Chapter 1
The phone kept ringing, loud and insistent. The alarm blared untended in the corner. The announcer on the radio was saying something about Lady Gaga. I dragged the blankets over my head and ignored it all. I definitely didn’t want to wake up.
An annoying beep followed, the noise that my phone made when I had voicemail. Then the phone started ringing again.
“Go the fuck away,” I mumbled, groping for it. “Hello,” I spoke blearily into the receiver. There had been plenty of drinking last night. I was hung over and hurting and I just wanted to go back to sleep.
“Wake up, Kelly.” The woman’s voice was a combination of amused and annoyed. “I’m just calling to confirm your lunch appointment with Mr. St. Clair.”
“Fuck, is that today?” I swore and opened my eyes to look at the time. Ten-thirty. I was meeting Miles at noon. I would have to hustle.
Paula, Miles’s uber-competent assistant, huffed in mild irritation on the other end of the line. “Yes, Kelly, it’s today. As you should know, since I called you two days ago to make sure you had put it on your calendar.”
“Sorry, sorry,” I soothed Paula. “There was a guy last night. Drinking, dancing, you know how it goes.”
Last night I’d received a call from the nursing home my mother was in. She was fighting some kind of infection that seemed incredibly resistant to any of the antibiotics they gave her. “She hasn’t been able to keep food down,” the woman at the other end of the line had said. “We are switching her to an IV.” They had to inform me according to the terms of the Power of Attorney. I’d clenched my fingers into fists, feeling helpless and unable to cope. An increasingly common feeling nowadays.
So I’d accepted an invitation to go out with a group of friends and had tried to drown all the painful memories in alcohol.
“I’m getting up now,” I replied to Paula. “I promise I won’t keep Miles waiting and he won’t go ballistic on your ass.”
There was a smile in her voice now. “Mr. St. Clair does not ever go ballistic on my ass, Kelly.” No doubt. I couldn’t imagine Miles ever creating a scene. He was pleasant and polite and well-mannered and very square. “I got the two of you reservations at Le Cirque.”
Despite my pounding headache I laughed aloud, then winced as a fresh slice of pain went through me. “Paula,” I told her, “you are the most awesome person in the entire universe.”
“Just get there on time, Kelly,” she responded pertly, though her voice had softened. “Because while I’m sure they’ll hold Mr. St. Clair’s reservation, he also has a meeting back in the office at two that he cannot miss.”
Miles St. Clair. Part science-geek, part business-genius. Miles had founded a biotech company in college, working with a bunch of graduate students to patent their research and try to monetize it. One of their ideas had struck gold. The venture capitalists had knocked on his door; massive sums of money had been invested and less than ten years later, Miles was one of New York’s many billionaires and the CEO of St. Clair Biotech.
He had also been my next-door neighbor growing up in Akron, Ohio. Before my mom’s illness, our mothers had been best friends. When I’d finished college a few years after him and moved to New York with a dream of working in fashion, my mother had called Miles and asked him to keep an eye on me and he’d promised he would.
Miles always kept his promises. Every second week, we would have lunch on a Friday, while Miles carefully probed the details of my life and made sure that I was well.
But his kindness went deeper than that. When my mother had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s when she was only fifty two, it was Miles who had paid for the best medical care that money could buy. I’d stammered out my thanks and he’d given me a surprised look out of his bottle-green eyes. “Kelly, your mom has cooked dinner for me more times that I can count. Of course I’m going to pay. She’s family.”
He’d paid for a multitude of hospital bills and now, month after month, he footed the bill for the luxurious nursing home she lived in. Once a month when he flew home to Akron to visit his mother, he gave me a ride on his private plane, since of course, billionaires didn’t fly commercial. And I scraped together every bit of money I could afford and flew home once more a month to visit my mother, even though she never remembered me. Every single time, these visits broke my heart.
It had been Paula’s idea that our lunches would be at places I wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. Three years ago, my eyes had turned wistful at the mention of some fancy eatery and she’d remembered. Ever since then, our lunch dates were always at Manhattan’s finest restaurants.
Today’s meal was at Le Cirque.
The one advantage of working as an assistant to a fashion designer was that I never had to worry about what to wear. My insanely tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn, an illegal sublet from an old Irish man who had moved to Florida upon retirement, was over-crowded with my sewing machines, half-constructed clothing and carefully folded yards of fabric. I pulled out my newest finished creation, a teal knit dress that dipped low in the front and stopped just shy of my knees and slipped it over my shoulder. I swallowed some ibuprofen, hoping it would keep the pounding headache at bay as I headed towards the subway.
I was only five minutes late but of course, Miles was already there, sipping a glass of sparkling water. Though it was Friday and summer in New York, he was still formally dressed, wearing a grey suit and a pale blue shirt. His only concession to the weather was that he had loosened the knot on his tie.
“Hello Miles.” I slid into the chair the waiter held out for me and smiled my thanks at him, before turning to look at the piece of eye-candy that was Miles St. Clair.
His hair, in shades of brown that ranged from chocolate to caramel, was longer than strictly appropriate for a serious New York businessman. But sadly, that was it in terms of rebellion for Miles. In every other way, Miles always did the right thing. The boring thing, I thought snidely. He’d been something of a wild kid in high school and in college, but that version had disappeared many years ago.
“Kelly,” he raised his glass in greeting. “How’ve you been?”
“You saw me last week,” I pointed out. We’d flown to Akron on his private plane, but Miles had had to work the entire flight. I’d just curled up on a plush seat and read a book.
He nodded. “But I was on the phone most of the time.”
“I’m doing okay,” I replied. “I’m thinking of applying to a job at Zac Posen.”
“Not enjoying your current job?”
We were interrupted by the waiter taking our food order. Miles didn’t bother glancing at the menu. I hastily scanned it as the waiter stood patiently. “Could I get the tasting menu please?” I finally asked. I loved variety.
“I’ll have the same,” Miles said. He looked at me expectantly once the waiter had departed, waiting for me to continue my conversation.
“I am,” I replied. “I like working with Nina. But I also feel like I’ve learned everything there is to learn. A bigger name would look better on my resume.”
“True.”
More than once, people asked me why I’d never hooked up with Miles. After all, he was single, rich and impossibly good-looking. There were so many answers to that question. The easiest being that there were two people in that particular equation and they both needed to want to tango. But a truer explanation was that I was a ticking genetic time bomb and I had no desire to inflict that on anyone else. I couldn’t put anyone through the same emotional wringer I’d been through since my mom had been diagnosed.
In addition, there were the things I wanted sexually and the things that I thought Miles wanted, and these didn’t intersect. Miles wouldn’t understand my desire for pain and oblivion. Once upon a time, I thought Miles and I were cut from the same cloth. I would have sworn that we each had a darker hidden self that hungered to escape.
But in New York I’d come to realize that Miles and I were two very different peop
le. It wasn’t his wealth, but it was the ease with which he’d had embraced New York society. He’d maintained the utter properness required of being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, with no rebellion and no desire that he’d ever wanted something different.
I was much less proper. I sang karaoke while completely drunk. I danced and stumbled into people without inhibitions. I wanted to grind against strange men and be used by them. Perhaps I was subconsciously packing all the life I could into a short period of time, always aware that there was a ticking clock in the background and my memories could be erased, bit by precious bit.
Miles had never been a bad boy. But growing up there’d always been a wicked gleam in his eyes. A gleam that said that if you stuck around he’d take you exploring and it would be something you wouldn’t easily forget. Now, all that was left was his genuinely interested smile and immaculate politeness. I couldn’t see Miles slamming me against a wall and taking me. I couldn’t see him curving his fingers around my throat and I couldn’t see him holding a whip over me.
My darkest desires sometimes frightened me. Miles would be horrified by my fantasies, by the dark recesses of my mind and by what I craved.
“Smiley Miley,” I muttered into my wine, calling him by the nickname I’d come up for him when I was eight and he was an infinitely older and far cooler thirteen.
For an instant, his lips twitched with real amusement. “Do you remember what happened when I retaliated?”
I laughed. Just once when I was twelve, Miles had called me ‘Smelly Kelly’ in response. I must have been driving him crazy, this kid trailing around after seventeen-year old Miles asking him to play with her, repeatedly sing-songing the nickname he detested.
But I’d just got my period for the first time and I thought he called me that because he could smell the blood. I burst into tears, ran home and poured out my woes to my mother, who tried hard not to laugh and told me not to bother Miles. His own mother was a lot harder on him. When she heard, she’d promptly grounded him for two weeks. He never called me ‘Smelly Kelly’ again.
“You got into such trouble,” I remembered.
“That I did,” he confirmed with a twinkle in his eyes. For a moment, there was a brief glimpse of the person he’d been before he moved to New York and became the uptight CEO. Maybe that was why when he asked me what I did last night, instead of being vague as I usually was, I gave him an honest answer. Or maybe I just wanted to shock him. After all, I wasn’t that awkward child anymore.
“I met some guy at a bar,” I replied, peeking at his expression through my lashes as I sipped my wine. “I was tempted to go home with him but he was a complete stranger. I had to pretend to be interested in him so that he would ask me out again, when I really just want to use him for his body.” I sighed, a loud, exaggerated noise. “You billionaires have it so much easier with your sex clubs. No worrying that the guy might be filming you on his cell phone, no worries that he might turn out to be an axe-murderer.”
His lips twitched. I had wanted to shock him but he just looked amused. “You are very naïve, Kelly,” he murmured, “if you think the real danger is physical.”
“What is the real danger then?”
There was a slight edge in his voice when he spoke next, and the mask Miles wore in public slipped just a little. “Fear for your physical safety — that comes of watching too much TV. Physical violence isn’t the biggest risk.” He leaned forward, pinning me in place with his intent gaze. “The real danger is that once you take a step on this path, you might not want to return.”
“Please,” I scoffed. Miles was being protective. “I like sex as much as the next person but in the end, it’s just sex.”
“The next person is me.” His voice was as smooth as dark velvet and his tone spoke directly to some restrained bit of me. I swallowed as sudden unexpected heat ran through my body. Sure, I used to have childish fantasies about Miles when I was thirteen, but as an adult? I’d always assumed he was too vanilla for me. But he was looking at me speculatively right now and the customary politeness was absent.
He reached for his wallet and fished a business card out of it, handing it to me. It was solid black, matte in finish, and it had no lettering on it. Just a phone number.
“What is this?” I heard a tremor in my voice.
His eyes mocked me. “It’s the billionaire sex club,” he said dryly.
“Bullshit.”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Suit yourself, Kelly,” he said. Our food appeared and we ate the rest of our meal in silence.
I actually had work to do that afternoon, which tended to be rare on Fridays during the summer. I had bolts of fabric to buy for my employer’s upcoming winter line, so I headed to New York’s fast-disappearing garment district and spent the next four hours touching and stroking fabric and buying sample one-yard cuts of cashmere and wool.
I would usually have been tempted to buy myself some fabric as well, an unfortunate side-effect of being a fabric addict working in the fashion industry. But today my thoughts were on the piece of cardstock in my wallet and my mind couldn’t stop churning.
It had to be a joke. I’d lived in New York for five years and in all that time Miles had never given me the impression of being anything other than perfectly vanilla. There was no way he belonged to a private sex club. Most likely this was some kind of carefully constructed practical joke.
Except I’d brought up the topic, not him. Besides, Miles had never been the kind for practical jokes.
Could Miles belong to a private sex club? I’d never seen him photographed in the society pages. There had never been any gossip about him and a date. Occasionally, I’d tell him bits and pieces about my sex life, mostly for the purposes of shocking him, but he’d never revealed anything in turn about his private doings.
But Smiley Miley in a sex club? My mind couldn’t wrap around that concept, no matter how hard I tried. It can’t be a sex club, I told myself.
What if it is? another part of me countered.
There was a desire for darkness in me. I’d hinted at it to Miles today, though I hadn’t quite said those exact words. A secret, hidden, taboo yearning to be used by men; to be treated as an object for their pleasure and nothing more. To be taken hard and without concern for my own needs. I’d never really explored this part of my personality, always keeping it firmly in check. The reality of ensuring my own safety had so far won over my filthy longings.
But what if it were real? What if I could explore my needs safely?
Again and again, my mind came back to the central sticking point. I couldn’t see Miles St. Clair at a sex club. I couldn’t imagine him letting go and giving in to his needs. If he ever had a dark side, he had buried it so deep that it would never see the light of day.
That night I dialed the number.
Chapter 2
Of course it went to voicemail. A beep followed by a woman’s voice bid me to leave a message.
Feeling utterly ridiculous, I left one. “Hello,” I spoke into the void. “My name is Kelly Mitchell. Miles St. Clair gave me this number to call.” I thought about what to say next and realized there was nothing I couldn’t say without sounding like a fool. I left my phone number and hung up.
Less than five minutes later the phone rang. “Could I speak to Kelly Mitchell please?” It was a woman’s voice, polite and cultured.
“This is she,” I replied, glancing at the number on the display. It was the same number that Miles had given me.
“My name is Anna,” she said. “I’m in charge of recruitment at Club Phoenix. Miles St. Clair said you might be calling.”
I still wasn’t sure if this was an elaborate hoax and if Anna was just a friend of Miles. “Okay?” I said cautiously.
“You left us a message?”
“I did,” I replied. “Can you tell me what Club Phoenix is?”
“Club Phoenix is a very exclusive private sex club,” she replied readily. “Like I said, I’m in charge of
recruitment. Miles St. Clair has vouched for your discretion but that’s just the start. If you are interested in becoming a member, then I’ll need to assess your skills, willingness and fit.”
I probed, figuring that if it were a hoax she’d be revealed if I continued my line of questioning. “What does that involve?”
“For starters, we’ll meet and you can fill out a questionnaire where I can determine what kind of sexual experience you have. Then we’ll talk about willingness to partake in sexual activity, things you are interested in, things you have no interest in trying, that kind of thing.”
“For starters?”
“Yes,” she said patiently. I was asking a lot of questions but maybe she was used to that. “There’ll be live auditions as well.”
Live auditions. I will have to do live auditions. “That’s sex? In front of a crowd? And if I’m good enough I’ll be allowed in?”
Her laughter was light and amused. “Not quite,” she clarified. “There is rarely a crowd unless you’d like there to be. This is just a way for us to determine what you would like and what you wouldn’t. If you aren’t a good fit, you’ll be the first person to see that. We’ve never needed to ask someone to leave the club for that reason.”
Okay. If she was fake, she was very good at ad-libbing answers to my questions. “You said we would meet?”
“Tomorrow if you are free?” she queried politely. “We can meet for lunch.” She named a trendy eatery in the Meat Packing district and I arranged to meet her at one in the afternoon.
I dreamed that night of darkness and of light. Of a twisting road that split into two pathways and I was lost and I didn’t know which way to go.
I dreamed of men taking me hard. My cries of pleasure and pain filled the night and I couldn’t tell them apart. I dreamed of kneeling at the feet of a man with shoulder-length hair in shades of caramel and honey and chocolate. His gaze, with those intent green-glass eyes penetrated my soul, but if he learned secrets from his glimpse into my innermost self, he kept them to himself.
The Watcher (A Dark Romance) Page 2
