Billionaire's Caress

by Sloan Storm

  ‘Whatever it takes’ is Hollywood speak for sleeping with decision makers, directors and producers.

  I groaned. “Who is it? What’s the job?”

  “Mario Paulsen. Some new rom com, I think,” Harvey replied.

  “Ugh, seriously?”

  Mario Paulsen, a.k.a. ‘Mario the Chest’, was easily one of the most despicable, not to mention physically repulsive, power players in town. All of five foot four, he had a Napoleon complex that could have given the man for whom the term was coined a real run for his money.

  Not to mention his appearance which was, ugh. He preferred seventies-styled rayon with at least three buttons undone. Gold chains weaved their way like jungle plants amidst his thick, gorilla-esque chest hair, hence the catchy nickname.

  As if that wasn’t enough of a turnoff, how about this?

  He farted in public.

  Yeah.

  Like, in a room full of people. It didn’t matter if there were four or four hundred people there. I am not even kidding. The man had no shame, scruples or sophistication and I had no interest in anything having to do with him.

  “No way, Harvey. Forget it.”

  “Well,” Harvey said, as he exhaled. “There’s one other part at another studio but same deal, gotta have sex with the Executive Producer. That’s all I got right now doll. Look I gotta run. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  I sighed. “God. Gross. Okay, Harvey. Thanks.”

  “No problem, doll. Love ya.”

  MADDIE

  In the wake of my failed phone conversation with Harvey, I’d spent oh I don’t know, days, calling around town and seeing if I could get an interview somewhere or a referral from anyone, for anything.

  I felt like I had to get out of here and if I didn’t do it soon, I was gonna lose it.

  I managed to secure a few meetings with potential employers but it was tricky, to say the least. Most everything I found revolved around hospitality in one way or another which, uh, it’s such a small world that Grey would track me down, no question. And if I stayed in the business, Trevor would gloat incessantly at how I’d failed to make it without his help.

  It was the epitome of, as Grey was fond of saying, a lose-lose situation.

  I really had no opinion about which was the worse of the two outcomes. They were both horrible for different reasons. No matter, because the truth was that when it got right down to it, I’d be starting from ground zero wherever I went. Over and over, I got questions from prospective employers like, ‘Why would you want to come work here when you are doing fine on your own?’, or stuff like that.

  And I mean, on the surface, sure, anyone who didn’t know the details of what was going on behind-the-scenes would say that. It’s human nature, after all. Everyone thinks that someone else has it easier, makes more money or has sex with a hotter guy. Well, okay, maybe I was doing that but still, it didn’t take away from any of the other things I believed to be true about my situation.

  I am not even kidding when I say I called in every favor I had.

  I tapped my entire reserve and nothin’.

  In the end though, nothing compared to the income, not to mention freedom I had to set my own hours in my current business. That’s the part of it that sucked the most. It’s like that thing rich CEOs like Grey complain about all the time. Golden handcuffs or something like that? It’s where they make too much money to quit because whatever they’d do instead wouldn’t be enough to keep them, and probably their second wives, accustomed to the lavish lifestyle they enjoyed.

  Now that I found myself in a similar situation, which, ugh, I still couldn’t believe, I had two suggestions for them.

  First of all, stick with the wife who got them there and second, live on a budget.

  Seems so simple, doesn’t it?

  I mean, who wants to live like that? I certainly didn’t but after barely two months in business, I was and I couldn’t seem to find a way out. This back and forth, it was dragging me down. At the rate I was going I’d be dead before my twenty-fourth birthday and for what?

  And just like the CEO who drops dead at sixty-one from stress, I was headed down the same path – because I couldn’t quit!

  Worse yet, it wasn’t just me who had a lot to lose if I ditched this place and looked elsewhere. There were all of my employees who depended on me for income now. How did everything get so complicated this soon?

  As I sat in my office, I clicked a pen open and closed with a mindless rhythm. The warmth from the mid-afternoon sun caressed my tight neck and tense back as I realized maybe the fact that there was nothing for me outside of this place wasn’t an accident after all.

  Sometimes even though we may not like it in life, the universe has its own way of showing us onto the path we should be on. In the end, it’s up to us to choose it, of course. Pursing my lips, I had to at least consider the idea I’d been resisting all of this with Grey because I thought he was doing it to me on purpose.

  Hell, in one way, he was. I mean, look at what happened with Katy.

  But as I sat, I realized there were people, innocent people, caught between my indecision and Grey’s stubbornness. And though I hated the idea of Grey being right, I had to at least consider the fact he put the well-being of his employees at the top of his priority list.

  Maybe there was a lesson there for me.

  Shit. I didn’t know anymore.

  At this point, I was willing to try anything. I hadn’t made any progress floundering around on my own and in doing so, I’d shirked my responsibility as owner of the company.

  Which, uh, I really did feel awful about, especially since I’d put Carmen between myself and Grey, acting as a buffer while I searched for a way out. That wasn’t cool. Or mature. Or anything good.

  The truth was I had to set aside my feelings for now and do what needed to be done.

  Hey, who knows? Maybe some good karma would come my way as a result and when the time was right, an acting opportunity would present itself to me. It was the only thing I could hope for, since trying to make it happen on my own would get me nothing more than a one-on-one with ‘Mario the Chest' or worse, if such a thing was possible.

  Shaking my head, I straightened myself up in my chair.

  Suck it up, Maddie.

  “Carmen,” I said, buzzing my assistant. “Bring me the client files for this weekend’s jobs.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Confused, I glanced down at the handset. “Carmen… Is everything okay?”

  “It’s Mr. Sinclair ma’am.”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you mind Miss Olsen? If I come back and talk to you about it?”

  “No. Come on back.”

  Ten minutes later, I realized my worst fears about Grey had come true. Carmen explained to me he’d been putting pressure on her to tell her about my whereabouts when I hadn’t been around the office. Stupidly, I assumed Grey wouldn't be suspicious so long as business remained good, but once again, I learned another lesson about what it meant to be under Grey Sinclair’s thumb. Worst of all, Grey threatened to fire Carmen unless she told him everything she knew about what I’d been up to, which, of course, I’d kept from her.

  Thank God.

  Carmen wept as she sat across from me.

  “Oh, honey.” I said, as I got up from my chair and circled around my desk to comfort her. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll straighten all of this out with Mr. Sinclair.”

  Carmen sniffled as I finished speaking. “Okay. But, what about you, Miss Olsen?”

  Confused, I rubbed her upper arm with my right hand. “Me? What do you mean?”

  “What have you been doing? You disappear for hours at a time. Are we going out of business? If we are, please tell me. Don’t leave me in the dark, Miss Olsen, please.”

  If a car driven by ants had pulled up in the parking lot behind my office window, I would have needed a stepladder to climb up into it. As I looked down at her, I couldn’t rem
ember a time when I’d ever felt lower as a human being.

  Great Maddie, classy.

  I hugged her and pulled her close to me. As I did, Carmen’s body began to convulse as a torrent of pent-up tears poured out.

  “Shhh,” I began, as I stroked her head. “Shhh, Carmen. Honey, everything is fine and no, we aren’t going out of business. I am, was, just going through some things that have nothing to do with our business here and especially not with you. Everything is completely fine. I promise.”

  Carmen’s tears began to subside until at last, she leaned away from me. Looking up at me through puffy red eyelids, she smeared away the remnants of her tears and said, “But what about you Miss Olsen? Are you fine?”

  I smiled down at her and lied, “Of course.”

  GREY

  It was late Friday night by the time I arrived in LA. After touchdown, I was to head across town to Beverly Hills and the apartment. I hired a chef to cook for us that evening as a surprise. Not that Maddie deserved anything of the sort. Frankly I found her ingratitude childish. Or hell, if I was to be honest about it, fucking insulting.

  Even so, I wasn’t one to not hear someone else’s side, even if I might already have my opinions. It’s amazing how many times you get surprised in business. Not so much by the people themselves, but by what motivates them to do what they do.

  Head shaking shit.

  And as far as Maddie was concerned, I didn’t have her motives figured out. But no matter what they were, the whole situation wore thin with me. For instance, I’d managed to smooth things over with Ken Pickering and because of my PR firm’s help, Farrah’s ridiculous ploy had finally been put to rest. That one bit me in the ass. I did one of the guys from the studio deal a favor there. She was his niece or some such. Called her a lost cause.

  Yeah. No shit.

  Anyway, I was done with stuff like that. No deal is worth the grief that caused between Maddie and me. I pulled a lot strings to straighten that whole thing out and she’d never said a word of thanks to me for it. Not many things got under my skin when it came to the behavior of other people. After all the deals I'd done over the years, my expectations were low.

  But Maddie, damn it to hell if she didn’t surprise me and not in a good way.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, ever since all of that went down it seemed as if she’d checked out.

  Now she was avoiding my calls whenever she could. About the only way I got any information on her at all was to badger her assistant about it. And that lady, I mean, I did feel bad hammering away at her but until I could get Maddie alone in a room and lay it all out for her, I didn’t have a lot of options.

  I threatened to fire the poor woman once or twice before it became obvious she really had no idea what Maddie was doing. So I backed off. My hope was I’d put enough of a scare into her to make her run to Maddie and tell her what I’d been doing. Until I could communicate my displeasure with her in person, using Carmen as my proxy would have to suffice.

  After she’d confessed as much to me, my suspicion was Maddie had gone around town putting out feelers for auditions. It was a hunch, of course, but I really didn’t see much opportunity anywhere else for her to make what she pulled in with the business. My gut told me she wasn’t running around on me. So if there was any good to come out of this nonsense, it was that. Anyway, by the time I arrived that evening that was where things stood between us from my perspective.

  As I descended the stairs from the jet, a warm evening breeze hit my face. Though business had been a pain-in-the-ass out here recently, I loved the weather. Couldn’t beat it. I stepped off the last stair and onto the tarmac, where Armando nodded and smiled at me.

  “Mr. Sinclair, sir. Good to see you again.”

  I nodded in return. “You too, Armando. How’s Julio? Staying sober I hope?”

  Armando smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” I began. “Once we get past this mess with his DUI, I promise you we’ll give him another shot.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sinclair. You are most kind.”

  Armando stepped aside and gestured for me to enter. I took a step back and looked at the limousine.

  “Is this one of the new fleet?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Armando said as he tipped his cap. “And you are the first passenger.”

  He paused and nodded towards the interior of the vehicle. “Well, the second.”

  I glanced inside the open door and caught a glimpse a familiar set of legs. I nodded at Armando and climbed inside.

  I’ll be honest.

  Like I mentioned, things were shit between Maddie and me.

  I was pissed that she was MIA from the business she’d begged me to help her run. If she’d been anyone else in that circumstance, anyone, I wouldn’t have hesitated to get right into it with her as soon as I laid eyes on her.

  Both fucking barrels. Blazing.

  Yet, when I crossed the threshold into the backseat and got hit with the first whiff of her perfume, it’s like my mind went blank. Almost to the point where I’d forgotten what I was mad about. And that was before I even got a glimpse of her.

  When that happened, I about forgot my goddamn name.

  Dressed to impress, Maddie sat with her legs crossed at the ankle, a pair of black stiletto heels dug into the floorboard. My eyes wandered up the length of her thighs until I reached her waist. From there, the curve of her ass pulled my gaze further up until after passing her supple tits, it came to rest upon her face.

  Christ, what an angel she was.

  On the one hand, I hated to admit the effect she had on me. On the other, I never felt more like a man than when I was in her presence. Mother Nature played dirty pool. No question about it.

  Crafty bitch.

  Maddie smiled as I slid into the seat next to her. As I did, she produced a chilled glass, freshly iced and filled almost to the top.

  “Vodka, rocks.” Maddie said with the hint of a smile.

  I accepted the glass from her, took a hearty sip and hoped it would take the edge off.

  It didn’t.

  With the heat of the liquor still on my tongue, I leaned in to Maddie. She arched her torso towards me as I grabbed a fistful of her hair in my hand. Giving it a firm squeeze, I pulled her in my direction and inhaled her mouth into mine. She leaned against me with a soft whimper.

  Her taste was sweet. Perfect.

  “I missed you,” she said, as our lips separated and she leaned away from me.

  I smiled and rubbed her leg. My purpose flashed back to my mind and I resisted the urge to give in to my neglected libido. I took another pull from drink. Wincing, I placed it in the drink holder. My lack of a response didn’t go unnoticed by her.

  “Grey?” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  I shook my head and grimaced.

  “No, Maddie. Everything isn’t okay. Not at all.”

  Without speaking, she pulled her hair behind her left ear and looked out the window to her right.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  I arched a brow and glanced back in her direction. Taking another sip from my glass, I looked out my window and gave a nonchalant response. “Go on.”

  In my peripheral vision, I noticed her left arm move sharply towards her face. I moved my chin towards her in response and watched as her shoulders lurched forward. Pulsing in her seat, she kept her head turned away from me as she began to weep.

  The urge to comfort her was strong. It took everything I had to fucking resist it. Everything. But now I could see she realized what she’d done, I had no choice but to let her suffer through it. It was the only way anyone ever learned anything in life.

  Still, it turned me inside out to watch her hurt, even for a second.

  In an effort to numb myself to its impact, I lifted the rocks glass to my lips and turned it upwards until the last of the liquid disappeared and the ice bumped against my mouth. After a hard swallow, I set the ice cold glass down in a nearby cup holder. I b
rushed my palms with several strokes until the condensation on my fingers dissipated. Afterward, I folded my hands together and placed them in my lap.

  All the while, Maddie sobbed.

  After another ten seconds or so, she reached into her purse and pulled out some tissue. Maddie dried her eyes and following a few deep breaths, turned her puffy eyes in my direction and began to speak before I interrupted her.

  “What have you been doing, Maddie? Where are you going during the day?”

  She rolled her eyes in embarrassment. “Nowhere. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been stupid.”

  And even though my instincts told me one thing, my lizard brain had to hear it from her lips.

  “Is it someone else?” I asked.

  “What?” she said, as she shook her head. “No. Grey. Why would you say something like that? Of course there’s no one else. How could you think that? Don’t you know how I feel? That I…”

  Maddie fell silent as she turned away from me once again and looked out the window of the limousine.

  I bit my tongue. I didn’t start this between us.

  After another second or so, she turned back towards me, sniffled and said, “I’ve been foolish and selfish. I’ve put my own wants ahead of the needs of people who depend on me and I feel terrible about it. And as far as you’re concerned, well I can’t imagine what you must think. I’ve acted very ungrateful towards you when I know all you’ve been trying to do is help me.”

  I have to say her honesty took me by surprise. Shocked me.

  “I’m so sorry, Grey.”

  I turned my head towards her and reached over her shoulders with my right arm. I pulled Maddie close and her head collapsed against me. I moved my lips towards the top of her head and kissed it as I cradled her.

  “It’s okay, Maddie,” I began, as I kissed the crown of her head once more. “You have to trust me. Everything is going to work out.”

  Just then I felt Maddie’s hand press into my thigh, halfway between my knee and my crotch. She craned her neck around so that her lips faced mine. Without hesitation, she pressed her mouth into mine as her hand swept up the length of my leg and ended with her palm cupped against my cock.