by Cynthia Sax
I position the patio chair to face him, guessing at my billionaire’s intentions. The chair has a straight back, armrests, and no sharp angles. I’ve used it in the past and, as Blaine’s watched me, he knows this.
“Closer,” Blaine rumbles, his eyelids partially lowering.
I push the chair closer. As I sit down on the cool cushion, my bare knees brush Blaine’s pant-covered legs and I tremble, this first contact heightening my awareness of him. Will he touch me tonight? I shouldn’t want him to touch me, to break his vow, yet I do, needing him, needing release.
“Put your legs over the armrests,” he instructs unemotionally as though he’s teaching me how to build a set of shelves.
I hesitate. This will open myself completely to him. He’ll have access to everything a healthy male could want. Am I willing to trust him this much? I count backward from ten, slowly, methodically, and I spread my legs, hooking my knees over the armrests.
The cool night air skims over my hot wet pussy and I quiver, this experience surreal, like the most decadent dream. The key slides along my skin, the light reflecting off the gold.
“Pretty and pink.” Blaine leans forward and lowers his dark head between my spread legs. His hot breath wafts on my inner thighs and my pussy convulses. “So responsive,” he murmurs.
He examines me thoroughly, appearing fascinated with my wet folds. I’ve never been this close to another man, have never had a man see me this way, and yet I’m showing my pussy to Blaine, a man I’ve only recently met, a man I know nothing about.
Blaine breathes in, his shoulders rising. “You smell gorgeous.” My face is on fire. “How do you taste?”
“Taste?” I squeak.
Blaine pulls away from my pussy. “You’ve never tasted yourself? Anna, Anna, Anna.” He clucks his tongue and shakes his head as though every woman has tasted her own juices. Have they?
Impulsively, I dip the tip of my right index finger into my hole, wetting my skin, and I stick my finger in my mouth. The taste is watery and slightly tangy. Is that good?
Blaine watches me, his gaze focused on my face, his expression intense.
“Ummm . . .” I don’t know what to say or how to describe it. I wet my skin again, trembling at the intimate caress, and I hold my finger up to him. “You try it.”
His gaze doesn’t shift from my face, his attention fully on me. “I said I wouldn’t touch you.”
“Just this once and just my finger.” Is he being noble or does he not want to taste me? Am I forcing my pussy juices on him? Oh Lord. I’m a freak. “Never mind.” I lower my hand.
He surges forward, captures my finger between his grim lips and sucks hard, the tug and pull of his mouth felt down to my pussy.
Mercy. I stare at Blaine as he tastes my juices, a look of bliss on his previously expressionless face. His unabashed passion feeds mine. I rub my free hand over my pussy, stroking my fingertips back and forth, back and forth, my motions synchronized to his sucking. My scent mixes with his cologne, my heat meshes with his. We’re connected, one. I rock my hips into my hand, yearning for his mouth on my flesh.
He releases my finger with a juicy pop and leans back. I want to grab his shoulders, keep him close to me, but that’s not our deal. He watches. He doesn’t touch.
“Touch yourself for me, Anna,” Blaine coaxes, his voice a low rumble. “Draw more of that delicious juice from your pussy.”
I extend the finger he’d sucked clean and I slide it into my entrance, burying myself up to the joint. It feels good but not enough, not nearly enough.
“You’re so tight.” He says this as though it is a good thing. “How many fingers can you fit?” I add two more fingers, stretching me to the point of discomfort. Blaine shifts in his seat. His black dress pants are tented around an impressively huge erection.
Blaine has a hard-on . . . for me, plain little Anna Sampson. “You’re fully dressed.” This can’t be comfortable, especially in this heat. Sweat is trickling down my spine and I’m shamelessly naked. “Do you want to . . .” I can’t say it. I can’t ask him to strip for me, to show me his cock.
“No.” He chokes around the word. “I want to watch. Pump your tight little hole for me.”
I obey him, masturbating in front of Blaine feeling natural. He isn’t judging me. He’s enjoying me. I stroke in, stroke out, passion winding around us, binding us together. He’s seen me, tasted me. I pant, my breasts heaving. I wish he’d touch me, put that severe mouth on my pussy, suck my clit instead of my fingers.
“That’s it,” Blaine coaches, leaning forward once more. “Show me what you need, what gets you off.”
Blaine watching me gets me off. I’m burning, lit by desire. I lift into my thrusts, delving deeper, reaching farther. My juices splatter on Blaine’s tanned cheeks, freckle the fabric of his dark suit, but he doesn’t seem to mind and I’m too gone to care. Everything inside me tightens, the friction pushing me to the edge, where I dangle, the limbo agonizing.
“Blaine?” I ask his permission. This feels right and I don’t know why.
“Come for me, Anna,” he demands, and I whimper, ready and willing to obey. “Tap your clit and scream my name.”
I slap my palm against that bundle of nerves, drive my hips forward, toward him, and plummet into the abyss. “Blaine!” I shriek as I fall, reaching for him, trying to grab him, anything to secure me to this world.
My fingers close on air, his broad shoulders beyond my grasp. I scream his name again, this time with agony and fury, his desertion cutting me, angering me. I’m alone in my pleasure, my satisfaction, and I fold my body in two, gripping my shaking thighs. I close my eyes as tears stream down my cheeks.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs. I raise my head and glare at him. “I vowed not to touch you.”
He did but this reminder doesn’t make me feel better. Shouldn’t a man in the midst of passion forget his vows? I forgot all of mine.
Blaine withdraws a cigar and a set of matches from his inside jacket pocket. “Have you ever had anything other than your fingers in your pussy?” A flame flares and he puffs on the cigar, the smoke partially masking my musk.
“No.” I wrinkle my nose. “Smoking is a very bad habit,” I snip, his abandonment not forgotten.
Blaine draws on the cigar and leisurely exhales. “I have more than one bad habit.” Is he talking about me? I narrow my eyes at him and he chuckles. “Ask your question.”
My question. I blink. What is my question? I frown and his grin widens, my blasted billionaire. Billionaire. I remember and I wish I hadn’t. I lower my legs, my tension returning.
“Ahhh . . . ummm . . . I work for a charity—Feed Your Hungry.” There, I can truthfully tell Boss man I mentioned it.
Blaine sucks on his cigar. Light reflects off the moisture on his cheeks, my pussy juices staining his skin. Although he is impeccably dressed and I suspect a bit anal retentive about his appearance, he makes no attempt to remove the specks.
He watched me. He tasted me. He smells of me. I shift in my chair. He’s mine.
“Why do you work at Feed Your Hungry?” Blaine taps his cigar against the ashtray, the gray ashes falling on the red terra-cotta. “Is it to atone for what your father did?”
Terror courses down my spine and I straighten in my seat. “You know.”
“Not enough,” he says.
I search his face, seeing no judgment. Has he known from the beginning? I can’t imagine Blaine allowing someone on his property without examining his or her background.
“How many people did your father steal from before he was caught?” he asks.
“It was his first job,” I confess, my father inept as a criminal. “He was desperate. He’d been out of work for ten months and we were losing the house. We couldn’t afford . . .” My voice breaks. I’ve never told anyone this. I’ve never had the opportunity to defend my father’s actions. People, when they find out my family history, immediately judge both my father and myself.
“You
couldn’t afford food and no one would help you.” Blaine stares at his cigar, his green eyes soft, unfocused, and I stare at him, not expecting understanding from this hard, proud man.
“So now you feed the hungry so others won’t suffer the same fate.” He nods as though he has everything figured out. I wish he’d share that secret with me because I don’t have a clue. “Your mother left.”
He does know everything about me, all of my ghosts and all of my shame. “She couldn’t take the snide comments and the judgment. She left town one day.” January fourteenth, to be exact. “While I was at school. Our neighbors allowed me to live in their basement.” As long as I remained unseen and unheard. It was then that I mastered the art of disappearing.
Blaine grinds the head of his cigar into the terra-cotta ashtray. “You were fourteen and alone.” He links his fingers in front of his chest, looking at me with that intense all-seeing gaze of his.
“I survived.” I shrug off the past, unable to dwell on the pain. “Not everyone did.” My father died in prison. Blaine will know this also.
“You’re stronger than him.” The billionaire reads my mind. “You’re stronger than both of them.”
Tears well in my eyes. He’s been so nice to me and I’ve . . . I’ve been less than honest. “Your business card fell out of my pocket while I was at work,” I confess, wishing to rectify this. “My boss saw it and asked me to talk to you. That’s all I promised to do—talk to you.” The words gush out of me.
“I figured it was something like that.” Blaine tilts his head to the side, studying me. “Don’t worry about it, Anna. I’ll take care of it.” He waves his hand dismissively. I don’t know what he plans to take care of. “I’ll take care of you.”
I want to believe that. I’m tired, so very tired of being alone. I gaze up at the stars, sitting naked in Blaine’s backyard. He looks up also, fully dressed. We don’t speak. We don’t have to. Being together is enough.
The moth drifts closer, navigating the night breeze with her brown wings. I watch her and wonder if she was scared when she first flew, when she changed from being a ground-dwelling caterpillar to a creature of the skies, or whether she felt only the burst of freedom, of rightness.
“You can wash in the waterfall.” Blaine finally breaks the silence. “The conditioner is for you.”
I reluctantly stand, my knees stiff and my inner thighs sticky. “Will you watch?”
“Always.” He smiles, remaining seated. “The key.” He holds out his hand.
“I’ll get it back?” I play with the black ribbon.
“It’s yours.”
I remove the key, feeling even more bare without it, and I drop it into his callused palm. I saunter to the waterfall and immerse myself in the cascades. As the water flows over my breasts and between my legs, I cup and squeeze my curves, pinch and twist my nipples, imagining he has his hands on my body, touching me, pleasing me.
He’ll join me in release this time. He won’t allow me to fall alone. I spread my feet, grip the rock wall and bend over, tilting my ass upward, my pussy facing my audience of one.
Or is it one? Are there more men in the darkness, wanting me, lusting after me? I roll my hips sensuously, the water streaming down the crack of my ass.
Blaine groans. I look over my shoulder. His green eyes glitter and his cock presses against the fabric of his dress pants. He wants to fuck me.
I pump conditioner into my right palm and apply it to my frizzy hair, threading my fingers through the tangles. The conditioner smells of vanilla. Will it taste the same? I rub some of the mousse into my private curls.
“Enough.”
I jump, not having heard Blaine’s approach. He stands beside me with the key in one palm, the black ribbon wrapped around his fingers, and a plush white robe in his other hand.
“I didn’t wash out the conditioner,” I protest.
“It can stay in.” Blaine opens the robe and waits, his body rock hard under his form-fitting suit, his erection unabated. I walk toward him and he bundles me in soft Egyptian cotton, touching me only through the robe.
The hem hits my calves. This can’t be Blaine’s robe. He is easily a foot taller than me. “Is this for me?” I hold up my hair.
“Everything is for you.” He fastens my ribbon, the gold key restored to where it belongs—between my breasts. “I’ll walk you to the gate.”
“I left my flip-flops on the grass.” I follow him, savoring the grass between my toes.
“I’ll return them in the morning.” Blaine doesn’t take my hand. He doesn’t brush his arm against mine. Heat and tension radiates from his physique. How long can he go without touching me?
Or doesn’t he want to touch me? I frown. Is he merely interested in watching? “I left my clothes here last night.”
“I won’t return those,” he rumbles.
My frown deepens. “Did you throw them away?” They were old and worn but they were mine and I don’t have many clothes.
“I claimed them,” Blaine tells me. I don’t know what this means. Why would he claim a faded camisole and bleached thin boy shorts?
As we approach the gate, I slow my already slow pace. I’m tired and sexually sated, yet I’m not ready to leave Blaine, not yet.
The Leighs’ gate is beautiful but not unique. Every stretch of wrought iron enclosing Blaine’s backyard has a similar gate.
“Four sides, four gates,” I observe.
“One can never have too many exits.”
“That’s true.” I understand his need for freedom. If I was a billionaire, I’d have no fences. I take my own sweet time unlocking the gate, not wanting to end this encounter.
When I’m gone, will he unzip those restrictive dress pants and masturbate in the dark? Or, I stiffen, will he find another woman to ease his arousal? Am I simply an appetizer and not his main course?
“There’s no need to worry, Anna.” Shadows play over Blaine’s face. “I’m watching over you.”
“I’m not coming back tomorrow.” I decide. This relationship, or experience or whatever this is, can’t be healthy. It isn’t normal.
“You will.”
Blaine’s chuckle follows me as I hurry back to the Leighs’ steel and concrete bungalow. I tell myself I won’t look back but I can’t resist and I do. I don’t see Blaine. He’s gone, vanishing as though he has never existed.
Chapter Three
WHEN I WAKE up, I look in the mirror and a miracle has happened. My hair is no longer frizzy. It cascades over my shoulders, a sheet of rippling brown silk.
Buoyed by my great hair day, I decide to try out the new bra and panties. The panties are okay. I remain uncomfortable with the bra. My breasts don’t look like my breasts. They’re huge, massive. Even my baggy white blouse clings to them.
As I’ll likely be the only one who notices, I decide not to change and head out the door. My flip-flops are lined up neatly by the cold steel welcome mat, Blaine once again keeping his word.
I give the bus driver a cheery hello. He grumbles back. I sit beside a man in a construction hat and grubby work boots who spends the trip cursing out some poor soul on the other end of the phone. He’s using f-bombs like my mom would use oregano, liberally.
Thinking of my missing mom dims my spirits for a moment but then I stroke my hair and I bounce back. The normally unruly tendrils are soft and straight. I’m tempted to call Blaine and ask him for the name of his conditioner.
Although I have his number, I don’t have a phone, so I save that question for tonight. I’ll see him one more time, in the interest of frizz-free hair.
I pick up my list of past donors from the constantly texting receptionist, I scan the names and donation dates and my smile brightens. All of the people I’m slated to call today have donated within the last decade.
I’m so happy, I forget myself and smile at Goth girl. She is cursing a blue streak as she struggles to fit her brand new headset over her massive green Mohawk. She has also moved to the empty s
eat beside mine. I think I might have made a new friend.
I bend over to set my tote by my feet, and the key Blaine gave me slides across my skin. My nipples tighten. Although the blouse hugs my curves, I don’t worry that anyone will notice my arousal. The bra’s thick padding would conceal a Blaine-sized erection.
Third call in, I talk to a past donor who says she appreciates my call. Her business is going through rough times, the economy, you know, but in a couple of months she should have funds to contribute. I write a call back date beside her name, circle the line in bright red, and place stars in the margin. If I’m lucky to be here in two months, she will be the first person I call.
Around noon the big-breasted blonde in the front row makes her first call of the day. She mangles the name of the charity, giggles, tosses her hair, and secures another meet and greet. Bells ring. We all clap. Boss man moves her to an office.
I’m genuinely happy for her and I’m hopeful I’ll soon have an office too. My hair looks fabulous. My call list is less aged. I’ve only been yelled at by one donor thus far today. The only downer is that Michael hasn’t arrived yet.
At a quarter past two in the afternoon, Boss man returns to the edge of the pit. He scans his team and my stomach squeezes. He’s looking for me, I know it. He’s found out I don’t really, truly know Gabriel Blaine, or worse, he’s uncovered the truth about my father.
“Anna Sampson, you’re wanted in meeting room one.” He waves his hands frantically.
Meeting room one? As I hop out of my seat, my coworkers turn and stare at me. Goth girl blinks her obscenely long fake green eyelashes. Meeting room one is where the biggest donors are parked. It is the dominion of Melinda Grack, the queen of the big-breasted blondes.
“Sir, what is this about?” I hurry to keep pace with Boss man. I’ve never seen him move so quickly.
“You did it,” Boss man gushes. “I knew you had it in you. I could tell when I hired you, you had potential.”
Potential? I shake my head, confused. Yesterday he wanted to fire me.