Unspoken

by Haley Pierce

  Oh, good Lord.

  I almost passed out right then.

  I knew I should have gone home. This was the kids’ psycho time, and Cara was probably pulling her hair out, trying to get them all into their beds. Plus, it had taken me much longer to get into the city than I’d told Max it should take—an hour, at least, using public transportation. I was exhausted as hell.

  But those eyes were on me, mesmerizing me.

  So I settled back.

  His gaze is still intent on me, and his hand hasn’t left my knee. Now, it’s doing slow, tantalizing circles over my skin. And just like that, I’m feeling those things I never felt before with anyone but him. A buzz low in my abdomen, an inexplicable hunger. I want more than just his hand on my knee.

  He speaks in a low voice, and I’m not even sure what he’s saying. Something about how it’s okay to have a drink every once in a while. That his fiancé would drink them, at least. I nod, slowly, as a thought occurs to me.

  Is he trying to get me drunk?

  He leans in, brushes a lock of my hair off my shoulder, his finger lingering there, searing the flesh of my collarbone, then trailing back to my knee. And that’s when another thought occurs to me, as impossible as it might seem.

  He wants me.

  My heart is beating out of control as he continues to move on my thigh, those circles moving higher and higher. I part my legs slightly, welcoming it.

  I’ve never had anyone touch me there.

  But I want to.

  Oh, god, how I want to.

  I want him to take me to his home. I imagine he must have an extravagant place, with an extra-large bed, probably the size of my whole apartment. I imagine him easing me down onto that bed, kissing me, lifting the straps of my dress so that he bares my breasts. I imagine him taking one into his mouth his tongue circling the nipple, as he lowers my dress over my hips.

  Then I shudder visibly as he’s saying, “So let me get you that drink.”

  I shake my head. “I really should be going.” And then, so he won’t look any more alarmed, I yawn. “I’m just very tired.”

  I shift my knees away from him, and losing his touch almost sends a physical ache through my core. But I need to. It doesn’t stop him from diving for my hand and taking that.

  “That’s a shame,” he says, his voice low and controlled and so, so sexy. “Let me take you home.”

  I shake my head. I need to get away from him before I let him hypnotize me any more, rendering me completely unable to do anything but submit to him. Who knows what kind of things he could lure me into? “Oh, no. It’s okay. Public transportation is— “

  He’s already jabbing in a text to someone with one hand, holding mine firmly with the other. “Nonsense. My driver is nearby. Where do you live?”

  “Um. Lodi. Remember?”

  His lip curls up in distaste. I can tell he does not have love for anything Jersey. “Lodi. All right. I’ll have you home in half an hour,” he says with a cool smile. “My fiancé must have her beauty sleep.”

  His cloying, teasing words strike a chord in me that’s still vibrating, even when we’re outside, and a stretch limousine pulls up in front of the lounge. Without waiting for the driver, he opens the door for me and motions me inside.

  I climb in, lacking all the grace his supposed fiancé would. Likely, she’d be a woman who’d been climbing in and out of these cars all her life. But this is my first time.

  I sit on the massive leather seat, hoping not to let on how green I am, and he slides in beside me. “Lodi, Earl,” he says to the driver.

  Then he looks at me. “Address?”

  I tell the driver.

  And his hand snakes over and lands on my bare knee.

  “Goose bumps,” he remarks.

  I look down. Sure enough, there are a million. That’s not really a shocker to me.

  “Are you cold?”

  I shake my head. I can’t tell him what really caused those goose bumps is not the chill, but him. I’m thinking about those lips of his, kissing me. I’ve kissed before, but only twice. Both times, I was in high school, and it was awkward, first fumblings, no tongue involved, that never felt right, or natural, like this feeling blooming inside me now.

  Something tells me that when Max kisses, it will be the exact opposite of awkward. It’ll probably damn near kill me, those lips of his will be so good at it.

  And then I realize I’m talking about it in the future tense, like it’s just destined to happen.

  He leaves his hand on my knee for a long time. He pours himself a scotch and offers me one, but I decline. He drinks it as we sail over the George Washington Bridge toward home.

  We don’t talk much, but when the driver takes the exit for my hometown, he looks at me. “We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he says.

  It’s funny for him to say that, since we’d been so silent on the drive. I was happy about that, because I really couldn’t concentrate on conversation when his fingers were touching me. Maybe he, too, wanted to savor the feeling of me, beside him?

  I nod.

  “Tonight I’ll admit was premature. I’ve never done this before.” He looks at his drink and laughs. It’s the first laugh I’ve ever heard from him, a bitter, and not happy laugh. “But it was Dan’s first night in the city and I wanted him to know I was attached, to get it right out of the way before he could get any ideas.”

  His hand leaves my knee.

  “I want to meet with you. Wednesday. At night. Just the two of us. I’ll arrange somewhere in Lodi so it’s convenient for you, and pick you up. We’ll have dinner. And I can fill you in on us, a little more, so we can get our stories straight.”

  I nod. “That would be helpful.”

  He sighs, long and hard. “And I’ll get you a ring.”

  Whatever lust was in his eyes before, it’s gone. Now I can tell, he’s shifted. He’s thinking on his business. There’s a subtle crack, there, in his poised façade.

  He may not want a woman for longer than a night, but I think he’s not so made of stone as he would have people believe.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “No, thank you,” he says as we pull up at my apartment complex.

  He looks out the window at it. He must think it’s a shithole, because even I think that. He must wonder what the allure is of this place that I need to stay here. But if he does, he doesn’t let on.

  He says, “I’ll text you the details. Good night, Lily.”

  “Good night,” I tell him, as the driver opens the door and I step outside into the chilly night air.

  But even though the air is much cooler out here, my goose bumps? They’re gone. It seems that they only come out when Max is around.

  Max

  In the morning, I head to the office bright and early, intent on keeping things business as usual despite the absence of my father. I go to my father’s penthouse office, the one I’ve assumed as my own, and flip open my laptop. But before the sun even breaks between the city skyscrapers, I find myself staring out the window blankly, thinking of Lily.

  I’d moved up to my father’s office permanently when he went on hospice, and up there, now, in the vast space, I slog through a bunch of contracts and put out a number of fires. I should be thinking of how Lily and I are going to be convince my father to let me have this studded leather chair permanently, but instead, I’m dwelling on things that have no bearing on my future.

  The curve of her back, to her full ass.

  The bare, soft skin of her legs.

  The swell of her tits in that lethal dress.

  It had taken all my restraint last night to prevent myself from lunging across the limousine, taking her in my arms, and tasting those sweet red lips. Though I try to keep my mind on the business, I can think of a thousand different ways of defiling that hot virgin body of hers, and by lunchtime, my cock is pressed against my pants.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve never had that happen before, getting hot a
nd bothered about a woman without a clear outlet for getting what I want. If Lily was a normal woman, I’d simply tell her what I wanted, and it would happen. I’ve never found a woman to be unwilling.

  But Lily? Not only do I get the feeling she’d be unwilling. She’s disgusted by me. I have this urge to prove myself to her, something I’ve never felt before.

  As I’m slipping into yet another fantasy about her, someone knocks on my door. I look up to see Seth. “How’d it go?” he asks me.

  “Fine,” I say distantly. I hope that I can pass my distracted look off as being absorbed in whatever contract I’m poring over, but Seth is too smart to fall for that.

  He gives me a smirk as he looks over the contract. “Fuck the Buehler contracts. I’m talking about the club. Spill.”

  Seth can be about as gossipy as a twelve-year old girl. I shrug.

  “Let me guess. You went home alone.”

  I drop my pen, remove my glasses, cross my arms, and lean back in my father’s chair. “No, not exactly,” I say simply.

  His jaw drops. “The fuck you say?” He moves around the chairs opposite the desk and makes himself comfortable. He wants the full story, and Seth is not one to give up until he’s gotten what he wants. That’s why he’s our number-two dealmaker, after me. He stares, expectantly. “You bid?”

  I nod.

  “And . . .?”

  “I won,” I say, as if it’s no big deal. “Besides, when do you know me to ever go home alone? Or not win?”

  He nods, conceding. “So tell me. Who is she?”

  He knows I’m not one to fuck and tell. Not that I’d done much—or any of that, this weekend. But I figure he does deserve an explanation, especially since he’s the one who took me to the Suitors Club. Besides, it’ll give me an opportunity to think of Lily again, and not these goddamn contracts. I open my phone, flip to the app, and type in her name. When her profile comes up, I push the phone over to him.

  He studies the picture. “One million dollars, huh?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “I don’t recall seeing her there.” He pages through the profile a bit and then pushes the phone back to me, eyebrows raised. “Virgin, huh?”

  I nod.

  “She’s cute, if you like that kind of thing, I guess. So how was it?”

  I suck in a breath. Obviously I know what he’s asking, but I don’t want to hear his reaction when I tell him the answer. “How was what?”

  “You know.” He crosses his arms and puts his feet up, crossed at the ankle, on my dad’s giant desk. “You know. I can’t say I’m one for virgins. Too much work. I’m not a teacher. Was she tight?”

  “I told you,” I say, avoid eye contact with him. “That’s not why I was there.”

  “Wait.” He drops his feet to the hardwood floor with a massive, jarring bang. He’s staring at me like he just saw a ghost. “You paid a million dollars for this woman, and you didn’t fuck her?”

  I nod, then pile the contracts up on the blotter. Mid-day, and I still haven’t gotten through a single one of them. “That’s right.”

  I might as well just announced that I like men. “What the—“

  “That’s not what this was about,” I say, quietly and pointedly. “I need a woman to play my fiancé for these next few months. I don’t want to sleep with her. I can sleep with any woman I choose.”

  “Well, choose her!” he says like I’m a moron. “You paid a million dollars for her! Get some return on your investment!”

  “Fuck, Seth, keep it down,” I tell him as I look out the open door. The office is vast and my father’s secretary, Blanche, is over seventy and hard of hearing, but the last thing I need anyone to know is that I put a million dollars down on this.

  I go over, close the heavy door, and turn to him. “What do you think would happen, if I fucked her?” I say. “She falls for me, inevitably. She falls for me, and I can’t cut her loose, and then I find out she’s spilled the whole thing to Dan and my father as some kind of revenge scheme. I can’t risk that.”

  He rolls his eyes and throws up his hands. “Fine. But why pay top price for a virgin, then, dude? You could’ve gone for a bargain.”

  I give him an odd look, and he nods, understanding. Max Winchester always goes top of the line. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “bargain”. Besides, not a single woman in that place, virgin or not, compared.

  “Right,” he says. “But geez. I think you’re the first man who’s ever gone to the Suitors Club and played the gentleman. And pardon me for saying, you are far from a gentleman, bro.”

  I can’t argue with that. I lean back in my chair. Rays of summer sunlight, up ahead, are slashing through the window, telling me I’ve drained half the day thinking about Lily. It’s fucking pathetic. When have I ever done that before? “How was your night?”

  He grins. “Cherry—that’s her name—was just like you said. Completely vacant.” He pumps his fist. “It. Was. Fucking. Unbelievable.”

  I have to laugh.

  “She’s like a gymnast, so the things she could do with her body . . .” He whistles. “Defies gravity, and a bunch of other laws of nature. She did a split . . . on my face.”

  “I’m glad it was so good for you.” I try to project enthusiasm, but something inside me has hollowed out. Maybe I should have just taken Lily for what she offered, and been done with it. But Lily had been clearly terrified of sex, that first day I met her. She’d been relieved when I told her that wasn’t the bargain. I wasn’t just going to force myself on her. That wasn’t my style.

  Seth and I say our goodbyes, and after a long afternoon behind the desk, Earl takes me to my apartment. Fuck Dan and his assertions that limousines are too expensive. They’re part of the fabric of who I am, and I don’t do cabs.

  Hell, most women were impressed by my car. I’d been secretly hoping it would get me some points in Lily’s book. After all, I can’t even count how many times I took a woman in there, put up the partition, and really gave a woman the ride of her life.

  But not Lily. She looked as though she could care less.

  No, something tells me it will take a lot more than money to impress her.

  Usually, my touch did something to the opposite sex. And it had, with Lily . . . possibly. There were goose bumps. But she’d been stiff, unresponsive, when I tried to take it further. I could see . . . not disgust, but definite hesitancy in her eyes.

  Well, she was a virgin. Maybe she didn’t know how to act.

  Maybe she needs someone to show her.

  I need to make a bold move. I need to take the first step, and lead the way.

  What the fuck am I thinking? I can’t. She’s my fake fiancé, emphasis on fake. I need her to secure my business. In fact, of all the woman in this city, she’s the one I shouldn’t have. I get involved with a woman, she gets the idea we’re together. She gets that idea, the second she sees me with another woman, she gets jealous. She gets jealous, she’s more likely to do crazy things.

  Like blow this scheme wide open.

  No, I have to stop this.

  I take the elevator to my penthouse apartment. Dan would have a field day with this place, considering that the rent on this place alone is probably higher than what he pays per year for his mortgage in California.

  Yes, I have expensive tastes. Yes, I like the best. Not settling is a good thing.

  And maybe that’s why Lily is so alluring to me. She doesn’t strike me as the type who will settle either. She will only take exactly what she wants.

  And it’s going to be me.

  No. It can’t be me.

  The elevator stops at the top floor and opens into an expansive foyer with white walls and dark, wide-planked wooden floors. I walk out to a large, all-stainless kitchen that I never use, and a living room with twenty-foot ceilings and a massive stone fireplace that centers the entire thing. Despite everything being white, with expansive windows overlooking the Hudson, the place has never looked so cold and dark.
>
  I’m fucking horny.

  No, I’m not just horny. Everywhere I look, I imagine Lily. Lounging on my white sofa. Spreading her legs on my kitchen counters. Spreading her luscious body on the thick white carpet in front of the fireplace.

  God. What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve only just met her. She shouldn’t even be on my mind. And yet, I’ve blown an entire day, thinking of her.

  I sound like a pussy.

  This is nothing that can’t be solved by another woman. I’ll get dressed, and go downstairs. There is a woman on the fortieth floor, Evangeline, who is always happy when I stop by. Evangeline is married, but her husband is almost always traveling. She is easy, and hot, and no-commitment. I have several women in the city like her, but right now, she’s the most convenient. And I need something. I need something before I do something insane.

  I text her: You alone?

  A moment later: Sorry, he just came back from Singapore.

  Shit. As I run frantically through my other options, she adds, where were you last night? I really could have used you then.

  I start thinking of just where I was, last night. Getting the hardon of my life with my fake fiancé.

  I scroll through the other options on my phone, but even though there are plenty, I find fault with every one. One’s too far away. One talks too much. One will want to spend the night. A sour feeling starts to bloom in my stomach.

  Then I scroll up to one name, and my finger hovers over it: Lily.

  I click it. I wish I could see her now. But that’s not possible. I told her Wednesday, and Wednesday it is.

  Then I type in: Wednesday at 8. The limo will pick you up.

  A moment later: K

  That’s all. Just one letter. I’d wanted a word, at least. No, I want more. I told myself that because I hired her, I need to treat her like an employee, brusque and business-like. But as much as I told her that wasn’t what this is about, it’s too easy to breach that line, to want to go to that original, sinful first proposition, that was all about sex.

  But really? K. That’s it? Unlike me, she seems to understand this is all business.