[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take

by Blair Babylon

  It was over too soon, and they lay in her bed, their limbs snaked together, watching the dappled sunlight from the slot windows high on the wall.

  In the tiny dorm shower, Alex washed her body again, and took care to smooth lotion over her skin, like he was renewing her for her new life. As his arms and back flexed, his arms sweeping the cool moisturizer on her, the watercolor tattoo on his back looked like teal and blue ink had been poured over his pale gold skin. Darker designs of treble clefs and musical notes flowed over the strong muscles like flotsam in a flood. A serpentine, five-line musical staff wove through the design like a swimming water dragon. As he crouched and stroked lotion on her calves, Georgie ran her hands over his shoulders, feeling the rough ink under his skin.

  After they dressed, Alex checked his instruments in his combination guitar and violin case in Georgie’s study room and told her that his other luggage would be delivered to his plane so they didn’t need to stop at his hotel.

  Georgie wondered how he ranked that, but skipping his hotel was a ten-minute detour, lost.

  The thick traffic on the freeway under the noontime sun ran fast and clear, bumper-to-bumper and eighty miles an hour. Georgie gripped the hot steering wheel and drove precisely in the zero-tolerance formation, the hot wind whizzing by her windows. She had never wished for a traffic jam before, but that day, she did. She couldn’t even hold Alex’s hand because she needed both hands on the wheel, but he looked out the passenger window at the beige freeway walls speeding behind them.

  At the airport, she pulled her car into the first parking spot, the one nearest to the private terminal that she and Lizzy had flown out of only a week before.

  Alex walked around the car and retrieved his guitar case from her trunk. She met him back there, thumbing the fob to release the trunk latch.

  “I guess it’s time for you to go.” She couldn’t even make a joke about how it had been lovely fucking him.

  Alex grabbed her around her waist and pressed her back against the car, which warmed the backs of her legs. “This feels wrong.”

  No, it didn’t. His tall, lean body pressed against hers felt so right, but she knew what he meant.

  “Tell me where you’re going,” he said.

  “It’s better if no one knows,” she said. “I’ve got a quick meeting in town to support a friend, but then I’m hitting the road. I’ll be in Albuquerque tonight and past that tomorrow.”

  “No matter where you are, if something happens, if you need help,” he whispered, “get to an airport with a private terminal. Call me. Evidently, if they have suitable incentive, my plane can be in the air in under two hours. I will come for you. I’ll send people if it’s faster, but call me.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, feeling his arms around her waist and body.

  Alex pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. His long lashes lay like fringe on his cheeks. “No matter what you need, call me. I’ll help you.”

  The first two times she had disappeared, no one had said this to her. His words comforted her down to her core. “I will.”

  “Good.” He held the sides of her face as he kissed her mouth, so tenderly, and then he walked away, into the terminal where the golden sunlight glared off the glass.

  Your Grace

  Alexandre de Valentinois

  Alexandre carried his guitar case by the backpack straps clenched in one fist and strode across the sun-baked tarmac to his airplane, the tail painted red, white, and blue to mimic France’s tricolor Republican flag. His mother insisted on maintaining French pride even though his family was Monégasque and had been Monégasque back to when Monaco was just another feudal city-state, though like most noble and royal families, his ancestors were as often Austrian or German. The most he could really say about himself was that he was blue-blooded European with more than the average Italian mixed in. His mother, however, still believed that France would recreate its dukes and counts someday, and their family would be restored to their dukedom as they deserved.

  God, he hoped they never did that.

  He retrieved his phone from his pants pocket and told it, “Call security.”

  After a ring, a man’s voice asked, “Ouais?”

  Alexandre said, “Paul, Adrien, we’re delaying the flight for a few hours, and I’d like you to stay behind for a few days. I’m concerned about Georgie, and you should follow her even if she leaves town. There may be something very wrong, here. She was attacked in France, and now she thinks someone is after her here. I’ll come back through the terminal. Pick me up at the doors.”

  “Oui-oui, monsieur.”

  Alexandre hung up. If she wouldn’t come with him, at least he would not leave her unprotected.

  The plane’s jet engines were revving hard, a white-speckled yellow blast, probably running the air conditioning inside to combat the desert sun glowering down on the plane’s titanium skin.

  He reached the plane and took the stairs up to the door two at a time. The smoky exhaust billowing around the plane crawled like insects on his skin, and he hurried inside. Alexandre handed the guitar case to the steward to stow it.

  Guillaume, a middle-aged man with more scalp than hair and more paunch than legs, said in a low, servant’s voice, “Your Grace. Would you like a drink?”

  “Reschedule the flight for three hours from now and refile the flight plan.”

  “Won’t that be cutting it awfully close to your,” he sniffed, “performance?”

  “You’re right. Tell the pilot that we’ll have to make up time in the air.”

  Guillaume rolled his eyes. “Very good, Your Grace.”

  Alexandre ran to catch up with Paul and Adrien.

  Saying Good-Bye

  Georgie

  Georgie sat in her car, resting her arms and forehead on the steering wheel and giving herself a few moments. The air conditioning blew full blast, cooling the car even though it had been off for only a short time and tickling her ears with icy streams.

  Alex was flying away, and she was running away.

  It had been lovely fucking him.

  Cars whizzed by on the road outside the terminal’s parking lot, blotting out the blobs of the prickly pear cactus on the other side of the road.

  Damn.

  Georgie should drive.

  She should find herself some lunch before the Devilhouse meeting.

  She should get ready to leave.

  Instead, she dug her laptop out of her black bug-out bag from her closet, connected it to her cell phone, and composed emails instead, scheduling them to send in a few hours when she would be on the road to Albuquerque, telling everyone goodbye.

  She was a coward, but she couldn’t face their reactions because, for all pragmatic reasons, Georgie Johnson was going to die tonight, even if a new woman with a new name would rise phoenix-like from her ashes.

  But her reincarnation would be in Alabama, not the Southwest.

  So Georgie composed her suicide notes, telling them how much they meant to her, how sorry she was, but not to look for her, and she set up notes for Rae, Lizzy, some other friends, and even Wulfram von Hannover.

  And Flicka.

  Flicka’s was the hardest.

  I have to disappear again, Georgie typed, We just found each other, and I’m so, so sorry. In a few years, when things cool off, when I can pay everyone back, I’ll find you again. I’ll pay you back soon, right after the charities. The charities were the worst thing he ever did.

  The New, Improved Devilhouse

  Georgie

  Georgie sat at the end of the long, polished table in The Devilhouse conference room and stared out the tinted windows at the park-like expanse of lush grass and bushes shining in the blazing afternoon sunlight.

  At the other end of the conference table, Lizzy—finally clad in a black suit appropriate for business instead of stupid slavewear—was doing her best to look competent and in control and pulling it off really well. She had gotten her short hair trimmed in t
he last couple days so that her blond pixie-cut was back in spiky shape.

  Dozens of other contractors surrounded the table, seated in the squeaking leather chairs and in the other office chairs dragged in to line the room. More people leaned against the walls. Georgie tallied a quick head count, and she thought only two people might be missing.

  At the head of the table, Lizzy’s boyfriend Theo Valencia, the Medium Guy turned Radiant Sun God Dude, and Wulfram von Hannover flanked the tiny blonde, looking for all the world like giant, golden lions guarding a child. They turned in, toward her, directing the group’s attention in and to Lizzy.

  Nicely played.

  “First of all,” Lizzy’s raspy voice projected over the conference table and dozens of people around it, “let’s get this out of the way. I’m not The Domme, no matter how you spell it. I prefer Domina. You’ll address me as Domina or Ma’am when we’re inside The Devilhouse.”

  Georgie’s purse was tucked under her chair, the strap looped around her ankle so it wouldn’t get kicked around. She had thought about shoving one of her bug-out bags in a locker inside The Devilhouse, but the parking lot was fenced. No one was going to break into her car in that parking lot in the middle of the brilliant desert afternoon. She had cracked her windows so that her laptop wouldn’t broil.

  Yet, maybe she should have brought it in with her.

  But it was such a pain in the ass to tote the big backpacks around. People would ask questions. She didn’t want anyone to know that she planned to say good-bye to Lizzy and a few other people here before she bolted.

  After this meeting, and she was only here to support Lizzy, Georgie was going to drive through a coffee place, buy a triple-shot latte, and drive at least as far as Albuquerque that night, about six hours.

  The next day, it would take her about eight more hours to get to Oklahoma City.

  She had downloaded everything that she needed to get her to Alabama on her phone, including maps in case the cell phone towers were sparse and all of Killer Valentine’s music.

  If she had to leave, if she had to become someone else, she could at least hear Alex sing to her one last time.

  Beside Georgie, Josephine brushed her lavender hair behind her shoulder and shifted in her seat. “Um, I did one a couple months ago.”

  Lizzy, up at the front, projected, “A couple months ago. Georgie?”

  Oh, crap. She cleared her throat, stalling.

  Josephine ducked her head and whispered, “Blowjob. Last one. When?”

  Georgie flipped her hand, looking like she was dithering. “I have a new guy, so he wanted one. Other than that, it had been a couple months for me, too.”

  “And how many clients do you have?” Lizzy pressed.

  “Eight regulars, plus some special occasions,” Georgie said. Damn, she really needed to write them good-bye notes, too. They were all so fragile. Many of them had emailed her during the time The Devilhouse had been closed, asking her to meet with them, just for coffee, just to talk. Their lonely voices had saddened her cold, dead heart, so she had met with them at The Coffee Plantation for an hour each to tide them over, just for coffee.

  They were all sweetly grateful. Only two had wanted hugs. The rest just needed to talk.

  Oh, damn. What was Georgie going to do about those guys?

  “And it’s been months,” Lizzy said, her gravelly voice firm.

  “Well, yeah. They’re not really here for the BJs. They think they are, but, you know. They’re not.” Eight more emails. She could probably do that from Albuquerque tonight.

  “Yes,” Lizzy said. “That’s the point. Dommes and Doms, when was the last time yous guys blew anyone?”

  Jesus, did Lizzy want a mutiny? Georgie turned around to where the Dominants all sat behind her to watch the carnage.

  None of them twitched.

  Mairearad shrugged. “Dommes don’t do that, ever.”

  Lizzy said, “Yes. And yet the Dominants charge five times as much per hour as the general contractors. We’re going to apply the dominants’ model to everyone. Whatever the clients do after you leave the room is none of your business, but we have no part in it.”

  The Dominants looked smugly superior, like their business model had dominated.

  So they were staying.

  The rest of the contractors blinked, took notes (because most were college students and did that compulsively,) or stared at the ceiling, considering what Lizzy had said.

  All looked thoughtful. None looked pissed.

  Wow. Lizzy had turned it around.

  Georgie turned back to the table and checked the time on her phone. She needed to leave soon if she didn’t want to be driving long after dark. She had even changed into yoga pants and running shoes in the locker room so she would be comfortable on the drive.

  Her mind kept turning to Alex, the sunlight passing over his chiseled face and the blond ends of his hair as he rode in her car.

  She shouldn’t have fucked him that last time. Five times was too much. He was tangled up in her head, and every time she thought about her car or driving or music or breathing, she thought about him.

  The others started talking about The Devilhouse again, but Georgie contemplated the map on her phone and watched the clock.

  Run

  Georgie

  After the meeting, while the babbling mob of contractors snaked into a line to shake Lizzy’s hand, Georgie said good-bye to Lizzy, not in words but with a long hug that left Lizzy with lingering puzzlement in her pale blue eyes, and pushed open the heavy metal door to the parking lot. Afternoon heat ricocheting off the black asphalt stung her bare arms and scratched the inside of her nose with the stink of baking tar.

  Everyone else was still processing after the meeting, drinking the coffee and eating the pastries in the locker rooms and hallway that Lizzy had set out to encourage mingling and conversation afterward.

  The Devilhouse’s meeting had started at two o’clock, and the sun had dropped farther in the west during the hour since then, closer to the white walls that ringed the parking lot. Georgie’s white Lexus was parked near the back because the other contractors’ cars had filled the lot while she had been dropping Alex off at the airport.

  No one else had followed her out, too interested in the pastries and reading the new contracts to each other.

  Georgie walked between the cars, threading between the Mercedes, Bimmers, and the occasional Prius, her purse over her shoulder bumping her hip. Rows of cars separated her from her Lexus, her bug-out bags, and her ride out of the Southwest and her old life.

  She turned a corner around a candy apple red Corvette.

  A man stood up from where he had been crouching between the cars. He wore a black business suit and said, “Georgiana Oelrichs.”

  “You must have mistaken me for someone else.” She turned to escape back to The Devilhouse, but another man, far taller and wider than Georgie, had stepped between the cars behind her. He wore a grim smile on his wide, Slavic face, and his eyes were the cold blue of the Moscow winter sky.

  He said, “Tatiana Butorin sent us. She needs to speak to you.”

  Shit.

  Georgie jumped and scrambled over the Corvette. The sun-heated metal burned her hands as she clawed for fingerholds and her toes found the edge of the windowsill.

  A hand grabbed her leg but she kicked and got free. When she jumped down the other side, the men were sprinting around to fence her in again, but a convertible with its top down was in front of her. She hurdled the side of the car and bounced off the back seat, landing on the asphalt on the other side. She held onto her purse with one hand.

  The men kept running, trying to flank her, but Georgie reached the edge of the employee’s parking lot. The park-like space that filled the area between the long driveways leading from the street filled the land ahead of her.

  Georgie sprinted for the trees and shrubs.

  The guys behind her looked like they were in pretty good shape, muscular and broad-sh
ouldered, and they would have been intimidating in a fight.

  But this wasn’t a fight. This was a race.

  Her body, accustomed to running miles from cross-country in high school and every day since, stretched and settled into a hard sprint. She dug her feet into the hard desert dirt. She could keep it up for a long time.

  She ran through the park, the grassy and tree-shaded area she and Lizzy called The Garden of Good and Evil, over benches and through hedges and past an area where she liked to sunbathe in the spring and fall.

  The men crashed through the plants behind her, grunting as thorns tore at them.

  Georgie reached the perimeter, shoved one foot after another in the chain-link fence at the end, and vaulted over the top.

  A black SUV sat idling at the curb ahead of her. The men stomped to the sidewalk behind her.

  She ran hard, intending to sprint past the vehicle, but a man inside gaped at her through the side mirror and jammed his door open.

  The back seat door flipped open, too.

  Alex reached out, grabbed her around the waist, and tossed her into the back seat.

  Georgie clutched him around his neck as he leapt in after her.

  He slammed the door as the men chasing her started banging on the side of the SUV.

  She twisted in the seat to look out the rear window. The bratva men chased the SUV for a few yards but pulled up, gripping their knees and gasping for breath. One reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun, but he dropped his arm as the SUV swerved into traffic, jostling Georgie and bumping her into the seat back.