The Billion Dollar Wedding: The Honeymoon Collection

by Cynthia Dane

  He got back on the stool and readjusted the strap. He whispered something in the woman’s ear, but she did not respond. Behind her, Jasmine felt Ethan stir, probably to finish off his drink and discreetly order another one from a server. “Do you want anything?” Jasmine shook her head. She was still working on the cosmo, and was too transfixed on the stage to say or do anything else.

  Before the audience could lose interest, before they could be distracted by something else, and before they could conclude that this was all they would see tonight, the man leaped off the stool while pulling violently on one of the binds.

  Whoa! Everything came undone. Every bind, except for two, snapped out of the hoops and fluttered to the floor, some of them caught on a draft and drifting toward the tables. The woman, who had once looked so secure, exploded from her silky shell, bursting with a loud gasp as her long hair splayed around her and then pointed to the ground. Her arms hung above her, a pattern appearing between the both of them. Wings. Round like a butterfly’s.

  Once it was clear that this was part of the show, eager applause rang out from every table. Hushed voices rose around Jasmine. Even Ethan, who usually didn’t comment on much, said he wasn’t expecting that. “A butterfly hatching from its cocoon,” a man at another table explained to his friend. “Now that’s exquisite bondage.”

  The man hopped back up on the stepstool one last time. With the help of the same woman from before, the two of them gingerly lowered the model to the ground. Once she was secure on her feet, the worker stepped away, and the man was left to untie his girlfriend and take the blindfold off. She shook out her arms with a smile as they stood at the front of the stage and graciously bowed. The applause intensified.

  “Wow,” someone muttered at the table while the lights came back on. The couple stepped off the stage. “That was unreal.”

  Ian stood up, excusing himself to go to the restroom. Before he could go, he said, “My shoulder sockets are in such sympathy agony right now. Be right back.”

  Ethan backed away from Jasmine, although his hand remained on her thigh. “What did you think?” he asked her.

  I’m still trying to process it. While Jasmine expected some form of art, she did not expect what essentially became a performance piece. That young woman had been so calm and trusting of the man tying her up… and he had a great, imaginative mind to come up with something like that. Did he come up with it? Or did he get it from somewhere else? Jasmine wasn’t an artist. She barely knew how to write legibly some days, but she could appreciate fine art when she saw it, and the more she thought about what she saw, the more she appreciated it in turn.

  “It was exciting.” Those were the first words to come to her head. “I don’t want you trying that on me anytime soon, but…”

  Ethan chuckled. “How about something simpler than that?”

  Jasmine chewed on her smile. “I wouldn’t mind. Been a while since you bound me to bed, sir.” She wasn’t always in the mood for it, but when she saw something like that, she couldn’t help but think about Ethan tying her up to their bed, covering her in kisses before doing whatever the fuck he wanted to her. It always ended with both of them too exhausted to continue.

  The performance was the only thing anyone would talk about for the next five minutes. Someone described it as a magic trick. Another person said they had seen the man’s Instagram account, and it was mostly weavings and other pieces with his girlfriend. Jasmine found out that both the man and woman did shows like this all over. I feel sorry for whoever’s next… they better be damn erotic to compete with that.

  “Look who I found getting lost in our happy little home.”

  Ian returned with two guests, who apparently commanded enough presence to force half the people at the table to scoot over and make room for them.

  Soon Ethan no longer sat next to Ken Andrews, but the master bondage artist, who accepted the table’s hospitality alongside his young girlfriend – who was in the process of yanking off her pretty silver collar and shoving it in her boyfriend’s jacket pocket as if she couldn’t stand to wear it any longer. Ian followed them both, reclaiming his now much narrower seat on the other side of the table.

  “Everyone, this is Vincent Lane, one of the sharpest tech gurus in the Pacific Northwest… and his… uh…”

  “Nala.” The woman showed no inhibitions as she introduced herself. “I’m his Nala.”

  “Right. His Nala. Well, this is… everyone…”

  “You are absolutely hopeless at entertaining,” Kathryn said with a sigh. “Now they’re going to think we’re the rudest bunch in the Northeast. That’s a hard title to claim.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Vincent said, with a deep, almost growling voice. “We’re used to that sort of treatment in the socially frigid PNW.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way, either,” Nala quipped.

  The ice was thus broken, and Jasmine – crammed between Ethan and Monica at a table that wasn’t meant to hold more than six people and now held twelve – felt greater pressure to either say nothing or to be the most articulate woman she had ever been. So she elected to say nothing.

  I don’t want to be the reason these newcomers run away grumbling about all of us. Jasmine would never forgive herself – the others would never forgive her. One of the first things she learned after becoming Ethan’s serious girlfriend was that socializing and business went hand in hand in this world. Nobody “just” sat down and had a chat. Business always came up. If someone was new? They were seen as prospective clients, service providers, or investors. Vincent Lane was a name Jasmine would hear many times over the next few weeks, usually in the business context. Thanks to this dinner, he would go on to make more than one business contact that would help him expand his work to the east coast. So while tonight everyone commended him on his more artistic side, he had that look in his eyes that said, “How much money can I make off you lovely people?” Since Jasmine had no idea how invested or interested Ethan would be in management apps, she kept her mouth shut.

  Vincent’s girlfriend, on the other hand, did not keep her mouth shut.

  She wasn’t impolite, but Nala was louder than Lana, cruder than Kathryn, and definitely more socially unaware than Monica. By a thousand leagues. People looked at her with a mixture of fascination and disbelief whenever she spoke. Cocky young arrogance that Jasmine never naturally espoused, yet that teeming confidence she was always jealous of others having. Jasmine knew how to speak her mind around those she was comfortable with, but this was not such a situation. So she ended up being one of those people staring in disbelief – and fascination – as Nala interrupted her solemn, rich boyfriend to tell him he was full of shit regarding something or other.

  Jasmine had to excuse herself to the bathroom shortly after. As she was coming out of the stall, however, she bumped into the only other woman currently in the restroom with her. Nala stood in front of the mirror, touching up her mascara. She was so short that she had to stand on her tiptoes, one leg kicked out behind her. Her boots made this scene more comical than sexy.

  “Hey!” she called, catching Jasmine’s reflection in the mirror. “What was your name again? I missed it earlier.”

  Jasmine froze, hand seizing her clutch for comfort she didn’t realize she needed. “Jasmine.”

  “Ha! What a pair of Disney princesses we make!”

  Jasmine stared blankly at her until she got the joke. “I didn’t realize an animal could be a Disney princess…”

  “Hey, if it’s good enough for Princess Leia now…”

  “That’s true.”

  Jasmine took a step toward the bathroom door, but present company was not going to let her get away that easily.

  “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  Something speared Jasmine right in the heart. Fear? Deception? That knowing feeling that she really was an imposter all along? Imposter syndrome is real! “Um…”

  “I mean, you’re not part of that privileged crowd. Ori
ginally. Wow, this is coming out all shades of wrong… sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Jasmine continued to stand as if she didn’t know whether to stay or go. Would it be rude to walk out now? She felt rude just standing there and acting like a deer caught in Nala’s headlights. What does she want from me? On the stage, this young woman was quiet and obedient. Now she acted how most people saw Jasmine out of the corner of their eyes. “I’m not… yeah, my parents are a couple of commune farming hippies. Clearly I’m not, though.”

  “Oh, clearly not.” Was Nala rolling her eyes? Why do I like it? Was it because she was refreshing after spending half the night with a table full of snooty rich people? Now, Jasmine… “I did some reading on your boyfriend. He’s cute. A lot like mine… built up all his own riches.”

  “I suppose so.” Jasmine knew nothing about Vincent’s background. He was good looking, though. That she wouldn’t deny. Not every man at that table was her type, but Vincent was up there. Ethan is #1, of course. Jasmine hoped she wasn’t blushing as she thought of her own boyfriend. “It’s rather rare around here. Lots of rich families that have only gotten richer.” Would keep getting richer with subsequent generations, too. Like little Baby Warren, who would be one of the richest kids around when Henry and Monica finished combining their fortunes.

  “It’s more common out west, yeah, but they’re also few and far between. Do those other people at that table make you wanna pull your hair out all the time? Because I’ve been around them ten minutes and want to twist a few rings off fingers, if you know what I mean.”

  Wow, no wonder she was able to help take down some whackjob.

  “They can be a bit… well, you get used to it.”

  “Do you really?”

  Jasmine took a step back. “Well… not really. You are always on your toes.”

  “Blech!” Nala’s sour face made her look five years younger. “Glad I don’t live out here.”

  Before Jasmine could build up the courage to abandon Nala to the women’s restroom, she said, “I really liked that performance, by the way. I didn’t know bondage could be so… entertaining?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, Vincent’s weird like that.”

  “Weird?”

  Nala absentmindedly combed her fingers through her long, black hair. “Well, not weird, I guess, but his brain works differently. He sees patterns and stuff like that everywhere. I don’t get it. I’m just along for the ride.” She smiled, cheekily. “Although I’m in school for the first time in a while now. My goal is to get as good as him at the whole coding thing. What do you do?”

  “I… uh…” Jasmine couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. “I fuck my boss. Well, he used to be my boss. Now I’m a professional girlfriend.” The more Jasmine faced these sorts of situations, the more she realized she really didn’t have a life outside of Ethan. She wouldn’t dare say that, however. “I’m in transition, I suppose you could say. I was in administration until I got serious with my boyfriend. Now I’m…”

  “Enjoying the high life of having a rich boyfriend. Don’t worry, I get it.” Nala turned back to the mirror. “There’s something to be said for no longer living in someone’s dirty closet.”

  Jasmine snorted. “Or living in the most rundown apartment between a couple of dealers.”

  “Or counting out how much oatmeal you eat so you don’t run out before payday.”

  “Or cutting the mold off bread slices because we need penicillin in our lives anyway.”

  “Ha! Sounds like you get it.”

  Do I? Jasmine opened her clutch and pulled out one of the calling cards Ethan gifted her after she moved in with him. She handed it to Nala, who took it without a second thought. “Do you game?”

  “Do I… do I game?” Nala was on the verge of cackling. “Well, not as much as I used to now that I’m in school, but hell yeah. You game?”

  “Oh, I game.”

  The look they shared only meant one thing: even though they lived on opposite sides of the country, they were now rich enough to afford the communicative means to make a new friendship work.

  Chapter 13

  Jasmine turned the card she received in return between her fingers. Every few minutes she giggled, and Ethan – who was nose deep in his emails – asked her what was going on. “Oh, just girl stuff,” Jasmine would reply. That either bored or satisfied Ethan every time, because he would go right back to his phone and sometimes even the tablet he kept in the limo.

  “You know,” Jasmine said, halfway home to their house in the Hills. “It’s been a while since we…”

  She sidled up next to him and curled her hand around his leg. She hadn’t forgotten how he touched her, whispered in her ear while the show went on earlier. Neither of the subsequent shows were as engrossing as that first one with Vincent and Nala. But they stayed and watched them, before the party at the table broke up with half the people disappearing to go talk to others, or, if one was named Kathryn or Ian, fool around in some dark corner somewhere. “Wouldn’t be a night at The Dark Hour if I didn’t see Kathryn’s breasts at least once,” Monica had said when she came back from the bathroom.

  If Ethan ever cared about watching his friends and business partners have sex, he never said. He was more likely to do exactly what he did in that limo, such as glance at Jasmine with the smallest, slyest smile in the universe. “Indeed it has been. It’s also been a while since I’ve seen you this happy.”

  Happy, huh? I guess. Happier than she had been, yes. “We move on, I suppose.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Ethan put his tablet down and nipped the bottom of Jasmine’s ear. “I’ve been worried about you, though.”

  “Worried? About me?”

  “Mmhmm.” Ethan coiled his arm around her shoulders and brought her into a light hug. “I know you took this… past week rather hard. I wish I hadn’t been so busy so I could pay more attention to you.”

  “You pay plenty.” Jasmine wanted more, yes, but she knew that dating a busy billionaire businessman meant sitting on the sidelines once in a while. Jasmine may be his girlfriend, but his empire was his mistress. Rather it be her than some other woman. Jasmine intercepted his lips for a kiss. Their hug tightened. “But we’ve been lacking somewhere recently. Dunno what it could be.”

  “When you told me you wanted to go to that club this weekend, I was hopeful that it meant you were feeling better. Or at least were in the mood for a sexual distraction.”

  “You’ve been busy. I haven’t been feeling well. It happens.”

  Ethan gave her one last kiss on the cheek and went back to his tablet. “I hope I can finish this up before we get home.”

  Jasmine nodded, pretending to understand.

  Unfortunately, Ethan was not finished by the time they got home. He announced he was going to finish up in his office, so there would be no distractions. Only fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Jasmine nodded once more, but now she knew better. Ethan would be out half an hour to an hour, depending on how deep he got.

  Could get deep in other things… Jasmine didn’t care how long she had to wait. She was going into their bedroom, kicking out the cat(s), and doing everything in her power to make sure she got laid that night.

  “Men are easy,” she told herself, opening a bureau drawer and searching through her lingerie. “Ethan should be the easiest of them all.” Jasmine knew his ticks, his kinks, and what he responded to the best. The idea a man like him could resist his girlfriend… Jasmine pulled out the crimson negligee she bought at Monica’s behest. “Ethan would love it.” Well, he better. As Jasmine dropped her dress and shimmied into the lingerie, she thought of nothing but her boyfriend’s reaction the moment he came through that bedroom door.

  She smoothed out the bed covers, ignoring her cat on the other side of the door, mewling and scratching. He thinks this bedroom is all his. When she first moved in, Blackbeard refused to leave the bedroom. Then he started wandering the wing, claiming this windowsill and that chair in Ethan’s off
ice. Yet his favorite place, especially at night, was the bedroom, curled between Jasmine and Ethan’s bodies – regardless of how close they were too. That fat asshole was not above sitting at the end of the bed and staring at them while they engaged in foreplay. Jasmine had learned how to ignore him, but Ethan still got up, plucked the fucker right off the bed, and unceremoniously plopped him on the other side of the door. Now Jasmine had done it, prematurely, no less.

  “Sorry. This is an emergency,” she mumbled, going to a vase full of fresh flowers from the garden. Belinda always put them there, and for that Jasmine was grateful, because it meant a lovely early spring bud for her to bring to bed. She picked up her phone and texted her boyfriend.

  “You should come to the bedroom. It’s an emergency.”

  It took no fewer than ten seconds to receive a reply.

  “An actual emergency? Or did the cat get trapped in the shower again?”

  “You could say this emergency involves…” Jasmine had to decide how dirty she wanted to get. Grinning, she typed a word she didn’t often let be stored in the phone company’s records. “Pussy.”

  “Give me five minutes. Finishing up this email.”

  “You better finish up that email before I finish myself off.”

  “Now let’s not get hasty.”

  Jasmine put her phone on the nightstand and rolled onto her side. She didn’t have a mirror, but she had a woman’s intuition, and it told her that posing herself on the bed so her breasts bulged from the negligee and her thighs poked out from beneath was her best shot at getting what she wanted.

  She had just decided to fluff her hair when the door handle turned. Open, damnit. The door couldn’t decide. Open? Shut? Ethan’s foot and a tuft of black fur appeared in the crack. “No, no,” Ethan muttered, followed by an insistent yowl. “You were left out here for a reason, I’m sure.” Another yowl, this one almost violent. My freakin’ cat.

  Finally, Ethan won the battle with the beast, and managed to sneak into the room without the cat stealing in behind him. Pitiful scratches appeared at the door; pink paws appeared beneath the door. But the moment Ethan turned and saw the treasure on his bed, everyone ignored the demanding child.