And it did not... totally did not make my lady bits quiver.
"My brainwashed employees?" he asked, reaching for a cookie that was still on the sheet I had taken out of the oven.
"Yeah, well," I said, moving sideways and pretending to put all my attention into checking on the cake inside the oven, "Aaron said you were a nice guy," I informed him. "I figured there must have been some kind of mental manipulation going on there to make anyone swallow and then spew out that load of crap."
"That high an opinion of me, Miss. Marlow?" he asked, his voice a shade more guarded than it had been moments before, making me almost wonder if I had imagined the softness there, the openness.
"Can't imagine what I think matters to you," I said, reaching for the spatula and scraping the rest of the cookies off the sheet, feeling almost a little sad that the conversation had taken a turn. But that was so ridiculous that once I finished with the cookie-scraping, I went right to the sink to start scrubbing. Focus, I needed to focus.
"Who taught you to bake? Mack doesn't seem like the kitchen type," he commented, grabbing another few cookies off the tray which, unfortunately, only helped to improve my opinion of him. I, by principle, didn't trust people who didn't have a sweet tooth. There must have been something seriously evil about a person who didn't appreciate sugar and chocolate.
"I taught myself I guess," I shrugged, scrubbing the oily traces of the baking spray off the cookie sheet. "We needed to eat and take-out gets expensive when it's an everyday type of thing. I cooked because I had to. I baked because I learned I loved it."
"And yet you worked in a bank."
I exhaled, trying to convince myself that didn't smart a little. It was something that kept me awake some nights, thinking about the missed opportunity that was going straight to work instead of attending culinary school. But work was necessary, learning how to bake the perfect, flaky, buttery croissant from a genuine French pastry chef was not.
"I had bills to pay."
"And your father to bail out."
My hands stilled as I looked down into the running water. "Can you not?" I asked, exhaling hard as I lifted my head to look out the window at his expansive property. How could someone like him, someone as well-off, someone financially secure no matter what should befall him, possibly understand what it was like to live in constant fear of having to drain your bank account to settle a debt, to have to borrow from the phone bill fund to pay the water? How could you even begin to describe poor to a rich person?
As if sensing something in my tone, I could hear his voice soften slightly. "Can I not what?"
"Act like you have any right to speak to me about my father. You don't understand and you never will. So just... stop bringing him up. We have both done what we have needed to do."
The oven beeped, prompting me to dry my hands on my pant legs, grab the mitts, and fetch it.
"Prudence, I don't think you fully understand how unfair..."
"I said don't!" I shrieked, slamming the pan down on top of the stove, throwing the mitts, and storming past him toward the doorway. "Don't," I snapped again, low, lethal, as I disappeared into the hallway, taking the stairs at a dead run, then throwing myself into my room to worry the floors.
Fact of the matter was, I knew that. I knew it was unfair. My entire life, I had been trying to quiet the little voice in my head telling me to just... stop. Stop enabling him, stop paying his debts, stop trying to get him away from the tables before he lost every cent to his name, stop being there to take him in when he gambled away his rent and was tossed on his ass. Just... stop.
But the fact of the matter was, I couldn't.
I couldn't because my father was a bigger part of me than I was. He was everything. He was in every decision. He was in every worry, every hope, every plan for my future. Him hurting, suffering, sorting through the rubble as his life exploded around him because I didn't step in and take the wire out of the bomb... yeah, I couldn't live with that. Even the idea of it made my chest hurt.
But that didn't stop me from having a moment here and there, when I was tired, when I had a bad day at work, when I had to turn off the oven and go fetch my father, when I had to drain my bank account for the third time in one month... when the anger and resentment and sadness would overwhelm me. It was in those moments that I mourned the loss of a dream, the chance to open a little bakery and spend my days covered in flour and going home smelling sugar and cinnamon on my skin and never having to worry about loan sharks or debts or casinos ever again. To be, to put it plainly, happy.
Happy. It was a foreign concept. It was the stuff of fairy tales. It was for people who didn't have to spend every single moment of their lives with a knot in their stomach, just waiting for the next shoe to fall, the next small catastrophe to come barreling into their lives, terrified for the call that could one day say that the worry was gone for good. But only because my father screwed over the wrong kind of man, the kind of man who wouldn't tolerate not getting their money when they wanted it, the kind of man who would take his life as payment.
As Byron had been willing to do.
See, when Byron told me that I didn't know much about the men in our town, he was wrong.
Because he didn't know all the times I had to creep down back alleys with bile searing through my stomach lining to find my father beaten and bloodied by small-time loan sharks. He didn't know about the time when I was fifteen and home alone and one of the men he owed money to came to the house and forced his way in, grabbed one of my barely-there teenage breasts and shoved his hand into my panties before my screams roused Old Olie from across the hall, prompting her to come storming in with a bat and strong arms from lugging around six babies in her youth. He didn't know about the time I had to walk through a massage parlor, my shoes sticking to the floor and I knew exactly what kinds of fluids that were on my soles, to find the owner in a back room as he fucked a skinny Asian girl who couldn't have been much older than my eighteen years at the time in the ass while another woman, older, used-up looking shoved a dildo up his ass, and pay him back the five grand my father owed him, five grand I got together because I took a night shift stocking shelves at a department store and a weekend job waiting tables.
I knew all about the men in our town.
I knew what they were capable of.
I knew all-too well.
That was why I never gave up on my father.
Because a bullet in his brain didn't solve my problems.
All that would make me was completely and utterly alone in the world with so much guilt filling my gut that I could choke on it.
There would be no more cupcakes at three-forty-five on February third, no high tea, no one around to ask and listen about my day and my hopes and fears and dreams.
There would just be me.
But Byron was right about that too... I had no idea who I even was without my father around.
And maybe I was a little terrified to find out.
Later, much later, so late that it was almost early, I went back down to the kitchen, guilt flooding my system at leaving such a mess. I didn't want Ella to walk into a filthy kitchen the next morning.
But when I walked in, the room illuminated by the dim light on over the sink, it was immaculate. The cookies were in a plastic container on the island. My coffee cake was wrapped in plastic and left in the center of the oven, one hefty chunk taken out. All the ingredients I had strewn all over the counters were put away; the dishwasher had been run; the counters had even been wiped of all traces of flour and sugar.
I moved to turn and go back to my room, even more confused than ever about the enigma named Byron St. James who seemed wholly incapable of picking his damn towel up off the floor after his shower, but somehow knew how to clean a kitchen spotless, when I noticed something right in front of the coffee machine. Curious, I walked over to find a sliver of the coffee cake I had made on a small white square dessert plate, a fork sitting beside it.<
br />
I reached for it with a weird thrill in my belly and chest.
He left food out for me?
Was that like... his way of apologizing for sticking his finger into an obviously open wound?
I took my plate to my room, picking at the cake as I sat on my bed and stared at my bedroom door.
Finished, I put my plate on the nightstand and curled up on my side, slowly drifting off to sleep.
And it was the first time in my memory that I didn't fall asleep with worried feelings of my father running through my head like some dark, twisted, but familiar lullaby.
No, instead, I fell asleep thinking about Byron.
EIGHT
Prue
The next five days had me completely and utterly convinced I had imagined not only the orgasm in the den, but the whole conversation in the kitchen thing as well. Because things went back to business apparently. I fetched coffee. I washed sheets. I scrubbed bathrooms. I sat outside his office, his den, his dining room, his bedroom. There weren't more women to listen to him fuck, so what I was doing outside his bedroom was beyond me. There was also no more making me watch him jerk off. There were no glances that made me think he saw me as anything other than some kind of office equipment. There were no soft tones when he spoke to me. Only sharp ones.
The only real difference took place Tuesday afternoon when I walked into his office with his seventh (yes, seventh) coffee of the day. I had just put the mug down when his hand pushed a piece of paper across the dark surface of his desk toward me. My brows drew together because he never gave me papers. It was a simple piece of his watermarked white, expensive (I imagined) paper with... a handwritten recipe.
My head snapped up as soon as I realized what it was, my head shaking a little, to find him watching me intently with those dark, distant eyes of his.
"You're in charge of desserts twice a week," he informed me with the same tone he would if he were telling me I was in charge of washing and waxing his car, instead of giving me the smallest sliver of sunshine I had known since I moved in under his roof.
"Peanut Butter Triple Chocolate Explosion?" I asked, smiling a little.
"Too difficult?" he asked in his usual impatient bark.
"Don't insult me," I said instead, too glad to have a break from my every day monotony to even care about his usual douchebaggery. I even gave him what I would consider a grateful smile before I turned and walked away, looking down at the notes and realizing that he must have written them. It wasn't the delicate, swirly font of a woman. It was neat, almost to the point of anally precise. Which, well, seemed very much like the kind of handwriting he would have. So that meant he not only sat down to carefully jot down the recipe for me, but he had also went online and looked one up.
"Miss. Marlow?" he called, my last name going up on the end in the telltale sign that he was about to say something I wasn't going to like.
"Yeah?" I asked, turning, head tilted.
"I want the dessert at nine."
"Nine?" I repeated, brows drawing together.
"Nine. Find me wherever I am at that point."
"Um... okay?" I said, turning and leaving his study. That was a weird request. From what I could tell, aside from his coffee, he generally wasn't the kind of person who just... ate anywhere. Usually, he was in the dining room, even if he was eating alone, using the time to shoot off quick-fire texts to God-knew who or read the paper.
So, while he had dinner, I shooed Ella out of the kitchen and got to work on dessert, perhaps nitpicking over every single little step with borderline sociopath precision because, for reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I really wanted the dessert to come out perfect.
At five to nine, I walked to Byron's office with a giant slice of Peanut Butter Triple Chocolate Explosion on a plate with a fork and a big glass of milk to go with it. Because, let's face it, with a dessert like that, you had to have some milk.
Finding his office empty, I went to the den. Then, with a sinking feeling knowing, already knowing where he was, I checked the living room anyway. Hell, I even checked the dining room and the back porch. Then, with a swirling uncomfortable feeling inside, I went up the stairs and stopped outside his cracked bedroom door, taking a deep breath, convincing myself it meant nothing that he wanted his dessert in his bedroom.
But knowing better.
"Are you going to stand out there all night?" Byron's voice called, a little distant, a little cool, but not completely nasty for a change. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open with the tip of my shoe.
The lights were low, but on. The TV was on, some kind of news commentary, but the volume was too low to make anything out. And Byron was on his bed, sitting back against the headboard, shoes off, slacks on, but belt gone, dress shirt on but jacket discarded and all the buttons undone, exposing a sliver of his tan, perfect skin from waistband to throat.
My eyes found his face and everything about it confirmed the swirling in my belly.
I knew a slaughterhouse when I saw one.
And if I went anywhere near that bed, I was going to end up gutted.
But what choice did I have?
I took a deep breath and took purposeful steps into his room, going directly to his side of the bed, focusing my attention on putting down the glass and plate, ignoring the hovering presence of a silent Byron. I had moved to straighten when I felt my wrist snagged in a large, strong palm. Despite my brain booming out the ear-splitting warning signal you hear in every movie proceeding the end of the world, I lifted my eyes to his, seeing the knife in his smile, knowing how much it was going to hurt when it started slicing layers off of me.
But I didn't pull away.
There was a pregnant pause, both of us waiting for something, him for me to pull away, me for him to do something, say something that would allow my better sense to take control again.
In the end, Byron's hand pulled, sending me flying toward the bed, landing longways across it, barely able to get my equilibrium back before his body was half over mine, his head tucked down, his lips finding the sensitive column of my neck. Propped up on one arm, the other slid down the side over my body, teasing the dip of my waist, the flare of my hip. His fingers stopped at my knee, curling in, cocking it, and draping it around his back. His hand whispered down my calf, snagging my heel and pulling it off. I used the edge of the bed to kick out of my other, bringing my other leg up to wrap around him as his tongue traced upward to tease over the edge of my earlobe, dragging a shiver out of me.
On a rumbling, growling sound that reverberated through his body and into mine, his hand stroked back up my thigh to sink into my hip, pulling as he rolled onto his back, dragging me on top of him as he went. His legs parted, allowing mine to slide inside, pressing me bodily against him for a moment before I planted my arms and pulled up slightly.
Against my stomach, I could feel his erection, hard and straining, into my soft flesh.
His hands moved up, taking my hair which had curtained us and pulling it to one side of my head, wrapping it around his fist then tugging downward hard enough for me to gasp so his lips could claim mine. I pulled my body up a few inches, letting his cock settle at the juncture of my thighs, hard, offering a solution to the problematic heaviness tightly coiled low in my belly.
And I knew it was wrong. It was warped, twisted, completely insane. And utterly unlike me.
I chose the right men. Granted, none of them had turned out to be the right one, but I went with the smart choices. I went with men from stable backgrounds who worked hard at whatever their chosen profession was. I picked men who had manners and treated me well. They were all good, stable, and maybe just a little bit boring. But most of all... safe.
I always played it safe.
There was nothing safe about Byron St. James.
He was an ocean, constantly ebbing and flowing, always threatening a violent undertow or rip current.
And I was not a strong swimmer.
But the second his body touched mine, I was helpless to do anything but sink.
His hand released my hair and both palms flattened near my shoulders then moved slowly, possessively down my back, like he was claiming every inch. They trailed down and settled on my ass, squeezing hard, and thereby pressing his cock harder against my sex, drawing a ragged moan from my lips, the sound muffled by his mouth. I moved my legs out from between his, planting them on either side of his hips so I could rock against him, the friction easing some of the clawing need inside. Against my mouth, he let out a low, sexy grumble as his hips started thrusting up against mine as his teeth grabbed my lower lip and bit hard enough to draw a yelp from me. His lips pulled from mine, my eyelids fluttering open to find his dark eyes on mine.
"I..." I started, but was cut off by the shrill, unsettling scream of his cell phone on the nightstand.
He watched me for a long minute, his hand moving up again to cup my jaw, like he wanted to say something, but was searching for the right words. In the end, though, he knifed up, taking me with him, and reached for his cell, swiping over the screen before bringing it up to his ear. "Yeah?" he barked, his eyes on me, one of his hands still on my lower back. "Fuck. Alright. Yeah. Twenty. Okay. Keep me updated," he said, ending the call and dropping the cell down on the mattress.
And in that ten seconds, my common sense came rushing back, flooding my system with all the thoughts his hands on my body pushed away.
I let him touch me again. I melted into it again. Hell, I had ground myself against his erection.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
"Trying to convince yourself you regret it?" he asked, hand still pressing hard into my back.
I swallowed hard against my suddenly dry mouth. "I don't have to convince myself of anything. Of course I regret it."
"You know one perk to working in and then owning a casino?"
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