by Nikky Kaye
She turned to me with a pained look. “Look, I don’t want to do this, but I’ve got to. I need you to create a diversion so that I can get in the door. They can’t follow me in after hours without checking in at security, which they won’t get past. At least they better not,” she muttered to herself.
Was she serious? A diversion? “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t care. Something to draw their attention that will not get you arrested again, preferably.”
Okay, so acting drunk and disorderly and pissing on the sidewalk was probably out. Her phone rang again, making her sigh heavily.
“Can you do that for me, Luke?”
She looked toward me with tired eyes burning in a pale face. The beige of her raincoat washed her out completely, the scarlet silk around her neck like a grotesque injury.
Fucking New York did this to people. Money did this to people. If I could give a billion dollars not to see that look on Alexis Kincaid’s face again, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, her forehead creased. “Please, Luke. You—you owe me.”
Shit. She thought my hesitation was because I wouldn’t help her? I swallowed around a painful lump in my throat. I’d done dumber things for fewer reasons.
“Go,” I croaked. “I’ll come up with something.”
Chapter Four
Lexi
I punched in the code for the unit, relieved to see that no reporters had gotten that far. The security guard in the lobby had some discretion, or at least decided not to risk his job over a bribe. When the magnetic lock on the double doors opened, I walked in to and made a beeline for the charge nurse.
"Lexi! You got here fast."
"I was already in a car," I explained.
Now that I was here and it was quiet, my body sagged against the desk. Carmen never looked at me with pity, which I appreciated. It was all no-nonsense with her. Nothing fazed her. If she called me, though, then I probably needed to come. It was calls from the accounting office that I sent to voice mail.
“He’s okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I looked in on him a few minutes ago and he was watching TV. I unplugged his phone, though. Somebody managed to get the number for his room line. They’re still calling here, though,” she added with a sigh as the desk phone rang. “I swear these people have never heard of HIPAA.” She gifted me with a rare smile before I headed down the hall.
My steps slowed as I approached his room. I wanted to tell myself that I was just being stealthy and quiet, in case he was sleeping. The truth was that my whole being wanted to delay the mixed emotions that swirled around me when I visited. Happiness, fear, relief, shame and loneliness—they all surrounded me in a paralyzing miasma of guilt.
“Hi Daddy.”
My father was propped up in bed, staring at a twenty-four hour business channel. The frown on his face told me that he probably couldn’t even hear it properly, but he wasn’t allowed to turn up the volume this late in the evening. He fell asleep with it on sometimes, being so used to noise and action in the background of his old life.
I reached for the remote resting by his hip. “Dad,” I called, getting his attention.
That moment when I first walked in and he turned to me and blinked was always hard. In that few seconds was total blankness, like I was a stranger. Then frustration would twist his face as he searched his damaged memory banks.
“Les!” His smile was a little lopsided and his speech a little slurred, thanks to the nerve damage. But there was genuine delight in his voice, which made me feel even worse for not visiting all week.
He glanced over at the phone, which was mercifully silent. “P-porters,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry. I have a new client, and he got into some trouble tonight.”
It still amazed me how fast the cockroaches scurried, how quickly word spread and Internet searches tied things together. Despite owing my living to social media, there were times that I really, really despised it. I held his hand, my thumb dipping into the spaces between his knuckles. His fingernails needed trimming, I noticed.
“Tell me,” he said, and I did. I told him about Luke and his struggle to find a place in high society, when he clearly didn’t want to be part of it.
We chatted briefly, as much as we usually could anyhow, before his eyelids started drooping. It was almost midnight, after all, and they usually had him up by seven in the morning.
I switched off the TV, checked that he had some fresh water with a straw, and closed his door behind me. It wasn’t fair, but I always felt lighter when leaving, like I’d left some of my anger and worry there in the room. On the way out, I stopped to see Carmen.
“How was his day overall?
“Pretty good, actually. We were outside for a while in the courtyard, which he loves. Especially now the trees are coming in. Only one seizure after lunch, which got a bit messy. He kicked ass in timed Sudoku this afternoon, though.”
That made me smile, and I made a mental note to bring him some Sudoku books on my next visit.
I was so distracted leaving the locked ward that I punched in the wrong code twice, then wondered why the elevator doors weren’t opening. Finally, when I made it down to the lobby, I found Luke waiting for me at the security desk.
“How many are left?” I asked him wearily.
He shook his head. “None.”
Wow. “You’ll have to tell me your secret. Usually they’re harder to get rid of than termites.”
“Similar approach, actually.”
“You sprayed them with poisonous gas?” I joked. My mouth fell open as he shrugged. “Lucas Knox, if you—” I lowered my voice, horrified. “If you farted on them—”
He bent over with laughter. “Oh honey, you should see your face!”
A giggle welled up in my chest like a painful hiccup. As if to memorize my expression, he cupped my jaw and traced the line in my forehead and the curve from nose to my mouth. His touch soothed and burned at the same time, making me sigh.
“It’s past your bedtime, Party Girl.”
I nodded, knowing that I would still be up for a few hours doing damage control online when I got back to my tiny apartment. He led me to the waiting town car. The street wasn’t quiet, but it wasn’t crawling with paps either.
“Seriously, what did you do? I need to know in case I need to fix something.”
“Do you try to fix everything with social media?”
I slumped in the seat, closing my eyes briefly. “What I can, anyway.”
“I just had a loud conversation with the driver about who I saw in Central Booking earlier tonight.” His hand smoothed over mine in the space between us, not holding or grabbing, just exploring. “They went for the better food source.”
“Who?” Maybe TMZ hadn’t been there to taunt me after all.
His voice was low and husky in my ear when he leaned in whisper in my ear. The jumbled combination of a celebrity’s name, body part and small animal shouldn’t have made my panties wet, but the way he said it did. Something inside me that had been coiled tight all evening began to loosen, unfurling low in my belly.
“No way.” I grimaced at the visual.
His shoulder nudged mine until my head flopped against him and rested there in the curve of his neck. “Hell no. But I can’t help if they heard me wrong. Lotta cars passing by right then.”
“You’re bad.”
“Yep.”
We both knew that I didn’t mind as much as I should. In moments of self-reflection aided by too much wine in the past couple of weeks, I recognized that there was something about Lucas Knox that drew me in like a tourist to Times Square.
I’d tried dating a few people since that first douchebag boyfriend I made the mistake of sending flirtatious videos to. As a fellow blue chip brat, I’d thought he would be smarter than to spread it around. Then again, he probably thought the same thing about me, and my audacious behavior certainly didn�
�t make him look bad.
Since then I’d only seen people casually, and rarely for more than dinner or a social event that necessitated an escort. There were enough men who thought it would be easy to take a ride on the Sexy Lexi Kink-ade express train, but they usually saw my caboose moving down the tracks quickly enough.
Determined to be independent in every way, I no longer had patience for entitled rich boys or misinformed gold-diggers. And I always kept it cool, barely allowing more than light kisses as socially required without gaining the reputation as a cock tease—though I’d had the accusation thrown at me once or twice.
The car lurched gently in traffic. New York was never truly quiet, but Saturday night at midnight was a different kind of busy with lots of double-parked cabs.
“Your father is Alex Kincaid,” he announced into my hair.
My eyes opened and I kept my gaze on the privacy glass behind the driver. “Yes.”
Luke was quiet for a moment. “I thought he was dead.”
“He should be. He shot himself in the head. My mother is.”
“Gone?”
I hummed. “Long time.” Nobody could accuse me of rambling about my family history. A yawn threatened to break free from my chest.
“But your father’s not. And he lives here. And you work your cute little ass off to make sure he’s taken care of.”
“Those reporters tell you that?”
“Nah, Google,” he said in a muffled voice, nuzzling my head.
The sensation of his breath in my hair and the sound of his drawl in my ear raked along my nerve endings like the little Zen garden that used to be on my father’s desk—only there was nothing “Zen” about Lucas Knox.
Maybe taking this job wasn’t the best idea, but I couldn’t afford to turn it down—not with how much good long-term care for traumatic brain injury patients cost. I’d been lucky enough to get Dad into a facility in Manhattan.
My father had worked hard for as long as I could remember. Of course, I didn’t appreciate all the things his efforts brought me—nice clothes, vacations, access to people and places and things. With my mother dying when I was young, I’d wanted my father’s time more than any material things. But the material things kept me busy and distracted.
He was busy and distracted too. Unfortunately, he also made some questionable decisions and lost a lot of money for a lot of people. He ended his hedge fund management career in 2008, and very nearly his life a few months after that. Sometimes I still wondered if he would have been better off succeeding.
It took me a long time to get over the shock—of what he’d done to others, what he’d done to himself, but mostly what he’d done to me.
“You know what upset me the most,” I murmured, “after he did it?”
“What, honey?” He squeezed me gently.
“That I had to cancel my birthday party. And then I had to call his mistress to let her know what happened.” Only she wasn’t really his mistress, since my mother was gone. More like his girlfriend who he set up in a nice apartment in Brooklyn but kept ultra secret. I hadn’t seen her since his “accident.” Once the money had run out, so had she.
“Oh.”
I’d been such a brat—a desperate, naïve, entitled teenager. Having to face reality wasn’t pretty. My father was in a coma for months, the money was gone and I couldn’t get a job to save my life until I tried to parlay my social media expertise into a kind of career. Even then, I still felt like a fraud.
I had no college degree, unlike Luke. I had few friends, unless you considered former household staff who I never saw. I felt like an orphan, but my father was still alive. But was I alive? I’d been going through the motions for a long time now, trying escape the person I was and bitter memories of the past.
My body relaxed but my mind still raced, composing tweets and status updates to optimize both Luke’s and my father’s situations. One hundred and forty characters weren’t enough to fully express my existential crisis.
Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed that Luke remained silent and pressed against me, the side of my body nestled to his broad chest. The studs of his tuxedo shirt pressed through the thin layer of my coat, but I didn’t want to move. He was solid and strong, like a wall supporting me to face the world. I just didn’t want to face the world.
Chapter Five
Luke
“What do you mean, what do I read? Is this like ‘who are you wearing?’” I rubbed the back of my neck, glancing over at the small stack of books on the desk in my fancy-pants hotel suite.
“You read, right?” Lexi asked over the phone.
“Sure.” Was there some kind of upper class rule against it? Was I going to be ostracized on social media for reading?
“I mean books, not porn or something.”
I chuckled. Some novels were practically porn these days, or so I’d heard. I’d never read one, of course. “They don’t have pictures, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up in an hour. Bring whatever you’re reading right now.”
I looked down at the bulge in my boxer briefs, which was all I was wearing. My semi wasn’t exactly going down with her voice in my ear. “What if I’m busy?”
“Then you’d better hurry up and finish whatever you’re doing.”
Her call had woken me from a late afternoon nap. New York just plain tired me out. I didn’t know how people didn’t go crazy from the constant noise and motion. The only quiet place I’d found was my hotel suite, and with Lexi in my arms. So far I hadn’t been able to combine the two, however.
“Hmmmm. What should I wear?” I asked her, propping myself up against the headboard and slipping my right hand into my boxers.
“Just slacks and a shirt, I guess. Business casual.”
In my limited experience so far, business here was anything but casual--especially in my new potential tax bracket. My grip tightened around my dick as I thrust the thought from my head. “What are you wearing?”
“I’m wearing a skirt and blouse.”
“What kind?” Tell me about them. In slow, low detail. I moved my hand up and down methodically.
“Huh? Um, a plain black skirt and a red silk blouse.”
I bit back a groan, imagining her in my room at that moment. “Is it tight?”
“The skirt? Sort of.”
My strokes sped up. Were her legs bare under her skirt? Was she wearing stockings? High heels that made her ass look amazing and brought her lips that much closer to mine? I loved her legs. I wanted them wrapped around my hips, my waist, my head, my shoulders.
“I bet your shirt is soft, isn’t it? Can you see your bra underneath it?”
“Lucas! Are you trying to have phone sex with me?”
“I’m trying, anyhow. Say my name again,” I urged, my body surging. This woman drove me crazy.
“Luke!”
“Fuck!” I licked my lips as a prickling sensation ran through me. “Again. More.” I was so goddamn close. I ran my thumbs over the moisture at the tip of my cock, moaning.
“Where are you right now?”
“In bed.”
“Why?”
“Was napping,” I panted. I wanted to nap with her. I wanted her spread out before me, her long blonde hair falling over the side of the bed.
“And now you’re… getting off while talking to me?” There was shock in her voice, but not revulsion. Maybe I was getting to her, too.
I didn’t answer. I knew I was being a bad, bad boy. But I was almost there…
“Luke!”
Her loud gasp ended me. “Shit!” My balls tightened and I came hard. The wrongness of what I was doing made the pleasure more acute, and I struggled to stay quiet and ride it out.
She was very quiet, but I could hear her breathing quickly. I tugged the waistband of my briefs back up and lazily leaned over to look at the clock. “Guess I’ll see you in about forty minutes. Time for me to hit the shower.”
“Oh. My. God.
”
I grinned. The heat of her embarrassment almost sizzled through the phone. What I wouldn’t give to see her face at that moment. Then again, if I could have seen her face, I might have had different plans for it.
Yeah, I was a bad boy—no denying it.
“Lucas… Knox! Dammit, I wish I knew your middle name so I could middle name you right now! That was the most inappropriate—”
I couldn’t bring myself to feel ashamed or guilty as I padded to the bathroom, which was the size of some of my old apartments. I just felt relaxed. “Did it make you hot, Lexi?” I asked in a low voice. Steam began to waft out of the top of the glass enclosure, warming my body.
She let out a strangled whimper.
Time to get moving. “Alexis, that’s how turned on I am around you. Deal with it, or do something about it. I’ll see you in about half an hour.”
At first I thought she’d hung up. The echo of the shower spray on the tile floor was like white noise in my ears, until she startled me by clearing her throat.
“I might be a little late myself,” she said. “I just remembered something I have to do first.”
* * *
She wouldn’t look me in the eye when she picked up in the town car, twenty minutes later than when promised. Her ears were bright pink above her white scarf, her hair twisted back on her head. Impulsively I leaned over and kissed her neck behind her ear, making her shiver.
“Luke!”
I grinned, settling into my seat as close to her as possible. “Yeah, just like that. Say it again,” I teased.
Her cheeks flooded with color. “I give up.”
“You keep saying that, but you’re still here. I didn’t take you for a quitter, Lexi.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully as the car pulled into traffic. “You’re right, I’m not. What did you bring?”
I patted the book in the pocket of my new leather jacket, which I’d splurged on the day before.
“Nice coat.”
“Thanks.” The soft, buttery leather made a swishing sound against the seat of the car as she admired it. “Might as well start spending money on something.”
