Her clear-soled heels clicked noisily on the marble, echoing in the vast emptiness of the entryway. The whole house was like that, cavernous and devoid of life. Ever since her mother had died, the house had seemed so barren, as if she had been the only thing bringing any light to the long shadows that Landis Jones cast.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, instigating yet another futile attempt to wrench free of his grasp. “What are you gonna do, lock me in my room and ground me?”
Landis’s frosty gaze met hers from the corner of his eye. “No. That’s a punishment for children. Since you’re so certain you’re an adult now, I’ll punish you like one.”
Claire’s heart skipped a beat. For a moment, there seemed almost to be a hunger in his eyes, a burgeoning flame licking at his dark irises. But then he looked away, pulling her up the stairs toward his study, the place she hadn’t stepped foot in since her mother died.
She felt the chill in the air as soon as she crossed the threshold. Landis let go of her arm and she sat on the chaise near the fireplace, clutching his coat tighter around her. She watched as he locked the door from the inside and strode over to his liquor cabinet, hauling out a bottle of honey-colored liquid and grabbing a tumbler to go with it. He poured himself a small amount, reached into his mini-fridge, dropped a few ice cubes into the glass, and then sat down on the sofa across from Claire. He ran a hand through his thick, mahogany-colored hair and sighed through his nose, loosening his tie before he took a long sip from his drink.
There was nothing but silence between them. For a long time, Landis didn’t even look her way. He didn’t look half as wrathful as he had before. Now he looked tired, deflated, as though this newest discovery about his stepdaughter had knocked the wind right out of him. They’d had a turbulent last few months. Maybe all their fighting was starting to wear him down more than she’d thought.
Claire looked at her feet. Letting herself cope by lashing out at everyone around her had been working out so well. Why did he have to ruin it by actually caring about her?
“So,” Landis said at last, his voice thick and raspy, “you think stripping is the way you wanna go, huh?”
Claire looked up at him finally. She wasn’t sure what to say. On one hand, she wanted nothing more than to snap at him with some venomous comeback. On the other, no, she really didn’t feel that way. She’d just wanted to get even with him, to piss him off.
Torn between confessing the truth and telling a convenient lie, Claire went with what she was most comfortable with: being a brat.
“Why the hell not?” she sneered. “Girl’s gotta make a living. Especially with her stepfather tries to make her life hell.”
“You have no idea what hell is, little girl,” he murmured, taking another swig from his glass. As he looked around his study, she followed his gaze, remembering how he’d locked himself in here almost every night since her mother had passed away. It seemed to be his sanctuary, his safe haven. She wondered why he’d brought her here.
“Okay,” he said suddenly, jarring her out of her thoughts. “If that’s what you enjoy doing, you can do it. For me. Right now.”
Claire felt her jaw practically unhinge. She stared at him, brow furrowed, face screwed up in incomprehension. “Do what?”
“Strip,” Landis said, leaning back and crossing his ankle over his knee. He slung his tie back over his shoulder, freeing himself of its embrace. “Since you get so much out of it, and since I want so badly to see you happy, I figure I should give you every opportunity to do the thing you love most in this world.” He raised her glass to her as if saluting, and she felt a cold chill roll down each vertebra of her spine.
“You… you can’t be serious…”
“Oh, one-hundred percent,” he assured her, a twisted smirk playing at the corners of his lips. In the flickering firelight, it almost made him look devious, menacing. “It’s not like you’re not dressed for it, Claire. Or would you prefer it if I called you ‘Star?’ You seemed to like that name very much back at the club.”
“You’re sick!” she spat, standing up. “I’m not gonna strip for my father. That’s… that’s…”
“Stepfather, Star. I’m your stepfather, or do I have to keep reminding you of that?”
She couldn’t come up with the right words to tell him off. Nothing seemed to fit. She could call it “bad” or “wrong,” maybe, but there was something else to it too, something she couldn’t quite place.
Claire was a bad girl. She thrived on sin, on hedonism, on breaking the rules. And the rules said that daughters didn’t get freaky with their fathers, even if they weren’t related by blood.
And that made part of her want to do exactly that. Really, really badly.
She wobbled a little on her heels as her stepfather looked up at her. Despite the tempest of her outburst, he was so calm, so unmoved by it all that it deeply unsettled her. His Claire-colored eyes scanned her body from head to toe, staring with her long, wavy blonde hair and ending with her French pedicured toes.