The Golden Pecker

by Penelope Bloom

  The difference between Landon and everybody else was that he plowed straight over my humor. It slid past him like a harmless breeze. He just kept coming. Kept advancing. He made me think of that scene in Terminator 2 when the T-1000 was chasing down John and Sarah Connor in their car. No matter how many shots they fired at him or how many twists and turns they took, he just kept coming. And when hands weren’t good enough to hold on, he morphed his entire arms into metal things with hooks on the end. And yes, they eventually shot those off and lost him, but everybody watching the movie knew that wasn’t the end. Even if they couldn’t see him in the rearview, he’d be coming. Always in pursuit. Always advancing.

  “I would be bad for you,” he said, almost gently. “I’d want to punish you for being such a pain in my ass, but the worst part would only come once I’d shown you how badly you want me.”

  “That pain in your ass could be hemorrhoids,” I said. “Staring at your phone on the toilet? Straining? It can happen to anyone. They say you shouldn’t spend more than five minutes at a time on there.”

  Landon didn’t so much as blink, then he straightened, letting me feel like I could breathe again when he wasn’t acting like he was about to pounce on me.“I know you’re hearing all of this. And it doesn’t matter what words come out of that pretty little mouth of yours. Your pupils are dilated like your entire body is flooding with adrenaline, and…” he tapped my knee and I flinched like I’d just been shocked. “You’re wound as tight as a wire. So do I need to keep reading you, or are you ready to talk to me. To actually talk to me.”

  I cleared my throat. “Maybe my adrenaline is pumping because I’m pissed off.”

  “Could be,” he reached out and softly pulled my hand away from my lips, which I had been absentmindedly rubbing with my thumb. “But people tend to touch their lips when they’re aroused.”

  “You’re a body language expert, too? Tell me. What does it mean if somebody’s foot is touching your balls at a high speed? Do you want me to demonstrate?”

  He showed no reaction to my threat. The frustrating part was that it really did seem as if he could see straight through all my bluffs. “Every time we’re together, you can’t help talking about my balls. I think people in the world of psychology would call that a fixation.”

  I gritted my teeth. “There’s a difference between touching something and kicking it.”

  “Yes, exactly. Because touching can be torture just as much as pain can be ecstasy.”

  “Uh, no. That wasn’t really the point I was trying to make.”

  “Here’s what I think. The only way I can get honesty out of you is from these.” He sat down beside me on the bed and turned my head to face him, rubbing his thumb across my lips.

  I didn’t see him moving, but Landon’s face was closer to mine. No matter what words were coming out of my mouth, he was right. I couldn’t stop looking at his lips—hungry for another taste of the explosion I’d felt in the hallway.

  Landon’s eyes told me everything. He was going to kiss me again. Worse, I wanted him to, secrets or not. I even felt my chin tilting up and my eyes starting to close. The last thing I saw was the satisfied, knowing smirk on his mouth.

  Then our lips met more softly this time. It wasn’t the violent attack in the hallway. It was more careful, probing. It almost felt like he really could somehow read my thoughts with the kiss, and this was a physical conversation. Each flick and roll of our tongues was a message that he read loud and clear.

  His big hands cradled my cheeks and I knew how easy it would be to lay backwards and let him practically fall on top of me.

  The scariest part was how my worries and doubts melted with his lips and hands on me. They felt like wisps of smoke that I could see, but not grasp. I didn’t want to feel them. All I wanted was this.

  Him.

  Now.

  I wanted it to last forever so I wouldn’t have to go back to that world where Landon was real and so were the doubts I had about him. The fear that he was going to make me care for him just in time to smash my heart to pieces.

  I put my hands on his chest to push him away, but the warm hardness of his muscles made me pause.

  God.

  I’d never felt so out of control in my own body. My brain was like a little, insignificant pilot trying to run a complex machine—only I’d suddenly forgotten what all the buttons do and every moment spun the situation farther and farther out of my control.

  “Landon,” I breathed.

  “What?” His dark hair had fallen partly over his eyes and it physically hurt to see how good he looked—to know I was going to do the only thing I could think of to avoid getting carried away by the dangerous momentum I felt.

  “Thank you.” I pushed his chest gently, but firmly enough that he got the message and leaned back. “Now I know what a mistake tastes like. I’d always wondered.”

  His eyes smoldered, but I didn’t let myself sink into his trap. I stood, hoped I hadn’t left an embarrassing wet spot of arousal from where I’d sat on the bed, and hurried to the door.

  “When do you want to sign the contract?” he asked calmly.

  Right now. I want to do whatever it takes to get your hands back on me and the taste of your lips on my tongue again. I want it all, even if I’m almost certain I’ll regret every moment of it. “How about never?” I said, slamming the door behind me.

  I was curled in my favorite chair—the one in the lobby where I’d read hundreds of books growing up. Today, the story was of a golden-skinned alien smuggler with a massive, heat-seeking cock. The cargo he was smuggling happened to be a virgin Earthling woman, and his twelve-inch coke can cock was absolutely going to find its way to her. I grinned to myself when I imagined what Landon would think of a book like this.

  Except I didn’t have to imagine for long. He was walking straight toward me. For once, he wasn’t wearing a suit. He’d dressed down in a nice button-up shirt with the collar loose and the sleeves rolled up. His forearms were muscular and covered in tattoos, which, from our time at the dolphin encounter, I knew snaked across half of his chest as well.

  “I expected you to hide from me for a week or so,” he said, sitting himself down in the chair beside mine. “It’s almost disappointing to find you so easily. And not even twenty-four hours since I last saw you.”

  “Maybe I just hoped you wouldn’t be pathetic enough to come looking for me this quickly.”

  “The contract is waiting for your signature. We can’t move forward unless you sign it.”

  I tried to look annoyed. The truth was I’d spent all night tormenting myself with vivid, dirty dreams about what would’ve happened if I’d signed that contract. I imagined Landon carrying me to demented sex tables in dark rooms—tying me up and using more than just his breath to torment me.

  The most embarrassing element of the whole thing was that my conflicting feelings somehow made the idea of his touch all the more appealing. He was the forbidden fruit hanging from the tree—at least if forbidden fruits had six packs, tattoos, and jawlines like razor blades. And no, I hadn’t fully committed to pulling the fruit off the tree, per se. But I had basically licked it, sniffed it, stuck my tongue down its throat, and maybe even taken a nibble.

  “What happens if I change my mind after signing it?”

  “Good. So you’re considering it. And if you change your mind, you’ll have the only copy of the contract. Just tear it up and we’re done. It’s much less about legality and more about the formality of defining your boundaries.”

  I mimicked a large box around myself and gave him a dry look. “That’s my boundary. You on the outside of it, me on the inside.”

  “No,” he said. “This would be more nuanced.”

  “It was a joke,” I said.

  “If I stopped to indulge all of your ‘jokes,’ we would never be able to finish a conversation.”

  I sighed. “That’s a decent point.”

  “Do you want to meet me in the club to sign it,
or would you be more comfortable in your room?”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to anything.”

  “Do you want to give up your inheritance?”

  I glared. “Sometimes, I can’t decide if I should be pissed at you for statements like that or at my grandpa.”

  “Hate whoever you like but make a decision.”

  I wondered how he’d feel if my decision was to throw a lemon in his eye. One thing was for sure, he’d have trouble looking so frustratingly calm and collected with a bit of citric acid in his sinuses. “How about this? I take you on a date this time. If I’m not scared off by the end of it, I’ll sign your contract.”

  “A second date, then? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the one where you usually come?”

  Blood rushed to my cheeks. “It usually doesn’t snow in Florida, but that doesn’t mean it has never happened.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. And no, this would be a first date, because I still never agreed to call the aquarium a date.”

  Landon looked like he was trying to decide if he’d accept my little diversion. I could tell he was practically chomping at the bit to get me to sign his contract. “What sort of date?”

  “Does it matter?”

  14

  Landon

  Andi was playing with fire. First, she’d strung me along and assumed I’d give her as much time as she wanted to finish William’s list. Then, she’d been in no particular hurry to sign my contract. And now? Now she had the nerve to tell me we’d go on this little date of hers in two days.

  I wanted to growl with annoyance. In part, I just didn’t like when I wasn’t the one in control. The other part of me… Well, that part just wanted to have her to myself again, and sooner, rather than later.

  Of course, there were also two very large problems between me and what I wanted. One was the inconvenient truth about my father, AKA Andi’s “grandfather.” The other was that the more I came to appreciate her, the more trouble I had forgiving myself for thinking I deserved her. I was just the bastard using every excuse I had to manipulate her into spending more time with me. Even if I got what I wanted and she started to have feelings for me, I’d be building one lie on top of another.

  I stopped by the apartment to check on mom and found Grant sitting on the love seat. He was in the middle of a story. If it was anything like his usual stories, it was probably at least ninety percent fabricated.

  Grant was something between a business partner and a friend who ran the Platinum Pecker, the third sister club to the Golden Pecker.

  When he saw me, he stood and clasped my hand tight. He was dark haired and built like he’d spent his life trekking through the Outback on foot, wrestling wild animals. Although I knew he’d only actually lived in Australia until he was about five. He didn’t even have an accent, but something about him always did seem to scream “Australia” to me.

  “Do I want to know why you’re here?” I asked.

  “Grant was just telling me about when he used to lead safaris,” mom said, punctuating her sentence with a hacking cough.

  “Bullshitting, you mean,” I said.

  Grant gave me a careless shrug. “I’m a storyteller. You don’t hear Jeff R Martin apologizing for entertaining people with his books, do you?”

  “George,” I said.

  Grant gave me a puzzled look.

  I decided trying to explain myself would only confuse him more. “You don’t usually make house calls. What’s going on?”

  Grant gestured for me to follow him to the kitchen, which was about as far out of earshot as we could manage in the small apartment.

  “Just wanted to let you know I’ve been hearing some rumors,” Grant said once we were alone.

  “About?”

  “You. Your club. Some submissive you’ve been around with and that she’s William’s granddaughter. People are playing connect the dots. William dies. His granddaughter suddenly shows up in the club. Looks like you’re showing her the ropes. Get what I’m getting at? My grams always said if it smells like shit and looks like shit, you probably don’t need to bother tasting it to find out. So...”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Your grams sounds like a charmer. But, no. I’m keeping the club. Andi’s involvement is… complicated. It’s not something I need to explain to the members, either.”

  “Wait,” Grant said. “How exactly are you keeping the club? You and William hated each other. He’d never—”

  “He did,” I said. “Sort of.”

  Grant looked like he wanted to know more, but I didn’t intend to give it.

  He raised his eyebrows, then shook his head. “Just be careful. You lose the trust of your members, and you’ll be in charge of a big ass, empty building.”

  “Yeah, well there’s nothing I can do about it unless I want to ruin things with Andi.” I knew that statement wouldn’t make a ton of sense given the information Grant had, but it was the truth.

  Grant suddenly smiled like an idiot and punched my shoulder. “Look at you. Smitten. I’ve seen it before—in other men, of course. The only thing I’ve ever seen you smitten with is an expensive suit.” He tugged on my lapel as if to emphasize the point.

  I slapped his hand away. “Okay. Yes. I care about Andi, and probably more than I should given how little time I’ve actually spent with her. But it’s complicated between us, and complicated things have a way of breaking before long.”

  Grant held up his forefinger in dramatic fashion, looking at it with two wide eyes. Then he followed it as he made a circle with his other hand and inserted the forefinger inside. “Not complicated, Landon. I can show you again, if you’re still confused on the details.”

  I sighed. “There’s a reason I don’t visit the Platinum Pecker more often.”

  “Yeah, because I make you pay a cover fee and you’re too broke to afford it.”

  I grinned. “Please don’t rub in the fact that you didn’t have to pay the blood relative tax. It only makes me hate you more than I already do.”

  “So,” Grant said. “What’s so complicated about it?”

  “She doesn’t know William was my father, for starters.”

  Grant pulled his lips back, wincing. “Goddamn, you’re not a smart man. Are you?”

  “I never found the right time to tell her.”

  “The right time would have been probably in the first or second sentence you ever uttered to her. Maybe, ‘hey, I’m Landon and my dad was actually your adoptive grandfather.’”

  “I didn’t expect to be in her life for more than a few minutes. By the time I realized, it had already gone too far.”

  “And so, it’s complicated now because you’re still letting it go further? Just tell her, man. The longer you wait, the worse it’s going to be. Hell, you’re probably already screwed, anyway.”

  “Thanks for the comforting words,” I said dryly. “I’m going to tell her. I’m just waiting for the right time.”

  Grant pursed his lips and nodded. “I can see that. If I knew I was going to die, I would probably take a few minutes to choose where it was going to happen.”

  “Don’t you have some sort of work to be doing?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll be happy to head out. If I hang around you much longer, I’m bound to get splattered when the shitstorm arrives. And make no mistake, you’re about to be in the mother of all shitstorms.”

  I watched him go but couldn’t help thinking he was right. I needed to tell Andi the truth and I needed to handle the rumors swirling around us.

  I hated that my selfish brain went straight to what she might do if she decided to cut ties after I told her the truth. Would she know she could hurt me by talking to the right people in the club? If she talked to my ex, Sydney, or Edward, she could probably give them enough ammunition to chase away every last member of The Golden Pecker. The most logical thing to do would be to go finalize things with the lawyers now. I could cement my role as the owner of The Golden Pecker, transfe
r my share of William’s hotel to her, and then deal with the messy truth.

  There was only one problem with that plan.

  Despite what I might have said to Andi, I still wasn’t completely convinced that I had it in me to ignore William’s wishes. Sure, I hated him for what he’d done to us. But somehow, I had begun to feel like lying and sidestepping the terms of the agreement would put a gulf between Andi and I that I’d never be able to cross.

  If I tried to protect what flimsy hope there was of something meaningful forming between Andi and I, I’d be putting my mom’s future and her treatment at risk.

  I raked my hands through my hair and tried my hardest to think of another way.

  15

  Andi

  Landon met me at the zoo around noon. He had left behind the suit in favor of a black coat and jeans. As good as he looked dressed up, I enjoyed seeing him in something a little more casual, too. After all, Landon didn’t need any help looking professional or intimidating. I thought he probably could’ve strolled into a board meeting in a t-shirt and jeans and still commanded the room.

  “Wow,” I said, noting the look on his face when he arrived. “Did you just finish punching some newborn kittens, or something?”

  Landon’s frown deepened. “Why would I punch newborn kittens?”

  “You just look… dark. Like somebody told you they canceled Wheel of Fortune for good.”

  “Believe it or not, I’d survive that news unscathed.”

  I pursed my lips and shrugged. “Then you’re a monster with poor taste. But seriously, what’s up?”

  Landon studied a patch of wet cement between us. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was nervous. Nervousness and Landon together made about as much sense as gifting a snake a pair of boots and mittens for Christmas, so my curiosity spiked.