by Kylie Parker
– Just like he probably had so many other women.
If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that I was better than the lot of them. I might have dropped out of school, grieved the loss of a child that wasn’t mine, and lived two ticks above squalor just to get by, but I was better than being some rich guy’s flavor-of-the-night conquest.
I deserved better for my life, and it was time I started demanding that.
“Mr. Blake,” I breathed as I put my hands on his chest.
He stopped in his tracks and hooked his dark, gluttonous stare onto my face before I fluttered my eyes open to meet his.
“I really should be getting to bed,” I whispered.
I saw his jaw clench in frustration, and I knew I had made the right decision. Whether Mr. Blake saw me as another notch in his belt, or whether he saw me as a challenge, this job was financially changing my life.
So I had to keep it long enough to make sure it continued to do just that.
He sat up and took my body with his. His arm was strong around my waist: a part of me wanted to melt back into his arms; a part of me wanted to straddle his lap, feel his large hands cup my ass cheeks before picking me up, taking me to his room, and sinking me lustfully down onto his mattress;
a part of me wanted to scream his name.
But I had to keep thinking about my future.
I scrambled off the couch and resituated my clothes. I fluffed my hair and smoothed my palms down my shirt. Before I could reach for my wine glass on the table his soothing voice stopped me in my tracks.
“I’ve got it,” he said lowly.
I flicked my gaze his way and caught his stare one last time before he stood to go. Gone was the look of darkened lust and wanton gluttony. Gone were the predatory stare and the confident stature. In its place, however, was a look I couldn’t quite place.
It was a look I’d never seen on Der – I mean, Mr. Blake – before, and before I could question my actions and second-guess my decisions, I allowed my feet to carry me as fast as they could out of the room and into the dark confines of mine.
Distance was what we needed… and distance is what I would keep.
13
Fuck.
All I could think when I woke up that morning was “fuck.”
I’d had her. I’d had her right where I wanted her: worn down from the long day; loosened up with wine. And just as I could imagine what her legs would taste like on my tongue, she pulled away.
Why would she do that? I set everything up so well! I cooked dinner, Clara was asleep, the moon was full, and the stars were twinkling. There were no honking horns and the wine tasted especially ripe that night.
Fuck!
I groaned before I rolled over in bed and I closed my eyes while the satin sheets of my bed slowly slipped off my body. The cool morning air felt wonderful on my skin; there was nothing like sleeping naked to wake you up in a wonderful mood. I kept my body in shape just so I could go naked… but who the hell said I had to wake up alone?
Three fucking weeks, I worked on this woman.
I was due back to work the next morning, and all I could do was replay the night before: how her eyes sparkled easily with the reflection of my own; how her body curled so instinctively into mine when I laid her on my couch. I envisioned how her body would have rolled into mine, how her legs would have trembled at every flick of my tongue. She would have lost control and I would have slurped her up, and I could have taken her on every surface of my home –
– My dresser –
– That shower –
– The wall –
– My bed –
– Her bed –
– All the beds –
Damn it, I would’ve put her anywhere so long as she’d let me inside.
I felt my chest heating up and my pelvis burned with a frustrated fury. I reached down and wrapped my hand around my throbbing length, angry from the night before. My balls hung low with unfiltered need, and I knew this was the way I was going to start my morning. I closed my eyes and envisioned the voluptuous breasts underneath those conservative shirts she always wore. I imagined her thighs squeezing my head as my hand began to pump my thick cock, and the only thing I could think was that she was missing out. Every woman threw her head back in pleasure when they sat on my lap, and I knew I could fill her completely –
– Fill her wholly –
– Fill her in all the right places.
My hips began to thrust off the bed. My mind imagined her tongue licking down my chest. I imagined her fingernails raking across my back as I pounded her into the wall of my home. I clenched my teeth as I felt my balls rise up into my body, and my jaw peeled open with a silent cry that was begging to yell her name.
I yelled her name in my mind while her breasts pressed into the full-length windows of my penthouse.
I’d expose her to the world with me buried between her legs if she’d let me.
Anything to let everyone know she was mine.
My hot spurting seed shot out so far it hit my neck, and my back tumbled to the bed recklessly before my chest began to heave for oxygen. Silver streaks burst in my vision, and it took me a while to right myself before the wonderful smells came wafting in from the kitchen.
She was up and cooking…
… and I wanted to see her now.
I grabbed some clothes and slipped into the bathroom where I proceeded to clean myself down. I tried to rid myself of the fact that I had to go to work tomorrow and I decided to take a quick shower. The steam filled the room while I washed down my neck, and I couldn’t help but continue to think about last night. I had finally gotten my skin against hers, and it felt like she had burned a lasting imprint into all the places her skin had come into contact with mine.
She was fire, and I was ice, and slowly she was melting parts of my skin that hadn’t ever been exposed to the heated elements of lust in quite some time.
Sure, I’d had trysts. I’ve got urges just like everyone else, and trust me… there’s no hand that can compare with the sweet, silky, throbbing insides of a woman’s body. There’s nothing quite as soft as pulling a woman’s body next to yours at night, and there sure as hell was no substitute for a woman’s taste: salty, silky, smooth, and sweet.
Madeline would taste just like that and more, I just knew it.
I felt my groin churning again with desire at the mere thought of her presence, and I leaned my head against the shower wall before planting my feet firmly into the ground. She stirred feelings in me that was primal; feelings that no other woman had stirred in me. All of those other girls – those names I couldn’t remember – they were just warm bodies for the night. Prizes for every client I nailed and birthday presents for every year I got older.
But Madeline: she was a challenge; a treat after being thrown life’s biggest curveball;
a saving grace when I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do.
I wrapped my hand around my growing cock again and began thrusting into it. My hips pounded into my hand and I couldn’t help but imagine the slapping skin being my hips thrusting into hers. My balls would surely smack that tight ass of hers, and I knew I’d be able to render her speechless with the things I’d do to her body.
I’d tweak her nipples with my fingers while her legs were thrown over my shoulders. I’d slap her ass from behind before teasing her asshole with a finger. She’d clench, but I’d slip it in anyway, and she’d lose her head in a mind-blowing orgasm.
I bet she’d squirt.
God, they always do with me.
I choked out another orgasm, hoping I could stifle my sounds. By myself, I had sounds: roaring sounds; thunderous sounds. I enjoyed growling in a woman’s ear and telling her all the things that were to come. I enjoyed watching her skin tingle as she envisioned the beating her body would take before she would cry mercy.
But I never gave them mercy. I wracked their bodies with orgasms until tears poured down their faces.
>
I bet Madeline would look beautiful with her chest glistening with tears.
I slumped down into the shower and panted, trying to regain my footing before finishing my shower. The smells from the kitchen were dissipating, and that meant she was probably already washing it down from breakfast. God knows how long I’d been in the shower, and I knew that if she had any plans with Clara today, she’d be out the door in the next few minutes.
So, I turned off the shower and quickly stepped out.
When I emerged from the shower, I was still drying my hair. My t-shirt was clinging to my still-damp chest, and the jeans I’d picked out meant I probably wasn’t planning on going anywhere. I would never step out in jeans; that just wasn’t something I did.
This meant maybe, I could convince Madeline to stay in with me.
I dropped the towel onto the couch and strode through my home. The kitchen was silent and I didn’t hear Clara. My stomach dropped at the realization that maybe they had already left. But, before I got to the kitchen, Madeline was slowly slipping out of Clara’s room. She slid out gracefully before she shut the door, and when she turned around she ran right into me. She face planted into my chest and her hands flew into the air, while a bright grin spread across my face before she slowly panned her gaze up to mine.
If her eyes had been brilliant and bright in the darkness, they sure as hell glistened in the morning.
“Morning, Mr. Blake,” she whispered.
“Clara’s already asleep?” I murmured.
“She’s been up since four, so I’d say ‘yes’,” Madeline nodded. “Um… breakfast is in the kitchen still, if you’re hungry.”
“Thank you,” I said lowly.
We stood there for a while, just looking at each other. Part of me wanted to pin her against the wall and part of me simply wanted to wrap my arms around her body. I could tell by the bags under her eyes that she hadn’t slept well last night, which meant I probably drank too much pity scotch before I passed out last night.
But then, the words she uttered that broke the silence had me captivated.
“Mr. Blake… about last night…”
I watched her intently as she tried silently to formulate the words she wanted to speak.
“Well, I–... there’s just–... I don’t want–...”
It was cute, the way she stumbled over her words. Every time she paused her nose would crinkle up, as if she smelled the light scent of dirty laundry and couldn’t quite place from what part of the house it was coming. Her eyes darted around and her fingertips tapped the sides of her thighs, and everything she was projecting told me she was uncomfortable.
I always looked for those types of cues in business meetings to exploit; to make a potential client feel as if they needed me in order to ease their anxieties.
I wanted her to need me… to beg for me…
… But I didn’t want to exploit her in order to get it.
I was the king of exploitation, and I didn’t want to exploit her.
Huh.
“I hope you won’t fire me for last night, Mr. Blake,” she finally said.
I furrowed my brow deeply before I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.
“Why would I do that?” I asked.
“The first rule of our business is to never get… involved,” she answered lowly.
“Involved…” I trailed off.
“And last night was –”
“– involved?” I finished.
“Yes,” she breathed. “So, you understand?”
“Of course,” I nodded.
The sigh of relief she allowed to escape through her lips shivered my arms.
“You were sexually attracted to me last night, but you can’t cross that line because it would look bad on the firm that served as the intermediary between my needing a nanny and you being one.”
“Wait… wha–... no! No, Mr. Blake. Absolutely not,” she stammered.
“So, you let me kiss you because you weren’t sexually attracted to me?”
The infuriated blush that rose in her cheeks made me want to laugh. She was too cute when she was worked up, and her nose scrunched up even further before she ventured to toss something back.
“Mr. Blake, I kissed you because I’d had too much wine. It was inappropriate and it won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”
“I think you kissed me because you like me, and it will happen again because I’m just so damn irresistible.”
“You are such a pompous windbag,” she bit.
“And you are radiant in the moonlight,” I said lowly.
She whipped her gaze back up to mine and I saw the embarrassment quickly fade from behind her eyes. It was true: the way the moonlight played on her skin last night made me want to press her writhing, naked body into the glass for everyone below us to watch. I would’ve picked her up and pinned her to the glass and bit down into her shoulder as she shuddered orgasm after orgasm and dripped her essence onto my hardwood floors.
Then, I decided to make a bold move. I curved my hand around her waist and pulled her up towards me. Her feet were just off the floor as her eyes widened in shock, and I crashed my lips down onto hers. Her hands rushed to my hair and my other arm came around to hold her close, and when I pressed into her, her body curved into mine. The little paunch behind her belly button slipped perfectly into the concave structure of my abdomen, and our tongues wrestled and lapped at everything we could get from one another before I finally released her.
My eyes fluttered open and we were both panting, and I could still taste the tinge of eggs and orange juice on her breath.
“Just because I go after what I want doesn’t make me pompous, Miss Madeline,” I breathed. “And what I want… is you.”
I finally watched her eyes flutter open, and the desire floating behind her eyes ignited a fire deep within the pit of my gut that raged all the way up to the tips of my ears. She was trembling in my arms as I held her weight in my grip, and I could feel her freely-swinging breasts pressing into my chest as her nipples began to harden into luscious peaks I would do anything to get my lips around.
I didn’t know what this woman had done to me, but I wanted to share everything with her: the story of my family, the story of my business. How I met Clara’s mother and the reasons why I thought she abandoned Clara on my doorstep. I wanted to rip my burning body open and let her step inside, just to chance that my skin might ultimately touch hers.
But when she pushed free of my grasp, the only thing that rose into my throat was a bubble full of anger.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
And I could have sworn that as she pushed beside me there were tears glistening in her eyes.
14
“And what I want… is you.”
Those words echoed in my mind as I brushed passed him in the hallway. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heart was fluttering and my stomach was churning and my soul felt like it had been set on fire and rolled down a canyon. I felt like life itself had just started. For the first time since the death of that little child, I felt free.
For the first time since I had started living in basic squalor, I felt like I had an actual purpose.
Clara was napping, and I needed some space. Mr. Blake and I had developed a good rhythm with one another: I made breakfast, he made lunch, and we would both make dinner. We sidestepped one another as if we had been doing it for years, and taking care of his daughter alongside him made me feel, I don’t know, a part of a family. It wasn’t that I was estranged from my family. They just… didn’t quite understand me. I’ve always been headstrong: independent; fiercely loyal. They couldn’t understand why I would choose a profession that put me as someone’s subordinate. My father saw me as an entrepreneur and my mother saw me as a… well… mother. She saw herself planning my ultimate wedding, and my father saw me winning the bread for that family to whom my mother would marry me off.
They were always so critical: of my clothes; of my lack of
makeup; of the way I talked. I didn’t care if I left the house without a bra. For god’s sake, I was just going to the grocery store to get some ice cream.
Why does that require lipstick?
So, when I skipped my own graduation to travel with a family to New York City to become a live-in nanny while doing my graduate studies in Psychology, needless to say, they weren’t very happy. I tried talking with them occasionally, but all they wanted to do was convince me to come back home. My dad would say he could take care of me until I found my own way, and my mom said she could take care of me until I found a man who would.
Neither of them understood I was capable of taking care of myself.
We just… stopped talking, I guess: no massive falling out; no bodacious argument; no tensions that wrapped the family too tight. Just two parents who didn’t understand their daughter and didn’t want to.
I stopped calling, and they never made the effort to call me.
When I got the call for the job, I saw it as a form of redemption, as a way to prove to myself that the death of that one child wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t, I was just the nanny. I was the one waiting for them to get back from a vacation, so I could continue on with my job of taking care of their little one –
– Their beautiful, vivacious little one.
When I got the phone call that their child had died, a part of me died, too. I had raised that child for almost five solid years, and then the child was just… gone.
To this day, I still can’t say that child’s name. I can’t– can’t even acknowledge its gender.
It clutches a part of me that threatens to cut off my air supply.
So, when I heard that same family gave me the referral that sent me here, I took it as their apology. Their apology for cutting me off and not allowing me to come to the funeral and bury a child I had just as much right to bury as they did.
And it felt like my taking of the job was telling them I accepted.
But now… with Mr. Blake looking at me the way he did and… and saying what he just said.
It felt like we were becoming a family.
