by Holly Hart
Yet again, my driver breaks his silence. For a man who was grumpy as hell when I climbed into his cab, he sure likes to chat. “I’m Goldie, by the way. They call me that because of the rings.”
He takes his hand off the wheel and waggles four fingers and a thumb that are encrusted with gold rings at me. “You like ‘em?”
“Sure,” I reply.
“So who is this guy, huh?” Goldie grunts. “He cheat on you or somethin’? Or are you one of those sugar babies I’ve been reading about.”
“What?”
“Sugar babies,” he grunts again. You don’t need to be offended or nothing. I know how it is. Girl’s gotta make a living.”
I shake my head. “No, I just don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Goldie pauses for a second, indicates left and turns with Charlie’s limousine. At this time of night the streets are quiet. The traffic thins out, making it harder to follow without being caught. Still, it sets my mind at ease; I don’t see any evidence of other cars turning with us.
I sit up straight, eyes narrowing. I know where we’re heading: the Bronx.
Now why the hell would Charlie want to come here?
“Ladies,” Goldie starts.
He glances at me in the mirror, and I can’t tell whether he admires what he sees. I know I’m not exactly dressed to impress. “Who like to maintain a certain standard ‘o livin’, if you know what I mean.”
His meaning began to dawn on me. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“Ack, don’t be like that. I ain’t saying you screwing the guy or nothing; nothing wrong with it anyway. Like I said; girl’s gotta make a living.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t make mine on my back,” I mutter, flustered.
Goldie laughs. “Ain’t no shame in it, girl. I make mine sitting on my ass, don’t I? Hell, if I could do it on my back on silk sheets, maybe I would. Hold up –”
At first I’m just relieved that my driver has given up talking about me selling my body for cash. Maybe I’m only this happy about it because his comments hit so close to home.
But then I glance up.
The change in Goldie’s tone hits home – even if it is slightly delayed. I feel the tired, old yellow cab’s engine cough, and a rattle transmitted through the chassis and right up into my ass cheeks. The car slows, and bounces over a pothole that feels big enough to swallow both cars up.
“He’s stopping,” Goldie says.
The big man with the gold on his fingers swivels in his seat as he brings the cab’s protestations to a halt and kills the lights. As he turns, I notice his neck is ringed with golden ornaments as well.
“You sure you’re going to be all right around here?” He asks. “Pretty bad neighborhood for a pretty girl like you…”
I ignore Goldie’s mild chauvinism, and his insinuation that if I wasn’t a pretty girl, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t even take issue with his calling me pretty. I know he only means well.
“Where are we?” I ask quietly, as if Charlie might be able to hear me.
My eyes flicker around the dark neighborhood. Half the streetlights are out, and the other half look like they need their bulbs replaced: throwing out dull, useless light.
“Woodlawn,” he replies. He lowers his voice as well. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a cop move. “The Bronx: it’s an Irish neighborhood.”
I watch, transfixed, as Charlie’s limousine’s passenger door opens, and he steps out. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his eyes. The drawstring cords are cinched tight – he’s barely recognizable. I wonder if that’s his intention.
“Irish,” I whisper.
I don’t know why, but that word rings a bell. Something Charlie said, maybe. But no sooner does the thought enter into my mind, than it’s gone. I curse my useless brain.
“I didn’t catch that,” Goldie says.
I don’t reply. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out forty bucks and change. “Keep it,” I mutter, kicking the door open and stumbling out into the cool night breeze. Goldie’s worried protestations for my safety die the second I slam the door closed.
The Bronx smells like you imagine a city should smell: of fryer oil carried by the wind, and rotting food round the back of a Chinese restaurant. It sounds like one, as well. I hear sirens, and the incoherent mumbling of drunks stumbling down the sidewalk.
Most other women would be terrified here. I kind of like it. It reminds me of where I grew up in Brooklyn.
My heart beat thuds in my chest. I have that bitter taste of adrenaline on the back of my tongue. My face scrunches up as I try to wash it away.
I stick to the shadows as I follow Charlie. The limousine’s parked exactly where he left it. I wouldn’t want to be the driver; not in a neighborhood like this. I don’t give that fancy car ten minutes before someone puts a brick through the windshield. What the hell’s Charlie thinking?
Charlie walks to an underpass. He slows as he approaches an old, beaten-up van. I watch as he pulls his hands out of his pockets.
What are you doing?
Conspiracy theories flood my mind. Charlie must be coming here to buy drugs, or else inside information – or something –
– anything, in fact, except the real explanation.
He makes a fist and bashes the rear panel three times, hard. The sound reverberates around the neighborhood, echoing around the underpass’s walls.
“Hey, Tommy,” he shouts – though I swear his voice is suddenly New York Irish. “It’s your brother: time to get to work.”
Curiouser and curiouser.
The van’s rear doors open from inside and swing out, missing Charlie’s nose by inches.
“You’re late,” a man grunts. I inch forward, straining my ears to make out the conversation.
“I had… Business to attend to,” Charlie says.
Business – He means me.
“Sure you did,” Tommy says. Charlie’s brother, Tommy. I didn’t even know he had one.
“Where is everyone else?” Charlie asks, hopping into the van. Both men disappeared into blackness. I hear rummaging, then the thud of something heavy falling against the van’s metal floor.
“Careful, asshole,” Tommy chuckles. “This shit doesn’t pay for itself…”
I can almost hear Charlie rolling his eyes. “No. I do…”
Both men back out with wheeled trolleys, stacked high with cardboard boxes and… Cabbages?
I blink twice, just to be absolutely certain I’m not making this up. It’s been a long night. But no, I’m right. Charlie’s come out to the Bronx to wheel cabbages around with his brother.
I stay thirty yards back, following the two men as they disappear around the side of a railway bridge. I’m barely breathing. I feel like I’m going to get jumped at any second. I slow down before I round the corner, and notice light flickering on the brick wall of an abandoned factory.
Fire light.
I stick my head round the corner, inching forward so I don’t get caught.
Never in a million years would I have guessed what I see. Charlie’s walking into a homeless encampment, Mary as you like. Old, rusted oil barrels – four of them – provide the light, and act as makeshift barbecues.
“No way,” I mouth silently to myself.
I can’t hear what he’s saying from this distance, but I watch as Charlie waves to an older, white-haired man. He looks up, and then hugs Charlie, almost like a…
… father.
I don’t know how much longer I stay there. Half an hour? An hour? Maybe more. Time doesn’t seem to matter. Not now.
I watch as Charlie, and what appears to be his foster family, unpack huge cardboard crates of food, and start to cook full meals. I watch as he ladles out portions, and then goes around chatting to different families in turn, even to the old guys sitting alone.
Shit, I even watch as he grabs toys from a pack and hands them to a family with kids.
I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake
. Even now, I expected the worst from Charlie Thorne, when all he’s shown me is the goodness inside him.
I stumble away, hot tears filling my eyes. I reach for my phone. I compose a text through blurred eyes.
To Robbie.
“It’s over.”
109
Penny
The next couple of days are different.
It’s like Charlie and I finally relax around each other. We become… an “US”. I don’t know what’s behind his change in attitude, but my own reasons are clear enough. I can’t keep thinking the worst of him – not after I watched the goodness.
I went straight back home, ignoring Robbie’s increasingly irritated texts: her demands to meet up: immediately. I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to whip my addled brain into some sort of shape.
I feigned sleep when Charlie returned, as the dawn light tickled the sky. I pretended not to notice when he kissed me on the forehead, showered, then lay down next to me.
Still, I can’t help but feel that this is the calm before the storm. No matter what happens, everything is going to change. Everything is going to change because Tilly is just hours away from returning from England. I don’t know if the change will be for good or bad, but I know it’s coming.
“Hey, angel,” Charlie says on the second day.
He puts his paper down and rests it on the mottled black marble top of the kitchen island. He’s wearing a perfectly-tailored, slim fitting gray suit that looks like it was sprayed onto his rippling muscles. The kitchen top is stacked high with newspapers and breakfast items: blueberries, strawberries, blackberries – hell, every type of berry you can imagine.
“Don’t call me that,” I pout, sticking out my tongue. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough,” Charlie grins. “OJ?”
“I just brushed my teeth,” I groan.
I mean it, too.
I don’t know where Charlie’s getting these oranges flown in from, but I’ve never tasted any orange juice like it. One of the little perks of being a multi-billionaire, I guess. Like silk sheets that are almost enough in their own right to send me into orgasmic delight when they brush across my body. Like chefs who rustle up Michelin star cooking at every meal and maids who keep the penthouse shining, but who are never seen.
I walk toward Charlie, sashaying my hips and placing one foot in front of the other like I’m living a perfume commercial.
He licks his lips, watching me approach. “Did I ever tell you how hot you are?” he groans.
I walk right up next to Charlie, slowing my pace as I finally reach him. I lean in and nuzzle my face against his. “Once or twice,” I whisper. I nibble his earlobe. “But it doesn’t get old.”
Charlie pushes his stool out a few inches, and I hop up onto his lap. His thigh is tight and firm underneath me.
I giggle. “Just pleased to see me, or is that…”
“It can be, if you want it to,” Charlie growls. I close my eyes, just as a heat starts to bloom on my cheeks.
“I’m not –” I whisper, tipping my head back as Charlie kisses at my open neck.
“– ready, I know,” he growls. “I saw the way you waddled over…”
My eyes spring open, and I turn to face him with outrage burning in them. “What did you just say?”
A broad grin pushes across Charlie’s face. “I told you; you wouldn’t walk straight for a week,” he winks.
Charlie Thorne’s humor kills me.
In truth, I like it. He’s got a happy-go-lucky, lackadaisical attitude to the world. Even when he’s stressed, he doesn’t change. He doesn’t withdraw from the world like so many other men; he confronts his problems straight on.
I wiggle in my seat: his lap. I press my ass right up against Charlie’s cock. It’s thick and firm, but not erect.
Not yet, anyway.
I bite my lip and flutter my eyelashes, sucking Charlie into my blue doe eyes. He’s a sucker for them, and a sucker for that look.
“You like that?” I croon.
Charlie tries to keep his poker face on, but the muscles in his cheeks flinch, betraying the pleasure I’m inflicting on him.
I say inflicting because that’s exactly what I’m doing. Charlie Thorne is about to find out that his wife’s no pushover.
I hold the marble island for support and hike my ass up, so it’s pressed more against Charlie’s thick, flat stomach than anywhere else. He groans with disappointment.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I say. “I’m not done.”
I see myself in a plate glass window reflection. It’s like looking through someone else’s eyes. I want to stop and ask what happened to the naïve, innocent Penny I was only a couple of days ago. I wonder if that’s all changed, or whether this Penny was in there the whole time, just waiting for an opportunity to escape.
I reach down.
I place my hand on Charlie’s right thigh and extend my fingernails. I feel his hot, heavy breath on my neck. I feel how it catches when I shift the position of my ass, read his excitement through the stiffness of his body like a long-lost alphabet.
“How’s work, baby?” I ask. I artificially make my voice higher-pitched, younger, somehow: like a bimbo. I play into the sexy secretary fantasy.
“Work’s… It’s great, honey,” Charlie groans.
I walk my fingers up his inner thigh, scraping my fingernails against the soft fabric of his woolen pants.
Now I feel Charlie’s cock thicken underneath me. I feel it pressing into my ass. I feel him shift on his stool and press it against me. A wicked smile creeps across my face.
Men.
When it comes down to it, they are all the same.
Still, I can’t help but marvel in the power I have over Charlie Thorne right now. I have no doubt, that if I ask, he’d sign away the rights to all of his businesses in return for the touch of my lips on his burning cock. Lucky for him, I’m not that kind of girl.
Not anymore.
“You sure, honey?” I ask, putting the voice on once again. “You sure you’re not stressed? You sure there’s nothing I can do to…” I turn and lick my lips. I flutter my eyelashes once again, for good measure. “… Make you feel better?”
“Oh, my God,” Charlie pants, “Penny – you’re something else.”
This time, my smile is utterly genuine. I hide it, though. I’m not giving into Charlie’s charms. Not this time. I’ve got another plan on my mind.
“I know.”
My hand walks the last few inches down his inner thigh, and I press it against his cock. I feel a shiver running through Charlie’s entire body. His thighs tense, and he loops one of his thick, muscular arms around me, clenching me tight to his body. I giggle.
“You like that?”
Charlie’s mouth goes dry. I know it does because I hear him swallow before he speaks. “God, yes,” he says in a voice that’s hoarse with desire.
I massage his cock. I feel it stiffening until it can’t get any harder, can’t get any thicker. His heat burns through the fabric of his pants. It burns so hard I’m almost tempted to give up on my plan and undress him right here and now.
I bite my lip to regain control over myself.
“Shame…” I whisper.
“What is?” He groans.
“Shame that I can’t,” I turn my head and flash him a wicked grin. “Walk straight…”
I shift forward, remove my hand from around Charlie’s cock and rest my elbows on the marble unit. I don’t have to look around to see the look of shock as realization dawns on Charlie’s face. I feel it. I feel it in the way his body deflates like a popped balloon.
I feel it in the way he presses his cock against me with one last, hopeful – but ultimately doomed – attempt.
“So, what’s for breakfast?”
“Forget what I said,” Charlie pants. He leans forward and bangs his head against my back with disappointment. I laugh.
I reach forward and grab the corner
of the newspaper, smoothing it out, and folding it back to the front page.
“Charlie,” I say, games forgotten. “You’re –.”
“On the front page of the New York Times,” he says. “I know.”
The headline blares: Thorne in Thicket, like the Times has turned into a tabloid rag. My eyes scan the sub- headlines in the first few paragraphs of the story. I don’t have to delve deeper into it to understand exactly what’s going on.
“Landon,” I say. I slipped off Charlie’s lap and land lightly on my feet. I feel heavy, though; heavy with apprehension. “He’s behind this, isn’t he?”
Charlie nods. His dark hair is slightly curly today, as though all he did after getting out of bed was run his fingers through it. Actually, knowing him, that’s probably exactly what happened.
“He’s shorting Thorne Enterprises’ stock. Down 15% already since the markets opened this morning.”
“What’s going on?”
“The merger –” Charlie says with quiet fury. I doubt many people would even know he was angry, but I do. I see the telltale signs: the tightening of his cheeks, the fact his lips turn into thin, white lines on his face.
“Hostile takeover,” he says, correcting himself. “It’s happening.”
My eyes pass over the rest of the kitchen. Newspapers are stacked three high further down the marble. I feel like I’m in an old TV show – and Charlie’s the man of the house, leafing through the news on a Sunday afternoon.
The topmost of the newspapers is the Wall Street Journal. I can’t make out the headline, but Charlie’s portrait on the front cover is impossible to miss.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
I feel like everything’s happening in slow motion; like I’m walking through quicksand. Somehow, though, Charlie doesn’t seem as affected as me; even though it’s his company!
He looks at me, forehead furrowing for an instant before he states what – to him, at least – seems like the most obvious plan in the world.
“Fight, of course.”
Charlie steps up from out of his stool. His woolen pants bunch around his thick muscular thighs, and he smooths them down.
