by Robin Gideon
As Marcus was straddling his bar stool, she reached out and put his lapel between her fingertips and thumb and brought her hand down slowly, caressingly. The fabric was silk, and the feel of it—and understanding the cost of it, and what that meant—made her honey suddenly start to flow to the lips of her vagina. Before her hand had gone from the top of his lapel to the bottom, her clit had gone from being slightly awake to the early stages of serious arousal.
“Beautiful,” she said, leaving the single word to be as ambiguous as possible.
When she looked into Marcus’s eyes, she hoped she’d see burgeoning lust. If not that, at least surprise and curiosity. Instead, she saw no emotion at all.
“We’ll take a booth,” Marcus said. “I’ll have a tall mug of beer.”
William said, “I’ll have a bourbon straight up—Jim or Jack, I don’t care.”
They both got up off the barstools and went to the booth. Julie watched them walking away, each broad across the shoulders with lean waists. It didn’t hurt that they wore five-hundred-dollar tailored suits. And the best thing about the suits was what it said about their incomes. The thought of that money caused even more fresh cream to ooze to Julie’s labia. The idea of a man having money to spend on her was Julie’s ultimate aphrodisiac.
I’m ready for anything they want to do to me. Anything at all.
The notion made her shiver. While she had few inhibitions and had been the center figure in some steamy menage a trois encounters, the deVille brothers had the look and presence of sexual athletes, men who could dispense sexual pleasures for hours, not minutes. For all that Julie had done in her life, she’d never experienced an inexhaustible man, much less two…and she’d heard all the rumors about all four of the deVilles.
She made William’s cocktail and poured Marcus’s beer. She wasn’t at all certain what her end-game was, but even if all she could be was on the periphery of the deVille brothers’ life, that could be a lot more profitable than being a waitress in a wing joint in a little town not too far from the Big Easy.
A waitress started toward the waitress station, but Julie waved her off, mouthing the words “I’ll take this, but you get the tips,” and the waitress smiled.
Still not dissuaded of her allure, when she reached their booth, she bent particularly low to put the serving tray on the table then very slowly placed their drinks in front of them. She was giving them a leisurely view of almost all of her breasts—a view nearly to her areolas, which she believed were an enticing shade of milk chocolate—but the men were in a conversation that had something to do with overseas tariffs. Neither one looked at her, so she was very slow and deliberate and bent a little lower to give them a good look at what she was offering.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you,” she said, her voice a sultry purr barely heard above the jukebox, “just let me know.”
Julie was shocked when both men looked up at her face—neither one glancing even a second at breasts she was offer for their visual delight—and nodded…then went back to talking to each other.
Julie stayed there, bent at the waist with her hands on the table, waiting for the handsome men to look at the splendid femininity she was offering. But they didn’t. She would have let them stare, but they didn’t even glance. Finally, she stood up straight, and when she walked back to her position behind the bar, there was a high-pitched whine in her ears, as though someone had slapped her.
She had hardly gotten behind the bar when Diana walked through the front doors. Diana blinked several times, her eyes adjusting from the sunlight outside as opposed to the neon lighting inside. Reflexively, Julie looked toward the booth where the deVilles sat, and she saw that both men were looking at Diana and waving their arms to draw attention.
They’re here for that bitch. Almost immediately she felt her acid reflux go from unpleasant to fiercely agonizing. I’m going to clip that cunt out at the knees if it’s the last thing I do. I’m getting my share of the deVille fortune if it’s the last fucking thing I do.
* * * *
Geary pulled his car to a stop, put the transmission in park, and looked at the deVille mansion. Never before had he driven to the deVille antebellum mansion without having been given a specific invitation—more like an order—to do so.
He looked at the deVille home and felt the steady acceleration of his heart rate. For years—not weeks or months, but years—he had despised the family that he worked for. Had they made him a rich man? Yes, but not nearly as rich as he deserved to be. If Geary was certain of anything, it was that he deserved to be one hell of a lot wealthier than he was. But he intended to get what was rightly due to him. Get that money…and more!
With that thought buzzing in his brain, he opened the car door and got out. His confidence was soaring. His sense that soon the wrongs that had been done to him by the deVille family would be righted was more rock solid than ever.
He had rehearsed his lie in his mind a thousand times at the office. He needed to see the Old Man, he’d say, because an off-shore company needed a decision right away, and the only executive available—all four of his sons were away from the office and not answering their cell phones—with the authority to make the decision was the Old Man.
He was twenty feet from the front door when it opened abruptly and a liveried butler stepped halfway out. Geary gave him a smile as he approached. The butler did not return the smile. Geary’s stride faltered but only for a split second.
“Can I help you?” the butler asked before Geary had even reached the front steps.
“I’m here to see Mr. deVille,” Geary said. “There’s an important business decision that has to be made, and he’s the only deVille I can reach. I’ll have to see him immediately.”
Geary continued forward, but the butler moved so that he blocked the front door completely. Geary thought he had the look of a bodyguard as well as butler. His eyes were cold, his smile nonexistent, his body posture subtly belligerent.
“Mr. deVille is busy and cannot be disturbed,” the butler said. “You’ll have to leave now.”
“You don’t understand. I have to see—”
“No, sir, it’s you who does not understand,” the butler said. He did not raise his voice, but Geary felt as though he’d been given notice that if the situation escalated, the butler wouldn’t be the one to suffer the worse for wear. “You have to leave now.”
“You’re refusing to let me see Mr. deVille?” Geary tried to sound indignant, but the tone didn’t quite make it. There was something distinctly threatening about the butler, even though he had done nothing that could be outwardly considered violent. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The butler looked him in the eyes for several seconds then raised his hand and pointed at Geary’s car. There was no ambiguity in the gesture.
Geary turned and walked back to his car, forcing himself to not smile as he took each step.
I was right. That prick, Old Man deVille, is messed up in some way, and his boys are running the company. If our clients know that, they’ll freak. The goddamn company’s being run by a ghost…and if I play my cards right, I can take every bit of it from that ghost’s sons!
Chapter 4
Julie started the dishwasher to clean the cocktail and beer glasses, even though the washer wasn’t even half full. She had to do something to keep herself from looking at the booth where the deVille brothers were paying rapt attention to Diana.
There’s no way in hell I’ll allow her to stand in my way. I don’t care if I’ve got to suck off every one of the deVille men at noon on Bourbon Street, with high school bands marching by watching me, I’m getting my share of that fucking deVille fortune.
It seemed impossible to her that she had unbuttoned her blouse almost completely and done everything she possibly could to show William and Marcus the feminine delights she was offering, and neither one had displayed enough interest to even glance at her. Since her early teen years, she’d been aware that men looked at h
er and that the more skin she revealed, the more interested they were in her. She’d always liked the fact that men looked at her. It had always given her a sense of power that she could make men do what she wanted them to.
But Diana was derailing all that. Julie didn’t quite understand how or why that bitch was doing it, but she was definitely bewitching the deVille men, keeping them from thinking clearly, preventing them from understanding just how much sexual fulfillment—without the slightest emotional commitment, it was important to note, and men, she knew, always liked a lack of commitment—Julie was willing to provide them. Sex without emotional strings had always been a trump card that she had used with powerful men to her advantage in the past. She could not fathom why it did not seem to be working now. Diana had to be the culprit. Who else could be such a bitch?
The injustice of it was simply too much for Julie to comprehend.
The front door to My Place opened, causing the bell attached to the ribbon of curled stainless steel to ring. Julie was drawn out of her angry thoughts and found herself looking into the eyes of Gregg Hickson, her current boyfriend and Diana’s ex-boyfriend.
“Hey, babe,” he said in an elevated voice that immediately suggested to Julie that he had been drinking, “you’re lookin’ fine!”
He strode quickly to the bar and sat on a stool directly in front of Julie. He didn’t just glance at Julie’s exposed bosom or even merely look at the breasts she’d made available to the deVille men. He gawked at the creamy mounds with an open mouth and eyes as round as coffee cups. He wasn’t fourteen, but he was acting like he was.
“Oh, for Chrissake, Gregg, do you have to be so crude?” Julie asked as she turned her back to him and quickly refastened several buttons.
The old men in the bib overalls were chuckling. Julie felt herself blushing with embarrassment. A distinct sense of heat went through her, but it wasn’t a sensual heat. It was the physical reaction of a woman being publically embarrassed.
“Babe, we gotta take a walk to my pickup for a little one-on-one time. You’re lookin’ smokin’ hot, babe, and if I don’t get a little relief, I going to bust the zipper on my jeans.”
The men in bib overalls found that more than amusing. Rather than just chuckle, they guffawed, belly-laughed, and slapped their palms on the bar.
Julie looked at the old men and said, “Shut the fuck up.”
Marianne stepped forward quickly. To Julie, she said, “Put a muzzle on your boyfriend, or he’ll get 86’d from My Place permanently.”
Then she walked away before Julie could say a word in response.
Julie had never felt so humiliated in her life.
* * * *
Diana exchanged the almost-dramatic high-heels for a pair of flat-soled strappy leather sandals that showed off the pedicure she’d just had done professionally in New Orleans by a girl she’d gone to high school with. Diana had decided that the blue cotton sundress she wore was suitable for a boat ride with Marcus and William.
When she got to the river, the men were waiting for her at the base of the dock. They were wearing white tennis shorts, navy blue polo shirts, and smiles that could cause palpations of the heart—and elsewhere on a woman’s body, for that matter. They looked like a smorgasbord for famished feminine senses. Diana could almost feel her mouth begin to water.
In the very least, they were a four-course meal to be devoured slowly, savored nibble by nibble, until there was nothing left of them but skin and bones and sexual exhaustion.
Calm down, damn it. You’ve seen them before, and you’ll see them again, so don’t act like these are the first handsome men you’ve come in contact with.
She noticed William glance at his gold wristwatch.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, knowing she was three minutes past the time she said she’d meet the men. “Blame in on feminine vanity. I couldn’t decide what shoes to wear.”
“You’re beautiful,” William said.
“Stunning is more like it,” Marcus added.
Diana felt the comments touch her like caresses. She continued to walk, but now she was distinctly aware of the scissoring of her naked thighs. She could feel her cotton panties touching her pussy, her clit. She felt the sway of her breasts inside her bra. Her nipples had suddenly grown taut, and they were more sensitive now than they had been just moments earlier. Diana hadn’t any doubts as to what had caused the changes in her body or why it was suddenly responding the way it was.
They’re dangerous men. The deVille twins are very dangerous men.
“You men,” Diana said slowly, her tone teasing but entirely honest, “are flatterers. My father has always warned me about men who flatter. He says a girl can’t trust them.”
“Your father is a wise and cautious man,” Marcus said. “But in this case, he’s not just a little bit wrong—he’s completely wrong. You’re safer with us than with any men in the world.”
“And we have the rest of the evening to prove it,” William said without hesitation. He was looking directly into Diana’s eyes when he spoke.
Diana wondered just how far into the evening he intended to go with his declaration. She suddenly felt emotionally quite in over her head, and she wasn’t at all certain she should take another step closer to the deVille brothers. There was a quality to them—a persuasiveness, a sensual charm—that was different from all the other men she’d met. They were distinctly different…and that made them dangerous in ways that were new to her. She’d pretty much always been able to control the other men in her life.
But with the deVilles, she knew they weren’t the type to let a woman hold the reins. They had dominant personalities.
Pretending that their close proximity meant nothing to her, she walked between the men without breaking stride and went straight to the pontoon. She opened the door, stepped off the dock and into the pontoon’s deck, and went straight to the pilot’s wheel.
I can do this I’ve done this a million times. They’re just men, and I’ve been on this boat a thousand times with men.
“I love this boat,” William said as he stepped onto the pontoon. “Every time I’ve been aboard, I’ve had a good time.”
“Every time,” Marcus added, speaking it as a declarative that couldn’t be legitimately refuted.
“Well, since you men really aren’t paying customers, how about the two of you sailors cast off the lines so that we can get started?”
In unison, as though they’d rehearsed their response, even though Diana knew they hadn’t, they said, “Aye, aye, Cap’n!”
In seconds the dock lines were cast, the seventy-five horsepower Mercury outboard was idling comfortably and warming up slowly but nicely, and Diana was experiencing a curious simultaneous sense of excitement and contentment that she’d never realized was even possible.
Diana backed the pontoon smoothly away from the dock and, this time, headed upstream into a section of the river she hadn’t taken the brothers before. The fishing wasn’t good where she was taking them, but it was completely secluded, and she wanted to show them something that her father hadn’t already taken them to.
Or maybe I just want to take them someplace private.
A moment later she closed her eyes for just a second and gave her head a little shake. She had to control her thoughts and the direction they were going, but with the deVille twins, that wasn’t always an easy thing to do.
“This is different.” Diana took off her sunglasses and put them on the small dashboard in front of the pilot’s wheel. She gave her head a shake and combed her fingers through her hair as the breeze flowed through her tresses. “I’m never on this boat unless I’m with clients.”
“So you’re saying that, at least for tonight, you’re not looking at Marcus and me as clients?” She looked at William, and he gave her a grin that was both teasing and seductive. “I like that,” he added. “And since we’re not clients, you don’t have to give us that client services attitude you always do.”
“
I don’t always,” Diana said quickly. But after a moment, she added, “Do I?”
Marcus nodded. “When you talk to us it’s pretty much always assured that there’s a certain I-work-for-you-and-you’re-the-client undercurrent to everything you say. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a nasty I’m-a-proletariat-and-you’re-a-bourgeoisie-bastard kind of situation, but you never actually talk to us as though we’re equals.”
“But we’re not equals,” Diana said, almost reflexively. “People like you hire people like me. People like me don’t hire people like you.”
William issued a long, slow sigh. “I don’t like the sound of that. It’s simply not true.”
To give herself a moment to think through her response, Diana tapped the accelerator handle, and the big Mercury engine picked up speed.
“Sure it is,” she said after a moment, having to raise her voice now to be heard above the rush of the wind and the sound of the outboard motor. “I don’t mind it. The facts are the facts. I’m just not going to pretend it’s not true.”
They were silent for a while, each person aware that there was a chasm in their social positions that could not be easily bridged. Whether they liked each other, or not, actually made little difference. The facts were that the deVille men had wealth and a large family. Diana had no wealth and certainly no large family. Diana was the daughter of a Greek fisherman with limited English skills. She was first-generation, the first of her family born in the U.S. The deVilles had moved to New Orleans well over a hundred years ago. They’d bought land when it was cheap, and now that the land was worth a significant fortune, so were they. Bankers called even the youngest of them “sir” and treated them deferentially. Bankers looked at Diana’s father suspiciously and at Diana lustfully and made no effort to hide their emotions because, socially, the bankers had enough power to control their own destiny.
