Crowne Rules

by Reiss, CD

  I did not choose that way.

  “A thing is where I get attached and you… everything about you, what you think and what you want, is in my head. If we get involved, it’ll replace what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  Plink-plink.

  “Anything but a thing. Okay?”

  “If thing is a noun, I don’t want it either.”

  Plink.

  “A noun is a person, place, or thing.”

  He raised an eyebrow as if making it through third grade was impressive. “So, you did learn something in school.”

  I crossed my arms. The comment didn’t deserve a response.

  “If a thing is a verb,” he finally said, “if it isn’t something we are, but something we do, I want it.”

  “I’m not clear on this.”

  “You want me to paint you a picture?”

  “Of a verb?”

  “Things I want to do with you, including but not limited to…” He leaned into me, reciting a list of words from an index card in his mind. The flatness of his statements rushed blood and fluid between my legs so fast it hurt. “Undressing. Pinching. Sucking. Fucking. Screaming. Begging.” He got close enough to whisper. “Spanking. Binding. Blindfolding. Hurting. Lying.”

  I gasped at the last one because I knew who and I knew why. “Logan. He’d kill us.”

  “Just me.”

  Regardless of who Logan would be angry with or why, the idea appealed to my sense of safety and a desire for danger. The rules would tie my hands to protect me from hurting myself while he hurt me to the point of orgasm.

  “I don’t want to be a thing either,” I said with my nose a mere breath from his. “We can just do things.”

  “And not tell.”

  We could have kissed, but we didn’t. If we kissed, we’d have to close our eyes, and this was an eyes-wide-open conversation.

  “And not tell,” I whispered right before a lone plink. “I’ll think about your offer.” I opened the bedroom door. “And get back to you in the morning.”

  I went in before I could see his reaction and before he could see me smile.

  Chapter 17

  DANTE

  Amanda Bettencourt, a woman whose entire wardrobe was shades of yellow and gold, whose entire life was built around maintaining the fiction of her family’s wealth, and who let men walk all over her like doormatting was her job—that woman had taken control of me.

  Games were fun, or I didn’t play them, and if I didn’t write the rules, I didn’t enjoy the game. That simple equation had kept me sane and single.

  I only offered myself to a woman when I was ready to take her and she was ready to be taken. If she delayed, I walked.

  Until Amanda.

  I was going to give her the time she wanted because—standing under the leaky ceiling—I was still figuring out why I’d demanded she choose in the first place.

  The wastebasket was half-full under a damp, gray splotch of ceiling that was already mottled with the rust from the nails behind the plaster. A glassy slick of moisture hovered above, the center pulling into a nipple of water not heavy enough to fall just yet.

  “Have you emptied the bucket?” I asked, trying not to look at her.

  “No. It’s just this much since last night.”

  Not that bad. And it had slowed to a trickle.

  “I’ll check the roof.” Like a petulant child angry at her refusal, I left without making eye contact.

  What was happening to me? Why did I feel like this?

  The mud room was lined with books because there was nowhere else for them. My mother had dubbed it The Library. The trapdoor to the crawlspace was above. It was dry, so the access and the books were safe. I snapped my coat off the rack.

  Jamming my arms into the sleeves, I tried to convince myself I was in control of my ability to walk away from Amanda, say, “Thank you. No, thank you,” to what was obviously part of some kind of tactic to make me want her more. Having Amanda was a diversion, not a necessity.

  After laying the ladder against the side of the house, I climbed to the top.

  Playing into her game wasn’t worth the energy. So, why was I still thinking about it?

  Cresting the roof, I was finally alone, surrounded by the sound of birds and the sight of trees. On a clear day, the ocean was visible, but not today.

  I walked the perimeter of the flat roof, disappointed in the way I’d lost control last night until I was pulling her hair and coming down her throat, ordering her around as though she was really mine. She’d promised to do whatever I said while she was here, and I’d promised myself that I would only use her obedience to drive her out, but cruelty hadn’t worked, and neither had teasing her.

  She was proving she could tease just as effectively.

  At least being on the roof meant I couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her, couldn’t reach out and touch her. I’d been meaning to come up here again anyway—the TPO seams had looked a little worn when I’d cleaned the gutters. One must have opened up somewhere, but it wouldn’t be visible without careful inspection.

  A divot in a rush of runoff caught my attention. When I probed it with my fingers, I found a tear—nothing big enough to come from an animal. Probably just natural wear on the material, which meant this leak likely wouldn’t be the last.

  I stood there, trying to figure out what to do—whether it was worth trying to get a new roll of TPO up here and if the rain would stop long enough for installation anyway. If it didn’t—what? A house filled with buckets? Trying to keep the precious tapes and documents dry while keeping Ernie from finding out about Amanda?

  Amanda would be gone by then. No matter what I was feeling, that was what needed to happen. Not only for the business’s sake, but for mine. The self-control I’d spent decades building crumbled around her.

  I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t need to. I just needed to resist it.

  Convinced my attention hadn’t been on the roof the way it needed to be, I walked the perimeter again—back and forth over every inch, like a man inspecting the details of a new woman’s body.

  Our teenage connection—the way she’d awakened me to the possibilities of my own desire—made resisting harder than I would have guessed. That had to be a matter of history and little else. I could overcome that.

  I wanted her recklessly. So much that I was almost willing to not only lie to my family, but to give her control. But I wasn’t going to play her game.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. Tiny drops of mist landed on my brother’s name.

  “Logan,” I said, glad Amanda was too far away to make a noise that would expose us.

  “Are you alone?” Logan sounded worried, which was unlike him. We were competitive about business, and if he was sweating, he didn’t like to let me see it.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked. Technically, I was alone. Amanda was inside. There was no one else around for miles.

  “Is Mandy still there?”

  “She’s leaving tomorrow,” I said before adding an explanation to prevent more questions. “The rain just stopped.”

  “Dad wants to talk to you.”

  My father. Ted Crowne could cede certain parts of the business to his children, but as long as he lived, he was in charge.

  “You’ve been demoted to secretary?”

  Logan wasn’t in a joking mood. He just put me on speaker.

  “You stole records?” My father’s voice cut through the miles of cable.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  I said, “I bought the contents of the storage unit at auction, fair and square.”

  “Fair and… Are you joking? Did you even talk to a lawyer before you extracted privileged documents that belong to the biggest law firm in the country?”

  “Dad—”

  “Nothing you find in that box is going to hold up in court.”

  “It doesn’t have to. It has to be embarrassing enough to get them out
of our clubs.”

  I caught myself. The clubs didn’t belong to an our. Not my father and me… or the original owners I meant—Veronica and me. The clubs had been our safety net. I bought them with her, secretly until I was eighteen. She didn’t make it.

  “The way it’s structured,” I said, “her surviving family inherited all the benefits but very little exposure. When it catches up to them, it’s going to catch up to me.”

  “Logan,” Dad said away from the mouthpiece, “can you excuse us?”

  “Fine.” I heard a shuffle and a door closing.

  Taking Logan out of the conversation relieved me of lying about why Amanda was still in the house and when she was leaving… or not.

  “There’s one solution,” my father said. “Sell them your half and be done with it.”

  “No.”

  “The Hawkins cheat,” Ted added. “They use a media empire to lie. They cut corners.”

  “And there’s something in this box to prove it. If I can just—”

  “Despite how you think you ever felt about Veronica, you—”

  Forget the prenup.

  “She wasn’t like them.”

  “Is this your way of keeping her alive?”

  “No,” I barked.

  Yes, actually.

  “I’m not a lovelorn boy anymore,” I added. “I’m not fighting to maintain a romantic ideal.”

  The next part of the argument involved what I was fighting for, but I didn’t have an endgame or a brass ring at the end of this. At least salmon swimming upstream for miles got laid in the end.

  Only my motivation would soothe my father’s frustration, but what was I supposed to tell him? That I wanted to honor the memory of a woman he insisted had abused me? That selling those businesses meant she’d lost her only hope of getting away? That keeping my shit together when she died was for nothing?

  “It’s disloyal,” I finally said. “That’s it. Selling the business back to them is dishonorable, and I won’t.”

  “All right.” His tone backed away from a conflict, and I realized my tone had started one. “Caleb’s always going to have it in for you. He’s never going to let his mother’s death go. He needs somewhere to put his anger, and he chose you. They’re not changing. Best to sell him your half and wash your hands of it.”

  “It’s not right.”

  She’d died in her Porsche, half an hour after I’d finished salving her sore bottom. We’d just finished finalizing our escape plan when she misjudged the speed of a freeway merge.

  Such a dumb thing, and it was all over.

  “Dante,” my father said, “I’ve said this a hundred times, and I’ll say it a hundred more: Veronica Hawkins was not a partner. She raped you.”

  Nothing about it felt like what my father described.

  “Jesus, Dad.” I clenched my fist as if my fingers could be curled tight enough to hold my anger. He was taking away my agency and turning me into a victim who had never had a choice.

  “You were a child,” he insisted. “What else would you call it?”

  “What do you want me to do? Dwell on what you think it was? Or what I think it was?”

  He let out a breath. A pause. A realignment.

  “I want you to be able to live for a future,” he said. “I want to help you let it go.”

  In front of my father, it was easy to forget I was a grown man and fall back into a position where I had to do what I was told for my own good.

  But I was a man, and I didn’t have to let go of grudges or outdated loyalties if I didn’t want to.

  So, I thanked him for his input, said goodbye, and hung up.

  * * *

  Getting off the house’s grounds was good, even just for a little while—to be reminded of the world that existed beyond the one I’d been wrapped in for the past few days. I wouldn’t say I was pussy-blind exactly, but Amanda had a way of making me lose track of myself, so I spent perhaps longer than necessary in the hardware store, comparing different types of TPO sealant, grateful for a problem I knew how to solve.

  Procrastination notwithstanding, I was running out of time, and I knew it. The smart thing would be to let Ernie do the transcription, copy all the documents, and give them to Thoze & Jensen looking unopened.

  Before I could do that though, I wanted to—no, needed to—get Amanda into bed once and for all. After I’d had her—tasted her and fucked her, felt those long legs wrapped around my waist and her muscles quivering around me—after she’d made her throat raw taking my dick and begging me to let her come, then I’d be done, and it would be easy to send her away. I’d get the tapes back to LA. At that point, a roofer could deal with the TPO for me. I’d never have to see or speak to or even think about Amanda Bettencourt ever again.

  The thought soothed my need for solitude while generating an anxiety I didn’t recognize.

  For now, though, she was still back at the house, typing obediently. There was a convenience store in the strip mall, and as I passed it, I remembered the ridiculous breakup snack she’d brought with her that first night: ice cream and potato chips.

  Whatever she thought of me, especially after my behavior this week, I wasn’t a monster. I was sympathetic to heartbreak and the bruises it could leave.

  She deserved a treat.

  So, I bought her chocolate chip Häagen-Dazs and picked up the Kettle chips she’d had before, but put them down in favor of Ruffles, which would work better. She’d be surprised I cared about pleasing her at all, then she’d ask if I was trying to bribe her into agreeing to a fuck. I wouldn’t deny it, but when she did agree, I’d spank her for the implication and soothe her sore ass with ice cream.

  I was picturing her face when I casually handed her the bag as if it was nothing—or something just to shut her up. She wouldn’t be able to hide her surprise and delight, and I caught myself smiling at the thought of her face because the easy transparency that had caused her pain in life charmed the fuck out of me.

  Then my mind’s screen turned her face bitter, with too-red lipstick twisted into a scowl. I didn’t know why until the picture in my mind matched the cover of a tabloid on the rack next to the checkout counter.

  RENALDO & THE HOMEWRECKER:

  HOW MANDY BETTENCOURT’S BIG PLANS BACKFIRED

  The yellow block letters plastered over her and that fuck-clown were the size and shape of her pain, but what really bugged me was that they were in her favorite color, because that was her soul, and it was exposed for the public.

  She didn’t belong to the public.

  She belonged to me.

  Only until she leaves the house.

  As long as she was sitting in my house, doing my bidding, she was mine. I was buying her food. I had made her come for me, felt her pulse and writhe on my fingers, and I was going to do it again.

  She’d made a promise when she asked to stay, and she’d kept it. So, for the time being, I got to decide how she was treated. Once she left, we’d both be on our own.

  I swept all of the tabloids onto the conveyor belt. The look on my face must have conveyed that I didn’t want to talk about it, because the clerk didn’t ask any questions as she rang me up. I dumped the stack in my trunk and turned the car back toward the house.

  Chapter 18

  MANDY

  Dante was obviously a guy who didn’t like being put off, but I had to think hard about fucking him before I did it.

  Yes, I’d sucked his dick last night, but if I was going to get control of my love life, it had to start with not assuming that just because I blew a guy, a fuck was the next thing that had to get done. I had the responsibility to think about it every step of the way, and if that meant he had to stew in his own juices for a while, then that was tough shit.

  I got back to transcribing the call, which had moved on to duller subjects, but got held up because I must have left it playing, and I had to rewind to find my place.

  I spent the rest of the day transcribing calls about the two-million-do
llar donation that was to accompany Max Hawkins’s application to Yale, and I didn’t get really hungry until about five o’clock, when the sun got low and clouds gathered before opening.

  The sky held nothing back, dumping fat, heavy drops that splatted audibly on the concrete.

  Dante was nowhere to be found. Good. I’d make dinner, and he’d have to do the dishes in the sink with the green brush that slipped out of your hand every two minutes. When he came in from mending fences or plowing the fields or whatever, I’d have something hot and ready.

  Everything except my decision, but I didn’t have to rush that.

  Since I didn’t need Wi-Fi to get my jam on, I connected my phone to the sound system and put my playlist on shuffle.

  Baby, baby, baby

  You got the kit, and I got the cat

  Blue sky up and my back ain’t flat

  Come on, baby, I got room for your kit

  Put it in the trunk

  Yeah, hiss and spit

  “Meow!” I sang with the lyrics, shifting my hips with the beat as I checked the pantry for something to make.

  I found a box of macaroni and cheese in the back of the cabinet, frozen peas in the freezer, chopped meat in the fridge, and a head of arugula in the crisper.

  “See?” I said, plucking salad dressing from the door shelves. “Meow!”

  Baby, baby, baby

  I’m your slinky tabby

  Your back soft and my claws ain’t shabby

  Give it, baby, take me on a trip

  We’re just pretty kitties

  Yeah, scratch and nip

  “Meow!”

  The water boiled and the meat sautéed while I congratulated myself for getting control of my life. I should have done it sooner. How had I lived like that? Getting tossed from side to side by whomever, letting them make all the choices just so I wouldn’t be alone.

  Well, those days were over.

  “O-V-E-R,” I sang as I poured the macaroni into the boiling water. “Over, baby, over.”