Back when I was nineteen, my gambling-addicted father drugged my mom and handed her straight over to his creditors to cover part of what he owed them. When my mom woke up the next morning and realized what had happened, she couldn't live with it. She took her own life. The creditors refused to count it as payment, saying he'd delivered a corpse instead. While I was still numb with grief, that worthless excuse for a father grabbed me and dragged me off to settle the rest of his debt. He looked those men dead in the eye and said, "My daughter—nineteen, untouched, and prettier than her mom ever was. That ought to wipe the whole slate clean, right?" The men there stared at me with hungry eyes, like they might tear me apart and swallow me whole at any second. I had a pair of scissors tucked up my sleeve, already imagining the cold steel against my skin if any of them laid a hand on me. Just as that thought crossed my mind, a low voice drifted out from the shadows in the corner. "Is she really clean?" In the bathroom, warm water slid down my skin, washing over the faint marks he'd left all over me—marks that told a story I didn't want anyone else to read. A sudden draft hit my back as the door swung open from the outside. Eldon Haywood stepped in completely naked. I was used to this by now, so I played the part. I lifted my hands to cover my chest, turned halfway away, and gave him my best pouty little whine. "Come on, Eldon, I'm still in the middle of my shower." Before I even finished the sentence, his strong arms pulled me against his solid chest. His wide hands moved over me with practiced ease, and a rush of heat shot through my whole body like electricity. "Eldon, we've already gone twice today. I'm seriously done." "Three years ago, when I bought you from your dad, you gave up the right to tell me no." His words ripped open the old wound inside me, raw and ugly, just like the day it first happened. My name is Alisson Mendez. I'm twenty-two now, and for the last three years I've been Eldon's bed companion. It all started when my father gambled away every last thing we owned and still came up five million short. That night, he knocked my mother out and delivered her to those creditors. The next morning, she woke up, realized everything, and ended her life. The creditors tossed her back, refusing to accept a dead woman as payment. So my father decided to sell me instead—his own nineteen-year-old daughter. That was the night I first saw Eldon. He sat right in the center of the room, wrapped in a black overcoat that made him look cold and untouchable. Dark sunglasses hid his eyes, but I heard his low, calm voice cut through the noise. "I'll take her." He dropped a five-million-dollar check on the table without blinking and walked out with me. ***** A sharp pain suddenly flared across my shoulder as Eldon sank his teeth into the spot that still hadn't healed. The sting yanked me right back to the present. "Pay attention," he growled, voice low and rough. He knew every sensitive place on my body like a map he'd memorized. In seconds, he had me trembling, lost in that dizzy rush. But just as I started to melt into him, his next words sliced straight into my heart like a blade. "Tomorrow I'm getting engaged."