Rhodium

by Elise Noble

  He’d moved closer by then, almost without me realising, and his lips were mere inches from mine as I nodded.

  He drew back a little, and his mouth twitched as if he was undergoing an internal struggle.

  “Tell me,” I pleaded. “Please.”

  He leaned over, slowly, deliberately, and put his wine glass on the side table.

  “I can’t tell you. I can only show you.”

  Stupid, stupid me. I fell for it. “Then show me.”

  His first kiss was barely there. Just a slight brush to the corner of my mouth. He drew back, waited.

  “Yes or no, Steffie?”

  Oliver was totally wrong for me. Older, more experienced, good looking in a way that would never age. And dangerous. Oh yes, he was lethal, because once I’d had a night with him, all other men seemed half-dead to me.

  I nodded again, and this time, the kiss was deeper. A gentle nibble on my bottom lip before he licked along the seam and invited himself in. My mouth opened of its own accord, and suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore. Heat fizzed through my veins as he peeled his jacket away and tossed it onto the floor.

  I’d worn a simple checked shirt that day, perhaps unconsciously thinking of home, and Oliver untucked it from my jeans before snaking his hand underneath. I’d reverted to the white cotton underwear Chrissie disliked so much, and Oliver yanked my bra cups down before pinching my right nipple hard enough to make me gasp.

  “Relax,” he whispered. “Don’t think, just feel.”

  Thinking was the last thing I wanted to do, and I slithered down the couch as Oliver gave my left nipple the same treatment. This time I anticipated the pain, and rather than making me jump, it shot through every nerve ending to my…

  “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked, but his smug smile told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. Then he nibbled my earlobe, and another bolt of pleasure shot between my legs.

  I surrendered to his touch as he undid my buttons, taking his time. As each one popped loose, he caressed the skin revealed underneath with soft fingertips, leaving a trail of fire wherever he touched.

  Once my shirt fell open, he paused for a second and met my eyes. “Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I need you to tell me.”

  “I’m okay.”

  His answering smile seemed to be almost for his own benefit rather than mine, and he dropped his mouth to my breasts.

  Perhaps I should have stopped things at that point, and no matter what he did to me that night, what I let him do to me, I couldn’t accuse him of forcing me into it. Quite the opposite. While his tongue and fingers held me under their spell, I was a more than willing participant.

  “You’re exquisite, Steffie. You know that?”

  My eyes had been hovering at half-mast, but now they sprang open to find him focused on my face.

  “Nobody’s ever made me feel that way,” I whispered.

  “Then I’ll change that tonight.”

  My shirt fell away as he picked me up bridal-style, his eyes never leaving mine. He laid me on the massive bed and knelt alongside, still fully clothed. I reached for his shirt, but he gently took my hands and raised them above my head.

  “No, Steffie.”

  Nobody else called me Steffie. I’d always been Stef, or Stefanie if I was in trouble. Steffie sounded sweet coming from his lips.

  Before he let me go, he’d released the back clasp of my bra, expertly—too expertly—and now he pulled the straps down my arms, one at a time, using his teeth. He let them graze my skin as he did so, each touch sending a jolt through me until he discarded the garment on the floor.

  Oliver’s fingers went to my belt, then to my top button, then to my zipper. With each movement, he teased my stomach with soft, fluttering kisses, and before he’d even got my pants off, my core began to throb in a way I’d never experienced before.

  I wanted to scream at him to move faster, but I got the impression it wouldn’t make a difference. I may have theoretically been the professional in that room, but I wasn’t the one who knew what I was doing. Oliver, on the other hand… Every movement, every touch, was designed to stimulate parts of me I didn’t know existed.

  I tried to keep my eyes open, to watch his chiselled jaw working its way across my body, but he’d sent me into a stupor. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d had sex plenty of times, but it never felt like this. I felt… I felt wanted.

  And then he stopped. I lay there in my plain white panties, ruing my decision to go for comfort rather than style, when he got to his feet.

  And he was still fully dressed. Even his tie remained knotted at his throat.

  He strode to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed me hard on the mouth. “Don’t move, princess.”

  I stared as he slipped out the door, leaving me wound up tighter than a banjo string. Where the heck had he gone?

  I never did find out, but he came back a few minutes later, carrying a bundle of slinky material.

  “What’s that?” I twisted to look.

  “Shh. Lie back. Don’t think.”

  “Just feel, right?”

  That got me a genuine smile, followed by a sweet kiss on the tip of my nose. “Now you’ve got it.”

  He carried on where he’d left off, making me squirm as his tongue trailed across a ticklish spot on my side. Then slowly, slowly, he slid my panties down my legs, taking all the time in the world.

  As soon as the scrap of fabric had gone, his head moved between my legs. Now, I’d given enough blow jobs to hate them, so I grabbed at his arms to pull him up, but he shook his head.

  “Lie still, Steffie. I want to taste you.”

  “But it’s icky.”

  He swiped his tongue along my slit before circling my nub, and I almost fell off the bed.

  “Never describe yourself as icky, princess.” He crawled further up the bed. “I can see I’ll need to do something about your errant limbs.”

  “Huh?”

  You know that bundle he brought back with him? It was scarves. Silk scarves. And before I realised what he was up to, he’d looped one around my right wrist.

  “What are you doing?”

  I tried to snatch my hand away from him, but he laughed and kissed his way along my biceps.

  “I promise you’ll enjoy this. If you don’t, just say the word and I’ll stop.”

  “What word?” My voice rose. I’d read Fifty Shades of Grey, along with Chrissie and most of the rest of the female population. “Do I need a safe word?”

  “If it makes you feel better, but I’m not planning to go that far with you tonight. Pick something.”

  “Red and yellow,” I gasped out as he tied a scarf around my other wrist. Highly unoriginal, but my brain barely functioned at that point.

  He chuckled, and I wondered if he’d read those books as well. “Fair enough. Red and yellow. And what does green mean, Steffie?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “And what’s your favourite colour?”

  “Green. Please, green.”

  He tied my hands to the bedposts, not tightly, but not loose enough for me to wriggle around, then repeated the process with my legs. Spread wide open to him, I’d never felt so naked in my life.

  “This isn’t fair,” I told him.

  “What isn’t?”

  “You’re still dressed. I don’t want to look at your suit.”

  “I told you, Steffie. Tonight’s about you. But since you’ve mentioned it…” He tugged at the end of his tie. “I’ll rectify the situation.”

  Blindfolding me wasn’t quite what I’d expected.

  Being unable to see heightened every other sense, and when he pressed his thumb over my nub and slowly circled, I arched up off the bed like a yoga pro, restrained only by the soft tug of silk.

  I climbed higher, higher, and when he plunged a finger inside me, I gave in and clenched around it, moaning long and low in my first ever orgasm.

 
“Oh my…”

  Oliver covered my mouth with his, and I tasted myself on his tongue. Another first. I wanted to be repulsed, but instead, my thighs clenched and I took a shaky step up the mountain again.

  “Steffie, you look beautiful when you come,” he whispered. “Uninhibited.”

  “It’s your turn.”

  This was my job, after all, and I knew how it worked. The whole point of sex with a guy was so he could get his rocks off.

  But Oliver didn’t seem to understand that.

  “Later. Lie still, Steffie, and stop pulling. You’ll hurt your wrists.”

  Sweet sassy molassy, he’d gone there again. He licked, he sucked, and he stroked me from the inside out. My legs were sticky with my juices, which made me cringe a little, but when I attempted to writhe away, I only got a growl.

  “Stay still or I’ll spank you.”

  Was he serious? I couldn’t tell, but I didn’t want to find out. I tried my best to keep still, and he soon sent me over the summit for the second time.

  By that point, my language skills had been reduced to gibberish, but as he pressed himself against me to kiss my lips again, I felt his hardness against me and knew I wanted it.

  “Please.” I tried to rub against it. “Green. Fucking green.”

  He laughed and moved away again, but this time I heard the snick of a zipper followed by the rip of foil. I expected his cock straight away, but instead, he reached above my head.

  “Raise your hips,” he instructed, and I complied instantly.

  He slid a pillow under my bottom, leaving me at a strange angle.

  “Why did you do that?”

  This time I felt him probing at my entrance, rubbing his cock through the moisture dripping out of me.

  “Because then I’ll hit the right spot and you’ll come harder.”

  Harder? Was that even possible?

  He pushed inside me with one smooth thrust, and I gasped at the size of him. I think I did more gasping that night than I’d done in the entire rest of my life. That was what the man reduced me to.

  I wanted to touch him, to run my hands over his chest and tangle them in his hair, but he’d trapped me. I was helpless to relieve the pressure building inside me as he pistoned in and out, and he was damn right about that pillow. When I came down from that euphoria, it was like the aftermath of a high I’d spend the rest of my life chasing. With one final grunt, he came too, a delicious warmth that I felt even through the condom.

  I couldn’t move. Could. Not. Move. He untied my legs and then my arms, but I simply lay there like a beached starfish as he reached over and undid the blindfold, peppering my cheeks with tiny kisses.

  His face was flushed pink, but apart from that, he looked little different. How did men do it? I was paralysed, yet if Oliver knotted his tie again, he could go straight into a business meeting. And he’d zipped himself back in, which wasn’t fair. I’d at least hoped for a quick glimpse.

  He lifted me again so he could tuck me under the quilt, then arranged my hair over the pillow.

  “You look tired, princess.”

  “Mmmm.”

  He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Sweet dreams.”

  A modicum of my brain came back. “You’re leaving?”

  He hesitated, halfway up from his seated position. A second passed. Two. Three. Four. “No, I’ll stay.”

  Still fully clothed, he slid into the bed beside me and curled me into his chest. I fell asleep like that a minute or two later, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, his warmth seeping into my muscles and lending me strength.

  For the first time since my daddy died, I felt content. Even after all the shit that had happened, I felt content.

  Then I woke in the morning and Oliver had gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  BARRETT’S CLONE DROVE me to a nondescript apartment in central Richmond and pointed at an empty bedroom.

  “Wait in there, please. I’ll be out in the lounge if you need anything.”

  “What, all night?”

  “All night. You’re due at Rhodes, Holden and Maxwell at nine.”

  Thanks for telling me that, buddy. You just ensured I’ll get no sleep. Well, maybe a couple of hours. I drifted off as the moon began its descent, having relived that night with Oliver at least twice more. I could still feel his hands roaming over me, just a whisper, and each time I nearly fell asleep, I came so hard I woke up again. Who needed a vibrator? Or even a man? The mere memory of Oliver sent me crazy.

  And now I was about to face him again.

  I’d brought a suit to wear for the meeting. Power dressing, if you like, even though I held none of it. Barrett had given me another reminder of that yesterday.

  “Ready?” his clone asked. My hour of doom had arrived. “You want breakfast?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t eat, not now.

  It turned out the apartment was only ten minutes from Oliver’s law firm, and the car journey went far too quickly. Soon I was being shown into a medium-sized conference room, all light wood and glass. Not really what I expected, but then again, I’d never seen the inside of a real-life law firm before.

  “Cup of coffee? Tea? Water?” the assistant who motioned me to my seat asked.

  “Just water.”

  No “please.” They didn’t deserve manners today. Not when I’d been forced to come here. Right now, I should have been shampooing hair and catching up on gossip, not becoming the subject of it. What were they saying behind my back?

  Then the door opened again, the temperature dropped a couple of degrees, and the lights flickered. Okay, that last part might have been my imagination, but if they didn’t, they should have.

  “Thank you for coming, Miss Amor.”

  Oliver kept his tone light, professional. Exactly the way he had ever since disaster four. Exactly the way. When I’d stumbled down to breakfast the next morning, he’d greeted me in that cool, detached way of his, as if he hadn’t just spent hours exploring every naked inch of my body.

  In the kitchen at Riverley, he’d glanced up from his laptop. “Good morning, Stefanie.”

  The first thing I’d noticed was that we were back to Stefanie. Not Steffie. That alone should have given me an indication of how the conversation would go.

  I’d stood awkwardly in front of him while he finished typing an email. Then he raised an eyebrow.

  Another member of the Blackwood team bustled around the coffee machine on the other side of the kitchen, so I kept my voice down.

  “I thought you might like to eat breakfast with me?”

  He waved at his coffee. “I already ate.”

  “Oh. Uh… About last night.”

  “Don’t overthink it, Stefanie. You wanted a distraction and I gave you one. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  That was the moment my heart turned to ice, freezing tentacles spreading out through my veins. How could he not feel anything from…from that?

  “So that’s it? You fucked me, and now you’ll forget me?”

  “Forget’s the wrong word.”

  “So what’s the right word?”

  He sighed. Or huffed. One or the other, it was hard to tell. “Stefanie, take last night for what it was. An enjoyable distraction, no strings.” His phone rang. “You’ll need to excuse me.”

  Just like that, I was dismissed. A distraction? A freaking distraction? I almost smacked him over the head with his coffee cup, but Dan walked in at that moment and helped herself to a glass of juice.

  She looked at each of us in turn. “Everything all right?”

  Oliver covered the mouthpiece of his phone. “Fine.”

  She turned to me.

  “Fine. I need to shower.”

  And to pack. I couldn’t stay near Oliver a moment longer.

  Since that morning, our conversations had consisted of the odd awkward greeting while I found a new place to move into. Until now. Now, he met my eyes as he settled onto a leather seat directly opposite me. T
he assistant who followed sat next to him and busied herself setting up a digital recorder while I took off my suit jacket. The temperature in there was stifling.

  He allowed us a minute, then took out his Montblanc pen and straightened his legal pad.

  “Shall we begin?”

  “I wasn’t aware I had a choice?”

  He sighed, a faint sound I interpreted as disappointment. “Let’s try to make this as easy as possible, shall we?”

  “Yeah, best not overthink it, eh?”

  That got me a small frown.

  “So, as I mentioned on the phone, Carter’s decided to make our lives difficult, which means we need your testimony. I’d been hoping to avoid that.”

  “At least we’ve got something in common.”

  His gaze flicked to the girl sitting next to him, scratching away on her legal pad. Why was she there when the conversation was being recorded? So I wouldn’t ask any difficult questions of my own? Well played, Mr. Rhodes. Well played.

  Those questions burned away inside me. He’d mentioned they’d found another girl. So the rumours were true and there were more victims? I wanted to ask for the full story, but I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want this meeting to take a moment longer than it absolutely had to.

  “Today, I’d like to go through the night you spent with Carter. He’s claiming he couldn’t help but act on his murderous impulses, so we need to understand whether he did anything during his time with you that signalled a darker purpose.”

  “It was over a year ago. I don’t remember all the details.”

  “Yes, I appreciate that. We’ll talk through what you do remember. Let’s start at the beginning. I understand you offer certain services to men?”

  “Used to. And you know damn well I did.”

  “I do. But the court doesn’t, and that’s what I’ll need to ask you in front of the jury.”

  My heart began to hammer. Up until that point, I hadn’t truly appreciated what testifying would mean, but now it sank in. “You mean I’ll have to tell all this to a bunch of strangers?”

  “The jury, the judge, the attorneys, the court staff, plus whoever happens to be in the public gallery. Maybe a few journalists.”

  I shoved my chair back. “I can’t do this.”