The Willing (10 page)

Not having any siblings of my own, I couldn't decide if it would be better or worse if she knew precisely what I was here for.

I shook my head. "No, but I'm alright."

"Well, I'm not," Gerry snorted. "I've taken the liberty of ordering pizza but I don't have cash, so one of you has to pay. I'm going to get changed into something more comfortable. I can practically feel the in-flight bacteria clinging to me."

She finished her whiskey in a single swig, ice cubs clinking together. It wasn't the most ladylike thing I'd ever seen, but it made me feel a little bit better about standing there in ripped jeans, with shoes still dangling from my fist.

Oliver submitted to a kiss on the cheek, but his expression was stiff with tension. I dreaded being alone with him. It was anxiety born of guilt and I braced myself for a not so gentle let down.

"I'd like to apologize," Oliver said, blowing my expectations out of the water.

"Oh?"

"I was counting on having the chance to debrief." He heaved a sigh, sloped shoulders sagging. "With my sister here, that's not going to be possible. So I'm just going to apologize for my behavior and hope we can discuss things… next time. Is that okay?"

There was going to be a next time? I bit back the urge to ask as much, aware that there was very, very little in life more unattractive than a lack of confidence, particularly in one's dominant partner.

"Should I go?" I wondered out loud, giving Oliver the opportunity to send me off if he didn't want me here. Part of me prayed he would take the easy road. This was always going to be a pretty awkward evening, seeing as it was the first time we saw each other as something beyond casual acquaintances. Add Oliver's imperious sister to the mix and I could only imagine the result.

Oliver stubbornly held my gaze. "It's up to you… isn't it?"

It wasn't really, but I chose to believe he was asking me to make the call as his domina and not as an average employee. I wanted to believe he still needed me—maybe because a small part of me needed to be needed. "I'll stay," I said and sipped greedily at my whiskey for liquid courage.

Chapter six

I got home that night feeling full with more than pizza and crashed into bed still dressed. Gerry had kept up a steady stream of conversation all though our very tardy dinner; my ears were still ringing with her appetite for gossip and the speed of her tongue. I'd always considered myself sharp—not book-smart, sure, and definitely not an intellectual, but I was pretty quick for a girl who hadn't even finished college. Tonight had proved to me how wrong I was. Gerry took no prisoners. She mocked everyone even as she made them love her. She'd done it with me and I, despite my best attempts, found myself completely taken with Oliver's sister.

If she hadn't been related to him, I might have asked her out for the hell of it. She was good company: loud and lively and absolutely shameless. Like Oliver, if he hadn't been born with a stick up his ass.

I turned my head against the pillow, groaning. Thinking about Oliver's body in any capacity was a bad, bad use of my overactive imagination. I was far too familiar with the way it shuddered and arched like bow string pulled tight under my hand. No wonder I found myself wishing I'd stroked my fingers down his bare cheeks, maybe even reached in—

I wondered, would he have started or sobbed? Would he have begged for more?

Sighing, I rolled over onto my back. There was a damp stain on the ceiling right over the bed and it spoke of the derelict apartment I'd made my home—of self-sabotage after an evening that had cranked up my engine like nothing short of all-out porn in a long time. I couldn't close my eyes and not see Oliver on his knees, waiting for me to dish out my worst, my toughest torture. Ready to take it. I could hear his breath catch even now; it was a soft, tremulous sound, like he didn't want me to know the effect I was having on him. Did he know how sexy he looked like that?

I pressed a hand between my legs, squeezed my thighs snug around it. My cunt throbbed with heat; it was so tempting to touch myself. I was sure it wouldn't take more than a few strokes to put me over the edge.

The thought of Oliver—oh, but that was such a slippery slope. There was nothing worse than getting the hots for a guy who paid for sex, however sanitized and tame his proclivities.
You're in so much trouble already
, I told myself,
do you really want to add fantasizing about your client—your
boss
—to that list?

The taboo only made it sweeter.

My head thumped back into the pillows, lungs emptying of breath with a dejected huff. I wasn't the kind of girl who mixed business with pleasure: my deal with Oliver was firmly in the former category. It had to remain there if I wanted to keep my newly-bought apartment. Guiltily, I removed my hand.

I needed to get to sleep. It was coming up on two AM, which was still earlier than I usually got home but still late enough for me to feel just a little on the sluggish side. If only I had any faith that I wouldn't dream about Oliver when I finally fell into the arms of Morpheus, I would've succumbed much quicker, without teasing my body to arousal first.

It took a while, but I did eventually get to sleep. Physical exhaustion took care of that even if my mind seemed determined to keep on wandering into forbidden territory. I woke up to a gloomy, leaden sky and low clouds. A migraine the size of Manhattan was pounding cymbals against my temples, so I helped myself to a glass of juice long past its sell-by date and a couple of painkillers. I figured the good with the bad was the only way to do it.

There were no new messages on my phone, but as I fired up the laptop—and dimmed the backlight so the screen was reduced to glyphs on a grey-black background—I was startled to discover two emails from Oliver. Paranoia was alive and well this morning and it jostled to the forefront of my mind just as quickly: my first concern was whether I'd given him my email address or if he'd had my ISP produce it for him on the sly. It took me a second to remember the contract and the subsequent money transfer—for which, incidentally, a confirmation notice was waiting neat and tidy in my inbox. It was my bad, then; I told him how to reach me.

With heavy heart, I clicked to open this morning's messages.

Surprisingly, Oliver's email wasn't a request for restitution of the cash. Nor was he offering a performance review for last night. (I suppose he was too tech-savvy to put any mention of our arrangement in an email. How else could he have avoided scandal until now?)

As I read the email, I discovered Oliver wanted us to meet. Today. Our next appointment had been settled for early next week and though in my heart I knew I shouldn't, I was looking forward to it more than a little bit.

The night had done nothing to cleanse my thoughts of Oliver's harsh-bitten moans.

His second email amended the first with a suggested time and place. I didn't get it; why would he want to be seen with me at all? I was toxic at best and potentially lethal to his career at worst. If anyone who saw us together knew what I did for a living, I'd be the stone around his neck.

I wrote back saying I thought we should meet at the penthouse. I even promised to bring croissants and coffee.

It took Oliver all of twelve minutes to write back.

You may not realize it for the weather
, he said,
but it's actually ten AM
. He did not insist to meet outside, though, so I could only assume he was okay with the change of locale. It was for his sake, anyway. I didn't have a reputation worth defending.

I yawned in the general direction of the laptop screen. Typed back:
so that's a no to the croissants & coffee?
And with that, I hopped reluctantly into the shower.

The heater was still broken, so it turned out to be a remarkably brief jaunt, just long enough for me to shampoo and rinse my short-cropped hair and step, shivering, back out onto the bathmat. My reflection in the mirror did me no favors; my eyes were red, my make-up smeared since I'd failed to take it off last night. I looked a lot like a painted hooker on
CSI
—except I was alive.

I decided to blame it on the neon lighting and scrubbed my face clean of any trace chemicals. At least I hadn't worn fake lashes; going to bed without peeling those off was pretty hilarious. I'd nearly given myself a heart attack one morning thinking my eyelids were coming loose.

No such shock this morning, only the dismal realization that everything that was pretty in the dark turned pathetic in the light and day. Case in point: my clothes, which I'd called quirky yesterday before heading off to meet Hunter and then Oliver, now look cheap and unwashed. Even my purple hair had the allure of a carnival costume.

Last night's wig really was in a dreadful state, so I took it with me into the living room to comb and untangle. One good look at it in the light of day told me my normal carelessness wouldn't do, so I stoppered the sink and let it fill with water. For all that I wore wigs almost daily, washing them was one of my least favorite activities. I couldn't explain why, maybe it was the texture—all that synthetic hair all soggy in my hands—or the smell of the conditioner the hairdresser had told me to wash it with. In any event, by the time I'd finished, my fingers were pruny and aching from the ice-cold water.

I knew I'd have to take better care of my things now that official, legit employment was absent from my life. Sure, Oliver paid well, but as soon as our three-month contract ended, I would have to find something else.

When I fired up the browser on my laptop next, I pretended it wasn't to check my email. For good measure, I even launched a job ad website, and pretended to peruse the entries while I waited for my inbox countdown to update.

It did. No new emails.

My heart sank a little.

I probably shouldn't have been pinning my hopes on Oliver; he was a busy man with a company to run and a life that didn't involve me. It wasn't like we were together, whatever rumors might take seed if we were ever seen in public. This whole schoolgirl crush thing I was developing for him had no future. I was losing perspective, to say nothing of endangering my finances every time I let my thoughts run wild.

There was a lesson in that. I was allowing myself to get swept up in what had been a good, not-so-humiliating evening with a man—a rarity these days—but that didn't mean I had any chance of being more than what I was as long as I stayed on his payroll.

Hunter had told me once that the things we liked to do—the kinks we shared, sometimes publicly—were best enjoyed with a loving partner. It occurred to me that I wanted that someday. I could be more than someone's employee, or the flavor of the week at some high roller's birthday party. Getting paid for company or sex or smiling and nodding—or wielding a whip, for that matter—wasn't exactly a lifelong dream of mine.  

With heavy heart, I opened the browser page I'd just loaded and clicked the flashy, red sign up button. I needed to think of my future
after
Oliver and Madam Madrigal.

Oliver wanted me to meet him at six PM, so naturally I showed up at five-thirty, completely anxious. I told myself I wasn't, but the pep-talk did no good. There was a hollow in the pit of my stomach, like someone had reached in and scooped up my insides, leaving me with nothing but air and a racing heart.

"I know I'm early," I told Oliver cheerily on the phone, "but I'm busy later, so..."

"Another man? Careful, Jo, I could get jealous."

"I seriously doubt that." I had boxes to pack and a move to organize, but if he wanted to think I had a date, I wasn't going to contradict. Truthfully, going out and getting picked up was not on my to-do list. I was more concerned about paying both rent and a mortgage at the same time—and how unbelievably stupid that was. Of course, if I was bound to lose the apartment, then surrendering my small, troublesome lease was probably just as dumb. I couldn't afford to think that way.

"I'm not home," Oliver told me crisply. "You'll have to wait."

"Sure. Any good magazines in your lobby?"

Silence trickled down the line for a long moment, the miles of empty space between us crackling with the static of white noise. Then Oliver said, "Ask George to let you into the apartment."

"George?" I asked, because that was easier than wondering if Oliver was worried I'd be spotted in the lobby. Granted, yesterday's get-up had been pretty obvious, but now I was wearing a sensible skirt and an even more sensible pair of flats—the only one I owned. With my curly red wig on, I didn't exactly look like I belonged in this part of town, but maybe no one would do a double take at the sight of me.

"The concierge," Oliver clarified. "I can always call him myself..."

"No, it's fine. I'll ask. I think he likes me, anyway."

George turned out to be receptive to the claim that Mr. Shepherd had invited me to go up to his apartment, but he still called Oliver to check. I tried not to feel offended. It was probably just procedure.

I climbed into the elevator feeling anxious and exited into the penthouse with similar discomfort for no discernible reason. The lights were down on the upper floor. Even downstairs, everything but the foyer was in shadow. I ventured into the sitting room feeling a bit like an intruder. None of my previous visits had given me a whole lot of time to explore the place. Gerry's energetic company had transformed last night into a game of verbal tennis that I was still reeling from some eighteen hours later. I hoped she wasn't coming by again tonight; I needed time to recover. 

It took me a few minutes to gather the nerve to pour myself a drink. I didn't go for the hard liquor, only a bit of ice and tonic water with a slice of lemon. Oliver's sideboard had everything from fruit to very, very sharp knives. Rifling through it curbed my desire to search the rest of his cupboards. For now.

Truth be told, I couldn't get used to being surrounded by so much luxury. A part of me still worried I'd touch a Ming vase or something and end up having to sell what was left of my soul to pay for it. I was more of a plastic plates kind of gal, here only for a short-lived interlude in better homes and gardens; Oliver could keep his crystal champagne flutes.