by Cynthia Sax
I close my eyes, trusting him to protect me. He says he’ll watch over me, and Blaine always keeps his promises.
Chapter Three
BLAINE WAKES ME before dawn. He has to return to the office again. The company he’s buying in New York is under some sort of government investigation. He assures me there’s no risk of prison time, my technology billionaire having already spent some time in the slammer for hacking during his formative college years.
I shower quickly in the waterfall and return to the Leighs’ bungalow, carrying my new phone. Blaine asked me to keep it turned on but I am determined not to use it. I’ve heard the horror stories about huge phone bills and I can’t afford any more expenses.
I take extra care with my appearance, knowing I have an interview this evening. I don’t have a choice of outfits, my oversized white blouse, roomy black dress pants, and matching flat-heeled shoes my sole serviceable ensemble, but I ensure that the blouse and pants are neatly pressed and my shoes are shiny. I spend extra time on my hair, styling it until the brown tresses fall down my back in perfectly straight lines.
Satisfied, I head out the front door. As I struggle with the finicky lock, I notice a plastic bag hanging on the stainless steel door handle. This biodegradable white bag contains a sample package of hazelnut chocolate spread and a tiny box of organic whole wheat crackers. I put both in my tote, the marketing fairies having solved my lack of lunch problem.
The sky is gray, the sun covered by clouds, and the humidity high. I fear for my hair, frizz being its natural state, and my smile is forced as I pay my bus fare. The driver grumbles something I can’t understand and shakes his head. I sit beside a woman who speaks rapid-fire Spanish into her phone. All around me other passengers are talking on their phones.
I take my phone out of my tote and glance at the screen. I have a message. I tap on the tiny envelope. Blaine has sent me the address to his office, including instructions of whom to contact when I arrive.
Although the message is short and businesslike, I gaze at it for the rest of the bus ride, giving the appearance I am as connected and as important as the other passengers. It is a lie but that’s what I do—I lie to everyone except for Blaine.
The tiny strip of grass in front of Feed Your Hungry’s office has mysteriously died over the weekend, the turf brown and dusty. Some maintenance employee will be getting fired today. If the job with Blaine doesn’t work out, replacing this inept employee is another moneymaking possibility.
As I enter the former family home, the rapidly texting receptionist ignores me, her pink polished fingernails flying over the tiny keys. I pick up the list of past donors I’ll call today, the goal being to arrange a precious meet and greet.
On Friday the donors on my list had all donated within the past year. Today the donors on my list have donated within the past decade. My mood darkens even more, my odds of success decreasing.
I hurry down the narrow hallway and push through the doors of doom, moving from the new front extension to the original section of the converted house. The temperature rises dramatically, fixing the broken air conditioner not one of Feed Your Hungry’s priorities. The wall colors change from freshly painted beige to chipped gray. The carpet loses inches of padding. The lights dim, the fluorescent bulbs flickering.
I enter the area we call the pit. Metal folding tables are lined up in rows. Flesh-colored telephones are set before each rock-hard seat. There’s a new big breasted blonde reigning over the front row. As her coworkers dial for dollars, she files her already perfect nails.
I wander to the back row and sit down. Goth girl, my new friend, curls her black-lipstick-covered lips, flashing her white teeth at me, her version of a smile. She’s managed to fit her headset over her giant green Mohawk and is speaking in a surprisingly human tone to one of the donors. She’s clad in her usual black leather corset, short full skirt, ripped mesh tights, and clunky army boots.
I set my tote on the frayed gray carpet and plug in my headset. I dial and dial and dial. No one is home. No one is home. I don’t speak English. No one is home. Voice mail. Stop bothering me.
I wish I could stop bothering people but bothering people is my job. My fingertips grow numb. My brain falls asleep. I’m cursed at in Spanish and German and an Asian language I can’t place. A receiver is slammed down and my ears ring.
Fifteen minutes before noon Michael Cooke swaggers into the room. He passes his office, a perk earned by landing two meet and greets, and heads toward me. Today he has paired his usual khaki pants and Birkenstocks with a sky blue short-sleeve shirt. The color matches his eyes perfectly.
I stare at him. I can’t help it. The man is obscenely good looking, his blond hair glowing under the fluorescent lights, his features classic, timeless.
“Hey kiddo.” Michael smiles at me as though we haven’t shared a kiss, as though I hadn’t rejected him on Friday. “What are you doing for lunch?”
“She brings her lunch and eats it here,” Goth girl answers for me. “Not all of us have a silver spoon stuck up our asses.”
Michael’s face flushes bright pink. “I wasn’t talking to you, rebel for a cause.” His gaze lowers to Goth girl’s creamy cleavage. Her breasts threaten to spill out of her tight corset, her nipples barely covered by the black leather. “And I said nothing about going out.”
Michael returns his attention to me. “Would you mind if I join you?” He smiles widely, displaying perfectly straight teeth and an engaging dimple in one cheek. I blink, dazzled by the male beauty of his face.
“Yes, we mind,” Goth girl replies.
“No, we don’t mind if you join us.” I slide my gaze to her. She shakes her head, her Mohawk rattling. I widen my eyes, silently pleading with her to stop giving Michael such a rough time.
Goth girl sighs and her big breasts heave, attracting her nemesis’s gaze. “All right. You can join us since you don’t have your own friends.”
“They went to Napa for the weekend.” Michael glares at her. Goth girl glares back. Currents of energy crackle through the musty air, raising the short hairs on the back of my neck. “I’ll be back.” He pivots on his Birkenstock-clad heels and stomps away.
“Okay, dialinator.” Goth girl salutes his broad shoulders. She grins at me, light reflecting off the silver piercing in her bottom lip. “This will be fun.” She hops to her feet, her big black boots thumping against the floor. “You need to warm up your food, Moth?”
“No.” My face heats, my lunch consisting of crackers and a chocolate-hazelnut spread. “But can you bring me a knife and a paper napkin from the kitchen?”
“Sure thing.” Goth girl struts in that direction, her skirt flouncing with each defiant step.
I refill my water bottle from the station in the corner and place my measly lunch on the table. It looks pathetic even to my eyes. I open the box of crackers, hoping to spread them out on the cardboard. Three thin squares tumble into my palm.
There’s nothing more I can do. I can’t buy lunch. All of the money I have left is allocated to bus fare. I sigh. I really need this job at Blaine’s office.
I look at my new phone. Not a single scratch mars the screen’s smooth surface. There aren’t any new messages. I scroll through the apps, expecting them to be business related. There are two games—solitaire and pinball. I grin, my entertainment options having expanded.
The phone vibrates in my palm and a message pops up. It’s from Blaine, no one else having my phone number.
“What are you wearing, nymph?”
He’s sexting me. My hardworking billionaire must be sitting in one of his endless meetings, surrounded by men and women in serious dark suits talking about sales growth and expansions. Except Blaine isn’t thinking about sales growth. He’s thinking about me, about what he’d like to do to my body, how he’d like to touch me, kiss me, fuck me. A thrill skitters down my spine.
“I’m wearing my white blouse and black pants. I don’t have a lot of clothes.” I answer truthfully. M
y outfit isn’t sexy but I don’t lie to Blaine.
“And underneath?”
I picture Blaine tapping on the screen with his callused fingertips, his phone hidden under the boardroom table. Is he hard? Are his dress pants tented around his erection? Does he need me as much as I need him?
“The bra you gave me.” I hunch over as I type, hiding the words from my co-workers. “And the white cotton eyelet panties.” I glance around me. No one looks my way. “You can see everything.”
There’s a long pause. Is he imagining me with my legs spread, my brown curls and pink pussy lips visible through the eyelets in my panties? I shift in my seat, my nipples taut and aching for his touch. Will he unzip his pants, take out his big cock and stroke himself while his employees sit around the same table, blissfully unaware of his activities?
“Are you wet?”
I wiggle, my cheeks heating and my panties soaked. “I am now.” Only Blaine makes me this wet and only Blaine can arouse me with mere words. “I’d be slick and hot and tight around you.”
“You are around me,” he shares. “I’m inside you, filling you, stretching you.”
“How are you taking me?” I hunger for details, hunger for him.
“From behind,” Blaine answers quickly as though he fantasizes frequently about fucking me. “In front of a mirror so we can both watch.”
I’ll be positioned on my hands and knees, at his mercy, as he drives into me, shaking my body with the strength of his thrusts. “You’ll cup my breasts with your hands.” He’ll squeeze my nipples with his fingers, the pain sharpening my pleasure. “Taking me hard.” Blaine will slam his hips against my ass, thrusting hard and deep, forcing me to take every delectable inch of him. Skin will slap against skin, the burn delectable. I’ll pant and he’ll grunt, the sounds of sex filling the space.
“I’ll take you as hard as you wish,” Blaine assures me.
I want Blaine to take me as hard as he wishes. I want him to lose control and fuck me like a man possessed, owning my body with each thrust. “Will you fill me with your cum?” His essence will drip down my inner thighs, scenting the air.
“I’ll wait until you come first, your pussy tightening around me,” Blaine types. “And then I’ll join you, giving you everything I have, showing you all of me.”
He’ll plunge into my body and roar my name, proclaiming to the world I’m his. I moan softly and a brunette seated in the row in front of me turns her head, narrows her eyes. I bite my bottom lip, swallowing my torment. “Blaine, I need to go to the bathroom and touch myself.”
“Do NOT touch yourself.” His reply is immediate and I tremble, Blaine’s dominance exciting me. “Wait for me.”
I press my thighs together, fighting to control my desire. “I’m not ready for more than touching,” I confess. I trust Blaine more than I’ve ever trusted anyone yet even this trust isn’t enough to push past my fear.
“I know, nymph. We’ll touch and that’s all.”
We’ll touch. I’ll touch him also, stroke his shaft, cup his balls. Will he allow me to taste him, to lick his pre-cum, to take him deep inside my mouth, to suck him dry?
“Be a good girl, Anna.” I hear Blaine’s deep voice in my mind as I read his text. “I’ll be watching you.”
I glare down at the small screen. He’ll be watching me die of sexual frustration. I squirm in my hard chair, uncomfortably aroused. There are no more messages, my merciless businessman having incited my lust and then abandoned me to suffer alone.
As I breathe in and breathe out, I scan my list of donors once more, cold reality dousing some of my desire. I fiddle with my phone, spinning it on the tabletop, round and round. I need to land another meet and greet soon.
“Did you get a booty call from your Mr. Blaine?” Goth girl plunks a plate of red curry and white rice on the table beside me. The nosy girl in the row in front of us sniffs loudly and complains about smelly foods in common areas.
I inhale the tantalizing spices and my stomach rumbles. I wrap my arms around me, trying to muffle the embarrassing noise.
“He isn’t my Mr. Blaine,” I whisper, not wanting Michael or anyone else to overhear our discussion. “And it isn’t like that,” I lie. It is exactly like that.
“What’s it like, Moth?” Goth girl lowers her voice also, sliding a white plastic knife and a neatly folded paper napkin to me. “Does he keep you tied up in his dungeon?” She tugs on the silver studded collar encircling her neck. “Paddle your ass red when you’re bad? Whip you until you scream with pleasure. ‘Oh, yes, Mr. Blaine, sir.’ ” She mimics my voice.
I stare at her, my new friend having a colorful imagination. “That only happens in books.” Didn’t it? I swivel in my seat, acutely aware of how limited my sexual experiences are. What if Blaine asks to do those things to me?
Goth girl laughs. “Clearly, BDSM isn’t Gabriel Blaine’s kink.” She drops her gaze to my plain black flats, the same shoes I wear to work every day. “And he doesn’t have a shoe fetish. Does he make you play dress-up?”
He likes to watch me as I masturbate. I avoid Goth girl’s curious gaze. “He’s a normal man.” I give her the answer I think she expects.
“Are you tormenting my friend, Camille?” Michael pulls a chair toward the table and sits down, facing us. His knee presses against mine. My body rejoices, needing touch, while my mind rebels, Michael not the man I want. I move my leg, giving him more space.
He called me his friend. Are we friends now? I tilt my head and study him, part of me—a primal feminine part—perturbed that he has gotten over me so quickly. Michael places a fast food container on the metal tabletop, liquid dampening the bottom of the cardboard box.
“She’s my friend to torment.” Goth girl lifts a forkful of delicious-smelling curry to her painted black lips.
I glance down at my much smaller lunch. I’m aroused and ravenous, my stomach twisting with hunger. I nibble on the edge of one cracker, forcing myself to eat slowly, seeking to match their consumption.
Michael flips the cracker box over. “This is the same brand I saw Juanita eating this morning.”
My face approaches the surface temperature of the sun. “Is Juanita your sister?” I ask, seeking to draw attention away from my pitiful lunch.
“Juanita is our maid,” Michael replies. Goth girl snorts, and he scowls, opening the restaurant container. Tofu squares and vegetables are tossed over yellow round noodles. Ginger and other spices tease my nostrils.
My stomach growls again and Michael chuckles. “It tastes as good as it smells.” He twirls his fork around some noodles and holds it out to me. “Try it.”
“I’m fine.” I wave one of my hands. My stomach protests, the embarrassing noise growing even louder.
“One bite, kiddo.” Michael moves the fork nearer.
“One bite.” I capitulate, unable to resist the sight and smell. I extract the noodles with my teeth. Flavor bursts in my mouth. I close my eyes and hum, chewing thoroughly, leisurely, savoring the experience.
“I think she likes it.” Goth girl laughs. “Have a drink of water and a bite of your cracker. Cleanse your palette.” I reluctantly follow her instructions, washing the taste from my mouth and nibbling on a corner of the whole wheat wafer. “Now, try this.” She holds out a forkful of curry.
I hesitate, knowing what is expected of me next. I don’t have anything to offer them, only the same brand of cracker Michael’s servant ate.
Goth girl waves the fork dangerously close to my left eye. I surrender to temptation and heat flushes over my tongue, the burn accentuating the other spices. Oh Lord. I moan. This is what heaven tastes like.
“And the winner is?” Goth girl demands.
“I couldn’t possibly choose,” I protest. “They’re both so good.”
“You’re saying his restaurant-bought veggie delight is as good as my homemade curry?” Goth girl glares at me, her mood changing at a head-spinning speed. “Give me a bite, pretty boy.” She swigs down water.
I break her off a piece of cracker, happy to have something to contribute.
“Since you asked so nicely.” Michael holds out some noodles. “Don’t leave an oil slick all over my fork.” Goth girl’s eyes flash and she sucks on the metal tongs, blackening the finish. “That is disgusting.” He examines the fork, his nose wrinkling.
“That wasn’t disgusting,” Goth girl reluctantly admits. “Try some of mine.” She offers him a forkful of curry and rice.
I give him an entire cracker, Michael being a large guy. He drinks water and gulps the cracker in one bite. “I don’t eat meat.”
“Just take a bite.” Goth girl shakes her head. “We won’t tell veggie nation.”
Michael closes his lips around the tongs and works his cheeks back and forth as though he’s gargling with the curry. He grins as he releases the fork, the white plastic polished clean.
Goth girl licks the fork and his grin fades. “You’re a menace to polite society, Camille.” He calls her by her first name. He’s the only person at Feed Your Hungry who does.
“There’s nothing polite about society,” she quips.
They banter back and forth as we eat. I don’t join in, content to watch, to be invisible, the attention deflected from my tiny lunch. I eat my remaining crackers slowly, slathering them with the chocolate hazelnut spread.
“That stuff will kill you, kiddo,” Michael leans over and whispers in my ear. He brushes his fingers over mine, his skin soft and warm, and my traitorous body once again hums to life, craving touch, anyone’s touch.
As starvation will also kill me, I stay silent, smiling at him, warmed by his concern. He chuckles and stands, his trash in his big hands. “You’re quiet, serene, like a pool of deep water.” Goth girl snorts, and he casts her a dark look. “You’re the type of girl a guy will wait for.”
What is he saying? He’s not giving up? I gaze at him, wondering if this will still be true once he finds out I’m the daughter of a thief.
If he finds out. Blaine has hidden my past, hacking into government databases to erase my father’s misdeeds.
