by Joey W. Hill
Marcie stopped beside her and looked up at it. For an instant, their expressions were almost identical, an unexpected sadness mixed with appreciation for the work. Marcie slid her arm around Cass’s waist and Cass leaned against her, another unexpected reaction. Ben’s brow creased. Marcie spoke to her and Cass nodded, gripping the hand at her waist. As the women moved onward, Marcie pointed to another couple pieces that seemed to lighten both their moods, since Cass chuckled, the pleasant, feminine sound reaching Ben’s ears.
However, as they moved up the stairs toward the gallery’s second level, Marcie glanced toward Ben over Cass’s shoulder. She twitched her chin in a significant yet subtle movement toward the painting they’d left. Ben nodded, understanding, and Marcie returned to talking to her sister.
After they disappeared out of view, he rose and moved to the painting. When he stood before it, he instantly understood why the two sisters had reacted to it as they had. It was a Buddhist monastery in the mountains, the structure nestled in among trees and rock, a star-strewn and moonlit sky cloaking it all. The title of the painting was “Peace at Last.”
Marcie and Cassandra’s oldest brother, Jeremy, had died recently, the result of a lifelong battle with drug addiction. The grief, particularly for Cass, was still fresh. But during his final years, their troubled sibling had found peace at last at a monastery in Thailand, thanks to contacts Jon had in the area.
Ben moved to the employee manning the desk and quietly handled the transaction, instructing him that he’d pick it up the following day. The employee, a young, fashionably dressed man in gray vest, white dress shirt and black slacks, understood Ben’s request for discretion and assured him he wouldn’t put a sold sign on the work while Cass was still in the store. His co-worker, another male twenty-something, nodded in vigorous agreement as he arranged frame pieces the two men had been discussing. Ben concluded he must work in the back, because he was covered with a light frosting of sawdust and wore jeans and a denim shirt.
As Ben returned to his seat, he thought about where Cass would put the picture. She’d probably have Lucas hang it on the back wall of the sunroom. It was her favorite reading, visiting and napping area. She’d frame the painting with the exotic plants she placed strategically amid the comfortable lounge furniture.
It wasn’t the usual thing, a man so intimately knowing the behaviors and preferences of his closest friends’ wives, but then they weren’t the usual kind of group. Proof of his thoughts, Savannah and Rachel had found their way to the painting, and, almost at the same time, they glanced toward him. He gave them a slight nod, confirming he’d already made the purchase, and Savannah’s expression warmed as Rachel smiled.
Rachel headed up the stairs while Savannah drifted away to consider a clay sculpture. Okay, this one wouldn’t be for the nursery, since it was of two figures twined erotically together, but Ben wondered if she was considering it for her and Matt’s master bedroom. They had a long glass table along one wall, below the mounted flat screen. The only thing there right now was a blue pottery piece Rachel had given Savannah for her birthday, so it left room for the sculpture Savannah was studying.
When they’d come into the gallery, Ben had noted there was one other patron, a man in slacks and golf shirt. He’d disappeared into the back display rooms, but had now reappeared and was perusing the paintings. Or appearing to do so.
He might have come in with that intent, but when he started ambling in Savannah’s direction, Ben easily picked up that his purpose had changed. Or maybe this was a normal hunting ground for the guy.
Ben narrowed his eyes. Logically, he knew Savannah was more than capable of brushing off a come-on in a public place. Just as he knew Cass made more than enough money to buy a pair of pretty shoes. That wasn’t the point.
What particularly irritated him was he knew the guy could clearly see she was married. That three-carat diamond flanked by diamond-studded wedding and anniversary bands was kind of hard to miss. This guy wasn’t looking for a relationship. Just an afternoon hook-up, which meant he was probably married himself.
Shame they couldn’t fit a body in the trunk next to the women’s packages without the risk of getting blood on them. That might be the only thing that saved his life.
He’d gotten close enough to Savannah to speak to her in low tones. People who appreciated art always seemed to do that, talking in hushed voices. Savannah tilted her head his way. She wasn’t unfriendly, but she didn’t smile. She’d recognized the same thing Ben had, probably as soon as the guy had darkened the area beside her.
She responded to him, apparently discussing the artwork. Giving him a courteous nod, she started to move away. He put a hand on her arm, his expression amused, teasing, as if chastising her for running away from him.
Ben was already on his feet as the guy was reaching out, but Savannah glanced Ben’s way and shook her head, a subtle movement. Cutting her eyes back to the man, she said something. Whatever it was resulted in a dramatic change. He backed off, his demeanor far less charming. Though he made a pretense of looking at some other pieces, he exited the store within a minute. Savannah went back to her own interests, but she tossed Ben a look that told him she’d had it well in hand. She also mouthed Neanderthal, Dana’s favorite term for him and the other K&A men when they reacted so protectively.
He spread his hands out in a conciliatory way, but backed it up with an unrepentant look as he took his seat. Yeah, she was tough, but if Matt thought he’d let some asshole man-handle the mother of his child and the love of his life, the best outcome for Ben was looking for another job. The far more likely scenario was Matt having him buried beneath the K&A parking garage under a new layer of cement. For old times’ sake, he might make sure he was dead first. Maybe.
Savannah came to him when she was done with her looking. Since he was in the only chair in that corner, he started to rise, but she shook her head and amused him when she perched on his knee, accepting his hand at her waist to steady her. “Find something?” he asked.
“I’m going with the Blue Dog print, as well as that smaller one of Pete the Cat, sitting on the street sign at Jackson Square. That can go in Angelica’s playroom.”
“Good choices.” He lifted a brow. “What did you say to that guy? If his dignity would have allowed it, he would have sprinted out of here.”
Savannah adjusted on his knee. “I told him I knew his wife from garden club meetings, and she wouldn’t appreciate him hitting on another married woman.”
“You’re not in a garden club.”
“Of course not,” she said serenely. “But a man like that has no idea what his wife is doing with her day, except when it gives him a safety net to stray.”
He chuckled, squeezing her trim waist. “You were fairly light handed.”
“No need to use a bat when a smack with a ruler will do.” She frowned. “Men like that repulse me. And there are far too many of them out there.”
“Oh really?” He arched a brow. “You have that kind of trouble often?”
“Don’t even think about telling Matt I need a bodyguard on my job. I’ll kill you with my bare hands and get a new manicure afterward. Seriously, no different from what I handled before I was married. Which is actually quite sad.” She shook her head. “Some men think an attractive woman is always looking for company, no matter her marital status. I’ve changed my mind. Go beat him to a pulp.”
He started to get up and she laughed, clasping his shoulder to hold them both in place. “I’m kidding. No violence today.”
“Your backside has gotten softer since you had your baby,” he noted. “It was a great ass before then, but I like it even more now.”
“Only you would have the courage to frame that as a compliment.” She crossed her legs, the toe of her heeled shoe brushing his jeans leg. “That was nice of you, getting the painting for Cass. I think that will bring her comfort.”
“She doing okay these days? We all keep tabs on it through Lucas, but I know yo
u’re her closest female friend.”
“It’s also kind of you to ask that.” Savannah’s blue eyes softened. “Yes, she’s all right. She has her bad days over Jeremy, but if he’d died in an alley with a needle stuck in his arm, it would have preyed on her far more harshly. With Jon finding him the place at the monastery, Cass and Jeremy had time to reconcile. She saw some of the brother she remembered, before he became addicted. She also saw him come closer to being the man he should have always been.”
“Good. I know she’s had a tough time realizing she did all she could. That a lot of that was beyond her control.”
“Yes.” Savannah met his gaze. “She cares a lot about you, too, Ben. It will be all right.”
“Yeah. In another decade or two. And we were talking about her and Jeremy, not her and me.”
“Yes and no.” Savannah laid a hand on his face, bemusing him when she tapped her well-manicured fingers on his temple. “Try not to get lost in here,” she said.
He took her hand, and gave it a kiss. “I’m good,” he promised. “Only good stuff happening in there today.”
She nodded. “I’m glad.”
Fortunately, his phone beeped, changing the direction of the conversation. Keeping his arm around Savannah, he used his other hand to withdraw the phone from his shirt pocket. He scowled as he saw the text and attached picture. Savannah saw it too, and covered a short but fascinatingly girlish giggle with her hand.
Cass and Marcie were coming back down the stairs, Rachel with them. As they approached him and Savannah, he tossed out the information with mock annoyance. “Our team’s ahead. Barely. But apparently they just made one of the best plays of the season.”
He turned the phone to show them Lucas holding a steak speared on his grilling fork, a beer in the other hand, while Peter and Matt were obviously hyped up about what was happening on the giant but blurred flat screen behind them. He assumed Jon was taking the picture. The ass.
Marcie plucked the phone from his hand. Giving him a wink, she typed in a quick text and sent it. When she handed it back and he looked at it, his lips twisted. “You’re a delightfully evil woman.”
Sorry, can’t talk. Currently in a threesome with Savannah and Cass while Dana does a girl-girl lap dance with Rachel. All in Jackson Square. Marcie filming it for my private library.
The other women read it over his shoulder as Dana and Max came into the gallery, bearing a bagful of chocolate-covered pretzel sticks and a box of pralines.
Dana stuck a pretzel in his mouth, which he clamped cigar-style as she plopped down on his other knee. The other women were still leaned intimately over him, cocooning him in pleasant fragrances. With two female bottoms pressed to his lap, Savannah and Dana’s hands clasped on his shoulders, and another hand teasing the hair on his neck—that one was Marcie—he had to admit, it really didn’t suck to be him today.
When he caught the dropped jaw, saucer-eyed looks of the two guys behind the desk, it only made it better. The one who’d been working on the frame had come to a full stop. Ben hoped he knew he’d just put a piece backward into the frame he was constructing.
Regretfully, he lifted Savannah and Dana to their feet, so he could go and complete the purchase of Savannah’s pictures. While he was at the desk, though, he couldn’t resist. As he returned his wallet to the back pocket of his jeans, he grinned at the two men.
“Start with one,” he advised. “Build up to five. It takes stamina to keep them coming back for more.”
He left them chuckling uncertainly, as if they weren’t sure if he was kidding. He wasn’t, though the comment wasn’t about these five women. Before Marcie, he had been known to take three or more women in one night in a club environment, his needs almost limitless. But he hadn’t realized then it wasn’t a physical need he couldn’t sate.
As he joined the women out on the sidewalk in front of the store, he looked for the answer he’d found to that need. She was leaning against the side of the limo, chatting animatedly with Dana. Sunlight gleamed off her hair, but in his mind, it was no match for the wattage of her smile. When he’d stepped out, her gaze had immediately cut to him and that expression brightened. He was her touchstone, too.
Another even more important reason why being him today didn’t suck.
The other women were looking at Savannah’s pictures. When they turned them over to Max to tuck the purchases carefully into the limo, Ben took a white chocolate covered pretzel with sprinkles and a praline wrapped in tissue from Dana. The New Orleans warmer fall air was a welcome change after the cool temperatures in the gallery. “Okay, whose turn is it now?” he asked the milling women. “Marcie’s had her shoes, Savannah her pictures.”
“Ingredients. The cooking store.” Rachel beamed at Ben. “You’ve been so nice, I figure the next one could be something you enjoy as much as I do.”
Ben did love to cook. He was teaching Marcie some basics. She didn’t have an aptitude for it, much preferring to consume than create, but she did enjoy their cooking sessions. Like last night, learning how to prepare melted chocolate to apply to the fat, juicy strawberries…
He’d laid her down on the kitchen floor and drizzled the heated chocolate over her breasts, stomach and between her thighs before sampling her, top to bottom. It had been everything he’d wanted, seeing her body bowed up from the tile, her full breasts quivering, pink nipples hard and sex glistening. Her lips parted on a scream as he drove into her and made her climax. While her body was still shuddering, he’d withdrawn, flipped her over and taken her ass, tasting chocolate on her shoulder as he bit her there, leaving that bruise she’d shown him. He hadn’t let go as he’d climaxed, only increasing the force of his bite.
As the women started to get back into the car, Marcie hung back, her gaze returning to him. Maybe his thoughts showed, because her eyes became more luminous, lids dropping as her lips parted. She mouthed one word, a secret message just for him.
Master.
Max inadvertently shifted between their line of sight, handing Dana in and then gesturing courteously to Marcie so she could follow her. Ben saw the flash of Marcie’s mischievous smile around the limo driver’s broad shoulder before she ducked into the car. His little tease. He’d make her pay for that later. For now, he tried to focus on other things, like poured asphalt and a fifty-pound barbell sitting on his dick to keep it behaving properly in public. Maybe a hundred pounds would do it.
He joined the ladies in the car. On the way to Ingredients, they broke out bottles of water and soda. Cass and Savannah took a glass of wine, all of them sampling more of the pralines and pretzels.
As he listened to them without hearing the words, a relaxing rise and fall of feminine music, he began ticking off some things he wanted to check out at the store. Driving a submissive to mindless ecstasy with the artful use of pain and working for K&A were his two favorite things, but cooking was right on their heels.
When Jonas Kensington, Matt’s father, had taken Ben in off the streets, he’d been a hungry, wary-eyed kid. Even after being given enough at mealtimes to fill him up and then some, Ben couldn’t get out of the habit of scavenging and stealing food, hiding it away. There was a pantry and refrigerator full of snacks that he was told he could have at any time, but he hadn’t believed it. On his first night, he’d snuck down in the middle of the night to squirrel some away in his room. He was practical, grabbing protein bars and packs of crackers. But what he really craved were the fresh fruit and vegetables. So he’d snagged three big apples, an orange and a pear.
He’d also taken a head of iceberg lettuce and a half bag of baby carrots, eating those all immediately in his room, trying to crunch quietly. Even today, he remembered how the lettuce had tasted. The crisp heart, the burst of cool water when he bit into the white, thick section of each leaf. Not slimy and limp, like what he’d find in a dumpster. A kid on his own couldn’t take advantage of soup kitchen food without SS being called.
He hadn’t realized a maid would be makin
g up his room weekly. A couple days later, he was attending school like any other “normal” kid, with clean jeans and a packed lunch, plus money to buy milk and other stuff from the cafeteria. When he came home, he found the non-perishable snacks he’d stored under the mattress stacked neatly in a decorative basket on his nightstand.
Panic at the consequences of being found out had turned into puzzlement when nothing was said, but that basket forever after remained filled with snacks and fresh fruit. More often than not, they were homemade foods, like fruit-and-nut laden granola and walnut chocolate chip cookies. He’d never forget the white chocolate dipped granny smith apple. The coating had been mixed with pecan chips and some kind of spice that balanced the sugar perfectly.
He became curious about how the cook for the Kensington household made such wonderful things. Soon after that, he was spending a lot of his afterschool time at her elbow, watching and learning. His love of fresh foods, his appreciation of the flavors and how they could be combined, evolved into a love of cooking. Golda was a brusque, no-nonsense woman without maternal warmth, but Ben didn’t trust affection, so they were a good match.
Jonas had been looking for a good foster home placement for him, since he didn’t feel he was home often enough to be a good parent to a nine-year-old boy. Matt himself was always either with Jonas at work or attending college, so his and Ben’s relationship didn’t really kick off in the direction it existed now until Ben was in college himself and started interning for K&A.
Since Ben had never had any parenting, a couple hours here and there would have worked fine for him, but Jonas seemed to feel differently. Then Golda told Jonas that Ben would come live with her in the guesthouse on the Kensington property. She became Ben’s final foster home before he turned eighteen and went off to college. Golda and he remained friends until she died in his sophomore year. He still had items in his kitchen that had belonged to her.