by Bromberg, K
But maybe I’d wear the dress.
I opened the manila envelope and shouldn’t have been shocked that there was no dress inside. I laid the clear plastic bags on the kitchen counter. One had a white envelope inside. I opened that first. The lace underwear I’d worn to the Eclipse show fell out.
“Oh, fuck you, Byron.”
The envelope had Olivia written on it in script. A blue foil crown was embossed at the point of the back flap. Ripping it open as if I wanted to shred the entire thing, I pulled out a card of expensive stock with the same blue crown in the center, as if that was all anyone would need to know who it was from.
The fact that it really was all I needed annoyed me. I poured another glass of wine before I read his tight cursive while standing at the kitchen counter.
Dear Olivia,
You left these at the Waldorf.
They’re quite stretched. Though I’m sure they would look stunning tying your wrists behind your back, they’re now unworthy of you. I took it upon myself to choose something satin to replace them. I’m afraid my imagination got carried away. I had to get you the entire set. Please accept it as an apology for ruining your lace pair.
I know we had a limited-time arrangement. I think, based on subsequent conversations, we both agree the original deal has now proven to be wholly inadequate. I need to touch you again. I need to taste your sweet cunt and get inside you. I need to claim a part of your body.
Soon, Beauty.
Byron
Oh, my poor underpants. Not the ones on the counter, but the ones I was wearing. They were soaked, damn him. The flow had started as I read about his touch and increased to a flood with him claiming my body.
I ripped open the bag and poured the contents onto the counter.
He’d said they were satin, and they definitely were, but the black silk was sewn into half-inch-wide straps with gold fittings. I separated the black stockings and pulled the rest apart, laying it out so I could puzzle over how it worked.
It didn’t take long.
The neck strap connected to three others that went under the rib cage, supporting the cups in a way that looked uncomfortable and very hot. The panties were a triangle of satin with straps around the hips that could be removed by unsnapping the gold clasps that matched the garter.
He hadn’t sent underwear he’d imagined me wearing. He’d sent gear to fuck me in, and my pussy was clenching to use it when he texted.
—Did you get my gift?—
—Is it for me or you?—
—I’ll send Yusup for you now,
and we can find out tonight—
—I can’t. I have a thing—
My phone rang. Byron, of course.
“What thing?” he asked.
“Emilio’s opening his restaurant tonight.”
A pause as he fingered through the files in his mind. “Is he the one who was trying to get you pregnant?”
“He’s a dear friend. And yes. I can’t miss this.” I stopped myself. I was about to offer something I hadn’t thought about hard enough.
There were no fast answers, and my body was making urgent, immediate demands.
“I’ll be ready for you next week.” That seemed ages away. “When I’m ovulating. I’ll wear it then.”
“No. You wear it for me tonight.”
“Byron.” I fingered the gold clasp between the bra cups. “I can’t skip this.”
“Don’t skip it. Go. Wear it underneath. I’ll know you’re thinking of me.”
“Maybe.”
“Your dress should be modest. Cover everything.”
This was new but not unexpected. He was jealous of men’s eyes, and I had to put my foot down before that got out of hand.
“I’ll wear what I want, Lord Byron.” My nickname didn’t soften my scolding.
“You will. Always. But for tonight… imagine this…” His voice dropped as if we were naked together. “What you present to the world tonight is chaste and businesslike. Underneath it, I’m touching you, and you can’t show it. No one can tell how turned on that makes you. No one knows I’m wrapped around your cunt.”
“You’re filthy,” I said like the compliment it was.
“I’ll take that in the spirit you meant it.”
“Okay,” I said, scooping up the lingerie. “I’ll play. But this can’t turn into you telling me how to dress.”
“Have fun tonight.”
I could practically hear his smile over the phone, and rather than feeling as if I’d acquiesced, pleasing him felt like a win.
* * *
When I’d been to Amelia’s before, the house lights had been on and the room had been populated with construction workers and staff. The music had been boomboxed Spanish-language standards that echoed off the exposed brick walls.
The Uber stopped in front of a completely different place. The glass doors facing the street were open, and the bar crowd spilled out. Waitstaff bustled around candlelit tables surrounded by people in comfortable chairs.
“This it?” the driver asked.
“Yup.”
“Looks like a happening place.”
“Fingers crossed.”
I got out, balancing on my favorite pair of black stilettos. Byron’s lingerie would have shown through anything tight or flimsy, so I’d chosen a sleeveless sweater dress with a high neck and a flowing skirt that landed right above my knees. The garter hid well above the hemline, and the straps under my ribcage were invisibly tight. The sex under my dress was a secret between Byron and me, and—besides the thought of his touch—it was the most arousing thing imaginable.
He had a talent for the filthy, and he knew exactly how to use it.
I showed my invitation to the maître d’ and went to the bar. It was crowded with people wanting to try the food and wanting to be seen.
Linda was at the bar, chatting with a man in his twenties. I hung back, watching her listen attentively, scanning his face for subtle clues and contradictions, then smiling so genuinely I couldn’t imagine anyone holding back. I’d seen her work before. It was always a sight.
When she caught sight of me, she held her arm for me and excused herself.
“You came!” I kissed her cheek, and she turned into the woman I knew. No less charming but ten times more real.
“Dad asked me to watch everyone who got coffee. Make sure they like it so he can micromanage in the back.”
“I’m glad you’re here. I love this.” I indicated her shiny, pale-blue trench dress with a plunging neckline. “It’s not black.”
“I’m nervous,” she said in a low voice. “There’s red wine everywhere, and I almost bumped into a food tray.”
“I’ll keep my eye out.”
The actor-handsome bartender recognized me and started pouring red wine.
I held my hand for him to stop. “Chardonnay, please. The Alexander.”
He nodded and switched.
“Everyone’s here,” Linda said, nudging her chin toward a dark-haired young woman in a shape-skimming yellow satin dress. “Mandy Bettencourt flew in from the Paris shows.”
Samantha Bettencourt’s younger sister was a fashion designer. Her clothes were bank-breakingly expensive, critically loved, and hard to find.
“That’s very yellow,” I murmured into my glass.
“Yeah, hey, I have to tell you something.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s gossip.”
Linda didn’t gossip idly. She didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t need to know.
“About?” I asked.
“You.”
“Me?”
She leaned up to whisper in my ear, “And Byron Crowne.”
The lingerie seemed to tighten around me to squeeze all the blood to my face. “Who said?”
Not that it mattered. People knew. I was in bed with a man known as dishonest and cruelly arrogant. One I’d pledged to take down. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did, and my heart fell into my garter.
“Carolyn Harkness. She’s been trying to get set up with him for a year.”
“How…”
A man in a black suit bumped Linda, and she gasped, holding her wine away from her dress.
“So sorry,” he said.
“Alan!” I exclaimed, thankful for the change in subject.
“Olivia!” We double-kissed. “That’s twice in a month. People are going to start talking.”
People were always talking. Maybe this was a good way to dissemble.
I introduced him to Linda, laying my hand on his shoulder as we chatted about nothing. The art deco brass plates. The flower arrangements. I talked up my favorite dishes, and Alan laid his hand on my back to get me out of the way of a rushing waiter.
When I tucked my clutch under my arm, I felt my phone buzzing inside it.
I checked.
Byron. His third call.
Stepping back, I answered with my finger pressing my other ear closed against the noise. “What?”
“Olivia.” He was on the street somewhere. I could hear the whoosh of cars passing and brakes squeaking.
“It’s a bad time.”
“Is it?”
I found a spot by the front windows. “It’s loud, and I’m in the middle of a conversation.”
“Are you wearing it?”
“Yes.”
“Prove it.”
“I’m not texting pictures of myself in a bathroom mirror.”
“Pull up your dress so I can see the tops of the garter belt.”
I looked around the room. Tall men. Men in suits and sweatshirts. Men with short hair and long. None of them were Byron.
“Where are you?” An ambulance screeched through traffic at the corner.
“Where I can see you in the middle of a conversation.”
Through the phone, the same ambulance made him hard to hear. I faced the window again and found him standing across the street, in the middle of the sidewalk, with his phone to his ear.
He was the still point inside a whirl of pedestrians. They moved around him as if he was the north side of a magnet, and he attracted me as if I was south. Without thinking, I put my hand on the glass.
“Now,” he said. “Prove it. Show me that you’re wearing what I sent you.”
“No.”
“I think, down deep where your hunger meets your heart, you want to be dominated. You want to submit your pleasure to me. So… show me.”
The flash of sensation tingled between my thighs with such power my eyelids fluttered. His voice was a sparking fuse that ended between my legs.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
“I know.”
I took my hand off the glass as if it had gotten too hot. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“My sister couldn’t make it. She gave me her invitation. Out of respect for you, I’m standing across the street.”
“And telling me what to do.”
“I’m going to come in there and lay my hand on your back. I’m going to kiss your face twice and tell you how nice you look tonight.”
“No!”
“I won’t be talking about your dress. But what’s under it.”
“It’s not appropriate. I’m lead counsel in a case against you. And people know, Byron. I don’t know how, but they’re talking.”
That gave him pause. He got into the driver’s side of a black Jaguar that was parked in front of him. The background noise from his side cut out.
“Stay there,” he said, starting the car.
“Stop!”
But he was gone.
What was he thinking? Was he going to come to the most important night of Emilio’s life and demand answers?
No. He wasn’t. Not if I could help it.
I went outside calmly, as if I needed a little air, and strode to the corner opposite of the one Byron had stood on. The voices and music faded into the distance, and I slowed my step.
“I told you to stay there,” Byron said. “You’re a moving target.”
How had he known I was moving?
“Olivia!” Alan’s voice came from behind me.
I turned. He was three steps away, and the Jaguar was rolling slowly at his back.
“Alan, hey.” I hung up and waited for him.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he caught up.
“Yeah, I’m… just getting a little air.”
“You turned and left so quickly I thought I’d missed talking to you.”
“No, I—”
“I just figured I could get a redo on eleventh grade.”
The Jaguar stopped right behind him.
“I’m sorry?”
“I wanted another chance to ask you out. On a date. Coffee, maybe. Or dinner’s better, but whatever you want.”
Alan, with his sweet smile and humble manner, would never hurt me if he could help it. He’d always keep me seventy to seventy-five percent satisfied, and that just wasn’t enough anymore.
“I can’t.” I smiled to soften my words.
Alan’s self-effacing charms would have been what I found most attractive about him, but on that night, he played a distant second to the commanding, filthy, arrogant asshole waiting for me.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Uh. It’s me? Or a bad time?”
“I’m seeing someone.”
“Huh.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I heard that, but I didn’t believe it. Not that you’d be seeing someone but specifically that it was—”
“So, you know him?”
“By reputation. Anyway, I thought there was no way you’d be with a guy like Crowne.”
The Jaguar was still waiting. Inside it sat a man I was about to deny by my silence and whom I wanted to join in that car. His body was ecstasy, and a warm glow showed under the locked door of his heart.
“We should get back,” I said, taking my eyes from the Jag.
Alan offered me his arm. I turned so we could head back to the restaurant. I glanced over my shoulder for the Jaguar, but it was gone.
There were plenty of desirable things about Byron, but if he was angry about me talking to Alan, I would have to draw another line.
Chapter 23
BYRON
Alan Barton.
I knew him from around. He was from eastside circles. Studio City and Pasadena private schools. Fewer generations of wealth. More dependent on the Hollywood system. They didn’t come to LA for the weather, and they didn’t stay because they wanted to.
I was pushing through the foot traffic across the street from Amelia’s when I saw her in the restaurant. Alan put his hand on Olivia’s back.
It was only a moment, and knowing he didn’t know she was mine did nothing to smother the screaming rage in my guts. Her relaxed chatter. Her smile. Her comfort in the space she occupied calmed me.
I didn’t know him well, but I knew he was safe. He wouldn’t press himself on her. He wouldn’t touch what was mine unless she invited him to, because what was mine to own was really hers to give.
She wouldn’t. She was trustworthy.
I’d come to the opening to surprise her. Maybe get under her dress to see myself strapped to her body. I hadn’t come expecting to make decisions about trust or commitments, but I had to turn on a dime as if I’d been handed a rival take-it-or-leave-it cash offer half an hour before the deal closed.
Handling such an offer would have been easier than processing my trust through clogged emotional pipes. My throat backed up with the difference between what I felt and what I knew. Who I was and who she was. What I wanted and what I needed.
The smartest thing I ever did was leave before she saw me.
It was also the hardest.
I pulled my car out of the lot, intending to go home, but I couldn’t. I was stuck on a restaurant-lined street with a thousand others. She was within reach, and I trusted her, but I couldn’t drive away. She had me.
I parked on the corner and got out. Started across the street, walked back t
o the car. Paced on a sidewalk crowded with people on date nights and dinner outings. Felt comfort for a moment that she wore my gift against her body, then dismissed the comfort in favor of a demand.
I called her until she picked up.
“What?”
Impatient. Yet the sound of her voice was comforting.
“Olivia.” I saw the top of her head through the crowd, and when it shifted, parts of her body were visible.
“It’s a bad time.”
“Is it?”
She came to the front windows where I could see her.
“It’s loud, and I’m in the middle of a conversation.”
“Are you wearing it?”
“Yes.”
Thank God. An irrational, unexplainable relief flooded me, and with it, a need for visual confirmation broke the dam. “Prove it.”
“I’m not texting pictures of myself in a bathroom mirror.”
“Pull up your dress so I can see the tops of the garter belt.”
An ambulance whipped by me and passed the restaurant. She’d hear it. My cover was blown. She spotted me, eyes meeting across the night.
She put her hand on the glass, and I felt our bond in that moment.
“Show me that you’re wearing what I sent you,” I said.
“No.”
No. Flat no. Her refusal didn’t piss me off, but I wanted to punish her in a way we’d both find pleasurable. Because she’d want me to. I’d ask, of course. I’d lay out the rules. We’d discuss. And in the end, I was sure she’d learn strategic refusals and I’d give her tactical, consented consequences.
You can get that anywhere.
I could. I had been. But Olivia was different.
What if she loves you? What if she wants you to say it?
She wouldn’t love me. She hated me.
“I think,” I said, “down deep where your hunger meets your heart, you want to be dominated. You want to submit your pleasure to me. So… show me.”
“I hate you,” she murmured.
“I know.”
She took her hand off the glass, but the connection wasn’t broken.
