by Kimball Lee
“Heartwarming, isn’t she?” Bly smiled at West and handed him the Cartier box, “I’m sure it’s a watch,” he said, and they got into another Mercedes that was waiting to take them to the Four Seasons.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Mr. Bly, I completely understand if you’re not feeling up to having dinner so soon after being released from the hospital,” Maddie was saying, she’d answered the phone and Alexander Bly’s voice sent her into an instant fit of panic.
“I feel just fine, Miss Newland, and really I’d like to call you Maddie, but if you insist on calling me Mr. Bly…”
“No! Of course not, yes, call me Maddie, oh shit! Oh, ignore that… what should I call you? Please tell me, and I’m insanely nervous and I’m shutting-up right now!”
He laughed and it was a genuine, feel good laugh, the kind of laugh he needed after the nightmare with Natasha or Natalie or whoever she was. Natalie was her real name, and she had been drugging his drinks from the first night they met, West had learned from the teenage girl. Drugs that rendered him senseless, but let him appear fairly normal to the untrained eye. Prescription meds that allowed her to take control of him from the moment he drank that first tainted drink, and she began to convince him she was the perfect replacement for Charlotte. The hospital found traces of the potent muscle relaxer Soma in his bloodstream, as well as Vicodin, and Oxycodone. It was truly fortunate that he had been found so quickly, the doctors said, or as the dosage of the drugs was increased, the combination would have been lethal.
“Call me Alex, and I’d like to send a car for you. If you don’t mind we’ll have dinner in the hotel restaurant, that way I’ll be close to my room and a bed just in case. Wait, fuck, that didn’t sound right!” he said, and then they both laughed and decided to start again from the beginning.
He called and said his car was in front of her hotel, then he stepped out and smiled at the surprised look on her face when she saw him holding the car door open for her.
Her hand flew up to cover her delighted smile, and her eyes sparkled as she passed in front of him and scooted onto the leather seat.
“You shouldn’t have come out in this cold weather, I didn’t expect it… but you look so much better than you did in the hospital. Healthy… I mean… you looked fine then too, handsome, seriously handsome! Never mind,” she said, and he took her hand and kissed it.
“Thank you for saving my life,” he said, “you look beautiful tonight, but you looked beautiful the night I saw you in the hospital, as well.”
“You’re my boss Mr. Bly… Alex. I work for your company and this is weird, let’s just admit it. I feel so out of place being on a date with you, but I know you’d do anything for Charlotte and she wants so much for you to be happy. I have no idea what went on between you two, and I don’t want to know. I do know this, you have a true friend in her,” she said. Then she wondered why she couldn’t shut her mouth and just enjoy the fact, that for whatever reason, she was going to dinner with Alexander Bly.
“I have an idea,” he said, as the car drove through the snowy streets of Prague, and along the lamp-lit banks of the Vltava River. “We’ll pretend we’re not on a date, we’re just two new friends having dinner, and let’s not talk about Charlotte anymore. Because the truth is, Maddie, when I opened my eyes and saw you standing in the hospital room, before you read the note, I already hoped I would get to see you again.”
Her heart was doing cartwheels, she felt like she was in high school and the cutest boy at school had asked her to the prom. When they stepped out of the car, she said, “This isn’t your hotel.”
“No, it’s Bellevue Restaurant, it has excellent food and an even better view of the river,” he said, taking her hand and leading her inside.
She let him take her coat, and she blushed as she watched his blue-green eyes turn as dark as an endless sea. She wore a cream silk dress that clasped on one shoulder, and left her other shoulder bare. The fabric clung to her high, round breasts and hugged her tiny waist. It was an impractical dress for winter and so were the strappy stilettos, she might possibly freeze to death, she thought, but she didn’t care. It was worth it, because Alexander Bly couldn’t tear those heart-stopping eyes away from her body.
“This is fantastic!” she said, peering through the wide arched windows of the old building to the glowing river beyond. “Are you sure about this, what if you start feeling… unwell?”
“Then West, he’s the big military looking guy in the front seat of the car, will take me back to the hotel. It’s not a problem, and I thought after we talked earlier you might have gotten the wrong idea, like I was some sleazy guy trying to lure you to my hotel room. I know we laughed and made a joke of it, but I want us to start off right. Maybe I’m wrong Maddie, but when I look at you, and not just your outward beauty, I see someone I’d like to have a chance with,” he said and he meant it, but he knew it was obvious that her body had affected him.
His cock was rock hard and as much as he wanted to get to know her, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to see her huge brown eyes widen and fill with need as his fingers slid over her pussy and he wanted her lush, innocent looking mouth on his cock, soon.
“A chance with…” she said, trying not to grab the woman at the next table and say, “look at the man who just said he wants us to have a CHANCE! He’s gorgeous he’s sexy and I’ve had a crush on him for a zillion years!”
“Yes, a chance to get to know each other and, oh hell Maddie, I don’t know how to just tiptoe around this. To say that you’re beautiful and sexy would just be stating the obvious, and you’re incredibly brave. I mean, look how brave you are, you follow troops into war, and you came to find me with people you didn’t even know. You’re the first woman I’ve wanted to actually get to know since… well, since Charlotte and I broke up. As for the whole Natasha/Natalie episode, all I can say is, I was on some seriously fucked-up drugs!” he said, and they both laughed and began to loosen up and talk for real.
Hours later, when the restaurant staff was giving them dirty looks and all the other guests had left for the night, Bly left an enormous tip and they walked to the car. Before they got in, she reached for his hand and told him to look at the beautiful snowy river in the moonlight. It is very beautiful, he thought, but it didn’t warm his heart the way that she did.
“I’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow, on New Year’s Eve, but I don’t want to leave you,” he said, and before she could say another word, he kissed her, and after a moment of shock, a meltingly hot fire ignited in all the places Maddie had kept locked away for so long.
*
Maddie left West with instructions to wake Bly twice in the night to drink water, it was important to flush any traces of drugs from his system, she said. She also wanted him to eat a good breakfast the next morning to help regain his strength. She told him she would be waiting outside her hotel at eight-thirty a.m. for a day of adventure, and she stood on tiptoe and kissed Alex Bly once more before he left. Then she went straight to her hotel room and fell on her bed, laughing and kicking her feet in the air from sheer happiness.
For their date the next day she wanted to wear something sexy, but the temperature outside in January didn’t leave room to show even a patch of bare skin. She wore her favorite jeans, the ones that even she had to admit, made her ass look great. Then a soft, black turtleneck that contrasted perfectly with her honey-colored hair and sun-touched skin. She added a touch of blush to her cheeks and two coats of mascara, since her eyelashes were as blonde as her hair. Then a bit of light-brown powder to her high, arched eyebrows, and a swipe of clear gloss on her soft pink lips. She looked healthy and vibrant, but she wanted to look sexy and mysterious… she wanted to look like Charlotte, so Alex would fall in love with her.
He looked way too sexy to be going to a cathedral, she decided, when he smiled down at her in the lobby of her hotel. She wanted to take him up to her room and push him onto the bed or the floor or any fucking surface, and lick that sexy
cleft in his chin among other things. Suddenly she wondered why they were going to a church, unless he wanted to marry her, which she hoped he would someday. Then he slid the strap of her camera bag from her shoulder and carried it to the waiting car, and she remembered that it was her idea, she was going to the famous cathedral to take pictures.
“I’ve read about it,” Alex said, “the St. Vitus Cathedral is part of the largest castle complex in the world. A church, interesting choice for a second date, I wonder if that’s a first.”
“You’re very clever! It’s my artistic side wanting its own way, I’ve always meant to photograph the Gothic details, the rose window and flying buttresses, but I never got around to it,” she said, and without thinking she pulled off one glove and ran the backs of her fingers across his cheek.
He caught her hand and closed his eyes as he held it against his cheek, then he moved it to his lips and kissed her fingertips one by one. “You smell wonderful,” he said almost reverently, and she was speechless with pure unadulterated pleasure at the feel of his lips and the sound of his words.
“Ma’am,” West said, holding the car door open for her, and although she liked West, she thought his timing sucked.
“Are you religious at all?” Bly asked, as they wandered through the myriad rooms and halls of Prague Castle, then across to the snow-capped cathedral.
“I was raised a Methodist, how about you?” she asked.
“Episcopalian,” he said, “but I’m not good about going to church, I should make more of an effort. Everyone says that, don’t they? I mean it, and it’s important for raising children.”
Maddie looked taken aback for a moment, and she stopped walking and knelt on the snowy ground and began unfastening her camera bag. “So you have children? Somehow I didn’t realize…”
“Not yet,” he said, “my birthday is coming up and I’ll be thirty-six, maybe fate will smile on me and it will happen soon. Falling hopelessly in love and having a family, I mean. My father was nearly sixty when I was born and my mother was twenty, it wasn’t an ideal situation.”
She took her camera out of the bag quickly and quietly, as if she’d spotted a rare bird and was afraid she’d scare it away. Then she changed the lens and began to photograph the buttresses and spires of the cathedral, trying to capture it all as the sky darkened. The early morning sunlight was being swallowed up as a mass of clouds, heavy with snow, covered the sun and sent the temperature plunging. They hurried inside and she captured the diluted rays of light as they slanted through walls of stained glass.
“One more stop, if you don’t mind, I promise it will be quick and painless,” she said, “Veletrzni Palace, it’s practically one of a kind, a stark, Functionalist building built in nineteen-twenty. It houses the twentieth and twenty-first century art collections from the National Gallery. If you’re interested in the Impressionists, the scope and variety is impressive.”
Maddie photographed the angular interiors of the building, pointing the lens at walls that rose eight stories high. She showed Bly some of the shots she had captured, and they were a study of the earliest movement toward truly modern architecture.
“You’re brilliant,” he said, kissing her lightly, “I’d like to take a glance at some of the paintings, you can continue working if you’d like.”
“No, I’m done, we’ll go together,” she said, and they held hands and he carried her camera bag as they walked among the paintings hung against the stark walls.
“I don’t understand Gauguin,” she said, she had stopped in front of one of his earliest paintings. It was a landscape of France rather than Tahiti, but the colors were there, and the passion. The style was animalistic, as he’d once said, in another museum, a world away.
He stood behind her and studied the painting, then he set the camera bag down and pulled her back against him. He wanted her to feel the size and hardness of his cock, and he imagined her hand grasping it.
“What don’t you understand?” he asked, his voice dark and husky in her ear.
She moved her hand inside his coat, and stroked the immense length of his erection.
He pushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck, and he said, “I can take you against the wall of the restroom now, or at the hotel, which do you want?” and she pressed against him, so he led her to the men’s restroom and into a stall.
Afterwards, when they were in the car, driving to the hotel, he said, “I’m sure the pictures you took are going to be fantastic. I think Bly international should buy them from you and do an entire feature in one of our publications.”
“I don’t want to mix business with… whatever kind of… friendship is happening between us,” Maddie said, and he could tell she was flustered.
Other men had come into the restroom while he fucked her, and they knew just what was happening. Bly didn’t care, she had the hottest, wettest pussy, and his cock was in heaven. The painting had disturbed him, and he’d needed to empty himself, to quench the sudden fire that had blazed in him. He’d intended to wait until their relationship had grown, but there was nothing to be done about it, and her body had been so sweet and responsive, despite her unease.
Before the car had picked them up, when they were both still vibrating from their orgasms, they silently walked along the frozen sidewalks of the city. They bought Trdlenik from a street vendor, and removed their gloves so that the delicious pastries, hot from a bed of coals, warmed their hands as they tore them apart and ate them.
“Let’s go sit in front of a fire in the hotel lobby, I know it’s still early, but I’m damn well freezing to death. I’m a California boy, after all, and I swear there is no place on earth colder than Prague in the middle of winter,” Bly said, and she agreed that it was indecently cold, so they went to his hotel.
“If you decide to sell your photographs, and Bly International wants to acquire them, it will be an art director’s decision, not mine,” he told her, as they sat in the warmth of the car and watched the biggest snowflakes either one had ever seen float down from the steel grey sky. “I’m not going to try to buy your affection, Maddie, I’ve seen your work in the magazines, you’re good at what you do.”
“I’m just being paranoid,” she said, still shaken from the way he’d so easily made her cum in a semi-public place. “Why would you need to buy me when you can melt me with one kiss?”
He led her into the lobby and they stood in front of a roaring fire, he untied the belt of her wool coat and slipped his hands inside. They rested on the soft fabric of her sweater and closed on the curve of her waist as he pulled her against him. Just before his lips met hers she whispered, “People are watching,” and he laughed at her words. She lifted her face then, and her hands got lost in the unruly waves of his hair, and the rest of the world no longer mattered.
“What day is your birthday?” she asked, when he moved his lips to her forehead and she could finally speak.
“January first, the day after tomorrow. My mother’s always been one for making a statement, so she managed to have her first child on New Year’s Day. How should we celebrate?” he asked, and he knew she could feel his hopelessly large erection pressing against her again through his coat.
She was so fucking sexy, her face and body were beautiful, and she was completely unaffected. She saw good and beauty in the world, although she’d been up close and personal with the horrors of war. Maddie had so many endearing qualities that drew him to her, and her desire to please him was a powerful aphrodisiac. He wanted to keep her with him, and he intended to fall in love with her, and to fuck her often, so that his heart and mind wouldn’t have room for any other woman.
“We?” she asked, and her fingers brushed a wayward lock of hair off his forehead. It seemed she couldn’t keep her hands off his face, and she blushed, thinking of all the other parts she had so recently touched. So what if he was Alexander Bly the billionaire, or Mr. Bly who she’d had a crush on since the first time she laid eyes on him. He was simply, Alex,
the man she was getting to know personally. Of course it crossed her mind that it might just be about sex, but she decided at that moment, to make him love only her.
“Definitely we,” he said, “let’s leave this frozen city and go somewhere warm, or hell, let’s go somewhere hot! God bless the Czech Republic, but if I never come back here, it will be a day too soon, now where should we celebrate my birthday?”
*
They flew to Mahe in the Seychelles Islands, off the eastern coast of Africa. Maddie looked out at the window of the jet at the scattering of lush green islands floating below in the azure waters of the Indian Ocean, and she laughed. Bly leaned closer and pressed his cheek to hers and asked what was so funny.
“I am,” she said, shaking her head, “asking if we could get a decent flight on New Year’s Eve, and you being kind enough to humor me. You do realize this jet and your lifestyle is pretty opulent for a girl from Niceville.”
“Niceville, really?” he asked, and reached across to buckle her in as the jet began its descent.
“Niceville, Florida, it really exists,” she said. “My dad was stationed all over the world as an Air Force pilot, but he ended up at Eglin Field so that’s where I went to high school. My parents still live there, my dad’s retired and they live in a house on Bluewater Bay, very ‘Ward and June Cleaver’… you would be bored to death.”
“I doubt that,” he said, “the international jet-setting life isn’t without its downfalls. Strange women come out of the wood-work to drug you, while nubile teenagers distract your iron-willed bodyguard.”
“Hey!” West said from somewhere in the back of the jet, and they all laughed.
A car drove them to the Banyan Tree resort and Maddie stood mesmerized on the verandah of the presidential guest house. Bly was behind her with his arms around her. He rested his chin on her shoulder and they gazed across the private infinity pool to idyllic view of sand and palm trees and bluer than blue ocean.
