by Louise Bay
The large, polished maple table was set for two, complete with what looked like crystal glassware and china tableware. If I hadn’t already been to Sam’s apartment, after seeing this I’d assume it to be similarly expensively furnished, no expense spared.
I knew differently.
I was peering at the blue and green abstract painting on the wall above the wet bar when the door swung open. “Grace Astor, you’re late,” Sam said.
“Deepest apologies for my tardiness. It couldn’t be helped.”
He waited for a beat for me to elaborate, and when I didn’t, he chuckled. “We’ll eat here if you don’t mind. Saves time.” He held out his hand for me to take the chair to the right of the head of the table.
His tone was friendly, but businesslike, as if we’d met once or twice before, but not as if we’d seen each other naked, as if we’d pulled and scratched at each other, each begging the other to push them over the edge into a soul-blistering orgasm.
Okay, well I could work with that.
“So, this is the catalog,” I said, pulling out the glossy book from my tote and placing it in front of us. “I’ve marked the ones I think are probably going to go for less than their real value with a Post-it.” We hadn’t really discussed budgets, so I’d labelled absolutely everything I thought would be a good buy. His picks should give me some indication of his budget.
He flicked his thumb down the line of multicolored Post-its and smiled before opening the catalog and regarding my choices.
We were interrupted by three waiters arriving with large white plates. Sam didn’t even look up as the food was set in front of us.
The silence bordered on uncomfortable. “Is there anything you like? I mean, if you want to discuss my reasoning behind any of the pieces I’ve marked, then do ask me questions.”
He set the book down and picked up his fork, pausing when he saw I hadn’t started eating yet. I picked up my silverware and we began to eat.
“What do the different colors mean?” he asked.
Was he asking me what colors represented in paintings?
“Your Post-its,” he clarified.
“Just ignore them, they don’t really matter for your purposes.”
“But there is a reason they’re different colors.” He set his silverware down and sat back in his chair, giving me his full attention.
“Not a business reason,” I replied, focusing on my plate.
“I think you like the ones you marked green the best.”
He was right, but how could he possibly know that? “Why are you always trying to figure people out?” I asked.
“Not always,” he said, picking his silverware back up. “Only people who I want something from, or who want something from me.”
“And which box do I fit into?”
He looked up from his plate and grinned. “I think you have a box all of your own.”
The room was quiet, and I was pretty sure I could hear my own heartbeat. What did that mean? Was he just avoiding my question, or was he paying me a compliment?
I wanted him to touch me because when he had before everything had made sense. I’d been so focused on the moment and the way our bodies worked together, I hadn’t second-guessed anything.
“I agree, by the way. I like the green ones, too. But I want to see them,” he said.
I glanced up and he was watching me as if he were checking every reaction I had to him.
“You want to see the green ones?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“You should keep an open mind about some of the others. There may be some other good buys among those that I’ve marked in something other than green.”
“I’m good with the green. I think we should go with your gut.”
“And you’re not going to tell me how you knew the greens were my favorite?”
“It’s no secret. I’m getting to know you. The way you like the intimate or unexpected.” He grinned. “In your art.” He shrugged and took a forkful of food. “And you clearly hadn’t marked them on price or period. It’s cute. Don’t be self-conscious about it.”
“I’m not. If I was I would have replaced the Post-its.” I didn’t want him to think he’d gotten under my skin. “Anyway, it’s too late to see the paintings before the auction next week—the viewing closes this afternoon.”
“Then we’ll go after lunch.”
Did this man not have a business to run? “What if I’m busy this afternoon?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do what you gotta do, Grace Astor.”
Almost everything he said could be interpreted a number of different ways.
“Do you always want more from people?”
He paused and glanced away from me. “Not always.”
What more did he want from me?
“Okay, I can take you this afternoon … on one condition. If you get more then I get more.” His lack of furniture had bothered me ever since I’d walked into his apartment. And perhaps more so after his half-explanation. Not being sentimental wasn’t a reason a rich man didn’t have a bed—or a decent couch.
He finished his mouthful of food and placed his napkin on the table. “Name it.”
“After the showing, we go and buy you a couch.”
He chuckled. “That’s the more you want?”
Was there something else on offer? Did I want there to be? I nodded.
“Deal.”
Chapter Nine
Sam
As I watched Grace wander around the auction preview, I wanted to pull her aside, untuck the shirt from her stuffy, Upper East Side skirt, and slide my hands over her breasts until she was begging me to fuck her. Here. In this room. In front of everyone.
When we’d fucked on my apartment floor, she’d opened up to me and now, here she was, doing it again in a different way. Just by existing.
I couldn’t get enough. Her wide eyes, the way she became mesmerized by everything she saw, the way she leaned in to me, whispering secrets about the paintings. “Look at his boot–it seems black, but if you look closer, the paint is green and white,” she said, turning to me, checking that I was listening, wanting me to be as excited about the art as she was.
I smiled and nodded. As impressive as the preview was, she outshone everything in the room. Without thinking, I smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. The rise and fall of her chest stilted, as if she held her breath. “You’re even more beautiful like this—passionate, excited,” I said.
The seduction was meant to be over; I was supposed to be done. I always was after the sex. But since she’d left my apartment, there’d been a niggling feeling that I hadn’t quite had my fill of her. Was it because I hadn’t dragged out my orgasm with her? I’d come a dozen times since by my own hand, but I still wasn’t sated.
So who was seducing who?
She smiled and looked down at her catalog, and we continued as if I didn’t want to fuck her right there. When we reached the end of the exhibition she tipped her head to the side, indicating we should move away from the crowd. “Do you know which you like best?” she whispered. “We should narrow it down to two or three and then place limits on them all.” Flicking through the catalog, she dug into her purse and pulled out a pencil. “You should prepare yourself for not getting anything at all.”
I’d made a mental note of the paintings she flagged as green and paid attention as they appeared on our way around. There were three I liked in particular. “I like these two,” I said, pointing at a set of two prints by Toulouse Lautrec in bold colors. They were more masculine than the work I’d bought from her gallery—more straightforward.
“Yes!” she said excitedly and then, as if checking herself, she refocused. “For your bedroom,” she whispered. The prints were valued in the low five figures, so I was impressed she’d flagged them. She worked on commission and could have gone for the most expensive items. “I think if we can get them for the right price, it would be a good buy. What else?”
I pointed
at another picture, marked green. A black background with a vivid bowl of flowers. It was kind of old-fashioned, but something about the darkness and the way the color seemed to break through appealed to me.
“The Brueghel. God, yes. It’s so you.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. It was? “It’s me?” I asked. No one other than Angie made that sort of comment to me. No one knew me well enough to.
Her cheeks colored and she shrugged. “Yeah. You know. Dark and stern. But then you get closer and …”
I wanted her to finish her sentence. Then what?
“It will look good in that apartment,” she said, paging through the brochure.
Finally, we decided on another nude. Apparently, she liked them as much as I did. Had anyone ever drawn Grace naked? Or taken photographs of her? A dull pang hit me in the gut. I didn’t like the idea of anyone looking at her without clothes. Even more, I hated I felt that way at all.
“Come on, Saks next,” she said, leading me out the exit. “How come you don’t have a driver?” she asked. “You’re like richer than the pope or something.” She flagged a cab, but I pulled her away, putting myself between her and the curb.
“Why should I have a driver? Manhattan’s full of them.” As if to prove my point, a yellow cab drew up, spraying the morning’s rain on my trouser legs.
“Well, you could fire a driver if he did that,” she replied. “But I’m glad it wasn’t me. Thank you.”
Grace gave the address, then listed the exact route she wanted him to take. I sat back and watched, still intrigued. She’d seen buying a couch as a victory. I saw it as an inevitability. I didn’t want to have to fuck her on the floor again.
But I wanted to fuck her again.
I would fuck her again.
Shit. I kept my eyes firmly on the street outside. I wanted to fuck her again.
“But you don’t want to spend your money on someone permanent?” she asked.
“No, I just don’t think it’s necessary.”
“You say that like you don’t buy into the New York lifestyle, but look at your office, or your suits, for Christ’s sake.” She looked me up and down as if checking that I was actually wearing a suit. Or was she just checking me out?
“That’s different. That’s business. People expect me to have nice offices, wear nice suits. It’s just part of the job.”
Grace chuckled. “So you’re just doing what everyone expects of you?”
Was she deliberately trying to find flaws in my character? I so rarely interacted with women outside work other than Angie. I didn’t understand the reasons behind her questions. Did she have a point to prove or was she just trying to get to know me? “I’m doing what’s necessary. Sometimes you have to take certain steps in order to get to your goal.” I didn’t care about a fancy couch or having a driver because it was slightly more convenient. What I cared about was making sure I’d never have to repeat my youth. I’d do anything it took to avoid that.
“So you do whatever it takes?” Grace asked as we pulled up outside Saks.
“No. That’s not what I said. I do things to help me achieve my goal. But that’s just common sense. There’s no point making life harder for yourself,” I said as I followed her out onto the sidewalk.
She was ambitious. She got how it worked, surely. “You were dating the artist of your first exhibition. You wouldn’t have got his show if you hadn’t been involved, right? You did what it took.”
“What?” She spun around to look at me. “He was using me, you asshole. Steve wouldn’t have gotten an exhibition without me.”
“That’s not what I was trying to say. Don’t overreact.”
“Did you know I found him banging his assistant on my desk just after I opened?” She turned and flung open the door, not waiting for me to catch it as it swung shut in front of me. I yanked it open and followed her inside. “And how did you know I was dating him?”
“It was obvious. And just because he cheated on you doesn’t mean you didn’t do what you had to do to further your goals,” I said from behind her.
“Whatever,” she replied.
We made our way to the furniture department in silence. Every now and then, Grace opened her mouth to speak then decided against it.
“So am I using you?” she finally asked as she took a seat on a huge L-shaped sofa that had room for twenty people.
“I didn’t say you were using that painter guy.” I took a seat beside her. Every relationship was a trade-off. Someone wanted something from you, you wanted something from them—business, personal—it was all the same.
“You didn’t answer my question.” she said. “When we had sex, what exactly was I using you for?”
“Let me ask you something.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not asking to be evasive, I just want to answer your question better,” I explained, running my hand over a cushion. Of course she was using me. I just wanted to be sure I knew why.
“Go on then,” she replied.
“Who was your boyfriend before the cheater?”
She narrowed her eyes, which I was pretty sure she thought looked menacing. Really, it was beyond cute. “His name was Nathan. Happy?”
“But what did he do? What did you like about him?”
“He was a musician, if you must know.” She stood and marched across to another, slightly more realistically sized sofa. I followed her. “He was very talented.” She inspected the couch, trailing her hands over the black velvet.
“I like this one,” I said as I sat down, hoping it was comfortable. It was long enough that I could lie full length on it and Grace would look beautiful lying next to me, her blonde hair a delicious contrast to the black.
Grace came and sat next to me, her eyes facing forward.
“Using is the wrong word,” I said. “But you have to get something out of a situation, otherwise why would you bother?” I didn’t say that I thought it sounded like she had a habit of dating losers, or that there was likely a whole host of reasons why she needed that. “You have a type of guy you normally date. That’s because you get something out of dating that guy—just like he gets something out of dating you.” If she liked artistic types, I was definitely not the kind of man she usually slept with.
“Okay,” she said, “And I had sex with you because?”
“My big cock?” I replied.
She laughed and I found myself grinning not at my joke but at the sound of her belly laugh.
“You like it?” I asked, patting the couch.
“I do. It’s masculine and pretty at the same time.”
“Okay, well if this is the one, let’s find a sales clerk.”
“What, just like that?”
I shrugged as I leaned forward, then glanced over my shoulder at her. I was right; she looked beautiful on this couch. “We’ve found something we like. What’s the point in continuing to look?”
“You’ve resisted buying furniture for what looks like your whole life, but now, all of a sudden, you’re ready to pick the first thing we see?”
I stood and held out my hand to help her up. “I told you I’d get a couch. We found one. I like it. I’m going to buy it. It’s really not that complicated.”
She ignored my offer of help and stood. “Okay. Well that was easy. What about a coffee table?”
I chuckled. Why was she taking such an interest in my interior decorating? “Oh of course,” I said. I wasn’t so different to the other men she’d been with—the artist boyfriend, the musician before that.
“What?” she asked, looking at me from where she was crouched over a glass table.
I nodded. “You’re a fixer.” I’d met people like her before. No doubt she over invested in the people around her, coaching them to be the best they could be before they turned around and dropped her.
“And you’re a know-it-all,” she retorted. “Do you like this table?”
Well at least she didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t. “I’m not going to make it t
hat easy for you, Grace Astor. If you want to push at my boundaries, I get to peer over your Park Avenue princess walls, too.”
She shrugged and stood up, catching the attention of a sales clerk. “Excuse me, Mr. Shaw would like to take this couch,” she said. “And this coffee table.”
Jesus, this woman had some balls on her. But I took that as game on. How could I pull her out of her comfort zone? Before I could think too hard about the implications, I grabbed her around her waist and pulled her toward me.
“What are you doing?” she pushed her hands against my chest as I drew her closer.
“I’m peering over your walls,” I replied. “I bet you’ve never, ever kissed someone in public. If you want me to buy that table, press your lips against mine in front of everyone in this store.”
She glanced around. “You’re blackmailing me?” she asked.
“Hardly. We’re talking about a kiss and a table.” Truth be told, I wasn’t one for public displays of affection; seeing other couples embracing always made me feel a little uncomfortable. But having Grace in my arms, her warmth began to seep into me. Holding her felt as if I were in some kind of secret club, just her and me.
I didn’t give a shit about who was looking.
“Okay,” she whispered, then put her hand to the back of my neck, her thumb stroking up my jaw. If I hadn’t known better, I would believe that was real affection in her fingers. I bent and she reached up on her tiptoes and very chastely touched her lips to mine. Her mouth was so soft, vulnerable.
“More,” I muttered against her mouth, dipping my head lower. She linked her hands around my head and smiled against my lips. I couldn’t help but grin back before snaking my tongue inside and kissing her as if it were my last moment on earth.
Without the whiskey, every sense was heightened, and in a matter of seconds I was hard. I pressed my hand against her ass, pulling her toward me, wanting her to feel my cock. Jesus. Being in public and knowing this couldn’t be any more than a kiss made it all the more fun. I couldn’t remember ever kissing a woman without the expectation that it would turn into something more. This was new. And I liked it.
A small groan escaped Grace’s lips and suddenly she pulled away, almost as if she were ashamed she’d gotten so carried away. I released her, but couldn’t keep my eyes off her as she glanced around surreptitiously. She smoothed down her hair and turned away from me, then covered her mouth with both hands. “Your …” she whispered as if it were talking that would draw people’s attention. She waved her hand in front of my face. “It makes my face red.”