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THE LESSON
By
MILANA RAZIEL
This is dedicated to my daemons.
Thank you for setting me free.
PROLOGUE
She cut through the glaringly bright, sterile terminal with the quick efficiency of one who was far too familiar with its corridors and had places to be. Wearing a perfectly cut, discreet black Armani pantsuit like her own personal armor, Lena Corradi's efforts to blend into the woodwork were at odds with her slim, pale beauty as she drew the appreciative eyes of the men she hurried past. But for her twenty-first-century accoutrements, she could have stepped from a Renaissance painting, the serenity of her classically beautiful profile and elegant carriage undisturbed by the clamor around her.
Click click click kerchunk
Click click click kerchunk
Click click click kerchunk
Click click click kerchunk
She wrestled her roller bags through the doors of the oasis called the Admiral's Club, her base of operations for the next nine hours. The door swept shut behind her, blocking out the hubbub of the terminal and enveloping her in tranquility. She made a beeline for a vacant corner and sank into the plush sofa. She was in no mood for small talk or, god forbid, a businessman on the prowl. It may have been a while between her sessions at the club, but she wasn't desperate for companionship—just a bit of solitude. Her black patent Louboutins clattered to the floor as she tucked her feet up under her, settling in for a long wait. Thanks to a string of mechanical failures and mishaps in Tokyo blowing every one of her connecting flights, a night in her own bed in New York was just another dream that had slipped away.
Known as an “art retrieval” expert, Lena Corradi was equal parts cat burglar and diplomat. Her expertise in following the flows and eddies of an unending stream of paperwork and provenances coupled with her deft touch in negotiations and iron will kept her globe-trotting from one assignment to the next.
Most recently, she had been in Asia for months, tracking a Vermeer missing since the early days of World War II. Her search had taken her from Hong Kong to Singapore to mainland China before she finally caught up with the masterwork in Kyoto, Japan. With the Vermeer in question riding shotgun on its own first class ticket, she planned to turn it over to its rightful owner in Houston then hightail it home. But for now, she was stuck at LAX, waiting for the next flight able to accommodate her and her precious cargo, packed in a protective case. Too large to fit in the overhead bin, the painting required a seat of its own. Adjoining seats in first class were hard to come by at the last minute, especially between LA and Houston. The continuous exchange of money and glamour would not be interrupted—especially by something as mundane as an Old Master.
Tracking the Vermeer down was easy compared to actually retrieving it once she’d pinpointed the location. Negotiating its return was a long, drawn-out process steeped in the intricacies of Japanese etiquette and demanding more than a little groveling. Like most of her Asian assignments, her meetings meant ceremony and deference for days on end with no release. Even for a masochist like Lena, that was too much.
In the end, it took a more than a little shaming and a hint of extortion to win the day. She reminded the art lover involved that it just wouldn't do if it were disclosed that a prominent Japanese industrialist was in possession of a family heirloom stolen by the Nazis from a Holocaust victim whose family had received the painting as a gift from the artist himself. A revelation like that would have highlighted the historical connection between the Nazis and the company that its owner would rather leave under a rock.
Despite the endless begging, Lena relished jobs like these—bringing the lost art of the Holocaust out of the shadows and back to its rightful owners. But these assignments were becoming fewer and further between as art and artifacts became the currency of crime and terrorism.
The concierge’s approach drew her out of her reverie of what was to come. Oscar. One of her favorites. That she had favorites in an airport executive lounge said a lot about the state of her life. Between the consuming nature of her work and the constant travel, her social life was non-existent.
Oscar sat lightly beside her. "What can I get for you today, Miss Corradi? I checked the computer and see you'll be with us for a while. That JAL route has always been a problem."
"Coffee, please, Oscar, and every frivolous magazine you've got laying around." She’d had enough tea to float a sailing regatta over the last few months and was heartily sick of it.
"Rough assignment?"
"Just tedious and overly complicated," she said with a tired smile.
"I have just the thing."
And with that, he scurried off, leaving Lena to return to her thoughts. The holidays were fast approaching, which meant her transfer to the European office of UNESCO for a long-term, hopefully temporary, assignment cracking a black market antiquities smuggling ring, wouldn't be far behind.
In no time at all, he returned with a full coffee service, a stack of the latest gossip and fashion magazines, and a luscious, berry-colored cashmere throw. Lena cocooned herself in that decadent bit of luxury and grabbed the LA Weekly off the top. The cover showed a celebration of the Dodgers’ first Championship in twenty years. She wasn't a rabid fan, but Lena had more than a passing familiarity with baseball and baseball players since they had helped put her through college.
"Well, I'll be damned." The first human interest piece inside stopped her in her tracks—it featured D. Beaumont Warren, baseball god, and his over-the-top proposal to a vivacious brunette during the seventh inning stretch in Game 7—complete with a Jumbotron full of poetry. Hollywood couldn't have manufactured a more picture-perfect happy ending.
Pouring through the rest of the celebratory photos, she was confronted with another blast from her past. He looked every bit the devilish, ginger scion she remembered.
Jonathan S. Drazen, III.
Rich.
Gifted.
Commanding in every way.
Star pitcher.
Campus lothario.
Every sorority bitch's most wanted.
Voted most fuckable in a not-so-secret campus-wide poll.
The star of every wild college memory she’d never shared.
Her most secret of someones.
He held a stunning brunette close to his side. Dark and bright—they looked like pagan royalty. The power of their connectedness practically burst from the page. Lena pondered the photo, focusing on the beautiful necklace gracing the brunette's throat, and the love they clearly shared. That Jonathan had found such love gave her bittersweet joy and took her back to a long-ago winter.
MISSY
10 YEARS EARLIER
PHILADELPHIA, PA
It was my final semester at Penn.
In one short semester, I would be the first person in my family with a college degree. I’d lost my mom to breast cancer when I was twelve, but before she died, she made my dad promise that he would make sure my dream of college came true. Dad didn't see that promise through. He pretty much fell apart when Mom died, and he just didn't understand why I didn't want to get married straight out of hi
gh school to someone from the neighborhood, like all nice Italian girls had done for generations. So if I wanted to go to college—much less a college like Penn—getting there was all up to me.
The past three and a half years had been really tight, but thanks to my scholarship and work-study job as a team tutor, I would be able to graduate on time and not starve or freeze to death in the process. Generally, the tutor assigned to the baseball team had it made, thanks to the fact that the team traditionally had the highest cumulative GPA of any marquee sport at the college, but my assignment included making sure Eddie Milpas didn't flunk out of accounting and end up academically ineligible to play. Tutoring him was a minefield, not a cakewalk, which was yet another reason why I was sitting on a stool at Kovac’s Tavern on Saturday night, nursing a lovely glass of bourbon, a luxury I could ill afford for a myriad of reasons.
I loved Kovac’s because it wasn't beautiful. Its dingy patina, 70s knotty pine paneling, and 30s-era bar back reminded me of every neighborhood bar in Chicago where working-class guys like my dad would knock back a few after a shift. The decor consisted of decades’ worth of signs, clocks, lights, and whatever else a beer distributor might decide to slap a logo on and hand out to its customers. Unlike most dive bar owners, Big Mike kept the place spotless for his shot and beer regulars, and he had a real honest-to-God jukebox packed full of the good stuff from the 80s and 90s—no pop drivel—which cast a magical glow on the highly polished bar. He took the division of town and gown very seriously. Penn students were not welcome. At. All. It was a true townie bar. Being a blue collar girl from Chicago and a friend of Lucius' negated my student status and, as long as I didn't bring up the Blackhawks I was welcome. Kovac's also served as a cautionary tale because it reminded me of everything I was trying to escape. I wanted to travel and see the world rather than return to Chicago and my old life path, which led directly to marriage, constant pregnancy, and cooking Sunday gravy every week.
At that moment, I was sitting on this stool because I had to. Lucius Montclair—Wall Street titan, visiting professor, and my introduction to the dark comfort of dominance and submission—had left me with a command for my final semester. "Get out of your head and relax. More specifically, be social. Maybe even go on a date." He’d also confiscated my vibrator with the admonition, "This isn't an exercise in orgasm denial. There's a world of alternatives. You're a smart girl. Meet one and figure it out."
I’d thought about safe-wording him, but in the end, he was right. I had to get my nose out of a book and into the world.
To be honest, Lucius was my only semblance of a college social life period—if you can call getting picked up by a faculty member and caught in a whirlwind of sexual experimentation and exploration of so-called deviant sex a social life. He’d plucked me out of the crowd at department mixer, discreetly of course, and basically appointed himself my training Dom. Thankfully, none of this happened in earshot of the dean, because—awkward.
Lucius was perceptive, shrewd, and to my great surprise, kind, especially when he sensed my hidden unrest over my tendencies and beat the turmoil right out of me. He gave me a sense of serenity and insight into ways I could channel my submissive energy to my advantage. I would be forever grateful to him for that. I’d grown up fighting my nature because I thought that it meant I was weak; submissiveness a vulnerability that I thought would condemn me to being the nice, people-pleasing girl that got married at eighteen and stuck close to home to take care of her widowed father. I overcompensated by burying the urge to please, and all my defiance got me was a reputation of being a standoffish, cold, competitive bitch. I'd been fending for myself since my mother died, and it was nice to feel as though someone had my back—even if it was inside a sexually charged, highly artificial, contractual relationship.
When Lucius left, I thought that the only difference between this semester of celibacy and the other six would be missing the sex. That absence was quickly followed by missing the connectedness I felt with Lucius in a scene and, truth be told, the pain. That man made spanking an art form, and I was his canvas.
I hadn’t been a virgin when Lucius and I met—at least, not technically—but the man awakened something in me that refused to go down for its nap when he returned to New York. I’d found out that submission was my path to pleasure. A path I could ill afford at this point in time. I was so close to realizing my dream. I couldn't derail it by inviting the momentary distraction of a fuck buddy, let alone a boyfriend, into my life.
I figured the best way to technically honor his command yet stay out of harm's way on the dating front was to hang out one night a week at the little dive bar he loved. No chance of the Penn crowd showing up and no temptation in my path. Just me and my bourbon—neat—and some small talk with Big Mike or one of the retirees who seemed to haunt the place.
Don't mistake it for a sacrifice; being here was a survival strategy. I was ambivalent about dating in general. I’d never had any patience for the Greek shenanigans that made up the Penn social scene, so temptation was unlikely from that quarter. I had the keys to the kingdom—access to the hottest athletes on campus—and I never used them. My connection to the team and the desire others had to exploit it was the main reason I avoided the party scene like the plague.
Moreover, Coach DeMaio ran a tight ship, and the last thing he would tolerate was his players hooking up with the tutor or her "friends." Coach was another Italian father, thankfully more progressive than my own, but he was nevertheless protective of me. I certainly wasn't willing to test his patience and possibly put my work-study position, and my future, for a quick and ultimately forgettable fuck with a hot guy whose only concern was getting off but couldn’t be bothered to remember my name. I was all business around Penn's baseball gods for the sake of my own sanity.
My foolproof plan to get to graduation, honor Lucius's directive, and stay out of trouble went straight to Hell when a blast of frigid air to my back signaled the arrival of new customers. When I turned, I realized, in that moment, that the likelihood that my plan to avoid dating would fail spectacularly was practically guaranteed. Temptation had just walked in the door. Eve with a whole bushel of apples level temptation.
Jon Drazen.
Cheeks ruddy from the wind and copper hair dusted with snow, he shrugged out of what had to be a Burberry cashmere pea coat. Definitely not in the quick and ultimately forgettable category—he defied categorization. Simply put, he was my kryptonite. Once I tore my eyes off the perfectly cut jeans that caressed his lean hips and luscious ass and drank him in from head to toe, I noticed that he wasn't alone. He had one of the prospects with him—a beautiful black-haired man-child with the emphasis on man. He was taller and broader than Jon. Probably a power hitter, from the looks of the perfectly sculpted arms and shoulders his tight-fitting Henley couldn't hide.
It was an NCAA recruiting weekend for baseball. Jon and several other senior players had been tasked with convincing prospects to sign with Penn by showing them "student life" on and off campus. Penn's recruiting was low-key compared to some of the flat-out pandering and bribery employed at the Southern schools. We may not use hookers and blow, but we were still plying high school kids with booze and horny sorority girls as a way to convince them to sign a letter of intent with Penn. The fact that they were at Kovac’s could only mean that something was seriously off.
Instead of ejecting them, which he had done every other time Penn frat boys and jocks mistakenly wandered in, Big Mike put down the glass he was drying and nodded a greeting. "The usual?"
What the fu--?
Before I knew it, my personal space was full of the crisp, cool smell of winter mixed with sandalwood and man, and Jon Drazen's powerful frame. He extended his hand in greeting, grasping mine with the perfect amount of pressure. He couldn't be just rich and gorgeous and smart; he had to have irritatingly impeccable manners too. And with that chaste, but very physical bit of contact, my brain short-circuited.
"Missy, what a surprise! Meet
D. Beaumont Warren. Beau, this is Missy Corradi."
Shit. He does know my name.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Corradi."
Reciprocate the social niceties. Blah. Blah. Blah. Oh my God. Jon's eyes are so green. How did I not know that? Did I let go of his hand? I should let go of his hand.
"Missy's the tutor assigned to the team. She's brilliant—double major. Art history and accounting and Eddie’s only chance of staying off academic probation."
He's smiling at me. It's like the sun came out and I'm sunbathing naked. I feel it everywhere. What is wrong with me? How does he know so much about me? Say something.
"The asshole who insists on calling me Shelly? What an obnoxious dick. My sympathies," Beau said.
Beau was gorgeous, and that knowing look made him seem a hell of a lot older than nineteen. All rock-hard legs, and those shoulders and arms... he was a god in his own right. But he had the misfortune of standing next to Jon Drazen. Any other time . . .
Eddie. Blah. Blah. Blah. My cross to bear.
Those hands. That dusting of ginger hair on his knuckles. What would those calluses feel like on my skin? Brushing across my nipple? Would he pinch them hard? I hope so. And that scruff against my thighs. A shiver ran through me. Did I purr? Oh, my God, he heard me purr? He must have. That shark smile. He's looking at me as though I'm dessert. Get it together, Corradi.
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