by Tillie Cole
“Soft limit,” I replied. Novah added that to the “Never say never list of things I might try”.
“Blindfolds?”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Ropes?”
“Passable.”
“Vagina worship?”
“Highly encouraged.”
“Forced exercise?”
My feet slammed on the floor and I whipped my head to Novah with breakneck speed. “Hard limit. Really fucking hard limit. Who the hell would put someone through that kind of torture?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Barbaric! Whip me, cane me, tie me to a St Andrew’s Cross, but do not force me into a set of jumping jacks. That’s a definite addition to the “Oh, fuck no” list!”
Novah laughed and wrote it down. “You know, these things seem pretty excessive, Faith. You sure it’s that kind of club? Isn’t there a strong difference between a true hardcore BDSM dungeon and a sex club for the rich and famous?”
I nodded. “I don’t think it is for sadists, it’s more for exhibitionists with so much money they get bored with life and thus suddenly decide dressing up in a pig mask with a sign around their neck saying ‘touch me’ seems like a good idea.” I took a long drink of my coffee. “But I’m not taking any chances with Maître. He wants to own me, Nove. I can feel it. I need to have all parts of my bare ass covered.”
“No, what you can feel is the remnants of the hardest orgasm you’ve ever had, and it’s frazzled your brain.” Novah held my arm. “Faith, you’re acting like a man.”
I laughed, but I let my mind drift back to Maître Auguste behind me, his talented fingers causing me to scream. “It’s true,” I admitted in defeat. “And that was nothing, Nove. Nothing to what was happening in the rest of the club. Nothing to what all those devices and contraptions in Maître’s room promised.”
Novah rolled her desk chair beside me. “Just go with it, Faith. You never know, this might be the best thing that has ever happened to you. I mean, the elusive Maître of NOX picked you to be his personal siren. On your first night. Granted, it was because you almost maimed innocent people, but still. It’s an incredible thing. It’s like you’ve won the lottery twice. Think of all the material you’ll have for your feature.”
I squeezed the arms of my chair just thinking about watching Maître pleasure himself on his throne, with those alien-like silver contacts practically boring laser beams into my eyes as he watched me for any sign of disobedience.
“It was, without doubt, the best orgasm I’ve ever had in my life.”
“And you said he was hung.” Novah’s eyebrows danced. “Just wait until that piece of hot salami is served on your moist platter.”
“Please never utter that sentence again. My lady boner just totally deflated.”
“Faith! Are you finished with your column?” Sally barked as she whizzed past us like a hurricane.
“Almost!” I called back, scrambling forward to my desk. In truth, I hadn’t even started it. I had wasted too many hours researching hard and soft limits and kink practices. “Shit! What time is it?” I asked Novah.
“Five.” Novah grimaced.
“Double shit!” I spat and downed the rest of my coffee like it was a shot of cheap-ass vodka. “Think, think, think,” I said, piling up the emails for my “Ask Miss Bliss” page, trying to find ones that were spunky enough for this week’s magazine.
“We don’t go to press until midnight, Faith. You’ve got time.”
“I don’t. I have to be in Maître’s room by eight, kneeling down and awaiting my trip to hedonism!” Novah stood and started putting on her coat, as did most of the office. I panicked. “Help me!”
Novah kissed my head. “Can’t, sweets. I’ve got a salon appointment. These red tresses don’t grow naturally, you know.”
“Traitor!” I said and made my eyes focus on the first email I’d printed off.
I’ve recently begun having sex with my boyfriend, and on our first night I squirted as I came, drenching both myself and my antique patchwork quilt. I’m afraid it will happen again and, worse, my boyfriend cannot swim. Any advice? From H.R. Brown.
Loading up my computer, I wrote: Invest in some waterproof sheets for you, and repurpose the quilt as a wall tapestry far out of squirting range. Buy a snorkel and swimming cap for your boyfriend. Ride his dick like it’s Aquaman’s trident and be safe in the knowledge that the next time you gush, your precious belongings and boyfriend will be safe from imminent drowning. Live wet and wild, Miss Bliss.
I typed like a mythical Fury high off her tits on a six-pack of Red Bull and quickly wrapped up my agony column. When I looked up, it was to see Frank, the janitor, slowly making his way into Visage’s office. The lights were low and I was the only writer left.
“Hey Frank!” I called as I ran past him, jacket, purse and, more importantly, my list in my hands.
“Hey, Faith! Be careful out there. The rain is really coming down.”
“Will do, Frank! Bye!” I ran to the elevators and pressed the button repeatedly until the doors opened. I rushed inside, only to come up short when I saw Harry Sinclair.
His head snapped up in surprise. “Miss Parisi,” he said, rising from a slouched position against the back wall. “I didn’t think anyone else was left in the building.” The doors shut behind us, and I quickly pressed the button for the lobby.
“Yeah, had to work late,” I said and watched the floors begin to count down. I wanted to take a shower at home and change before going to NOX, but I couldn’t be late. Despite myself, I was practically bouncing with excitement about what tonight would bring.
Just as we reached the second floor, the elevator’s lights flickered, and the steel box jerked to a bumpy stop. “No,” I said, when the cable above groaned. “No, no, no!” I started slapping my palm on the door. “Not again! You piece-of-shit elevator! Not again!”
“Miss Parisi?” Harry’s voice said from behind me. “May I?”
For a second I’d forgotten that Harry was behind me. Oh. My. God. I was stuck in this godforsaken elevator. I was going to be late for Maître and, worse, I was trapped here with Harry Sinclair.
I pressed the button for the lobby repeatedly, so fast my wrist was at risk of developing a nasty case of carpal tunnel. When that failed to work, I tucked my things under my arm and ran my palms up and down all the buttons on the grid. No lights. Nothing. It was completely dead.
“Cazzo!” I shouted, the feisty Italian in me taking over.
“Miss Parisi!” Harry said more sternly. “Please move. Although you appear to be an expert in lift maintenance and repair, I’m afraid this time your talents seem to have failed you.”
I closed my eyes and stepped aside, mentally talking myself down from bitch slapping the English asshole. He’s your boss, Faith. Let’s not get fired when you’re finally getting ahead.
“Sinclair House, elevator three,” Harry said into the emergency phone. “Thank you.” He hung up and turned to me.
“That was my next option,” I said, sinking into the wall. The lights above us flickered again then suddenly plunged us into darkness. A shrill, banshee-like sound traitorously fled my mouth, and I launched forward when the elevator jerked again, convincing me that we were about to plummet to our immediate demise.
In seconds the elevator stilled and the dim emergency lights came on, blanketing the small space in musty yellow light. I counted to ten, trying to slow my panicked heart. It wasn’t until my breathing had calmed that I realized I was wrapped around something hard, smelling of mint, sandalwood, and musk.
My eyes widened feeling rippling abdominals flex against my chest and back muscles moving against my palms. As I slowly lifted my head, my gaze passed an open collar, the lightly tanned skin of a corded neck, and an incredibly strong clenched jaw with a hint of dark stubble, and came to a stop at a pair of bright blue eyes that were narrowed and watching my every move.
With awkwardness reigning, I smiled widely and said, “Well, of all the pl
aces in all the world, fancy meeting you here.” Realizing I was wrapped tightly around Harry like an overly attached spider monkey, I quickly unlatched my arms from his waist and stepped back.
Flustered, I pushed my hair from my face and moved to the far side of the elevator. “I was just checking you were okay. Some people can be scared of the dark, you know? I was just doing my civic duty in protecting a visitor to our fine country.”
“Is that so?” Harry asked, his face as stoic and unreadable as ever.
“Yep.”
Silence screamed around us, and I realized that I would never complain about the terribly played piano music filtering through elevator speakers again. Silence in general made me twitchy. Marrying that with the high anxiety of being stuck in a premade metal coffin gave me the unstoppable urge to fill it with noise.
“So, you work out?” I asked Harry, who lifted his head. Apparently, the floor had been a more interesting view than the clearly unstable agony aunt across from him, who now knew his clothing measurements intimately.
Harry raised a single eyebrow. I pointed to his body, circling his torso and arm region. “Hard,” I said, instant regret settling within me as the word slipped from my mouth. “Muscles.” I winced. That wasn’t any better. “That I was wrapped around. That I felt. The abs and back and—”
The emergency phone rang and Harry answered it, leaving me free to exhale in embarrassment and lean my head back against the wall. Every time I was around this man my mouth never failed to betray me.
“That is not the best news,” Harry said tightly to whoever was on the other end of the phone. “But thank you. We shall but wait.”
As he hung up the phone, I felt my hopes for a hot and steamy night with Maître plummeting as deeply as the Titanic. Harry sighed. “They had to call for the elevator repair service.”
“Great.” I slid down the cold metal wall to the floor. Harry watched me, opening another of his shirt collar buttons, laid his jacket on the floor, and sat down. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Something amusing, Miss Parisi?”
“Afraid you’ll get your tush dirty on the elevator floor?”
“This is a three-thousand-dollar suit.”
“Of course it is.”
Harry tipped his head to the side like I was a puzzle he was trying to work out. “You are here late.”
“Had to finish off my column. As you know we go to press tonight, and I was a little behind.”
“I shall look forward to this week’s Ask Miss Bliss’s offerings,” he said and ran his hand across his forehead as though he were fighting a migraine. “Anything particularly enlightening this week?”
I shrugged. “Squirting, herpes, and cock rings were the solid standouts.”
“Quite,” he said, and I thought I caught a slight flicker of a smile. It was gone so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. I once hit my head in the bathtub and swore I saw a mermaid swimming toward me during the subsequent concussion. I believed this could be akin to that. I felt the back of my head. I hadn’t hit it during the breakdown, I didn’t think.
“Are you hurt?” Harry’s voice changed in tone and he sat forward, narrowing his eyes to see me better in the low lighting.
“No, thought I might of hit my head. But I’m good.”
A minute fluttering sensation moved under my sternum. I shook my head, not having a clue what it was. I rubbed my hand across my chest. “You have anxiety attacks?” Harry asked, nudging his head toward my hand.
I nodded. “Don’t like the dark much. Or should I say, I don’t like the dark when I’m trapped inside a steel box that is dangling from a single cable in thin air.” But I knew what a panic attack felt like. The sensation I was feeling now had nothing to do with anxiety. Strange.
“We will be out soon.”
I checked my watch. I was running so damn late!
“Are you in a rush?” Harry asked.
“Kind of.” I gave Harry a tight smile. “I just have somewhere I need to be.” I decided to omit the fact that I had a sexual Dom waiting to teach me all the secrets of pleasure in the most interesting of ways, an experience I hoped to write about in a big feature that Harry Sinclair knew nothing of. “You?” I asked, trying to polite.
He shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“No hot date?”
Harry huffed a laugh, and I thought I might faint at the sight of him smiling, even if it was only a small hint of a grin. “No hot date.”
I studied my boss. He was only a few years older than me. Was ridiculously handsome and a billionaire to boot. He came across like an absolute prick, but he wouldn’t be that way to everyone. Surely some people warmed to him. He must have some potential suitors in his life. He was frequently photographed with that Lady Louisa Samson for one.
“So,” I asked, filling the dead air. “How are you settling into New York?”
“Well. I have been coming back and forth to Manhattan for years. I know it well. It is fine.”
“Not as good as old England, hey?”
“England is home.” His expression made me breathless. It was a look of pure love. He said “home” with such warmth I felt it deeply within my heart. And I knew that feeling too.
“You’re Italian?” he asked. He pointed to the grid of buttons. “Cazzo. If I’m not mistaken, that’s a swear word in Italian, is it not?”
I burst out laughing in shock at the word slipping from Harry’s prim and proper mouth. “Yes,” I said. “It’s Italian. And it’s a bad word.” He waited for me to continue. “My papa is Italian, from Parma in Emilia-Romagna. The north.”
“I know Parma well.”
“You do?” I asked. “I’ve never been. Though it’s my dream.”
“You’ve never seen your father’s home?”
My smiled died and my gut clenched. “No. They could never afford it when I was younger.” I didn’t want to add that they had saved up for years to go back last year, but it had all been stolen by a man Papa had trusted like a brother.
I’d never cared for money; it had never been a notable factor in my life growing up. Apart from the obvious—needing a house to live in and food on the table. But of late, it had been a huge factor to my parents. Good people who had been deceived by a bad man.
“But you are from New York?” Harry asked, pulling me back from the sadness I feared I’d drown in one day.
“Hell’s Kitchen.” I smiled, thinking of my youth running through the streets in the summer with my friends, the theaters, and neighbors gathering on stoops to chat and drink and laugh. “I live in Brooklyn now.”
“A true New Yorker,” he said with no discrimination in his voice. It reflected an easy affection toward those born and raised in the Big Apple.
“And you?” I asked.
“Surrey.”
“I’m guessing that, unlike me, you didn’t grow up in an apartment though.”
“Not quite,” he said, lip hooked up at the side. “Do you have siblings?” he asked awkwardly, like he was clutching at anything to make things less strained. If we were being honest, there was no love lost between us, so I was surprised he was trying so hard to engage in conversation. If it made the time pass more quickly and with less pain, I could put my animosity aside and engage in meaningless small talk with the viscount.
“Nope. Just me.” I winked. “Couldn’t let anyone else share my spotlight, could I?”
“I fear not,” he said; then he glanced at the emergency phone as though he were wishing for it to ring and rescue him from this uneasy situation. “I believe God broke the mold when He made you, Miss Parisi.”
“A defective model?” I joked.
His blue eyes met mine, reminding me of a cerulean sea. “I wouldn’t say that.” That strange feeling was back underneath my sternum. What the hell was it?
I cleared my throat. “So, do you have siblings?”
“No,” he said. An air of sadness seemed to wrap around him for a moment, before it q
uickly faded away. “But I have a cousin I am particularly close to. He is my pseudo-brother, I guess. My best friend.”
“Is he in England?”
“Yes.”
“You miss him?”
“Very much.”
An ache burst in my chest when it occurred to me that Harry might be lonely. I had always viewed him as uptight and distant, cold and unapproachable, which I supposed didn’t make for easy friendships. And he certainly appeared to be all of those things. But I had met his father, who was a complete and utter prick.
It couldn’t have been easy growing up with King Sinclair. From the outside, it seemed like Harry had a very sparse social life outside of HCS Media. He always gave me the impression that he was wound so tightly he was about to snap. That he didn’t have a clue how to operate if he wasn’t looking at people with utter distain and ensuring he could be viewed as nothing but powerful and prideful. For all I knew, every assumption I had about him was correct.
“Do you have hobbies, Mr. Sinclair?”
“Harry,” he said. Then, “Just the usual, fox and badger hunting. Pheasant and grouse shooting. All when in season, of course.”
My mouth fell open in disgust. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yes, I am,” he said, deadpan. It took me a moment for his response to sink in.
I shook my head, laughing. “Damn! I was just about to rip into you about the barbarism of blood sports.”
“God forbid,” he said dryly. “But that’s what you expected, did you not? The stuck-up English aristocrat taking part in those typically nefarious sports of ours.”
“I mean,” I said, “if the three-thousand-dollar suit fits.”
When he smiled knowingly, dimples caved into his cheeks. As if he needed to be any more handsome. “Fear not, Miss Parisi, I find blood sports as atrocious as you. In fact, I have put a great deal of money into banning them altogether.”
He undid his cufflinks and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. I checked the elevator for fire. I was suddenly getting really hot. He sat back and slouched against the wall.