Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1)

by Blair Babylon

  “Can’t say anything yet,” Lizzy said, hoping Georgie got the hint to be more general.

  “I know. I won’t say anything until The Dom gives us the high sign.”

  Lizzy flinched again and stared straight out in front of her, watching the road through the front windshield.

  Rae glanced down at Lizzy, concern written in her brown eyes.

  Georgie motored on, oblivious. “Rae, just remember that we’re on your side, because we like you and don’t want you to have to leave college.”

  “I’m glad,” Rae said. The car took a corner, shoving Lizzy closer to Rae. The silver material of Rae’s dress rubbed the sensitive skin on Lizzy’s back. Rae said, “I like you girls, too.”

  Georgie continued, “Here’s what you need to know. When we get to the party, you should mingle, have a drink or two and have some fun, but do not make an embarrassing spectacle of yourself like last night at Delta Chi.”

  Oh, thank God. Generalities. Rules. Maybe Lizzy wouldn’t have a freakout here in the car.

  Rae said, “Oh, heck no. I was just upset. And rufied. You guys sound tense.”

  “Nope, we’re fine,” Georgie said. “These parties are fun, but this isn’t the job. This is just advertising. At some point, after an hour or so, if everything is going all right, we’re going to introduce you to the The Dom.”

  Lizzy’s body began to compress at the mention of his name.

  Rae asked, “This guy’s name is Dominic?”

  “No. He’ll ask you whether you like the party,” Georgie took a breath, gathering herself, “and this is crucial, you tell him the truth about exactly what you like and don’t like about the party, about the people there, about what you see.”

  Rae’s voice rose. “What kind of a party is this?”

  “Just a cocktail party,” Georgie said, “like the Delta Chi house but with better booze and no rufies. All you have to do is have a few drinks—they’re really good, you should try a few, and I mean a few,—and talk to some interesting people, meet our friends, and eventually talk to The Dom, probably. He may not even have time to talk to you tonight, but he’ll be watching.”

  Lizzy twitched again, and she looked down at her tiny hands with their fresh pink manicure, trying to think about something else. Anything else.

  “And then what?” Rae asked.

  Georgie shrugged. “After the party, a limo will take us back to the dorm and drop us off. You can get buzzed. You won’t need to drive. Geez, Lizzy. You’re trembling.”

  Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Lizzy looked over Georgie’s shoulder and out the window at the darkening city. The car rumbled over the asphalt, spitting loose gravel behind the tires. “It’s just the first time that I’ve seen him since last week.”

  “Seriously, stop freaking out.” Georgie wedged herself back into the seat, nudging Lizzy closer to Rae again.

  If Georgie didn’t stop mashing Lizzy up against Rae, Lizzy was going to end up straddling her. Just how much sexing up had Georgie meant?

  Every time Lizzy took a breath, her back rubbed against Rae’s chest, irritating the skin. Her skin felt raw, but it felt good.

  Georgie said, “After that Dom-Date I had a couple months ago, he was great. After five minutes, maybe even three, it won’t be weird any more. You’ll be fine.”

  Lizzy prayed that was true, but she couldn’t get him out her head. It felt more like pain bleeding from her heart than anything like love.

  Rae asked, “You dated this Dom guy?”

  “Just the once,” Lizzy said. If he asked her to go on another Dom-Date, she didn’t think she should go.

  Rae asked Lizzy, “So, you don’t think he’s going to call you or something?”

  Damn, but she did not want to talk about this. “It’s not like that. It’s understood that it’s just the one date. I don’t even know how much money he must have spent on it. At least a couple thousand dollars, maybe more, depending on how much those concert tickets were. We met the band during the sound check and sat in the second row. Then we went out for dinner. That bottle of wine he ordered was ridiculous, and tasty.” Lizzy knew a little about wine, just enough to know that it was an incredible bottle.

  Rae asked, “Are you afraid of him?”

  Terrified.

  “Oh, hell, no,” Lizzy insisted. Rae’s silvery dress rubbed Lizzy’s back where The Dom had laid stripes on her skin. Her lips felt full, and the fear and pain swirled around her. Lizzy caught her breath, praying for a miracle to make her stop twitching. “I’m not afraid of him at all.”

  Liar.

  Lizzy crossed her legs, rubbing her thighs against each other, and just that little motion made her clit throb like a heartbeat. Her breath caught in her throat. Pulses traveled through Lizzy’s skin, and she shivered against the warmth of Rae’s cushiony body. She closed her eyes, reveling in it, astonished.

  Oh, God. She had to stop this.

  Georgie leaned into her, cramming Lizzy more tightly against Rae’s side. “What did he do to you?”

  Lizzy’s face burned. Even Georgie didn’t know things about Lizzy that The Dom had somehow known. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  With even more knowing coyness in her voice, Georgie asked, “For how long?”

  Lizzy wrapped her arm around her body, shielding herself, and stared out the front windshield with a wan smile plastered onto her face. “Three hours.”

  Georgie laughed at her.

  Lizzy couldn’t bring herself to laugh with her. “It’s not going to be weird, right?”

  “No. If his pattern holds, he’ll pay a little more attention to you tonight than usual, and he won’t have a date with him, in deference to your feelings. Next week, though, it’s back to business as usual.”

  Lizzy wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse. “I can handle that.”

  Rae moved her arm out from between Lizzy and herself and rested her arm on the back of the seat. With more room, Lizzy settled into Rae’s side to face Georgie and laid the back of her head on Rae’s bust.

  Lizzy’s hand drifted down and rested on Rae’s leg, near her knee.

  She felt Rae’s head whip around and stare at her hand, so she didn’t move it. Her hand so innocently rested on Rae’s silvery dress and her thigh underneath.

  Georgie asked Lizzy, “You talked with The Dom about this beforehand, right?”

  Lizzy should be flippant. She should be cool. “Oh, yeah. And you’ve had a Dom-Date, and some of our friends have, so I knew. It’s just, well, wow.”

  “Yeah. That’s the problem with The Dom’s dates. Like a good comedian, he always leaves you wanting more.”

  Despite every fiber of her body that wanted to stand up and shout Can’t you see that I’m freaking out? Lizzy laughed and nodded. “Yeah.”

  Georgie’s voice turned gentle. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? If you meet someone interesting tonight, go have some fun. Don’t mess up your head. That’s when things get weird.”

  It was already weird. The Dom had uncapped that cauldron of crazy in her head and thrown her in. Maybe she should find someone else, anyone else, to take her mind off her own insanity. “I won’t do anything stupid. I knew what it was. I know what he is. But, just, wow.”

  Rae leaned forward. “What is he?”

  Georgie’s answered, “That’s a loaded question. What do you think, Lizzy?”

  The Dom was Satan Incarnate, as beautiful as an angel and as tempting as sin, and he had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. “Damned if I know.”

  Georgie asked Lizzy, “Do you know anything about him, like where he’s from?”

  Lizzy shrugged, reaching hard for nonchalance. “Somewhere else. He has a British accent most of the time, very Londony, but sometimes I hear French or Italian or something else. Something Asian, maybe.” And Russian. “Not from the Southwest, that’s for sure. But he knows a lot of people here.”

  Georgie told Rae, “I’ve worked for him for over a year now, and I think he’s a
s smooth and polished as mirror. Whatever you are or want is reflected off of his perfectly shiny shell. If you ask him a question about himself, he won’t exactly answer, and then for some reason you spill your guts about something intensely personal without meaning to, and you have this great conversation, and after you leave, you realize that he didn’t answer you, and you still don’t know anything of any substance about him. Even the things you think you know are suspect, because he might be reflecting you.”

  Lizzy stared at Georgie. Jesus H. Christ. What the hell had happened to her on her Dom-Date? Was there a simmering pot of pain that he had thrown Georgie into?

  “Like,” Georgie continued, “I think he likes live music and books, probably. He almost always takes a date to some sort of concert but he must choose it based on what she likes because sometimes it’s rock, sometimes pop, sometimes classical, and he took Nona to a country music concert. If you talk to him about books, either he’s already read the book that you’re talking about, or else he has you text him the name and author, and quite often, a week later, he’ll have something interesting to say about it. But I’m not sure, because most of the girls are bookish types, so it might be the reflecting thing again.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lizzy said. “He’s read a lot. He’s read everything that I’m reading for class: Pope, Woolf, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Sand, and both T.S. and George Eliot, and he can quote stuff. I don’t think you can fake all that.”

  Georgie nodded. “And he has moderate, intelligent views on sports and politics, and anything else you ask him about.”

  “And he speaks a couple languages,” Lizzy said. Her heart clenched.

  Georgie nodded. “I’ve heard him speak some sort of Chinese and something Middle Eastern.”

  Lizzy spoke over her, “I’ve heard him speak Russian.”

  God, had she heard him speak Russian. He had spoken Russian to her until she was flayed alive by just his words.

  Lizzy sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep her voice from trembling like her whole core. “And he likes sex.”

  “Yeah, the sex,” Georgie said. “He loves women, craves women, and likes to be with women, in the plural,” Georgie said. “He likes sex, and if you’re ever with him, it’s almost,” she looked at Lizzy, “like he gets inside your head and knows what you want, even if you don’t know it or don’t want to say it. It’s the mirror thing.”

  Lizzy nodded, and her eyes burned again. She hadn’t known what she needed. Not at all. She never would have guessed.

  The car careened around a sharp corner, pressing them all back into the leather seat. Lizzy’s hand braced on Rae’s thigh.

  She glanced up at Rae. Rae’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were taking on a glassy sheen. Lizzy pressed her body harder against Rae, and Rae’s slight inhale told Lizzy everything.

  Yep, Georgie was a sex psychic.

  “A couple hundred years ago,” Georgie said, “The Dom would have made a great sultan, and his whole harem would have all been like Lizzy here, still suffering after-shock orgasms a week later.”

  “I am not,” Lizzy protested. Her whole body quivered.

  Georgie’s brown eyes and knowing smile turned kind, even pitying. “Sure, you aren’t. He’s odd in some weird ways.”

  He was, evidently, a sadist, something Lizzy had never suspected, and so skilled at it.

  “Do you know whatever happened to that cat?” Georgie asked.

  “The black one hanging around work a couple months ago? I thought The Dom had someone take it to the Humane Society.” Lizzy had seen him put it in his car.

  “No. He just said that he ‘took care of it,’ but he wouldn’t say anything else.”

  “You don’t think he hurt it.”

  “I don’t know. No one knows.” A hint of a troublesome thought flitted across Georgie’s eyes.

  “He’s not evil like that. He’s not evil at all.” But he was. Or else he hadn’t known what he was doing to her.

  Georgie said, “Yeah, well, we don’t know what’s underneath that shiny mirror-ball. Maybe there’s some swirling dark secret. Maybe he’s just a regular guy who lives an odd lifestyle. He might just be a really private person, though that’s not likely, considering. Maybe there’s nothing under the shell, and that shell is just all there is.”

  Lizzy tucked her other hand between her own leg and Georgie’s and clenched it into a terrified fist. “What did you do afterward?”

  Georgie shrugged. “I threw myself into my job.”

  Tears scalded Lizzy’s eyes again, so she laughed. Her laugh made her body bob against Rae’s boobs, and Lizzy felt Rae’s small inhale. She trailed her fingers lightly along the shiny material that barely covered Rae’s thigh.

  The car pulled up to the downtown hotel. The crowd on the sidewalk turned a little toward them, but because the Southwest was the outback of nowhere, they turned away just as soon. Georgie opened the door and stepped into the dark night and shining lights. Old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, those clear-glass ones with the fiery filament inside like Edison had made in New Jersey over a century ago, studded the hotel wall like the pioneers had just discovered them. Lizzy could blame any tear duct malfunction on the stupid lights. She pulled away from Rae and scooted across the seat toward Georgie’s butt that was blocking the way out of the car. She poked Georgie’s scarlet ass, and Georgie stepped to the side.

  In minutes, they would be upstairs in the suite, and The Dom would be there. Acting normal was going to require all the East Coast panache that Lizzy could muster.

  She turned back to Rae and laid her hand on Rae’s leg again.“You won’t say anything about this, will you?”

  “Of course not.” Rae’s kind smile warmed Lizzy. At least Rae had her back.

  “Everyone wants a date with The Dom, and everyone is bleary for a day or two afterward, and it’s embarrassing.”

  “I won’t say anything. I don’t even know what you guys were talking about.”

  Lizzy laughed. “Of course.”

  One last chance to sex Rae up for her audition with The Dom.

  Lizzy leaned over and kissed Rae smack on her lips, and her fingers tightened on Rae’s leg. Rae’s lips were shock-still under Lizzy’s for an instant, but they softened. When Lizzy rocked back, Rae’s eyes were shining, and her cheeks were pink.

  Damn. The Psex Psychic pstrikes again!

  Lizzy retreated from the car and stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Rae to get a move on.

  The light bulbs glared white outside the dark car in the cooling night, and the crowd on the sidewalk milled around them.

  Show time.

  A Different Kind of Cocktail Party

  The three girls rode the hotel’s mirror-lined elevator way, way up. Lizzy caught a glimpse of herself, a pale gold shrimp among the normal-sized girls. Her blond hair was so short that it fluffed up in curly spikes. Her tight, sleeveless gold dress looked like a crystal-encrusted leotard.

  Panic crashed through her.

  She looked sixteen again, a very small, very driven sixteen.

  Lizzy gripped the rail behind her back. Her knees shook, and her high-heeled shoes wobbled on the elevator’s carpet.

  The elevator doors slid open straight into a ballroom where a crowded party was swinging. The clear air smelled like cocktails and perfume, normal things, and Lizzy breathed. She wasn’t sixteen. She was fine.

  Jeffrey Jackson, a wide, tall black man in a black suit and the head of the security team at The Devilhouse, stepped in front of the elevator doors as they walked out, and Georgie and Lizzy smiled at him and nodded.

  He nodded and stepped back, but he didn’t smile, not with someone new there. If it had been just Georgie and Lizzy and his back had been toward the room, they would’ve gotten a grin and a wink.

  Rae asked, “Was that Dom?”

  “No,” Georgie whispered. “That’s Jeff, one of the security guys. He’s nice. He just takes his job seriously.”

  “Okay.” R
ae straightened, standing far above Lizzy, and they walked in.

  Like all The Devilhouse’s parties, most of the men were in their thirties or forties. Some had daubs of ash on their temples. Some thought they were silver foxes. Most Doms wore dark suits, and they stood straight and still as if they crackled with virile power, whether they did or not.

  The subs wore sparkling, jewel-toned dresses, mostly stretchy fabric, and looked like bright birds fluttering around their dark Dom trees. Most sported some sort of a metal choker or chain around their slim necks, so cliche. No VPL marred the lines of anyone’s backside because practically no one, including Lizzy, was wearing panties.

  The few Lady Dommes wore dark formals. One Domme, an older woman with a silver beehive hairdo, wore a navy satin suit and rested her hand on the arm of a Latino man. His royal blue suit was stylish and betrayed that his young body was lean and corded with muscle. The gold chain resting over his tie was probably a collar.

  Lizzy vaguely recognized some of the Doms and subs. In general, prospective members attended up to three parties to make an impression, and then were either admitted on a provisional basis or ceased being invited to parties.

  Rae leaned down and asked Lizzy, “Is Dom here?”

  Lizzy and Georgie glanced around the huge hotel suite.

  The Dom was leaning with his elbow on the bar, sipping from a highball glass and holding court, his bright blond hair half a head above everyone clustered around him.

  Lizzy’s heart flailed from a jolt of adrenaline that made her hands shake. She almost stepped backward and melted back into the elevator, and she nearly ran over to him.

  Lizzy glanced up at Rae. “I don’t see him. Let’s dance.”

  She slid her fingers into Rae’s hand and pulled Rae and Georgie through the crowd to the dance floor in front of the DJ like a chihuahua on a leash, dragging two giants.

  A crowd bopped on the dance floor, mostly the younger Doms and their subs. A deejay spun old, old rock songs and seventies disco just loud enough so that people could sing along without fear of anyone hearing them sing.