into fists at my side. Who was he to decide? Not that I wanted Spence to part with five thousand dollars, but it would have made for a hell of a payout if he had.

“I don’t get that. He was willing to pay. Good money, may I add,” I argued.

“His money is worthless,” he scoffed, closing the distance between us, and with a hand on my upper arm, leading me into the house.

I pulled away from his grip and spun around to face him. Now that I was in front of him in the doorway, he had no choice but to stop and listen to me.

With narrowed eyes, I asked something that had bothered me since he first said it. “Why am I off the menu?”

He stared at me for several long moments. I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer me when he finally opened his mouth and said, “Boss’s orders.”

“I don’t get it.” His answer bemused me. Why would Xavier say that? You would think he would want to make money off me. Like I said, five thousand was a damn good offer. Even I knew that based on the stories the girls had told me.

Ghost sighed and his shields cracked. He looked just as confused as I probably did. “I don’t get it either. Doesn’t matter, though. What X says goes. If you’re done annoying me, we need to get the other girls and go. This party is ending. Now.”

Even if I wanted to push the subject further, I couldn’t. Ghost picked me up by my arms and set me to the side. I scrambled to keep up with his long strides back to the party.