by W Winters
“It’s not your loyalty I’m worried about.”
“What is it then?” I ask him straight up. I need to put this to bed. Jase breathes in deeper, looking more tired than he has in a long damn time.
He shakes his head, which renews a surge of irritation. “There’s something I haven’t told you.” He talks as he runs his hand down his face.
“Is that right?”
“We got a message from Marcus. Mailed with no return address, no postage or prints… It’s his handwriting though. Something about Fletcher’s right-hand man.”
Hearing the name Fletcher sends a trail of unease down my spine.
“When?” I ask.
I’m answered with a question of his own. “Who’s Fletcher?” He adds, “Yesterday. Just after you left.”
“A dead man,” I answer him. “Fletcher is long dead and in the ground. Can I see the note?” I ask, letting him know I remember where my place is in this organization. I’ll make demands when it comes to Laura, but for business? It’s up to them. I don’t want to be in charge. I’m not interested anymore.
Reaching into his back pocket, he hands me the folded note:
* * *
Which will it be? Fletcher’s right-hand man? Or Laura’s father?
* * *
My stomach sinks and a cold wash of reality hits me hard. He knows. Marcus knows. Every hair stands upright on the back of my neck. Jase takes in every small change in my body language while reading that note. I know he does. The clenched jaw and difficulty staying still. I know he sees it all.
“What does it mean: Which will it be?” I ask him, repeating Marcus’s question. It’s harder and harder to breathe with this fucking tie on.
“I don’t know but do you see why I’m concerned now?”
Laura
The door doesn’t open slowly, it’s wrested open with intent and impatience.
The wind wails behind me, blowing past my shoulders and slipping into the sides of Seth’s open jacket. It’s a dark gray today, slim fit and accompanied with a black leather belt that probably costs more than the most expensive pair of shoes I own. I’m not cheap with my shoes either.
With a shiver tickling my shoulders, I pull the delicate cardigan tighter around me.
“You’re early,” he says as his tone and posture change, softening. The harsh grip he had on the door slowly slips and that makes my breath catch. That the sight of me could do that to him.
“Who did you think I was?” I ask, realizing his greeting was meant for someone else. “You were expecting someone?”
“No one… but you’re never early.” He’s displaying more than a five o’clock shadow. He must not have shaved this morning. “Come in,” he tells me, opening the door and holding it until I pass through, walking past him with each heavy and foreboding step. The roar of the fire in the living room straight ahead isn’t the only sound I’m picking up on. There’s also the steady thumping in my chest, harder than I’ve ever heard it.
Maybe it wishes to flutter and skip for the man behind me. The man who places his large hand at my hip, squeezing gently until he presses his hard chest to my back.
Thump, thump. The beat in my chest rages against my rib cage. If only I hadn’t taken that pill, I know how wild my heart would be for him. Caged but uncontained.
He lowers his lips to the shell of my ear and I focus my sight on the fire; I barely noticed it yesterday. The flickers of yellow and orange flames slip through black stones in the modern fireplace. There’s no wood, no fuel to speak of, but it roars intensely.
I can hear the moment he parts his lips, and my eyes instinctively close.
“Tell me why you’re early, Babygirl,” he whispers and the gentle tickle of his warm breath travels down my shoulder, both front and back. Eliciting a warning down my spine yet the goosebumps cause my nipples to perk and my core to heat as it travels down my front.
His hand moves to the front of my hip, curving against it.
“I didn’t like the waiting,” I answer him.
“No dress today?” he asks a little louder this time, less inviting, with less desire and more intrigue.
Instead of responding verbally, I shake my head. The crook of my neck must be more sensitive with his stubble rubbing against it as his thumb slips along the waistband of my favorite pair of blue jeans. I know it’s more sensitive because even the shake of my head brings a spark of knowing as the strands of my hair brush along my heated skin.
I have to step out of his hold just to breathe. I take one step in my tan leather booties and look down at myself. Dark skinny jeans and a simple oversized cream cardigan covering a blush tank top. It’s a more casual look than yesterday’s. “I had a date before you,” I comment, subconsciously teasing him.
I can see an alternate life in this instant. One where I’d never left him, one where we’re still together and the vision gives me shivers. In my mind, I watch as I place my purse down on the coffee table, taunting him about my coffee date until I confessed it was only Bethany. And he smiles all the while, knowing I was toying with him, knowing he had me all to himself. I can practically hear the laugh I make when he jumps on the sofa in front of us I’d so casually laid on, giggling as he slips between my legs and nips my neck for teasing him.
Another life, a different one.
But I can feel it.
“I know you were with Bethany.” Seth’s response is all business and the moment he steps around me, not touching me, his absence gives me a different kind of coldness.
The one that lingers with this reality.
“You’re tracking me?” I question him although it falls flat. Of course he is. He doesn’t even bother to answer. “Spies?”
Again, I get no answer. He simply walks to the kitchen, a small one at that for the large, open-concept main floor.
I listen as he pours the drinks, noting how there’s no art on the wall except a single piece. It’s a black-and-white modern artwork, very sexual with the silhouette of a woman’s figure straddling over a chair. It’s so close up, and the contrast muted, that at first glance, it’s only lines. Abstract art with no meaning. But then I can see what it is clearly, because I remember the day he took that photo of me.
My breath leaves me and I lose my composure the second I recognize it.
“I thought about getting rid of it.” Seth’s confession comes from the kitchen and rips me away from the memory I long to go back to.
His dark blue eyes pierce through mine, holding me captive as he lifts two glasses off the counter. “Sit,” he commands and caught in his trance, I move. I even place my purse right where I had in the fucked-up reality my head had conjured a moment ago. Instead of tossing it playfully, I set it down methodically and sit back against the gray sofa, gripping the edge of it and trying to hold on to my sanity.
“I bought it just before you left. Before that night. It hadn’t come in yet, but I got it for you.” My nails dig into the sofa, and suddenly the fire raging across from me seems too much. The heat is too overwhelming.
“I don’t like you bringing that day up,” I’m quick to tell him, feeling the anxiousness roll inside of me.
It’s quiet for a long moment. With my eyes closed all I can hear is the fire, followed by the sound of our glasses being set on the slick all-black coffee table and then of Seth drinking from his.
“It stayed covered for… it had to have been three or four years. I’d forgotten about it until I unwrapped it along with everything else that was shipped here.”
The sofa dips with his weight as Seth sits on the opposite end of the sofa.
“It stayed on the floor, leaning against the wall with its back showing, for a long time.”
I finally peek up at him through my thick lashes and dare to question, “Why? Why not get rid of it?”
“It was a reminder of what I lost. Those memories can give a man a lot of power. And motivation.”
I only nod my head before reaching for the glass. It’s
cold and the beads of condensation are welcome when I grip it.
With my eyes on the painting, hung up to the right of the fireplace, not centered above it, I take a sip of the vodka and soda.
“Do you like it?” Seth asks easily. “I thought about taking it down before you came, but I wanted to know if you remembered.”
“My birthday,” I say, giving him the information he’d need to know that I recall exactly when the photo was taken. “I remember… I love it.”
His exhale is easy as he takes another drink. I watch as he swallows and he only glances at the art piece before looking into my gaze. “I thought you’d like it for the bedroom,” he admits and a flash of emotion plays in his eyes. He breathes out like his thought is funny before downing the drink and abruptly standing. “I couldn’t throw it out,” he says with his back to me as he walks to the kitchen. “I couldn’t touch it.”
As he makes himself another drink, not bothering with ice and simply adding more whiskey to his tumbler, I hold on to mine. Feeling the diamond pattern carved into the heavy lead crystal.
Even with the cool drink, my throat feels dry and tight.
“A painter hung it while I was out. He thought I meant to hang it. And I couldn’t touch it to take it down.”
“I’m sorry it bothered you,” I speak and my voice cracks before I down my own drink.
He’s there, placing his glass on the coffee table and holding his hand out for mine when I finish.
On his walk to the kitchen, he doesn’t respond to my comment other than to say, “Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it?” Damn, do I hate that response right now.
He can’t hear my faint yeah from where I am as he stands in the kitchen. After handing me my glass, this one full to the brim rather than only halfway, Seth takes off his jacket and unbuttons his shirt.
My pulse quickens when he continues to undress himself until he’s only in his suit pants. I watch as he takes off his shoes, slipping his socks into them like he used to do. His muscles ripple with power and precision. The fire emphasizes every dip I crave to touch.
He’s older, his shoulders broader, his body more muscular and toned. I can’t take my eyes from his taut skin and the way his body moves. The warmth from the fire is nothing compared to the heat that kisses every inch of my skin while watching him.
“Getting comfortable?” I ask him. Again, nearly teasing. He looks up at me first, dropping his polished black shoes to the ground next to the fireplace, closest to the hall we walked down last time. With an asymmetric smirk, he comments, “You didn’t change, did you?”
“So much of me has changed,” I answer him without thinking about what to say. Without forming a list in my head of every aspect of my life that doesn’t at all resemble who I used to be.
With my manicured nail tapping along the glass, I speak up, telling him something I decided I had to confess hours ago when I was thinking about how tonight would play out. “I made excuses for you today.” My hardened voice and the confidence in it, makes him hesitate before he takes back his seat in nothing but those pants. Everything about him reads powerful and dominant. “I blamed myself for your actions.”
With his legs spread, he leans back with his drink, his gaze moving between me and the fire, but landing on me in the end when I don’t take my gaze from his.
He sips his drink rather than responding and I tell him, “I won’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Blame myself.”
“Then don’t,” he answers easily enough. My bottom lip wavers until I take another unsteady sip and close my eyes.
“What you did yesterday…” I trail off as I remember how I felt on his desk and the wave is an onslaught to my confidence.
The sound of him leaning forward forces my eyes to open wide, the sofa groaning, before I feel him closer to me.
“What did I do that was so wrong that you felt the need to make an excuse?” His question holds a taste of menace.
“You wanted to humiliate me.”
“The fuck I did.”
Anger rolls off of me in harsh and unforgiving waves. “Yes you did, you acted like I—”
“I wanted you to know how I coped with you leaving; I wanted you to feel it.” His words are rushed, pushed through gritted teeth. Clearly he’s referring to the note. Which is an entirely different matter.
“You had me lay on that desk so you could prove your power over me.” I know that’s why. I know it is and I can’t even breathe as I wait for him to deny it. “To demean me.”
He shakes his head. “I wanted to taste you again, that’s not humiliating.”
“Could any pussy taste that good?” I mock him, feeling that humiliation once again.
“I didn’t say it like that,” he speaks clearly, sucking on a piece of melted ice between his teeth. He lets it fall back to his empty glass. It pisses me off how he hides the emotion he clearly had a moment ago.
“How is that not humiliating?”
“I wasn’t aiming for humiliation,” he admits. His gaze unwavering, he fixes me with a calm and dominating stare, not moving. “I was just telling the truth.”
Not knowing how to respond, I move to the next item on the list. “Worse, you wanted me to feel bad about the note. You wanted me to feel guilty.”
“You are guilty. You’re the one who left.” Again his answer is matter of fact. Guilty. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the word. As if all of this is my fault. The control he has makes me lose what little of it I have.
“You’re the one who didn’t change!”
“You’re the one who wanted me to change.”
I don’t know how I’m able to stand, my legs feel so weak. But I do, as quickly as I can, reaching for my purse to leave.
“Sit down.” Seth’s authority makes me pause.
“Everything hurts,” I admit to him. “I can’t be here without hurting. I can’t see you without hurting.”
When I look down at Seth, through the glaze of tears I hold back, I feel a wave of fear and desire mix. It swirls through my blood and I lose my own thoughts, my concentration. I lose everything to the way he looks at me.
“You’re going to do what I say, because you want to… and there’s no humiliation in that.”
“I never said I wanted to.”
“You’re here early, Babygirl. You didn’t have to say it.” Babygirl. The desire is immediate and warms everything. He stands and steps forward, taking my purse and tossing it back down onto the table. My breath comes faster, my head feeling lighter.
He whispers, his lips only inches from mine. “Know that I want you, too, because I stare at that painting every day, wishing I could go back to that moment.”
Taking his seat again, he repeats, “Sit down.” And this time I do.
“You’re going to obey me, because it will take that pain and that guilt away.”
I close my eyes slowly, careful to hold back any tears and calm myself down. “Not everything. I don’t agree to doing whatever you say.”
His answer is spoken with confidence. “You will. You’re better at it now than you were back then.”
“Don’t do that,” I say and glare at him. Feeling a wash of anxiousness.
“What?”
“Bring up the past.” My heart thrashes in my chest, as if it’s at war.
“You will do what I say, and I will be mindful of what I tell you to do and how I say it.” Seth’s proposition eases a burning pain that’s quick to ignite every time I think back to what used to be.
As he waits for me to agree or to continue this fight, I consider what he said… the guilt.
God it hurts.
“I just want it to stop,” I whisper, feeling the pricks at the back of my eyes.
“Want what to stop?”
“The guilt.” Admitting it out loud brings a torrent of emotion.
“Strip down,” Seth commands me, not responding to the emotion I’m clearly displaying. Not giving it any
credence in the least. He doesn’t try to comfort me, and damn my desire, I want him to. I want to crawl into his lap, I want to beg for his forgiveness.
“Strip down to nothing,” he demands in a calm and controlled voice. His glass clinks as he sets it on the table and then leans back, his large hands clasped as he waits for me to obey.
The discord of what I want, what I need, who I am and what I used to be rips apart who I know myself to be.
The crackle of the fire feels like a whip against my bare shoulder when I slip off the cardigan. It glides slowly down my skin and I feel it settle against my shoes into a puddle of fabric. The blush tank top is harder to take off. Not physically, but emotionally.
I’m so aware of the fear. I feel like nothing when he looks at me. But I want to feel like everything. I have to close my eyes to do it, to pull the tank top over my head and do as he wishes.
“Look at me,” he says and it’s as though his command physically strikes me. Inhaling and exhaling, controlling my breathing and holding on to the fact that I refuse to leave here without trying, I do it.
I don’t know what I’m trying to do though. Even as I kick off my shoes and my jeans are stripped from me by my own hands, I don’t know what I want.
As if reading my mind, Seth sits up straighter on the sofa, his erection evident against his suit pants. The fabric is tighter along his length, outlining it and he rubs it once before telling me, “You want to feel better and so do I.”
I do.
God, I desperately do.
His eyes darken, the fire flickering within them. “Your bra and then your underwear.”
I do as he says. The clasp easily parting and the sound of my bra hitting the floor is louder than it ought to be.
When I step out of my underwear, I’m a half step closer to him, but before I give in and let go, I make him promise me something. “Tell me you don’t just want to embarrass me and toy with me.”
I can’t explain why it means so much to me. But I need to believe it’s more than that for him.
“I want to toy with you, yes. But you were never embarrassed before. Humiliating you doesn’t get me off.” His gaze roams down my body, his lips parted as he exhales. “I want you to listen to me. That’s what it boils down to. I just want you to listen to me.”
