by Fiona Murphy
“Serious as a heart attack. I don’t know what it is with her, but it’s never been as good as it has been with her. She got upset when she found out I was keeping Diana as a sugar baby to go out for the charity gigs and dinner out.
“I caved like a bitch to her ultimatum, when she told me she wouldn’t fuck me if I was fucking someone else. It wasn’t even a question, I told her okay right then. Honestly, I had actually only fucked Diana twice after signing Rachel. Fucking Diana just made me wish she were Rachel.”
“Okay, you are a serious. I’ve never known you to give in to a woman’s demand.”
“She had a point, I had it in the contract she couldn’t fuck anyone else. I shouldn’t be fucking anyone, either.”
“Give Rachel some time, you are less of an asshole when she’s around. She’s good for you. Would you still pay out her contract if you ended it?”
“Fuck you, no way. If it ends, she gets a month as severance, then it’s done. Are you going to pay out if you cut off Anne?”
“Yeah, it’s in the contract.”
“Are you fucking with me? You’re going to pay for pussy you aren’t even fucking?”
The way he refers to Anne as pussy pisses me off. I serve with heat, point. “I think she’s worth it. She’s not pussy, don’t call her that again.”
His hands go up, “I’m sorry, you’re right. My bad, I won’t do it again.”
We finish our game with neither one of us knowing who won. When we leave the gym we find the rain has stopped.
When I get home I expect Anne to already be gone but she’s still in bed. I finish breakfast wondering if I can join her, only to hear the door to her own office close. Since I have the rule about my own office time and I don’t want to invade her space I shrug off my desire. Going into my office I bring up my work and dig in.
I hear the front door closing behind Anne and Emilio. Glancing at the corner of my computer I see it’s a little after one in the afternoon. What I’m working on is forgotten as I think of Anne going out with Emilio as her shadow for the day. Emilio and Walters have been with her a little over a month now.
While she says she’s grown used to them and doesn’t mind them, I know that isn’t entirely true. I’ve figured out she feels more comfortable with Walters than Emilio. When Walters is working she would be out all day. If it’s Emilio then she usually didn’t leave until after lunch, and was usually only gone for a few hours. Sometimes she didn’t even leave the condo, using the excuse of being too tired or just not feeling like going out.
I’ve spent hours vetting them both, I wonder what I missed. The program I’m deep in is forgotten as I think of Anne out with someone she didn’t want to be with. Saving what I have, I shut down. I make a quick change and pull on some sneakers. I’m out the door only fifteen minutes after Anne has left.
In the elevator, I bring up Anne’s tracker for her phone. Outside the building, I close in fast to see Anne up ahead of me. She’s got her camera but she doesn’t stop to get a picture.
Grabbing her hand, I slip it into mine. Her head turns with a smile so bright I stop, it’s blinding with her happiness. “Where are we off to today?”
Leaning into me, she laughs. I love it when she laughs. “The Art Institute, it’s been a while since I’ve been. What about you? How long has it been since you’ve been there?”
Thinking hard I give up. “I took a stroll around when I first got to Chicago, it’s been about a dozen years or so. Oh, wait, no my friend Marshall’s charity held some event there a few years ago. It wasn’t really about the art though, more about writing a check. I wrote the check then I sat back with a beer and watched the masses adore Marshall.”
I let Emilio know he’s done for the day. Anne’s sigh of relief is so light I would have missed it if I wasn’t tuned into her every breath. Just like our time together in the Shedd, her happiness sucks me in.
What I thought would be a trial, simply to make her happy, is the most pleasure I’ve had with my clothes on since our time in the Shedd. I remember thinking last time was a one off, simply because she was new. Only today, I know with every fiber of my being it’s not because she’s new. It’s because it’s Anne.
When her eyes light up, becoming a soft dove grey and she smiles, knowing she’s happy gives me a rush of exhilaration I’ve never known before. I wonder how it is her happiness makes me as happy as she is, if it’s normal. Then I don’t care anymore because I’m too happy to care about anything but Anne.
Her chattering over the paintings she doesn’t like is as interesting as the ones she does like. Then there are the moments where she simply stands in front of a painting, her arms around my waist staring at it dreamily with nothing to say. Her happy little sighs tell me everything I need to know about how right it had been to come with her today.
Out on the steps of the building I don’t want to go home yet. “How about some calamari, sweetheart? Want to visit that restaurant again for dinner?”
“I’d like to, but aren’t we a little underdressed?” She’s wearing a long summer dress in comfy Keds. I’m in jeans and a polo with sneakers.
I laugh as I pull out my phone. A quick call tells me they will be happy to have a table ready in the next half hour, dress code not in effect. Taking her hand again, we take our time walking to the restaurant. We share the calamari and this time we both order the braciole.
“What? No wine?”
She blushes, “I don’t drink. I only ordered wine because you made me mad.”
“I wondered. You haven’t had wine since you moved in. I thought it might be because of Alice.”
“Nope, I just didn’t want to let you get your way. At the time, I was mad at you for telling me what I couldn’t do. I didn’t like it.”
“Hmm... interesting how much you love it now.” She blushes again. “I’m surprised today was the Art Institute. I would have thought you were going back to the library to take some of those books back. You managed to get through far more over the weekend than I thought you would. Hell, I couldn’t believe how many you came home with. If you wanted that many books, you should have gotten a cart to take with you. All those books, and you still read on your tablet. Are you going to be able to read all of them?”
“I do get a little carried away when it comes to books.”
“Why did you go the library? Why not go to the bookstore?”
She looks at me like it’s a stupid question. “I love libraries. Maybe you’re right and I won’t be able to read all of the books I get but I would like the chance to try. With the time limit on a library check out I’m more inclined to read what I have. When I go to the bookstore, knowing they’ll be there for as long as I want them, I go a little crazy. I would have needed a car to get them all home.”
“You love libraries, really?” Her eyes glowed when she said it.
“Yes, especially the older ones. I love the sheer history they represent, the way some of them are the prettiest buildings in the city. Because, you know, a lot of times libraries were some of the first buildings built in a city or town.
“Then there’s the whole idea of a library. You get to pick out any book for free. It blew my mind. I didn’t get to go into one until I went to Vegas at eighteen. Until then, if it wasn’t the bible I couldn’t read it. I remember spending hours in the library at first, not realizing I could leave with the books. One of the librarians finally took pity and explained how everything worked.”
“You had never been in a library before?” The very idea of someone not knowing what a library was and how it worked, at the age of eighteen, is crazy to me.
“My parents allow me in a place full of information that conflicted with anything I was being taught? No way, not going to happen. I was determined to make up for lost time and read everything I should have read growing up.”
“Your parents kept a really tight leash on you, didn’t they? I don’t think I really understood until now.” And I didn’t. Even though I took in what
she told me, and committed it to memory, I thought it meant I understood. But I didn’t, not really.
“Very much so, at all times. My home was about twenty miles outside a town of less than ten thousand people. I was never allowed to go into town without my mother by my side, even then it was only a handful of times. My father ran a farm that supplied most of the dairy and meat for the town.
“While we weren’t rich, it was enough to support a family of twenty. It also meant we didn’t need to leave the farm for hardly anything. From sun up to sun down, it was on and on about how right we lived and how wrong everybody else lived.”
“That sounds tough, I’m sorry. How did you manage to get away from them? You never said exactly.”
I’ve hit a nerve. I’ve been careful until now letting it go every time I asked a question about her past that she didn’t want to answer but I’m dying to know her better. The things I knew were only a fraction of the real story. Her lone offer up of being taught sex was only about procreation and not to be enjoyed explained so much for a while it was enough. Now I want to know more about what had made Anne who she is. She swallows as she studies the ice in her glass. “It was easier than they thought it would be. A week after I turned sixteen, my mother started talking to me about how my father had already started looking for a husband for me. She named a man twenty-seven years older than I was, who was interested in a wife who would be a good breeder. He was willing to wait until I was eighteen but not a day later.
“When she first told me, I’m sitting there trying to feed my two younger brothers. She’s pregnant and is breast feeding my youngest sister. All I could think of doing was getting up and running for the door. It actually ran through my head, just get up, and run until I couldn’t keep running. The life I was growing up in was supposed to be my future. I hated nearly every hour of my day. My mother was insistent it was a good life. But it couldn’t be when I felt suffocated by the rules and the demands and I hated it. I didn’t really know what other kind of lives there were besides the one I was living but I knew I didn’t want it.
“All I knew was I wanted out. Billy was one of the few farmhands who wasn’t scared of my father. Billy ignored the rules about not talking to me and my little brothers and sisters. He talked about his plans for leaving our small town, of following his uncle to Las Vegas. Although he wanted to work in a casino, he was willing to work in his uncle’s furniture making business, anything but becoming what our parents were.
“I hung on his every word. At first, I just wanted him to take me with him. That was my only interest in him, but Billy being eighteen, had other things on his mind. I could say he used me, but I can admit we both used each other.
“Did I plan to get pregnant at seventeen and married at eighteen to a boy who didn’t want me, but didn’t want to be disowned by his family? No, but I let him use me to get what I wanted, a way out. I didn’t think about what would happen once we got where we were going.
“In the end we both got what we wanted, in very different ways. His uncle in Las Vegas took us in because my family wouldn’t have anything to do with me, As far as my parents were concerned Billy’s family wasn’t good enough for me to marry into. We couldn’t stay in our hometown, no one was willing to anger my father by hiring Billy.
“Eli, Billy’s uncle, was a good man. He put up with Billy longer than either of us deserved. He also helped us find our own place. Eli put Thomas on his family’s insurance when it became obvious something was wrong when Thomas was first born. He and his wife were with me for Thomas’ first open heart surgery, when Thomas was only two weeks old.” It’s the most she’s ever said about her son, as if she realizes it she stops.
I want to ask more about Thomas. Except, I hate seeing the pain in her eyes. Her smile is long gone. “I’m sorry. But I’m not sorry the path you took brought you here to me now.”
I had only intended to tell her I was sorry, sorry for making her lose her smile, sorry for making her remember things I knew she would rather forget. Where those other words came from I’m not sure, but they are very true.
“I’m not sorry, either. What about you? You don’t talk much about yourself. I remember reading you were some sort of young genius. When did you get into computers?”
Shrugging, I downplay my dysfunctional past after hearing her own put my mine to shame. “I was eight. Like you, I was homeschooled, but my mother left me to do what I wanted after she felt I learned better on my own. She was a schoolteacher before I was born. I was reading Mark Twain by the time I was three, Dickens by the time I was four, and bored by five.
“Computers were emerging back then, so my mom sat me down in front of one. It was supposed to help me learn when I exceeded her limits. I became obsessed with it quickly. Before long, I wanted to learn what made it work. It all went from there.”
She wipes her plate clean with the bread she had held back for it. I call the waiter over but not for the check. When I order the tiramisu she groans. I laugh. “We’re sharing. One dessert, two forks.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. As long as you tell me why you aren’t happy with Emilio.” She blinks fast, pewter becomes storm clouds. “I know you aren’t happy with him. Tell me why.”
“It’s nothing really. He just talks, like a lot. I think he thinks he’s building rapport or whatever. I prefer how Walters just hangs back unless I talk to him, even then he’s no chatty Cathy. He can be a bit stuffy and he has an odd sense of humor. I actually got him to laugh though, twice.”
The waiter sets down the tiramisu and Anne moans at the sight of it. Fuck me, watching her take a bite makes my cock hard. I can only watch as she takes a second bite.
Her eyes go up to mine in surprise then widen as she sees the desire in mine. “Sweetheart, eat up because I don’t think I can last much longer here.” The little brat laughs. “I’m going to make you pay for that laughter.”
Taking another bite, she pouts. “Don’t get cranky. It’s just, I like knowing I’m not the only who gets all twisty and hungry for sex.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you have to know you aren’t the only one who gets hungry for what we’ll be doing soon. Why do you think I’m here?” Her head tilts in question. Fuck, she doesn’t know. “I’m here because I knew you didn’t like going out with Emilio on your walks as much as Walters. I’m here because like I told you, you’re mine. You’re mine to protect and take care of, to keep happy. If you aren’t happy then I’m not happy. From now on you won’t have Emilio as security. I’ll make a call tomorrow and let them know to just send Walters from now on.”
“Don’t do that, Emilio isn’t bad. I don’t want them to think we are firing him. I would feel awful.” She drops her fork, her face tight in discomfort.
“If it means that much to you then I’ll just tell them we don’t need someone as often.”
Shrugging, she moves a chocolate shaving around on the plate. “It’s just, what now? Walters told me he’s only available four days of the week because he has to take care of his mother. I’m down to four days a week? I was going to the University of Chicago tomorrow to meet with an advisor and do a visit. Walters is off for the next three days.”
“You aren’t down to four days a week. If you want to leave the condo, I’m coming with you.”
Her fork falls with a clank. “What?”
“I’m coming with you. Tomorrow we go to the University of Chicago. You want to take pictures of churches, take another boat ride to see the sights, I’ll go too.
“As Alice has told me numerous times, it wouldn’t kill me to get out of the condo. Between the Shedd and today, I realize I’ve lived in this city going on fifteen years now and barely know it. I figure it will be fun.”
She’s full of hesitation, as if she thinks any moment I’ll change my mind. “Are you sure? You won’t be annoyed with me? I don’t always plan my day. Sometimes I just wander around, other days I pack the day full.”
“I won’t be annoyed. Let m
e know over breakfast or if you’re up later, you knock on my door and I’ll go.”
Her eyes go wide, teasing. “I can knock on your door?”
“Yes, you can knock on my door.”
“Okay, help me eat this dessert like you promised.”
One bite and I understand her moan as she savored her bite. “This is good. The chocolate isn’t too sweet and the espresso is quality. As good as it is, it doesn’t even come close to your sweet pussy.”
She blushes down to her neck. This time she carefully sets her fork down and signals for the check. We’re home in record time. The minute the door to the condo is closed, I rip the sundress down off her body. Then push her back against the closed door with my body. Her hands fumble with the opening of my jeans, as she yanks them down enough to free me. Seeing me free of my jeans she cups me from the base of my cock, pulling me toward her uncovered pussy.
“You left the condo without underwear. Naughty, naughty girl.” I groan into her mouth as I pull her up so she can wind her legs around my hips.
“You’re right, I should be spanked. After you fuck me.” Anne’s hands in my hair force my mouth to hers.
I guide myself into her pushing until I’m buried deep. She cries out for more, begging me to fuck her faster, deeper. I can’t stop, don’t dare stop. Anne cries out as she comes, grasping me deep, urging me to come with her and I do.
Holding her against the door with my body, it takes a while before I can move. She tightens her legs around my waist as I walk us to our bedroom. When I move to lay her down on the bed her legs tighten on my waist again. “Sweetheart, I need to get undressed.”
“You just feel so good.” Her moan in my ear sends a shiver down my spine.
“I’ll be back inside you soon enough, I promise.” With a sigh, she lets me go.
While I undress, her eyes on my every move. With a light tug, what’s left of her dress is gone, her bra follows. She knows I love to stare at her naked body, and poses prettily for me. I run a hand from her inner thigh to cup her, feeling her still swollen, still tender to the touch. “I love it when you do that, you know it.”