My Best Friend Sold Me, So I Went to Poison My Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Gift

Egon presents Oren to Benedikt as a gift in the Customs House ballroom; Benedikt takes him, and in the car orders the veil off.

The green silk was cut to be taken off.

Oren stood at the top of the Customs House stairs in it, with two hundred people in black below him, and felt every eye find the open back.

Egon's hand rested on his shoulder, light and owning.

"Smile," Egon said. "You're a present."

Oren smiled.

It was the smile he had used for six years, the one that showed his teeth and said nothing.

Across the ballroom a tall man stood alone by a pillar with a glass of water in his hand.

Oren knew him from the photograph.

Benedikt Dreyer was bigger in the flesh, broad through the chest and so still that people walked around him.

The scar through his left eyebrow was white against his skin.

He was not looking at the stairs.

He was looking at the floor, and then, slowly, he was not.

His eyes came up and found Oren.

Something went across his face that Oren could not read, and then it was gone.

Egon took him down the stairs by the elbow.

The room made a path.

"Benedikt." Egon spread his free hand. "Twenty years of friendly rivalry, and you have never let me do you a kindness. Tonight you will."

"Egon," Benedikt said.

His voice was low, quiet and formal.

It carried to the back of the room without any effort.

"This is Oren. He is the finest thing my house has ever produced, and he is yours, with my compliments, for as long as you want him." Egon smiled at the crowd. "Please don't be rude."

People laughed.

Someone near the bar said, "Go on, Dreyer," and someone else whistled.

Oren stood with his hands at his sides and his heart going hard.

This was where the man would look him over, as they all did.

He waited for the hand under his chin or the thumb on his lip.

Benedikt did not touch him.

He put the glass of water on a passing tray and looked at Oren, only at his face, for what felt like a long time.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.

Oren blinked.

Nobody had asked him that in six years.

It threw him, and because it threw him, he got angry.

"Does it matter?" he said, loud enough for the first row. "I'm a present."

The first row stopped laughing.

Egon's smile stayed exactly where it was.

Benedikt's mouth moved, very slightly.

"It matters to me," he said.

"Then yes." Oren lifted his chin. "Sir."

He saw it land.

A flicker in the gray eyes, quick and hurt, there and put away.

Benedikt turned to the room.

"Thank you for the gift," he told Egon, without warmth. "Excuse us."

He put one hand at the small of Oren's back, over the bare silk, and walked him out.

His palm was large and very hot.

It didn't push or steer.

It simply rested there, and Oren found himself walking faster so he would not lean into it.

The car was already at the curb, a long dark one with a driver who didn't turn his head.

Benedikt held the door and Oren got in.

The seat was cold leather.

When Benedikt slid in beside him, Oren braced for the smell of him.

But all he got was a faint dry warmth.

The veil still sat behind his ear and dulled everything.

Benedikt looked at the patch.

"How long have you worn that?"

"Every day for six years." Oren kept his voice flat. "Don't worry, it's standard. You can't smell me, I can't smell you, nobody gets any ideas. Egon says it's for my protection."

"It's for his." Benedikt's jaw worked. "Take it off."

"That's a three-night patch to come out of. If you want me before Tuesday, you'll want me the way I am."

"I don't want you the way you are." Benedikt said it quietly. "I want you the way you are without it."

Oren stared at him.

Then, because it was Egon's patch and Egon's rule and his own wrist was shaking, he reached up, got a fingernail under the edge of the veil, and peeled it away.

The skin behind his ear felt raw and naked.

He held the little square out on his palm.

Benedikt took it, rolled down the window and dropped it into the street.

"My terms," he said, and looked ahead through the windshield, not at Oren. "No veil in my house. You will not call me sir. And you will not perform for me. Whatever you do, you do because you want to. If you want nothing, you say so, and nothing happens."

"That's three."

"Then you can add yours."

Oren turned it over in his mind.

It was too easy.

Nobody let you set terms unless the terms were part of the price.

"No bite," he said. "Not while I have a paper open with Egon. Not a mark on my neck."

"Agreed."

"You just said yes to that fast."

"I wasn't going to bite you tonight." Benedikt turned his head at last, and the gray eyes were steady. "I can wait for a paper."

The car turned onto the coast road.

Black water ran beside them under the street lamps.

Oren looked at his own reflection in the glass, the green silk and the bare neck, and at the man's reflection behind him.

Benedikt's thumb came up, very slowly, and touched the raw spot behind Oren's ear.

It was the lightest pressure.

Oren's whole body went hot.

"Now," Benedikt said, almost to himself, "we'll see what you are."

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