Private Player

by Louise Bay

  “God, you’re so beautiful,” he said to me as I started to recover.

  “Nathan,” I said, unsure as to what had just happened.

  “So beautiful,” he repeated.

  I reached up and pulled off my bra fully and pushed his shirt over his shoulders as he kicked off his jeans. I needed his flesh touching mine without interference. As he kneeled up to take off his shirt, I pushed him to a sitting position and straddled him again.

  Me, beautiful? He was one to talk. I pressed my fingers across his collarbone, up his neck, and along his jaw. “How did you end up with eyelashes like that?”

  A grin nudged at the edges of his mouth. “What?”

  I laughed. “They’re wasted on you. Do you have a condom?”

  He pulled his wallet from the side table and I took out a condom, sliding back to give me room to roll it over his jutting cock. It started to rear as I tore open the wrapper, like an impatient stallion, eager to gallop. I smoothed it on and gave him a squeeze just below the crown, then rose on my knees, positioning his tip so I could sink on to it. We both moaned as I lowered myself down, rocking to get him as deep, as close to me, as I could.

  “You feel so good inside me. Like that’s where you’re meant to be,” I said, pressing one hand against his chest, the other around his neck. “I don’t want to move.”

  His hands found my hips and he shifted me backward and forward in small, smooth movements, creating just the right amount of friction. I was content to let him position my body as he needed, and quickly discovered that our needs were the same.

  He glanced sideways. “Even your reflection is completely fuckable,” he said. I followed his eyeline and saw our merged shadows in his glass window: the point of my nipples, the swell of my bottom, his large hands around my waist. I started to move with him now, watching as our intertwined bodies undulated in unison, like reeds in a river or grass in the wind. I tipped my head back and he caught my hair in a tug, roughly holding me in place while he scraped his teeth down my neck and across my chest.

  Shared pleasure seemed to bloom from us, and his fingers dug into my bottom, urging me deeper onto him as I pushed and pulled from him, increasing the rub, the slide, the delicious friction between our bodies.

  “You need more?” he asked, moving one hand to press his thumb on my clit. I couldn’t help but cry out, though I didn’t want to come again yet. I wanted to watch him dissolve underneath me.

  I moved his hand to my breast. “I have everything I need,” I replied. “I like fucking you like this.”

  “I like fucking you every way,” he replied, taking my nipple between his thumb and forefinger and rolling it. The sharp sensation verged on painful, but stayed just this side of pleasure.

  “Jesus,” I cried out.

  “Just trying to make you feel good.”

  “You don’t need to try,” I replied. “I always feel good when I’m with you.”

  He grunted and pushed his hips up, and something inside both of us snapped. It was as if the music had changed and the slow, comfortable rhythm wasn’t enough anymore. Nathan lifted me at the waist and turned us both over so I was kneeling over the sofa, my hands on the back, Nathan behind me. “Like this,” he said thrusting into me, hard and deep. “And this,” he said, one hand bracing himself on my shoulder, the other delving between my legs.

  “I need to feel this,” he said, circling my clit before moving to my breasts. “And this.”

  He set the rhythm—hard and relentless, but completely necessary.

  “Look,” he said, pressing his cheek to mine as I turned my head and saw our reflection again. “Look how great your breasts look in my hands. Watch how our bodies fit as if they were made for each other. See how you sink down on me as I drive up into you, like you just can’t get enough.”

  I groaned as I watched us, as I felt everything he described.

  “We’re perfect together,” he said.

  He was right. Nothing ever had felt this good. And nothing could make me walk away from what we had. I wanted to stay like this forever. Together. With Nathan.

  Twenty-Three

  Nathan

  Bloody hell she looked good sitting at my breakfast bar.

  “Hit me with it, Cove, what do you have for breakfast?” she asked. “I need something so good it makes up for the fact I only got about thirty minutes sleep last night.”

  “Didn’t all the orgasms already make up for that?” I asked as I poured out two cups of coffee.

  She tilted her head. “Only partly. I’m going to need something to sustain me while you’re not naked and inside me.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, so let me order something and while we wait, I can talk to you about Audrey.”

  She drew her brows together and sat back in her chair. “You don’t need to explain. I meant what I said, Nathan. I trust you.”

  God, she was beautiful. Her hair was piled on top of her head, though some unruly bits had escaped and framed her face like some kind of Greek goddess. She didn’t have a scrap of makeup on, but her cheeks were flushed and her soft lips were so deliciously berry red that I wanted to sink my teeth into them.

  “I actually want to tell you. And I have Audrey’s permission, although she needs you to sign this.” I pulled out an NDA from my drawer that I’d had my lawyer send over last night.

  “Audrey’s permission?” she asked, and looked at the document. “This is a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “Not my idea. Not my private information. This is about Audrey. I think you might be able to help her.”

  She signed the agreement without reading it and pushed it toward me.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. I had Audrey’s permission to tell her story to Madison, but I didn’t know where to start.

  “As you know, Audrey’s married to Mark Alpern,” I said.

  Madison shot me a look like I’d just told her she’d get wet if she stood out in the rain. That look didn’t last long as I gave her all the details of how Audrey had discovered that Mark was operating a huge Ponzi scheme, and how I’d come back to London because Audrey had been presented with her immunity agreement and was having concerns.

  “How much has he stolen?” she asked.

  “It’s difficult to say because he’s likely hidden a lot in offshore accounts. The police think he has an escape plan. He’d go somewhere like the Dominican Republic or the Middle East, but he’d need plenty to live on. And Mark likes to live well.”

  “And you don’t think Audrey knew anything about it?” she asked.

  “I know she didn’t. I’ve known her a long time. I was the first person she came to when she got suspicious. I’ve coached her through looking for more evidence—”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “The police approached her about helping them but she didn’t know anything. She needed a bargaining tool. She had to find something to tell them.”

  I’d asked Madison not to take notes while we were off the record, and she’d agreed, but I could see her brain whirring, trying to commit everything to memory. “What about you? You know what he did to you at Oxford. Didn’t you have your suspicions?”

  It was a good question and one I’d thought about a lot. I still hadn’t come up with an answer. “I knew Mark well. I knew he was a risk taker. I knew he had a way of twisting the truth to make him look better and a way of rearranging the moral argument so nothing he ever did was wrong.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “If you just wait, I’m building up to it.”

  She shot me a little grin that said, I know I’m being pushy and I think you like it. And she was right.

  “When Audrey came to me with her suspicions, I immediately knew he’d done it. We just needed proof.”

  “You’re saying you knew he had done it but hadn’t suspected him beforehand? How does that work?”

  “I don’t think anyone goes around suspecting their friends of massive fraud.
But when Audrey came to me, it made sense—he’d made them a lot of money very quickly, and wasn’t shy about enjoying it. I knew he didn’t come from money, so it seemed . . . strange to me that someone who’d had to work hard for the money would spend it so frivolously. Plus what had happened at Oxford showed he had a history of doing what it took to survive. Looking back, their life seemed too good to be true. At the same time, I was having success, building my business and floating it, so I knew it was possible he’d just been as lucky as I was.”

  “You were one of the most successful businessmen in the country. Perhaps he felt he had to keep up with you.”

  Mark was competitive. Jealous even. It hadn’t occurred to me that anything he had done had been about me, but maybe he didn’t like his friends doing better than him. That kind of thinking was certainly consistent with a pattern I could trace through our friendship. I’d never dated Audrey but she’d definitely been a woman who had caught my attention. She was beautiful. I’d always wondered if my interest had fueled Mark. In the same way, perhaps my success had created a jealousy in him that had encouraged his immoral tendencies. “I have no idea.”

  “If this all comes out,” she said, a worried look ghosting her face, “you’re going to be . . .”

  “Implicated?” I finished her sentence for her. “I know. But there’s nothing I can do about that. At least Mark and I never did any business together.”

  “Are you invested with him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Did he ask you to invest?”

  “No. Never. I didn’t like the idea of mixing our friendship and business. I assumed he felt the same way.”

  She nodded. “And what about Audrey? You’re sure she didn’t know? Maybe when the police caught up with her, she decided to plead ignorance.”

  I shook my head. “She’s not that person.”

  Madison tried to give me a blank expression but she was way too easy to read. She thought I was fooling myself. “I’ve known her a long time.”

  “You’ve known both of them a long time.”

  “And I’ve accepted that Mark’s entirely capable of doing something criminal. Audrey isn’t. You’ll get it when you meet her.”

  “You want me to meet her?”

  “I want you to help her.” I would have thought it was obvious why I was telling her all this, but maybe not. “She’s concerned that everyone will think the same as you. That she’ll be guilty by association even though she had no idea who she was married to.”

  “No idea? Even you admit he was morally ambiguous. With the benefit of hindsight, he was completely capable of fraud.”

  “Love is blind.”

  “Right,” she said. “Good to know.”

  “I’m serious. She trusted her husband. That’s not such a radical concept, you know.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, so she was completely blindsided,” she said as if she believed the exact opposite. It was good she was skeptical. No one wanted a sycophantic journalist—well, I wouldn’t have minded if Madison was a little less skeptical of me at the start. But when it came to Audrey, it was important that the writer who told her story had credibility.

  “Will you at least talk to her?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “To hear her out. She’s worried she’s going to be thrown to the wolves.”

  “I thought you said she’s going to do a deal with the Serious Fraud Office. She’s going to give evidence for the prosecution. From what you’re saying, there’s no chance she’s going to prison.”

  “She’s not worried about prison. She’s concerned that she’s going to live her entire life with everyone thinking she got away with it.”

  She stayed silent but shot me a look that said that’s exactly what she thought. Audrey would change her mind. There was no question she wouldn’t answer. She had nothing to hide. Madison just had to see that for herself.

  “If you heard her story, got to know her, you could write it for her. Get the truth out there.”

  She began to bounce her crossed leg. I’d learned that was a cue she was considering something. “Could be interesting,” she said after a while. “But there’s no guarantee I’ll believe her.”

  “What have you got to lose by meeting her? Hear her out. Then if you think she’s lying, you can walk away. But you won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know her,” I replied and then I lowered my voice. “And I know you.”

  We locked eyes and for a split second, we were back in Norfolk, back in the office at the end of my parents’ garden—her face lit up by the moonlight, my hands running through her rioja hair. Did she feel it too? This heat? This connection?

  “Madison,” I said in a half whisper. I wanted to grab her hand, pull her out of the office, and race back to Norfolk.

  “I’ll meet her. After that, I’ll let you know if I’m willing to write the story. But you know how it is, Nathan—no promises that I’ll write what the two of you want to read. I have to tell the truth as I see it.”

  “All she wants is someone to write the truth.”

  My doorbell rang and Madison slid off the stool. “I’m starving. You get plates and I’ll get breakfast.”

  I pulled out my sexy placemats, plates, and cutlery and set them out in front of the stools. Madison was taking a long time with the food, so I went to investigate.

  “Very cozy,” the delivery guy said, glancing back at me. “I guess you had to sleep with your subject to get a story. Ruthless. Just like your mother.”

  “Who is this?” I asked as I came up behind Madison. It certainly didn’t sound like a delivery driver.

  “I’m Craig Jenkins, from the Post,” the man said, outstretching his hand. I didn’t shake it. “I’m impressed with Madison. I didn’t think she had it in her to sleep her way to a story.” He shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t have underestimated the daughter of Mandy Mason.”

  Mandy Mason?

  Madison snapped her entire body around to face me and pushed me inside. “He’s the one I told you about, trying to steal your profile from me. Has been from the beginning.” She kicked the door closed and looked up at me as if she was lost for words. “I was going to tell you,” she said finally.

  “Which bit? That you’re sleeping with me for my story, or that you’re the daughter of the woman who nearly got me fired from the company I built?”

  “Of course I’m not sleeping with you for a story. You know that, Nathan.”

  I did know that. Or maybe I didn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me who your mother was? Have you been feeding her bits of information about me?” I hated the entire concept of gossip columnists, never more than when one particular gossip hound came after me personally.

  “I would never do that. And I told you my mother was a journalist,” she said, as I turned and charged back down my hallway.

  “Gossip isn’t journalism,” I said as I spun to face her. “You lied.”

  She stuttered like she was out of a defense. Because she was.

  “Jesus, Madison. All the things I’ve told you. No one knows what happened at Oxford. No one.”

  “I know,” she said, reaching for me. I stepped back and around the other side of the kitchen island. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “I’ve trusted you. Bloody hell, you’ve met my entire family. And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me that your mother has been trying to ruin me.”

  “Nathan, you were a virtual stranger to me when I got assigned your profile. Why would I care if you knew who my mother was? This is an article that could land me a permanent position at the Post. I just wanted to do my job.”

  “A lot has happened since then. You’ve had plenty of opportunity to say something.” Even if I accepted she wasn’t going to announce who her mother was the first day in my office, she’d deliberately kept it from me when I’d been an open book to her.

  “I was going to tell
you,” she said. “That’s why I came over yesterday. It was the reason I saw Audrey leave. I knew the weekend in Norfolk changed things and I needed to tell you.”

  “So, why didn’t you?”

  “Events took over. I saw Audrey and . . .”

  She had the audacity to accuse me of hiding things from her when she was the one who wasn’t being honest.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t let me take you home on Sunday. In case your mother was there.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t want to ruin things. It had been a wonderful weekend and I wanted to pick the right moment.” She paused, seeming to collect her thoughts. “Look, Nathan, I’m not my mother. What she does for a living doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Keeping it from me does,” I said. It was as if a sheet of ice had shuttered between us. I could hear what she was saying and I could still see her, but the view was different. Distorted. “I need to be able to trust the people in my life.”

  “Nathan,” she said and rounded the island so we were toe to toe. “You can trust me. Of course you can. This doesn’t change anything.”

  “It changes everything. You should leave. Get back to your mother. For all I know, she gave you the idea of sleeping with me to get the story.”

  “Nathan!” She gasped and took a step back. “Don’t say that. You know what we have together isn’t anything to do with my job.”

  How could she think there was anything between us? Even her identity was a lie. I’d been kidding myself thinking Madison was anything more than a distraction. There were plenty of other beautiful distractions out there—women who didn’t lie and didn’t make their money from gossip.

  “I asked you to leave. Don’t make me ask you again,” I said and turned away. I should have known better than to trust her. She was a journalist, after all, and the apple never falls far from the tree.

  Twenty-Four

  Madison