by Zara Cox
There wasn’t much room for thought after that.
Quinn didn’t waste any time to stripping me to my bare skin, although he only shed his jacket. Then he walked me around naked while we lazily inspected two-dozen grand pianos. I sat on his lap and played “Greensleeves” on an ebony Boston Grand with his fingers deep inside me and his other hand playing with my breast. It felt a little sacrilegious to play the tune my mother taught me on our plastic dime store piano back in our trailer home, but it wasn’t as if I could deny the man I loved anything he wanted, could I? So what if my conscience smirked at me a little?
After I climaxed like the shameless slut I was, we moved to an Essex upright. He seated himself on the long, cushioned bench and instructed me to kneel in front of him. His hands brought mine to his fly, and with his eyes, he told me what he wanted. I needed no second prompt. As I unzipped him and drew his beautiful cock into my mouth, he lifted the lid and trailed his fingers over the keyboard, sending delicious shivers down my spine. Then he struck up what I found out later was a perfect Vivaldi concerto.
Was I surprised that he played the piano like a maestro? Hell no. Quinn Blackwood is a perfectionist in every sense of the word. And even caught in the savage grip of the best blow job I was determined to ever give, he still managed to execute the tune to pinpoint precision, timing his climax to coincide perfectly with the crescendo of the haunting melody. I’m not ashamed to admit the power of the music and the power of Quinn’s cock in my mouth moved me to tears. Enough to whisper the words he wanted to hear, the words he vowed I would say, right before he erupted in my mouth. It moved him, too, if the deep trembles that coursed through him when he kissed me afterward were any indication.
We left the store with Quinn in a decidedly calmer mood and a manager quietly ecstatic to have made a hundred-thousand-dollar sale with zero effort at all. The rest of the afternoon passed with lazy indulgence in each other and very little conversation. It continued into the evening with an almost solemn Quinn content to feed me from his plate at Juniere’s while he mostly drank his favorite red wine. In the car on the way back to the apartment, he splayed me across his body and played with my hair. We kissed a lot, and he told me he loved me. A lot.
We came home to the new, gorgeous ebony baby grand piano already tuned and set up on its dais in the living room, beautiful and pristine like the rest of the apartment. The carnage from before was almost a figment of my imagination.
We celebrated the piano’s arrival by fucking on top of it, after which Quinn, looking immensely pleased with himself, carried me, exhausted and barely conscious, to bed.
Now, in the morning sunshine, his eyes meet mine in the mirror as he efficiently knots his tie, and shivers run down my spine. I’m almost too scared to ask what’s wrong. But I open my mouth anyway because, while there’s one thing I’m keeping from him for now, I don’t want to shut my eyes to other problems.
“What are your plans for today?” he asks before I can voice my concern.
“A little studying. A lot of resting. Phone call to Petra to tell her about the horse before it arrives. I anticipate a lot of screaming, so don’t be surprised if I’m deaf by the time you come home.”
No response to my attempt at humor. He’s not prone to belly laughs, but one of his blindingly gorgeous smiles wouldn’t be unappreciated right now. From the look on his face, I’m not going to get one anytime soon.
Anxiety rolls through my belly. I take the bull by the horns. “Something’s wrong. What is it, Quinn?”
He takes his time to straighten his tie until it’s military perfect. “Why do you ask, Elyse? Should there be something wrong? Something I should know about, perhaps?”
I bite my lip. Maybe I need to revise my decision to bring everything out in the open later and do it now instead.
As if he’s read my mind, he pulls at his cuffs. “I received an email from Dr. Freeman this morning. He wants to start seeing us together again. You want to tell me what that’s about?”
Ah. Shit. Okay, this I can deal with. “I just thought it was time. I ran it past him last week, and he said he’d think about it. I didn’t think he’d email you until he’d discussed his decision with both of us.”
He turns from the mirror and faces me where I’m sitting in the middle of our bed. His eyes are white-hot lasers. “I see. And you didn’t think to run it past me first before you talked to him?” His voice is as mesmerizing and as deadly as an avalanche.
I grip the sheets tighter around me. As if that would be any help at all. “I thought he would, but I didn’t think you’d mind. You hated it when he proposed we have separate sessions.”
“I didn’t want him filling your head with his ideas.”
“Ideas like what exactly?”
He slides his hands into his pockets with elegant ease, but I notice the vein throbbing at his temple, his clenched jaw. “Like how bad I am for you.”
I laugh at the sheer absurdity of it. When his face remains ice-cold stoic, I sober up. I rise on my knees and crawl to the edge of the bed. “Quinn, no one will ever be able to convince me of that.”
“He still thinks we should be living apart. He said that to me on Friday. That you need some fucking independence that I’m apparently not giving you,” he delivers with barely suppressed vitriol.
I perch on my knees even though I want to fly across the room and reassure him with my touch as well as my words. “And we’ve both told him, separately and together, that that’s not going to happen. I’m not leaving your side. Not without serious surgical intervention.”
He stares at me for a long, raw minute. Then he strides across to where I’m waiting. His fingers slide into my hair to cradle my head. One thumb traces my lower lip with slow, concentrated purpose. “Are you sure?” he presses, and I hear the note of uncertainty in his voice. From a man like him, a man who outwardly has everything—power, money, success—but is inwardly wracked with a million merciless demons, it shakes me to the roots of my soul.
I grip his wrists, feel the erratic pulse pounding through him. “A thousand percent.”
“Fucking promise me, Elyse,” he demands roughly.
“I promise,” I deliver immediately, the words rushing over his thumb, which I kiss to seal the vow.
He swallows and leans forward to rest his forehead against mine. He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. We just breathe in the promise for a minute before he lets me go and heads for the door.
“Quinn?”
The way he pauses for a moment before he turns around makes my heart stutter in alarm. “Hmm?”
I feel like a fraud for asking the question, but I can’t help myself. “Are…are we good?”
“We will be when I find a way to keep my heart from beating when I’m not with you. For now…you think about me every fucking second we’re not together, and I may just survive.”
Words fail me in that moment. He stays in the doorway long enough to see the tears falling from my eyes. Then with a solemn look that tells me he sees and acknowledges how he’s tilted the earth beneath my feet, he turns away and shuts the door behind him. A minute later, I hear the front door to the apartment close.
More tears fall while I sit on the edge of the bed, crying happy, terrified tears. If anyone had told me this time last year that I would be so hopelessly, fatalistically in love with a man as complex and devastating as Quinn Blackwood, I would’ve laughed myself stupid.
But here I am caught in the eye of a raging storm of love, while knowing deep in my bones the worst devastation is yet to come. Will we emerge from it whole? I have no idea but I’m up for whatever I have to do to make it to the other side.
I’m dying to call Dr. Freeman and ask his advice but instead I head to the shower and indulge in a twenty-minute top-to-toe scrub.
After breakfast of coffee and a bagel I abandon after two bites and the long call to a supremely ecstatic Petra is taken care of, the day stretches long and boringly in front of me. Quinn and I crave
our privacy too much to have a live-in housekeeper, but the concierge offers a daily service. I’m in no mood for company today, even the discreet professional kind, so I cancel it before I email my instructor for the segment of the class I missed yesterday. But when it arrives, I’m not in the mood to study.
I wander restlessly through the apartment, going from one stunning view to the other until even the magic of New York City wanes under the gravity of my apathy. A stint at the piano is pathetically woeful after the way Quinn played it yesterday, and the TV holds very little appeal.
The conversation with Quinn and my own guilty conscience is weighing too heavily on my mind for me to concentrate on anything else.
You think about me every fucking second we’re not together…
But I want to do more than just think about him.
On a wild whim, I rush into the room Quinn uses as his office when he works from home and where I study when he’s not around. A quick Internet search yields the result I want. A first phone call with a tentative, slightly embarrassing request, and a second, quicker phone call, and I’m all set. My heart races a lot at the thought of what I’m about to do, but what the hell?
We both need this.
I throw on a gray jumper dress and my favorite pair of black Manolo thigh-high boots. A darker gray scarf threaded with pink and silver seams and a black leather biker jacket completes my outfit. I sling my purse across my body and call down to Lionel to bring the car around as I wait for the elevator. The scenario I’m playing in my mind would’ve been perfect if I took the subway, but with my stalker problem, I have to concede to being safer than sorry.
The reminder makes me hesitate when the elevator arrives. Should I even be doing this? Am I compounding my eventual reckoning with Quinn by piling on my sins? Because he’s going to be super-pissed once I confess this stalker problem to him.
Fuck it.
We wouldn’t be together in the first place if I let terror stop me from doing what needed to be done. Resolute, I step into the elevator and press the button for the ground floor.
“Good afternoon, Miss Gilbert. Traffic doesn’t look too bad this morning. I’ll have you there in no time.”
I smile in response. “Thank you, Lionel.”
“My pleasure, Miss Gilbert.”
I slide into the backseat, and he shuts the door after me. The first stop is taken care of very quickly, and I emerge from the shop clutching a bag containing everything I need.
The wild fluttering in my stomach escalates as Lionel races me toward Wall Street. The imposing sight of Blackwood Tower brings a barrage of nerves. Even more so the narrow alley and side entrance where Lionel drops me off.
“What time would you like me to pick you up, Miss Gilbert?”
The million-dollar question. This could be over very quickly or it could take the rest of the afternoon. “Can I let you know when I’m ready?” I reply.
“Of course. Have a great afternoon.”
My smile feels a little wobbly as I step away from the car and turn around. I haven’t used the steel door ahead of me for almost a year, and although I could’ve used the formal main doors at the front of the building, this feels more authentic. Behind me, I hear the car idling as Lionel waits for me to enter the building before he leaves.
I’m grateful for his consideration but also a little pissed at the pressure for me to get on with it. I force my feet to move. Down the stairs to the entrance, I’m faced with the coded panel. Shit, what if it’s been changed? A small part of me momentarily hopes it has. Maybe this wasn’t a great idea after all.
I key in the code. My heart skips an erratic beat as the door springs open. I grasp the handle and pull it wider. I hear the car rolling away as I head down the stairs into the basement. I open another door, and I’m hit with the smell of industrial-strength detergent and a thick cloud of steam. Memory returns like a clanging church bell.
This was my lifeline to anonymity a year ago, the place where I came to hide during the day and earned enough money to keep a roof over my head at night. The familiar sound of dishes being put through giant industrial washers filters through from the floor below me, but that’s not where I’m headed today. I walk through the double doors, bypass the rec room, and hurry to the locker room. Inside there are a couple of women I don’t recognize from my time here, which is good, although the quizzical looks they give me doesn’t help my anxiety.
I don’t have to worry about Miguel, the ex-colleague and fellow dishwasher who used to not-so-subtly hit on me. He made the mistake of grabbing me a little too roughly once during a conversation and leaving a bruise on my wrist. He had no idea then that he’d left a mark on the one-million-dollar property that belonged to Quinn Blackwood. I never discovered the ins and outs of Miguel’s subsequent departure, and to be honest, I try not to think too hard about it.
I undress quickly, change into the clothes in the bag, and stash my things in the locker. As I climb the stairs back to the ground floor, I replay this same scene from a year ago when I was on my way to meeting Quinn Blackwood for the first time. Fortunately without the crippling terror and sweaty palms.
A few people look up as I head toward the office of the catering manager. Sully Manning hasn’t aged since I last saw him, although his hair is a little longer than I remember. He raises his head as I approach his door.
If he’d wondered about my odd request when I phoned him an hour ago, it doesn’t show on his face now. He drops his pen on the table and leans back in his creaking chair.
“Look who the gods graced us with today,” he says with his Irish Italian brusqueness.
“Hi, Sully.”
His solemn gray gaze traces me from head to toe. “Hi, yourself. You’re a sight for sore eyes around here, that’s for sure.”
The genuine affection in his voice makes my mounting anxiety settle for the first time since I thought up this insane idea. “Thanks for…umm…helping me out with this.”
He shrugs. “Hey, it’s not the worst idea I’ve heard in my long years. Everything is set up for you upstairs. If that idiot chef gives you any grief, let me know. He’s on his last warning. I need an excuse to kick his bony ass to the curb without getting the union all up in my face.” He returns my nervous giggle with a smile.
“Will do.”
As I’m about to turn away, he clears his throat. “Listen, kid, if I don’t see you down here on account of things going okay upstairs, I’m glad everything worked out for you.”
I have to swallow the stone in my throat before I can speak. “Thank you, Sully, for giving me a chance.”
He nods briskly and picks up his pen. “Right. I have work to do. Stop distracting me.”
My responding grin dissolves when I reach the elevator. Just like the first time I took this elevator, my palms are clammy, and my finger trembles as I hit the button marked B. Executive. All too soon the elevator doors are opening, spilling me out into the giant, stunning skylit space that is the restaurant reserved exclusively for the top hierarchy of Blackwood Tower employees. As I head to the chef’s station, I can’t help but glance over at the table beneath the north window. The place where I first set eyes on Quinn. We’ve been through so much since then, and yet it feels like yesterday.
With a deep breath, I resume walking toward the chef’s station. He’s barking orders at his unfortunate minions. Nothing new there. He stops midbark when he sees me, and his eyes widen in unpleasant surprise.
For a moment, I wonder if Sully withheld telling him I would be coming up in the hope that the arrogant chef would react in a way that’ll get him fired.
The fighter in me wills him to display the innate arrogance he tosses around to everyone in his kitchen. When I catch the barest, quickly suppressed hint of assholery, my middle finger twitches with the urge to flip him off for humiliating me all those previous times I worked for him. But I manage to convince myself I’m better than that.
Besides, I want today to go perfectly. So I stri
de forward and look him in the eye. “Is everything ready for me?”
The brisk authority in my voice makes his eyes widen further. Then his head bobs like one of those comical dashboard toys. “Of course, ma’am. Lee will bring it out to you. Lee!” A snap of his fingers gets another minion jumping to attention. He issues instructions without taking his eyes off me, and I see the same questions flitting through his eyes that I get when people see me with Quinn. How? When? Where? Really?
My thin smile confirms silently, Yes, really, and I see you, asshole, so fucking watch it.
He confirms to me how much he treasures his little empire in that moment because the last trace of arrogance leaves his face, and his gaze slides from mine. His voice is a touch subdued as he does my bidding. When the harried Lee approaches me holding what I need, I smile. His breath catches audibly, and his gaze drops to my boobs. Okay…normal service has resumed.
I hide a grimace. “Thanks.”
“M-my pleasure,” he gushes.
The chef shoots him a sharp look as I turn away, but I’m too nervous to get up in his business.
My trip in the elevator this time takes me only another dozen floors up. The air is a lot more rarefied up here in the nerve center of the billion-dollar Blackwood Estate. Spines are a little straighter, shoulders a little broader. But none more so than the man whose office occupies the farthest end of the corridor.
The outer office slides open to my touch on the sleek keypad next to the glass door.
A stylishly dressed assistant looks up as I walk in. Her eyes flicker with recognition but her smile is neither warm nor cool. I don’t fault her for it. It’s been that way since our first meeting.
“Hello, Miss Gilbert. Come right in.” She stands and walks to another set of glass doors at the farthest side of her office. A swipe of her key card and it opens. A brisk nod and she leaves me to it.
I shouldn’t be this nervous but I am.