Gagged (14 page)

“You drank too much, is all,” she says, still rubbing my side through the blanket. But she says it like a mantra. Like she’s trying to convince herself. In her voice, I hear the way she told me to come off the dance floor. In her voice, I hear concern for this new person she saw me become tonight.
 

Someone out of control.
 

Someone inside who’s taking me over like a virus claiming its host.

My reaction to Caspian, that first day.
 

The vibrator, and how I rescued it. How I used it. Who I thought about with it in my hand.
 

The dancing, the drinking, the hot feeling that subsumed my rational mind.
 

The bathroom, on my knees.
 

“Way too much,” I say.
 

“You’ll feel better in the morning.”
 

She’s said her piece but still doesn’t rise. As if there’s unfinished business between us.
 

“I know something that will make you feel better.”

I turn my head to look at her.
 

“I set something up for you. Something that’s going to totally make your day, sick or not.”
 

She looks down at me. I blink in response.
 

“Caspian came up to me when you were in the bathroom. And he told me that he’s going to donate one hundred thousand dollars to each of the schools you visited this week. He said that you’d changed his mind on some things. That education really
is
more important than he’s been letting on.”
 

“He said that?” I literally have no idea how to feel.
 

“But there’s more, A.” She grins a little. “He said he’s willing to listen to what you have to say about educational research. Maybe even about that open-source thing you keep talking about.”

I shake my head against the pillow, sure of what’s coming and hating it all.

“Tomorrow, Aurora. Tomorrow, noon, in his office. He told James, right there at the table, to clear his afternoon so we can continue the interview and do it right this time. I set it all up.” She smiles her wide, bow-lipped smile, knowing she’s done something to please me. “So. Does that make you feel better?”

I pull the covers tighter and mumble a noncommittal answer. Eventually Jasmine pats my side, leaves, then closes the door.
 

I wait until she’s probably in bed then tiptoe to my dresser and remove the long black vibrator from my drawer using a sock as a glove. I wrap it in discarded paper from my wastebasket, over and over again. Then I put the wrapped bundle on my floor and pull a heavy bookend from my shelf, raise it overhead, and prepare to smash the thing.
 

But that will wake Jasmine, so I stop.
 

I’ll throw it away. Sneak to the garage and put it back in the outside can it came from.
 

But without knowing why, I put the vibrator back in my top drawer instead.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

C
ASPIAN

L
UCY
IS
WAITING
FOR
ME
when I step out of the private penthouse elevator. She’s standing in the small foyer that opens into the large GameStorming lobby, farther from her own office than is logical, hands on her hips, glaring at me.
 

“Don’t start, Lucy.”
 

“What?” she replies. “What was I about to say? Enlighten me.”
 

“I don’t know what you were about to say, but you were going to nose into my private business.”
 

“Bernie has been waiting. He’s been bothering me nonstop while I’ve been trying to find you.”
 

“Bernie is lucky to have this job, Lucy. He can wait if I decide he should wait.
He’s
replaceable. My time is not.”

“I don’t care if Bernie waits, either. I
do
care that he won’t leave me alone, though. I have too much to do — I can’t listen to his whining every two minutes. I’m not your assistant, you know. I’m director of operations.”
 

I consider telling her that this is still my company and that I can do whatever I want and give anyone whichever titles I choose, but Lucy never lets me get away with things like that. I didn’t hire her because she’s my sister. I hired her because she’s far better at getting shit done than anyone I’ve ever known, and far more balanced and responsible than me. Like how while I was upstairs in my penthouse, she was down here, listening to Bernie complain.
 

Still looking at me sideways, still with her hands on her hips, Lucy says, “Where were you, anyway? You weren’t at a coffee shop this time.”
 

“I love you, Lucy, but that’s none of your goddamned business, and you know it.”
 

“You were upstairs.” She says it like an accusation.
 

I’m straightening my collar. Tugging at my cuffs. My hair might be mussed; I don’t know.
 

I push past her without answering. I can tell she’s waiting for confirmation, but she’s not going to get it. I’ve only let a few people upstairs into my private quarters — all of them have been single-serving, and treated with the greatest discretion. There’s a reason Lucy has never seen where I live, and there’s a reason she probably never will. People like Lucy believe the world is a worthwhile place where good things happen easily. I know the truth.
 

“First that girl last week,” she says, now trotting along beside me as I stroll through the reception area. “Now Bernie. When these things get fucked up — when you forget your schedule — ”
 

“I didn’t forget about Jasmine Lewis. I wasn’t there on purpose.”
 

“Why?”
 

“And Bernie? I just don’t care enough about wasting his time.”
 

Hands back on her hips. Lucy has my complexion, and we both have blond hair, but hers is dyed and her eyes are brown. We’re more different than similar, but when she gets pissed off and glares at me, sometimes I feel like I’m staring into a mirror.

“You want to vanish to … whatever,” she says, “you get an assistant to cover. If you don’t, they all come to me because they think I’m your handler. But I’m not. I don’t even want to know the things I suspect I’m
not handling
when you run off like this and come back with that look in your eye.”
 

I feel momentarily transparent. The stuff inside my fucked-up head is like a disease. What I do is the cure. Only not really; there is no cure. What I do is more like taking another hit of a drug. It gets me by and nothing more. And apparently, Lucy knows when I dose.
 

“Get James to handle your guests,” she says.
 

“James isn’t an assistant, either.”
 

“He’s sitting in your foyer. Like an assistant or a receptionist.”
 

“I don’t know what to tell you. He’s neither.”
 

“What is he?”
 

“He’s nothing, Lucy. He doesn’t work for GameStorming.”
 

“Then why is he here? I was talking to accounting. We don’t know how to expense him.”
 

“You
don’t
expense him. He’s not an employee or a contractor of this company — ignore him. I pay him personally. So like my whereabouts, that makes the rest none of your business.”

Again with the hands on her hips. I’m getting annoyed. Good thing I’m not near a boil right now. I wanted to step into what’s coming controlled, so as far as temperament, this is as close to even as I get.

“I don’t like this, Caspian.”

“What?”

“All the secrets. All the mystery. You’re up to something.”
 

“I remember you saying that once before, then I launched my beta and was on my way to my first billion.”
 

“This isn’t the same. Something has changed. With you. People keep calling me with their sympathies about Dad, but it seems like everyone always asks about you. Not about GameStorming or LiveLyfe.
You.”
 

“The best way to keep the media interested is to keep it hungry,” I say.
 

“These are friends. Family.”
 

“So?”
 

“Why didn’t you come to the hospital the other day? Why did you make me do that all by myself?”

“I don’t have time for this right now, Lucy.”
 

She’s blocking my way — her chicken-wing elbows, from the obnoxious hands on her hips, doubling the width of her thin frame. Lucy is tiny, probably barely a hundred pounds. But she can stop me better than any club bouncer, and knows it.
 

“Bernie has already waited a half hour. He can wait another five minutes.”
 

“Not now. For you or for Bernie. Tell him to go home, Luc.” Her eyebrow goes up, so I add, “Please.”
 

“Why are you working on a Saturday if not to meet him?”
 

“Why are
you
working on a Saturday?” I counter.
 

“I need to take my mind off preparations for my father’s funeral. Which you still haven’t agreed to attend.”
 

“I didn’t see him for years, Lucy. I’m not going to pretend we were best friends now that he’s going in the ground.”
 

I say it casually, but my fists have clenched. My upper back muscles, all the way to the triangular trapezius muscles against my neck, bunch up in knots.
 

“Don’t come for him, then. Come for
me
.”
 

“I have to go, Lucy. I have an appointment.”
 

“You just told me to
cancel
your appointment.”

“It’s not with Bernie.”

“Who is it with?”
 

I don’t answer.
 

“What is going on with you, Caspian? You’ve been weird for months, long before Dad got sick. All this strange shit. Orders coming up from research. This Einstein project with Bernie, and when I ask him about it, he tells me you’ve instructed him not to discuss it — just that one particular, mysterious project. Then you run off to Colorado and I hear you’re hanging out with Trevor Stone, doing something that company rumor seems to feel is dicey at best. But I don’t hear it from you, oh no … I have to hear it through
Hunter Fucking Altman
— who, if you ask me, seems intent on imploding and making the recording industry throw him a rock ’n’ roll funeral before he turns thirty in a few months.” She hitches, probably because she just mentioned a funeral and her mind is reeling back. “I don’t see you as much. I don’t hear from you. You came back from Denver preoccupied, and then there’s more back and forth from R&D that I’m not supposed to see. And now you’re deliberately missing appointments. Making people wait, just to be an ass. That girl the other day, the redhead … she was from USF, right? Why would you ever accept an interview with a dipshit college newspaper when you’re turning down … ”
 

Lucy trails off. Her eyes sharpen, and then she says, “The girl I heard shouting at you in the coffee shop that day. Was it the same girl you brought up later? The redhead’s friend? That cute little blonde?”
 

“It’s none of your business, Lucy,” I tell her, trying to step around.

“Why did you go to get coffee in the middle of the day, Caspian? You never do that. And that’s where someone comes up shouting at you? Her specifically?”
 

“I’m not discussing this with you.”
 

Lucy’s curious eyebrow moves another notch higher.
 

“What’s her name, Caspian? Is it Aurora Henley?”
 

I finally shove past. Lucy says nothing from behind me, though I’m certain she’s going to. A minute later I’m in the lobby, and a minute after that I’m moving toward the waiting room. My heart is beating too hard for my liking, and at first I don’t understand why Lucy has gotten to me. But then I realize it’s not her who’s affected me. It’s someone else.

I don’t understand the emotion I feel.
 

I don’t like it.

Yet despite the pain, I still want more.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
URORA

I’
M
SWEATING
. I
CAN
’
T
KEEP
my foot from tapping or my hands from twitching. I keep telling myself that everything’s fine. What Caspian and I did — what
I did to him
— wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t want me. So I keep repeating a refrain in my mind like a mantra:
 

I have the power.
 

I have the power.
 

It’s what Jasmine would say about any of her encounters. It’s what she
has said
, come to think of it, whether I wanted to hear it or not. Normally, even in the privacy of my mind, I don’t like to say embarrassing words, but this time their possible defense seems worth the risk. Because Jasmine will say to me,
When you have a man’s cock in your mouth, he’s completely under your control
.

Whether you go faster or stop — whether he comes or goes home with blue balls — is up to you.
 

She’ll tell me her technique, knowing it makes me squirm. She’ll tell me about long, slow strokes of her tongue and gentle manipulations of her fingers. She’ll talk about teasing a man by flicking the sensitive spot under his member’s head, about pushing him with sweet torture until she deigns to give him the gift of release.

A blowjob,
Jasmine has told me,
is the ultimate power trip
.
 

But sitting in Caspian’s waiting room, it’s flat-out impossible to feel that way no matter how many times I repeat my
I have the power
mantra. No matter how many times I replay Jasmine’s stories of men brought to their knees after she falls to hers.