He’d done all that, so having her over his lap in a pair of pink cotton undies wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
Yes. It would be just that bad. But he’d agreed to it, mad or not, so he slung the black tie around his neck and began to knot it, although he still thought it was stupid.
“Who would wear a tie to spank a woman?” he’d objected when Charlotte had handed him his wardrobe.
“Hemi would.” Faith had answered for her. “He’s very, very rich.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Will had said. “And I thought nothing was written yet.”
“Trust me,” Faith had said. “You can bet he’ll be rich. Which is why you’re wearing the tie.”
It was as if their cozy family time with Solomon and Lelei had never happened, because she’d been all business again ever since. He sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. He got busy tying, and that was when he heard the unmistakable sound of somebody spewing.
His hands stilled as the retching went on, and then, when silence fell, he finished up, pulled the suit jacket off the hanger and shrugged into it. Maybe he’d be saved by the bug.
He went on out into the studio and submitted to some readjustment by Charlotte. She clucked over the dog’s breakfast he’d apparently made of the tie, unfastened it and re-did it, and was going over his jacket with a lint roller when the other toilet door opened and Gretchen came out in her robe. Her face was paler than ever, her eyes huge in her little heart-shaped face, and she looked fragile to the point of transparency.
Will stepped out of Charlotte’s grasp with a “Sorry. One minute,” and went across to Gretchen, putting a hand onto her arm to steady her, because she looked like she was about to pass out. “You OK?” he asked.
“Shh,” she hissed, casting a wary glance at Calvin, but he was mucking about with his camera setup with Faith at the other end of the extensive room.
“We don’t have to do this,” Will told her, keeping his voice low. “If you’re ill. We can reschedule for tomorrow, maybe.”
“It won’t be better tomorrow. I’m fine. Forget it, OK?”
The idea was dawning in Will’s brain in all its horror, because he had sisters, and he had cousins. “You’re pregnant,” he realized.
“Shh,” she hissed frantically. “Not even a couple months,” she whispered.
“What, they don’t know?” Will jerked his head at Calvin and Faith. “They should know. Make sure we’re careful enough not to hurt you.”
She sighed in obvious exasperation. “You’re not going to hurt me. Calvin doesn’t know, because he wouldn’t have picked me, and who knows what he’d do now? I need this job, and men are so weird about women being…” She looked around again. “That. And I need to save up for me and Quentin, and the…you know. Anyway, Faith knows. And don’t worry,” she added. “I brushed my teeth.”
Will seized on the one thing he could grab hold of. “Faith knows? She knows?”
“She heard me being…sick.” Gretchen was whispering again. “Like I guess you did. But she won’t tell. Faith isn’t like that.”
“I need you over here, Gretchen,” Charlotte called. “Right away, please.”
Will had heard enough anyway. He left her there and stalked across the studio, grateful after all that he was wearing the suit. He was meant to be intimidating? It could start right now.
“I need to talk to you,” he told Faith. “Outside.” He jerked his head towards the carpark.
She started to say something, but he didn’t wait around to hear what it was. She had better be following him, or…Well, he didn’t know what “or” was, but she had better be following him.
He hit the glass door hard, then turned and held it for her, because, yes, she’d followed him. Wearing jeans and a blue Henley today, most of the tiny buttons undone, and wrapping her arms around herself against the brisk January wind. Even as he fumed, he noticed the way it pushed up her breasts. She was showing a fair bit of cleavage now. Focus, he told himself sternly.
“What?” she asked. “It’s freezing out here.”
He slipped impatiently out of the jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and she hugged it around herself, though it didn’t hide the cleavage, and he needed to stop looking.
“Why the hell,” he said, his voice rising, not that he was trying too hard to keep it under control, “didn’t you tell me Gretchen was bloody pregnant?”
“Shh,” she said, exactly as Gretchen had. “Because Calvin would have pitched a fit, just like you are, because men are ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” he demanded. “Ridiculous? I’ve had my hands all over a pregnant woman. I’ve had her tied to the bed.”
“Well, you didn’t actually do anything to her,” Faith pointed out. “She’s just fine. And she signed up for this. It isn’t real, Will. You’ve got nothing to be upset about. Nobody will know she was pregnant, and you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Do. Not,” Will said, gritting out the words, “give me that bloody soothing thing. I know she’s pregnant. I know what I did. And I cannot—I can not—spank a pregnant woman.”
“You don’t have to spank her.” Faith was still so maddeningly calm he could—he could hit something. “You just have to pretend that you’re going to spank her. You don’t like soothing? I won’t be soothing. I’ll point out that you’re being patriarchal and patronizing. Gretchen’s perfectly willing to do it. She doesn’t need your protection. She’s waiting in there for you to fulfill your contract. We all are. And don’t tell me you can’t even pretend to think about spanking a woman, because I won’t believe it.”
“How d’you know what I do or don’t think about?”
She snorted. “I was born in the dark, but it wasn’t last night. I saw how you looked when we were in that store, and that was just me. Besides, that’s one of the most common male fantasies. I did the research.”
“Of course you did,” he muttered. What did she mean, “that was just me?” She didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she did. “Google must have a pretty interesting profile on you. I’ve thought about heaps of things I haven’t done. When you’re big and…”
“Strong,” she guessed. “Powerful.” Which would have been nice to hear, under other circumstances.
“Well, when you are, you take care that you don’t scare a woman, and you bloody well take care that you don’t hurt her. I don’t have to hurt women. I hurt men. That’s my job. If I’ve got any excess testosterone, I’ve got an outlet for it, haven’t I.”
“All very reasonable,” she said. “All very noble, but it doesn’t matter, because you won’t be hurting Gretchen. You’ll be doing a little fantasy fulfillment of your own. Here’s your big chance to do something exciting without actually having to worry about scaring a woman, or hurting her. Everybody’s happy, and we’re done.”
“Let’s make this dead clear,” he told her. “There’s not one bit of fantasy fulfillment in my spanking Gretchen, because there’s nothing I want to do less. I can think of one woman I wouldn’t mind spanking, but that’s not on offer, is it?”
Her eyes widened, then she seemed to catch herself and laughed, hugging his jacket a little closer. “Well, then, take yourself to your Happy Place. Whatever floats your boat. We done talking?”
“I’ve got an even better idea,” he said. “If it’s such an insignificant wee thing, how about if you do it? Hemi’s got a threesome going, maybe. That seems like the kind of bloke he is. And I’d be rapt about having you over my knee. I could look dark and dangerous as you like.”
She wasn’t looking one bit comfortable now. He should care about that, but he didn’t.
“Trust me,” she said, “nobody’s going to pay to look at naked pictures of me, especially not of my butt. And that isn’t the kind of threesome that sells stories to women.”
“No?” He took a step towards her, and she backed up, then seemed to catch herself. “I’d pay for that. And I’d do that shoot for free.”
“Dark and dangerous?” he asked softly, closing the distance, putting his hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him, and he took the jacket from around her shoulders and put it on again. “Then let’s go.” He saw her looking off-balance, and smiled. “You just keep looking at me while I’m doing it. You can know what I’m really thinking about. That way, we both get at least a taste of what we want.”
His Every Desire
For all his protesting, Will looked as cool and remote as an iceberg during the shoot that followed. He certainly didn’t seem to mind having Gretchen stretched across his lap.
“All right there?” he asked her when they first got into position in the black leather chair. “You get the blood rushing to your head, you need a break, you just say the word, and I’ll help you up.”
“Not your job,” Calvin growled. “I say when she gets a break.”
“No,” Will said, his expression hard for once. “You don’t. She does. And if you’ll get on with it, she won’t have to be down there so long. Let’s go.”
Calvin looked like he wanted to explode, but the pictures were gold, and he knew it, and for once, he held himself back. “I’m not the one sitting around here yapping. All right. Arm in the air. Other hand on her back.”
Will raised his arm, elbow high, and looked straight at Faith as Charlotte got in there, pinning his jacket back so it fell perfectly, then tweaking his tie.
“How am I doing?” he asked Faith softly. “This what you want?”
She stared back at him in shock. At what he’d said, at the fact that he’d said it here, in front of everyone. And he didn’t smile.
“Hold that expression,” Calvin said. “But look at Gretchen. You’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and she’s just about to find that out. More shadow on that arm,” he snapped at Faith. “Quick.”
Faith adjusted the light, calming her racing heart, until Calvin said, “Good. There.”
She watched the shoot, moved, followed orders, but her mind wasn’t on it. Nowhere close to on it.
Hope started at the knock on the flimsy door of her Brooklyn apartment. “One second,” she whispered. She got off the bed and went out, shutting the door to the bedroom behind her.
She unfastened the chain, slid the deadbolt back, and opened the front door, then stood gaping at Hemi. The last person she’d expected, and the last person she needed right now.
“How…how did you get in?” she managed.
“How d’you think?” There was not one bit of tenderness in the eyes that bored into hers. “Your security is rubbish. I walked in behind a bloke who didn’t even ask me what I was doing here. I could have been anybody.”
She couldn’t handle his anger, not now. She couldn’t handle him being here. “I said I couldn’t see you tonight,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I said…”
His face had become closed, set, and hard as iron. “I know what you said.” The skin prickled on her arms at the danger she heard in his voice. “That something had come up, and you couldn’t make it. And when you didn’t answer my text, I decided to check and make sure you were all right. But why are you whispering? And why did you just look back into your flat?”
“I turned the ringer off on my phone.” She was getting flustered in spite of herself, even though this was her apartment, her space. “Because I couldn’t talk. Because I’m busy. I’m sorry, Hemi, but please call me tomorrow.”
He had pushed past her, though, was striding through her apartment, throwing open the door at the back. A cry met him, and Hope was rushing through behind him.
“It’s OK, baby,” she said as Karen moaned and rolled over, her arm going up to shield her eyes. “It’s OK.”
“Ohhh…uhhh…” Karen was fumbling for the plastic bowl, heaving herself to her elbows, and Hope held her head as she was sick. Nothing to come up, because Karen hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day.
She helped her sister get comfortable again when the sickness had passed, picked up the bowl, and handed her a water bottle. “Try to sip, sweetie,” she coaxed. “Tiny sips. You need to stay hydrated.”
“Make him go away,” Karen moaned.
“I will,” Hope promised. “Right now. You rest. I’ll be right back.”
She went to the door, carrying the bowl, and Hemi stepped back and followed her out, didn’t say anything as she shut the door with infinite care, because sound and light made the headache and nausea worse.
“What—” Hemi began.
“Give me a minute.” She wanted to tell him to leave, that she didn’t need this, not tonight, but instead, she forced her feet to move to the curtained-off alcove that was the bathroom to wash out the bowl. She didn’t speak to him until she had returned it to Karen’s side, had seen her sister resting again, her eyes closed. She would sleep now, Faith hoped.
When she came out, Hemi was standing in the tiny, shabby living room, staring out the window. At nothing, because there was nothing but an air shaft to see, and the brick wall of the building opposite, and not even that now, not in the dark.
He turned at her approach. “Sorry,” he said, and she could see the effort the word cost him. “I thought—”
“Yes.” She tried to harden her heart against him, because how dared he suspect her, when she’d never given him one single reason to be jealous? “I know what you thought.”
“You could have told me your sister was ill.”
“I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted with a sigh, because he was right. She could have. “I barely remembered to text you.”
“Does she need a doctor?”
She sank onto the couch. “Probably. It’s migraines, they think, and she has medication. But it’s so…” She passed a hand across her forehead. “She’s sick again and again, ten times an hour, sometimes, for days. She can’t even keep water down. We had to go to the ER last month, and wait for hours, and…” She trailed off, the fear rising again, trying to overtake her. The fear of losing Karen. Her baby sister. Her family. Thinking about the pain on Karen’s face when Hope had got home tonight, the white, staring blankness of it, and her own helplessness at her sister’s misery.
“She needs a specialist,” Hemi said. “Why isn’t she seeing one?”
“I took her to the neurologist last month.” Hope wished she didn’t sound so defensive, but she couldn’t help it. Did he really understand so little of what life was like for regular people, for people like her? “Of course I did, as soon as her doctor told me to. But they need to do an MRI, they said, an EEG, all kinds of things, and I have to wait until my new insurance kicks in, because I can’t…” She had to stop for a minute to get hold of herself. “I’m so worried about her,” she said, her voice low. “I can’t…I can’t sleep.”
She blinked the tears back. Be strong, she told herself, as she did twenty times a day. You can be strong. She took a deep breath and continued. “They won’t do it until I get the preauthorization from the insurance. But as soon as I can, I will. Next month.”
“Why didn’t you ask me for help?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you even tell me?”
“Because I…I couldn’t. It’s your company. It’s your insurance. How can I tell you it’s not enough? How can I risk what you would say, or what you would do? I need my job. I need it more than ever now.”
“You think I’m that kind of bastard?” There was more than hardness in his eyes now. There was anger. “That I’d sack you because you told me your sister had a medical problem? You have to know I wouldn’t do that. The truth is, this doesn’t have a bloody thing to do with my company, or your job. This has to do with you and me. With why you won’t let me get you and Karen into a better neighborhood. With why you didn’t tell me she was ill. With why you won’t ever let me help you.”
“But I couldn’t, can’t you see?” She
was trembling, but she forced herself not to drop her gaze, to meet that hard stare, because this mattered. She’d tried again and again to explain, and still he couldn’t seem to understand it, or he couldn’t bear to understand it.
“You want to take me over,” she told him. “I work for you already. If I let you pay my rent, what does that make us? I can’t let you own me, like you own everybody and everything else. I have to come to you as…as myself, free and clear, or I’ll lose myself. I can’t do that. I can’t let myself be lost.”
“That’s rubbish.” Nothing but the pulse that beat in one temple betrayed his temper, but she could feel it emanating from every muscle all the same. “All I want is to give you everything, and you’re too stubborn to take it.”
She saw the anger, and it didn’t scare her. All it did was affirm her own resolve. “I’ll tell you one more time. And then I have to ask you to leave my apartment and think about what I said.” This wasn’t the time or the place, but she was too battered by exhaustion, too worn down by all the demands on her to be anything but honest with him.
She forced herself to speak quietly, to be calm. “I can’t be your mistress, Hemi. You want my body. You want my obedience, and I want to give it to you. In bed, or out of bed. Anywhere. I want to give it to you.” She was blushing, and he was looking at her, his gaze heating, and he was moving closer. She couldn’t succumb to him again, though, couldn’t let them get off track. She had to say this.
“But you don’t want to give me yourself,” she told him, “and that makes us a one-way street. I can’t go up a one-way street, with no way of getting back again. I need money, of course I do, but I can earn money, for myself, and for Karen, too, and I will. What I need most from you isn’t money. It isn’t even the pleasure you give me with all the…all the things you do. What I need most from you is just…you. I need you. That’s what I need. And it’s the one thing you won’t give me.”
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