Chapter Eight

Harper's POV

The message continues.

The_Triumvirate: To help you, here’s some information about us. We’re businessmen, professionals, each owning our own companies. We’re in our thirties and do require discretion. That means no sharing what happens with others. We can’t risk our private lives mixing with business. We’re looking for a baby girl who is willing to let us share her for one night while we spoil her. Typically, we play one-on-one. But occasionally, we come together... for the right lady.

I reread it twice. Maybe three times.

Businessmen. Professionals. So not just men who wear suits in their profile pictures, but ones who live that life, clients, meetings, reputations. They’re at least ten years older than me, maybe more. But that doesn’t surprise me. What does is the way they talk about it. Calm. Direct. No sleaze. No overcompensation.

The fact they don’t do this often, that they only play together rarely, makes something in my chest ease. I’m not sure why. Maybe it makes them feel less like predators and more like men with choices. Men who don’t have to do this, but want to.

Want me.

My stomach flips at the thought.

The final message arrives like a closing line.

The_Triumvirate: Just tell us what you’re comfortable with, and we’ll work out if you’re a good fit for us. Hope to hear from you soon. The Daddies

I stare at the words.

Comfortable.

Good fit.

They make it sound like I have a say in this. Like I have the right to draw lines and expect them to be honored. Like I’m something to be chosen... not coerced.

But before I can decide how I feel, before I can even start to think about how to reply, I feel Mark shift behind me again.

He doesn’t speak this time. He just watches.

And I realize that whatever I write back, he’ll be reading it too.

I’ve been called good girl before. Mark uses it often, always with that clipped tone, smooth as oil and just as suffocating. When he says it, it doesn’t feel like praise. It feels like ownership, like manipulation wrapped in silk and tied with a bow he expects me to thank him for. It’s not meant to lift me, not meant to make me feel seen or wanted. It’s meant to remind me where I stand. It’s meant to shrink me.

But when they say it, those three strangers behind the screen, their words still lingering in my head from the night before, it doesn’t carry that same edge. I haven’t heard it aloud, not yet, but even in print, it lands differently. The weight of it is softer. Heavier, somehow, but not cruel. It sounds like something I might want to believe in.

As for being called a bad girl, that one’s been thrown at me more times than I can count, usually by the kinds of men who paid cash and acted like that meant they could say whatever they wanted. For them, it was a kink, something they muttered with a groan while groping at my thighs, like the words alone were enough to turn me into whatever fantasy they’d bought. But it never felt sexy. It felt dirty in a way that made my skin crawl, like being called trash with a smile. They always made it sound like an insult pretending to be foreplay.

I try to shake the memories loose, try to breathe through the tight knot forming just beneath my ribs. I can’t let the nerves gnaw at me again. Not today. Not after I already sent the wink, already opened the door.

“Babes, just think,” Mark says from across the room, his voice sweetened with the kind of false hope I’ve learned to fear more than his silence. “You do this three or four times, and everything’s sorted. We can buy another house, get out of this dump. You won’t have to do this anymore.”

He grins like he’s just offered me salvation, like the freedom he’s dangling in front of me is a promise instead of a leash he’s planning to shorten. He says it like he means it, like he’s doing me a favor.

And maybe a part of me still wants to believe he is.

Maybe that part of me is the weakest one.

I open the app again, ignoring the pressure in my chest as I pull up the chat. My fingers are stiff, awkward, but I force them to move.

Bruised Lace: Hi, Daddies. Should I call you that? I’m not sure. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’m nervous to the point my hands are shaking. This is all new for me.

I hit send before I can second-guess myself and immediately regret it. The words sit there like something half-dressed and shivering, vulnerable in a way I didn’t mean to be. I just told them I’m inexperienced, that I don’t know the rules, that I’m walking into this blind and begging not to trip.

Why would they even bother replying now?

I try to recover, scrambling to find my footing before the moment slips away.

BruisedLace: I want to learn though.

The message sends and for a breath, I feel like maybe I’ve steadied the fall.

Then Mark’s hand closes around the phone before I can stop him.

“Say something that makes them want you,” he says without looking at me, already typing. “Jesus, Harper, you’ve got to make them want to reply.”

He finishes whatever thought he had and shoves the phone back into my lap.