by Savannah May
The mat black helicopter was like no other I had ever seen and always made me think of the Batman movie. Not that I had much experience with this style of travel, but even I could tell it was moving impossibly fast through the air. He lowered the machine to a pad on the rooftop of a skyscraper and we took an elevator down one floor to emerge directly into a massive pale gray room with a curved wall of glass looking directly out across the bay.
19
“Wow, what an aerie,” I gasped.
The view over the city lights twinkling out to the pink and orange tones disappearing into the water behind the bridge distracted me from the exquisite decor of the large room we were standing in. A butler appeared and I took the offered glass of champagne with a slack mouth.
“Don't look so worried Andie. That's just my Major-domo, Antione.”
“Good evening Antione,” I whispered.
“Good evening, Miss,” the butler replied with perfect discreet charm.
What was I doing here?
Without much consideration, I'd assumed we were going to a business meeting in an office or hotel, maybe a dinner. But here I was standing in Valentine's personal penthouse in the clouds. I'd never thought I would ever get to observe him outside the stately role he played at the chateau, in his real home. Valentine kicked off his highly polished shoes and padded across the expanse of steel gray plush carpet in his socks, up three gray marble steps into a high tech chef's kitchen of stainless steel and black granite island top.
Antione retrieved the upturned shoes and bore them lovingly from the space. Meanwhile I had to lift my mouth up from where it had dropped to my knees, before following Valentine into the kitchen where he was already at work at the massive Viking stove.
“I love cooking for relaxation at the end of the week,” he said. “Not that there is ever an end to it really.”
He pulled open a stainless steel drawer, revealing a layout of tools like a surgeon's rack. I laughed raucously, making him look up at me sharply, his face almost childlike. Who was this new man? I’d never met him before now.
“Your collection of every weird kitchen gadget ever invented looks like a modern day torturer's chamber.” I giggled, imagining the filthy practices Valentine could invent with some of the implements.
“I've had occasion to use every one,” he said.
“All the drawers in my kitchen are rammed with a junk pile of plastic,” I admitted. “I can hardly jiggle them open.”
Every one of Jay's utensils was nestled in its own custom space, meticulously carved, hewn out of the wooden block insert. They were lined up like soldiers ready for active duty. He retrieved a Waiter's Friend corkscrew with one finger and shoved at the drawer front. It glided smoothly shut despite his irritation then pulling itself in with a gentle tug.
“Choose whatever you want and open it,” he ordered, but softly now, indicating the built in wine cave.
Full height, double glass doors, it held racks of bottles cradled on their sides in straight rows at constant perfect temperature. Interior lighting came on automatically when I opened one of the doors, illuminating the labels for their close-up.
“Excellent choice,” he said, his smile and glistening eyes indicating I'd chosen well with the Cote de Nuits.
I hadn't known which to select as my wine training hadn't extended to deciphering cryptic labels. If there had been a test I'd have failed, but the label that caught my eye said 'Domaine du Comte' and sounded so much more erotic than 'Screaming Eagle'.
“Do you prefer the elusive variations of the burgundy region?”
“I don't know very much about Burgundy,” I replied truthfully.
And I seem to prefer elusive in men not wine.
“But I do have a penchant for the unknown,” I added.
Valentine looked up with a knowing grin. This was a side of him I'd never seen- relaxed, smiling with genuine amusement rather than the ironic, almost mistrustful, half smile he wore at the Chateau.
“The Burgundy changes from year to year with a slight change of the weather. One side of the hill can evolve a completely different vintage from the other.”
“Like siblings in the same family,” I said.
He looked up at me sharply.
“I thought you said you were an only child,” he gritted.
“I am and that makes me kind of fascinated with the relationship between brothers and sisters. And how one child can turn out completely different from the other under the same circumstances.”
“Fascinating indeed. You feel the absence of siblings then?”
Did he really want to know me like this? Without needing to maintain control? Just as though we were sharing ourselves on any normal date.
“I'm not sure, seeing as I don't have anything to compare it to,” I said, thinking about it to give him my truthful status. “It would be nice to have someone to turn to sometimes.”
“There are better choices than family for that,” he burred as he chopped through vegetables with a scimitar-sharp knife. “People who won’t betray you.”
He turned to the gigantic stainless Sub-Zero refrigerator, with his back to me behind the huge door I lost the information I was able to glean from his facial expression. But I was sure, in that moment of turning, it had been pained. When he swung the door shut with his foot and turned with a bowl of massive shrimp in his hand, his face was recomposed. I felt I'd lost him again.
“Uncork and give that nectar of the gods some O2,” he said with a smile that made my heart tingle and soften.
I pulled myself up onto a leather stool at the ten foot island and watched him toss brightly colored fresh veggies, now perfectly sliced, onto the steel circle hotplate cut right into the granite. His powerful fingers added dashes of sauce and pinches of powder from the huge selection of spices laid out on the counter. He clearly enjoyed tinkering with the elements to create an artful dish. Only Valentine could make cooking look so sensual.
“You'll find a decanter behind the bar,” he said, when I tugged the cork and it slipped out with a sigh.
I wandered across the serene space, room would barely describe the huge open area in lush tones of stone, made infinite by the floor to ceiling glass wall. On the way back from the full size bar, I examined Valentine's artworks for insights into his personality. Every one of the pieces exhibited disparate elements. One depicted Snow White with neutron bombs. It only enhanced my belief that the man now tossing shrimp and flambeing them in dangerously tall flames, held many conflicted desires.
I'd lost myself in the warring cartoon characters, absorbed by the meaning and almost burst from my skin when Valentine pressed his firm chest into my back and reached around to pop a delicious morsel of something between my lips.
“Sea urchins in love,” he murmured into the back of my ear.
The brush of his lips sent shivers all through me. If he thought he was going to squick me out by feeding me sea urchin, he was going to learn that I was adventurous in all my tastes. I wanted it all.
“Is that the name of the painting or the canape?” I said, turning to him and bringing my hand up to cup his neck before I caught myself.
He jerked away from my touch and his retreat was a match to a gas line as I swore over in my head at yet another stupid slip up. I said nothing. I was cool with it- understanding his feelings too. We sat together on the island stools to eat and talked about art, architecture, Tahiti and of course, wine, but Valentine wouldn't let himself go and relax to the point he'd been before I touched him.
20
When would I ever learn? I always had to ruin the moment with him by pushing for something more.
He had given me a very valuable gift, more special to me than the hundred thousand dollar Cartier watch I was wearing on my wrist now. Sharing his home and free time with me was worth more to me than anything. He was letting me see another side of Valentine the man, but I could never be satisfied with what I was offered. I always needed more.
“Wow, it
's past midnight,” I said, fingering his gift on my wrist. What would happen if we had to stay here the night? “Can you drive that beast in the dark?”
I wasn’t sure helicopters even flew at night except under covert mission.
“We'll stay here tonight,” Valentine said.
“But, I-” In the same room? Was he going to let me sleep with him? I couldn’t ask outright. “I didn't pack a bag.”
“I'm sure Antione has selected an exceptional overnight wardrobe for you, he has excellent taste.
Oh.
“Good night. Andie.”
Without so much as a brush of a fingertip, he disappeared down a passageway and left me gangling in the kitchen, wondering whether I should clean up as I had no idea where to go next.
“If you'll follow me please, miss.”
Antione materialized beside me like the genie out of the lamp. He led me along another passageway, opposite the one Valentine had been swallowed into, as far away as it was possible to get I realized with heavy stomach. He opened the doors onto another beautiful room decorated in multiple layered shades of nude pink, uniquely soft and feminine in the oyster gray penthouse.
“I believe you'll find everything you'll need,” Antione said, before he dematerialized back to wherever he waited for summons.
A silk satin peignoir was laid out on the silk bedspread, something a 1940s movie starlet would wear to flit around her boudoir. Also a pair of high heeled satin slippers, topped with feathers and a down feather stole. All in the same flesh tones of the room.
In the pink-toned limestone bathroom I discovered brand new MDNA skincare products and Tom Ford cosmetics. Everything was untouched, like waking up in Sleeping Beauty's castle after a hundred years, without a single cobweb. I gave half a giggle as I slipped into the luxurious long gown, the bodice made of diaphanous silk chiffon so my hard nipples prodded through the slinky material.
This was a very different sleeping outfit from my usual Victoria's Secret pajama short. I slipped into the nude pink silk sheets, wondering whether Valentine purchased brand new products and outfits every time a slave came for a sleepover. My bag tweeted a new text. I dug out my phone with a weight in my chest.
Arrive SF 4.35. get ready to play at the Fairmont.
Of course it would be The Fairmont – the most luxurious and elegant old hotel in San Francisco. Josh loved to shock elite society, who he said were uptight and obsessed with money and status. As soon as Valentine dismissed me for the weekend, I'd cab over to the hotel and wait for Josh to arrive.
I was a bleary puffy mess in the morning, from not sleeping more than minutes at a time through a very fretful night. I was in Valentine's personal apartment. But in his guest bedroom. Why had he ordered me to come to San Francisco? Did he require a companion to watch him cook dinner and decant the wine? If so why didn’t he also need one for after-dinner games?
If the private dinner date was a test, I'd obviously failed somewhere. That could be the only reason for his abrupt disappearance to his own quarters and it was making me absolutely miserable. On one side I wanted the security of the known with Josh and on the other, I didn't want to see him at all because Valentine was making me insane with the highs and lows of emotions.
My head was pounding with confusion while my body was feverish demanding all three of the men I had fallen into passionate involvement with. That was not permitted- a woman like me didn't keep three super alphas on the date-roll. Something was going to have to give. Before I imploded.
My clothes had disappeared during the night, so I went down the hallway to the main room wearing the 1940s satin peignoir and marabou high-heeled slippers. I laughed secretly with myself, at me, a girl who schlepped around in sweatpants on the weekend, now wandering a penthouse in the sky dressed like a movie star. Maybe I was going to be kept here as a permanent sex slave, naked all day without my clothes.
Would that be such a bad life?
Not if Jay Valentine was the master. Was it really any different from marriage? More honest a transaction and one I’d get to live in cosseted in luxury without worry.
Coming into the main area, discreetly flooded with light, I was stunned by the view of the entire city through the curved glass wall. I was a city girl at heart and if this had been my home I was sure I'd never leave. Antione appeared and beat me to the kitchen to operate the full size espresso machine on the stone counter.
“Soy cappuccino, correct?” he said.
“How did you know?”
Even Jay Valentine didn't know what I drank at breakfast seeing as we'd never spent the night.
“It's kind of my job to know,” he said, almost as inscrutable as his boss. Antione had a French sounding accent but looked darker than a European.
“Antione is an unusual name,” I said. “I keep wanting to say Antoine, like the French.”
“My mother had a sense of humor. We are Algerian, so not welcomed by French.”
“Oh, that's too bad,” I said, wishing my world cultural history was more complete. “Will Mr Valentine be joining us for coffee?”
“Monsieur has left for a meeting already. His day usually begins at five.”
Oh.
The sinking disappointment made me aware how much I'd been looking forward to hanging out over coffee and having Valentine admire me in my Hollywood siren garb.
“He requires your presence this evening at a business dinner. You are free until six thirty then you will be transported from here to the yacht.” Yacht?
What business could he require me for on the weekend, on a yacht, no less? I'd been hired to supervise a construction crew that was yet to materialize. And six thirty gave me almost no time at all to be with Josh.
“Is everything okay, miss?” Antione inquired. “You look perturbed.”
“I'm fine. It's just that, you know, it's the weekend and I had plans.”
21
Once again I was ripped in two. Unable to decide between the safety of my plans with Josh and the tantalizing tug of Valentine. They were such completely different men yet in some ways so similar. Not only because of their need to play games of domination and their unusual reluctance to indulge in penetration. Both had the allure of buried secrets and unrecognized desires enveloping them like a ring of razor wire.
Why was it so impossible for either to allow a woman closer access? I had managed to jack-hammer down through each man's emotional layers and had now hit bedrock. It seemed like neither would let me pound through, but both kept me pinned tight to them. I had no idea how I was going to choose.
“Ah. Yes,” Antione bust into my reverie. “Mr Valentine doesn't do weekends. Or plans.”
“Why not?” I inquired casually, hoping to get some information on the master from the inside man. But he was onto me and merely gave an inscrutable shrug.
“And I don't have any clothes.” I knew what the answer to that was going to be.
“That at least has been taken care of.”
Josh would already be in the air but I knew I had to go to dinner with Valentine. I would be ditching my boyfriend but I was starting to wonder if we really had a relationship after all. Josh had been pulling and pushing more aggressively than ever since I'd left New York but he didn’t act like he really cared. Determined to get an insight into that dilemma, I decided to meet him at the airport, with just enough time to get some answers before going out to meet Valentine on the boat.
“A/C, how sweet of you to pick me up. And all ready to play.”
Josh's grin was wider than cat with cream when he came through the gate and saw me dressed for my night out.
Antione had provided a skintight skirt with a full-length zipper that ran in a horseshoe curve from hem to just above my ass, emphasizing its roundness. The leather skirt was paired with a blouse super-glued to my curves with barely a hair's breadth of breathing room and already attracting some interested stares from other passengers at the airport.
Underneath I was wearing an unusual lace
and net bodysuit Antione had laid out. It was odd because it was a double G-string- the crotch ended just before my clit and the two straps ran outside the crease and across my ass cheek rather than hiding in the crack. All my chasm was compressed by the strapping, sending delicious pulsations up though my center. I was also aware of how deliciously naked and exposed my pussy was beneath the skirt.
As I walked across the arrivals lounge with my usual hobble, in screaming high heels, the constriction of the skirt forced friction in my folds that was making me super horny. When Josh came though the gate with his mega-smile, I wanted nothing more than to climb on him to drag him inside me right there.
The restriction of my outfit barely allowed inhalation, never mind exuberant hurling or climbing on lovers. The recall that Josh had possibly acted as Valentine's stooge returned, bringing me slamming back on my purpose – the discovery of what was going on here.
“I'm afraid I have to work tonight. I came out to let you know I have to break our date.” I spoke coolly as a Mistress rather than sub and elicited a grimace of surprise from my previous master.
“All this way and not even a fast one?” Josh said, with a charming pout.
That somehow managed to be intensely macho and made my pussy clench. I almost lost resolve, until the stewardesses came though the gate and every one of them eyed him voraciously-and then me. I drew myself taller, wishing I had a bullwhip in my hand.
“Bye, Josh. Hope to see you on the return flight.” A very gorgeous brunette with bright blue eyes called to him as they strutted past like a pack of glamorous cats.
“Shall we get a drink before you head back?” I said. I was suddenly unwilling to free him.
“Let's go downtown to the hotel,” he replied.
“You're staying?”
“Shame to waste a weekend,” he twinkled.
I had no need to feel sorry for him. He wouldn't be alone for the night. He'd probably joined the Mile High Club on the flight out.
