by L. D. Davis
“Actually,” Mayson surprised me by speaking up. “Mr. Sterling’s department is doing much better than any other department in the building right now. It runs like a well-oiled machine and even with a less than full staff, they are running at 97% efficiency. That’s not perfect, but that’s pretty damn close to perfect. If you move or fire Lily I guarantee that number will drop. I don’t condone their disregard for the rules, but I also agree with Kyle. You all know that he went through a lot of sh…stuff…and let’s be honest. You put him through more headaches than necessary and he still keeps everything rolling smoothly. I think you’re going to have to overlook this one.”
Again the three of them looked at one another.
“I think we need to have a private chat,” Nadia said, getting to her feet. She walked out of the door, followed closely by Ned and Warrick.
The door had barely closed before both women were on me.
“You asshole!” Mayson yelled. “Can you stop fucking your assistants!”
“I told you they would want to fire me!” Lily yelled and punched me in the arm.
“Dick!” Mayson spat and shoved me.
“Asshat!” Lily yelled.
I sighed loudly and ran a hand over my face. This was bullshit. I was getting the shit beat out of me by these women while they stood outside deciding my fucking fate. I stood up, pushing my chair back so hard that it crashed into the wall behind me. I started around the table, but the three superiors re-entered the board room. They didn’t sit down, but stood near the door.
“You can keep your position, Miss Whitman,” Nadia said, though she didn’t seem happy about it. “You are allowed your…relationship …but we ask that you not make it so damn obvious to the rest of the company until we can make some adjustments on the regulations. Public displays of affection are unwelcome and unnecessary. Furthermore, when you are with a client, you are to be one hundred percent professional. The clients do not need to be aware of your relationship.”
“This is only temporary,” Warrick warned.
They left without another word.
“Well, that was fun,” Mayson said dryly as she got up to leave.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I didn’t expect you to be dragged into this.”
“I don’t even want to talk to you or you right now,” she said waving her arms. “Once again I have to picture your tongue flopping around in a friend’s mouth and…I just can’t stomach it.” She put a hand to her stomach and quickly left the room.
Lily stormed past me and out of the room. I followed behind her as she bypassed the elevators where Mayson was waiting and took the stairs.
“Lily,” I called after her as she moved down the stairs.
At the next landing, she spun around suddenly and shoved me against the wall. She stood on her toes to reach my mouth and kissed me hard. I put my hands under her ass and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around me and I turned around so that I could hold her up against the wall. Her skirt had risen up her thighs. I pushed it up further and tore her lacey white panties off of her. Quickly I unzipped my pants and pushed my hard cock inside of her. She panted as I fucked her hard against the wall and kissed her neck.
When she started to cry out, I covered her mouth with mine, swallowing her orgasmic cries. A moment later I pulled out of her again and came on the floor between us with a soft grunt. I was barely recovered from my orgasm when a door above us opened and footsteps sounded on the stairs. I quickly and quietly set Lily down and stuffed her panties into my pocket as she fixed her skirt. I zipped up my pants as we hurried down the rest of the stairs and to our floor.
We walked back into our department as if we hadn’t just fucked on the stairs five minutes before. Just before entering our respective offices, Lily kept her stern face but gave me a wink that made me grin.
I sat down at my desk and tried to get back to work, but my mind kept drifting back to Lily’s words from earlier. She could have lost her job. I would have taken care of her, gladly, but Lily was the type of girl that didn’t like handouts. She liked to earn her share. I closed the window I was working in and went to my bookmarks. I stared at the screen for a long time before I made a decision.
I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Kessler and Keane, attorneys at law,” a young woman answered.
“Luke Kessler, please,” I said. “Tell him it is Kyle Sterling.”
Chapter Eleven
*~Kyle~*
“Are you sure this is a good time to meet your mom?” Lily asked from the passenger’s seat. She fidgeted with the one bracelet on her wrist. It was the one bracelet with Anna’s name etched into it, the only one she had not thrown away several weeks ago when our relationship changed.
I sighed and said “Baby, there is no ‘good time’ to meet my mother.”
“If that was meant to comfort me, you failed,” she said sourly.
Apologizing to her was only going to make it worse, so I didn’t say anything. I could understand why she was nervous. This wasn’t going to be a formal meet the parents kind of thing. While Lily and I were having brunch, my mother called and summoned me via text to the estate. I had not visited with her in weeks, so I felt obligated to go. Lily suggested I drop her off at home, but I would have had to backtrack through the city to drop her off and we were already closer to my mother’s than home.
“You should have at least let me change into something more appropriate,” Lily grumbled.
“There isn’t anything wrong with what you have on, Lil,” I insisted. Under her leather jacket, she had on an old Warrant t-shirt over a long sleeved tight, white shirt, and super tight jeans that made her ass look edible, and the sneakers I replaced for her. Her hair was loose and wild the way I loved it and she wore only a touch of eye makeup – enough to accentuate her gorgeous eyes.
“I feel so…low class,” she said.
“There isn’t anything low about you, Lily – except when you’re on your knees with my cock between your lips.”
She gave me a death stare, but I grinned until she couldn’t help but to smile a little.
“You didn’t think too highly of me at first,” Lily reminded me.
“I didn’t think lowly of you either,” I said, grimacing at the memories of the things I had said to her. “Besides, what she thinks isn’t going to have an impact on us.”
“There was a time when what your parents thought truly mattered, more than anything else,” she said, looking at me with worried eyes.
“It hasn’t been that way in a long time now,” I said, trying to convince both of us, but I’m not sure she was convinced.
I changed the topic, trying to take Lily’s mind off meeting my manic mother, though I was worried myself. Mom may be over enthusiastic and ridiculously happy or she may be all doom and gloom, and mean – or she could be all of those things, shifting from mood to mood without warning.
I was five years old when I realized my mother was different from other moms. Impulsive trips to Disney World were cool, even though mom would get a little too excited and lose me and my brother inside the parks, sometimes for hours at a time. Countless nights of sleep were disrupted to go on adventures to Narnia or to try an array of new recipes. Those times were fun, but it was the other times that stand out in my memory the most.
Like the time she swept me and Walt Jr. away to Hollywood to try to get onto the set of our favorite show, but instead she curled up in her hotel bed and refused to interact with her children for days until someone alerted the authorities. That was one of many times Walter or some relative or employee had to come and get us.
Then there were the times that mom was on a rampage, screaming, crying, and beating.
The suicide attempts were probably there all along, explaining her long stays in the hospital, but after Walt died at age thirteen and I was nine, the attempts increased for a while. I was only eleven when I found her bleeding from her wrists on the kitchen floor. I was thirteen when I found her comato
se after swallowing pills. It wasn't until just before I left for college that she began to have longer periods of something resembling normalcy. She stayed on track with her meds and made every therapy appointment. But there's no cure for bipolar disorder and the meds sometimes need to be changed, and then the therapy appointments stop and there's that in between period when things can turn to shit.
We cleared the security gate and started down the driveway to the house. Lily and I were having a discussion about the landscaping on the property when the sight of Walter’s Mercedes parked in front of the house made me halt mid-word. The next word I spat out had nothing to do with the landscaping. Lily looked at me with surprise.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Walter is here,” I growled.
Her head snapped back to the Mercedes. “I thought they were divorced. I thought he wasn’t supposed to be here.”
“He’s not.”
I put the car in park behind Walter’s car. I started to get out of the car, but I grabbed Lily’s arm as she also started to get out. She looked at me wearily.
“I don’t want you to come in,” I said.
“You want me to stay in the car?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m not sure why he’s here or what kind of trouble he is causing. I don’t want you caught in the middle of it.”
“You’re not leaving me in the car, Kyle.”
“Bringing you to see my mother was already a questionable decision. Bringing you in the middle of what is bound to be a hostile environment is a very bad decision that I will not make.”
“Fine,” Lily shrugged and then with maddening stubbornness said “I will make the decision myself. I’m going in.”
I scowled at her. She scowled back, snatched her arm out of my grasp and then punched me in the arm. I didn’t flinch, but I sometimes forgot how hard my little bully can punch.
“The last time I saw you with your faux father, he was beating the hell out of you and about to go home to beat the hell out of your mom,” she said with fiery eyes. “If you think I’m going to just sit here in the damn car while a free for all is going on inside, you’re out of your pretentious mind.”
“What have I done lately that has been pretentious?” I threw my hands up in frustration.
“Your very existence is pretentious! Your pretentious penthouse, your pretentious car…” She gestured wildly at the house and surrounding property. “Your pretentious upbringing!”
I dragged my hands over my face as I tried not to lose my fucking mind. Lily had the ability to drive me crazy like no one else I’ve ever known. I didn’t want her getting hurt if things were to get crazy inside, nor did I want her to see some other things…
“You’re staying in the car,” I snapped at her. “That’s the end of the discussion.”
“You are right about one thing,” she said. “That is the end of the discussion.” She punched me one last time and then got out of the car.
I growled as I followed her lead and jumped out. I slammed the door and stalked around the car. Lily was already standing at the door waiting for me. Her hair whipped around in the winter wind. If I wasn’t so pissed at her, I would have pressed her up against the wall and kissed her while her hair veiled us from the cold.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I growled at her instead.
“I’ll remember that later when you want to snuggle,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I don’t snuggle!”
I used my key to unlock the door and ushered Lily in ahead of me. I turned to the security pad next to the door and entered a code to keep the alarms from going off. My anger intensified knowing that the only way Walter was able to get in was through my mother. When he moved out, I arranged for all of the locks to be changed and had a new security system installed. This was the fifth time my mother had given him the security code, and she always regretted it later. It gave me some indication of what her current state of mind.
Not sure where they were, and hoping to God they weren’t in bed, I started towards the kitchen at the back of the house with Lily close behind me. As we got closer, I heard Walter’s gruff voice and my mother’s soft tone.
“We can go away as soon as my affairs are settled,” I heard him saying.
“Where will we go?” Mom asked in a small voice that I recognized as severely depressed.
“Where ever you like, Felicia. Whatever will make you happy.”
I stepped in the room at the end of his sentence. Four eyes turned to me, drifted down to Lily beside me, and then back to me. Walter’s eyes flared with anger. Mom sat at the island looking miserable, yet a little hopeful. Her golden brown eyes were muddy looking, and the skin around her eyes was sagging with weariness. Her dark brown hair was heavy with gray streaks, and it looked just as limp as her body. Her shoulders were slumped in defeat and her pale fingers nervously pulled at the sleeves of her long sweater. I hated seeing my mother like this. When she was doing well, she was beautiful and confident. When she was manic, she became someone else. Likewise, when she was in a depressed state, she became someone else.
“You are not supposed to be here,” I said to Walter.
He shrugged. “Your mother and I just reconciled,” he said, haughtily. “I belong here. You don’t.”
This wasn’t the first time this has happened. Walter was always trying to get back into the big house and into my mother’s pocketbook. He was an heir with a sensible trust fund, but he made most of his money when he was VP at Sterling. When he was ousted for his fraudulent behavior, his shares of the company were forfeited and his annual trust fund was reduced from six figures to a mere sixty grand a year. He lost nearly everything he had and almost cost my mother the house that has been in her family for over a century. For a man who was used to living the high life his entire life, he was unable to accept his current financial situation. More than a few times my mother had been duped into giving him money. Sadly, so had I. But I was done with his shit, and I couldn’t let my mother get caught in his web again.
“Mom, he is not going to change,” I said. “He is not good for you.”
Walter looked at Lily with an amused, but disturbing smile. “You remember those words, young lady. He will damage you eventually, and when he asks for forgiveness, remember what he has just said.”
I felt Lily stiffen behind me. “Do not speak to her,” I warned with clear intent in my voice. “Get out of this house.”
“No,” my mother’s small voice said forcefully. She looked at me like a mother looks at the child she is disciplining. “It’s different this time. I want him to stay.”
“You’re not thinking with a clear head right now, Mom,” I said patiently.
Walter shook his head as he walked around the island to stand beside her. It only intensified my boiling anger.
“Felicia, he always treats you as if you are stupid when you have these episodes,” he said, rubbing my mother’s back.
With great effort, I ignored him. “I know everything feels hopeless right now, but -”
“You don’t know!” Mom snapped. “You have no idea how it feels. I’m in this big house by myself day after day after day. I don’t have anyone.”
“You have me,” I said, placing a hand on my chest. “You don’t need him.”
“It’s not the same thing,” she said bitterly. “And I don’t want you.”
I felt Lily’s hand close on my upper arm.
“I’m the only one that has stuck around and taken care of you,” I reminded her. “Miranda left and never looked back. Walter only cares about his own needs, and -”
“And you killed Walt Jr.,” she said scathingly. “Everything was fine before your stupid actions snuffed out his life. It was your actions that destroyed all of us.”
Though it was not the first time she has made similar comments, the pain in my chest never dulled. It never hurt any less than it did the previous time. I could have lashed out at her and told her it was her inability
to get a grasp on her disease that fucked us all up, that and her abusive husband, but I didn’t. I sucked in a deep breath as I felt Lily’s other hand on my back. I didn’t want her to see this shit.
“Regardless of what you think of me,” I started patiently. “This is not a good decision for you. I can’t keep coming over here and fixing the damage he does.”
“I don’t need you!” she shouted.
“You are fighting a losing battle,” Walter said with a smirk. “Your mother has made up her mind.”
“If you don’t shut your mouth, I will put my fist in it,” I growled at him.
“Don’t speak to your father like that!” Mom snapped.
“He’s not my father!” I shouted.
“That’s right,” Walter said, nodding. “You are just a bastard mistake. You never really appreciated everything I gave to you. Everything you have is because of me. Hell, you have more privileges in my family and my family business than I do. You should be a little more considerate, especially since you are the one responsible for taking it all away.”
My fist was going into his mouth. I had enough of him. I had held back from beating his head in for years, but there was no reason not to now. I moved to go after him, but a blur of red hair rushed past me. I just barely caught up to Lily before she could put her fist into Walter’s mouth. I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted her off of the floor.
“You sonofabitch!” she yelled. “Someday the universe is going to repay you for all of the pain and trouble you have caused! And you!” she pointed to my mother, even as I carried her struggling body away. “When this blows up in your face again, you better hope that I don’t convince your son to leave you to rot!”
“Take your little, low class, punk whore and get out,” Walter snarled.
I released Lily so quickly, she fell on her ass. Before she could get up, I was already throwing my first punch, making Walter eat my fist. My mother screamed for me to stop as I threw two more punches. The second punch opened his bottom lip and blood started streaming from it. Walter wasn’t a pussy, he wasn’t going to just sit there and take a beating. He threw a punch that connected with my jaw, but that didn’t slow me down. I punched him twice more before he lunged at me and threw me against a couple of stools. The stools crashed to the floor as my back rammed into the island. He tried to throw another punch, but I blocked it and then planted my fist right between his eyes. He fell to the ground hard. His head bounced off of the floor, but I had only knocked him down, not out.