by Kira Blakely
The bathroom door opened, and I turned to look at Casper.
He looked as dashing as ever in a sparkling white polo shirt and tan chinos. He had an expensive-looking brown leather watch on his wrist and a pair of sunglasses in the front shirt pocket. As always, his hair was done stylishly, brushed to the side in a heavy tuft. His eyes were a calm morning gray again.
“You look beach ready!” he said, but there was no smile on his face.
“No beach. I want to go back home right away,” I said, zipping my suitcase back up again.
“Hold your horses, Lily. I said we’ll go.” His face turned sour. He had taken offense, and I breathed in deeply.
“I don’t mean to rush you. I just want to be back, back to my work and Marla and Zoe,” I said, running my hands down the front of my dress to smooth the creases.
Casper remained standing at the door of the bathroom until he dropped his arms to his sides and walked up to me. “Let’s go then. We wouldn’t want Zoe to worry about you too much,” he said, and before turning away from me, he placed a quick, wet kiss on the top of my forehead.
I licked my lips, afraid of how my body was going to react again to his touch. But I managed to soldier through, kept my emotions in check, and followed him out of the hotel room.
It was going to be over soon, I reminded myself. I wouldn’t have to be a slave to my own feelings for Casper for very much longer. Just a few more hours, and all this could finally be a distant memory.
“Leave the bags. Someone will bring them,” he said, turning to me. When I looked at his face, I realized that he had no idea how I was feeling.
****
“A hot towel?” The flight attendant presented herself to us again, with the same rolled-up hot towels on a solid gold tray. Only this time, the towels were lightly scented with cinnamon. It instantly made my stomach rumble, and Casper looked at me and smiled.
“Katrina, will you please bring us a plate of finger sandwiches or something?” he said to her, and she duly nodded her head and went away.
When Casper and I were alone in that large lounge in his aircraft again, we strapped ourselves in our seats and the plane took off.
I was sitting in front of him with my legs crossed and looking out the window, a little embarrassed now that he’d heard my stomach rumble. From the corner of my eye, I could sense he was looking at me.
“So, Lily, should I dare ask if you enjoyed yourself?” he said, after clearing his throat. He was sitting with his legs spread wide apart and his fingers laced together. When our eyes met, I noticed that he was serene; nothing was bothering him.
“It was a good party, and Hawaii was beautiful.” I didn’t want to talk; I just wanted to remain silent and think. But Casper was staring at me again. He wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.
“And what about the rest?” he asked with a smirk forming on his face.
“You mean the sex?” I asked him, rolling my eyes. “Are you asking for feedback on the sex?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It was good sex, Casper. I’m sure you know that by now,” I said, uncrossing my legs and then crossing them again. I looked away from him because I didn’t want him to see me blushing.
“I just wanted to make sure that you would keep it in mind when you consider my offer.”
My head jerked back toward him. “An offer? What kind of an offer? What are you talking about?” I asked him, nearly standing up. Was he finally going to tell me what all of this was about?
“The job offer. I told you already that I want you to come work for me,” Casper said, still self-assured. He either didn’t know how worked up I was, or he knew and could see it very well, but didn’t care. Either way, his demeanor was calm and collected, and that made me even more angry.
“You want me to come and work for you after all this?” I thundered at him.
Katrina entered right then, and I bit down on my tongue to keep myself from saying anything more in front of her. She placed a bowl of salted mixed nuts and a plate of finger sandwiches in front of us.
“Thank you, Katrina. That’ll be all.” Casper smiled at her before turning to me again.
He waited for Katrina to leave and pull the curtains, then he cleared his throat. “What are you talking about, Lily? What has happened?”
I huffed at him and rolled my eyes. “You seriously don’t know what I’m talking about?” I said, shaking my head in irritation at him.
Casper shrugged. “What? The sex? You don’t want to come and work for me because we had sex?” he asked, the smile still there on his face. I licked my lips and rolled my eyes at him. I was furious, I couldn’t believe he was acting this innocent about the whole thing.
“The sex is a part of the deal, Lily. I thought that was the clincher. That it would seal the deal for you,” he said with a laugh in his voice.
It seemed like he was making fun of me again, and I clenched my jaw as I faced him. “You are an arrogant bastard, and I can’t believe you think I’ll come work for you as an environmental consultant after everything that has happened between us.” I couldn’t control my rage any longer, and I was screaming at him by now.
“An arrogant bastard? Those are choice words. But please, Lily, explain to me what you think has happened between us.” He was sitting in the same position with his fingers interlaced, his jaw chiseled and set straight toward me, the same dancing, laughing eyes trained on my face. He was completely unchanged – the perfect poker face.
“You brought me here for sex. Just for the night. To seduce me and use me for this exotic getaway.” I stood up, and he turned his head up slightly to look into my face again. He was allowing me to have my say.
“And then you told me, quite frankly, that I shouldn’t expect anything more from you than this. That you’re going to be a womanizer, and I should just stand by and watch. Which is fine. It’s your life and your rules, but you can’t expect me to stick around after Hawaii,” I continued, my body shaking with rage.
“I didn’t want to give you false expectations from our relationship, Lily. I was doing you a favor by being frank with you.” Casper spoke quietly in his deep, smooth voice that made him sound much older than his actual years.
I breathed in deeply, hoping that would do something to soothe my nerves, but it didn’t. I was still raging mad.
“Thank you, Casper. I am very grateful to you for being honest, but no, I do not accept your offer. I do not want to be your pet slave, hanging about your office so you can summon me for sex whenever it pleases you.” The words came lashing out of me, and I wasn’t satisfied even after I had said them.
The smile finally dropped from Casper’s face, his eyes narrowed, and he looked at me like he wished we’d never met.
Chapter 16
“You’re spinning this out of control, Lily,” Casper said, but his words didn’t really register in my mind. We had been going back and forth with this for the past hour. We were both enraged, locked in a flight that had another three hours to go, and there was no means for an escape.
“Please tell me how I’ve spun this out of control. Isn’t it exactly what you want from me? Isn’t that the reason why you didn’t want to give me details of the job earlier and ruin our night?” I managed to finally keep my voice low as I sat in front of him, but I was still as angry as before.
Casper wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, he had an annoyed expression on his face like he wanted to get out of there, or wanted me gone. Clearly, the job offer wasn’t on the table anymore. He didn’t have to say it in words for me to know.
“I don’t want to go into the details of all this, Lily. You’ve made up your mind about me and what I have to offer, and nothing I can say can change that,” he said quietly. Casper had managed to remain calm throughout this whole ordeal, while I was within an inch of hurling myself at him.
“You have given me all the reasons I needed to form an impression of you. You invited me on this trip to test m
e out. To see if you would like having me around your office,” I spat at him.
Casper sat back in the seat and sighed. “And you’re telling me that you didn’t enjoy it?”
I gulped and looked away from him. He was right. I had enjoyed it. I had initiated the sex a few times. I’d wanted him, I wanted him right now, but that wasn’t the point. Being seduced or being fatally attracted to him wasn’t the same as agreeing to be his on-call fuckbuddy.
“Be that as it may,” I said, and watched as a smile appeared on his face, just for a moment, and then it was gone again, “it doesn’t mean that I want to keep doing this forever. That I want to be available for sex at your beck and call. If you had an actual job to offer me, I might consider it.” I crossed my arms over my breasts and saw how his gaze landed there. In that instant, he was imagining me naked. Then it was gone again as his face darkened when he remembered what I had just said.
“Who said it’s not a real job? Stop making assumptions,” he snapped at me. I hadn’t anticipated this tone of voice from him, and it surprised me. I managed to simply roll my eyes and look away. We both knew it wasn’t a real job. It wasn’t just my assumption. He’d offered me that job, even on that first day, because he’d liked what he saw. He saw me for my body, and he wanted me.
“I’m not going to force you into anything,” he added.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Good, because you can’t. I am not going to give in to everything you say. I’m sorry, Casper, but this time you’re not going to have your way.”
Neither of us touched any of the food in front of us, even though I was very hungry. I was just hoping that my stomach wouldn’t rumble again.
He laughed, and I snapped my head around to meet his eyes. How was he laughing in the middle of all this? How was any of this remotely funny?
“It’s funny how you think you’re going to bring me to my knees,” he said, surprising me further by standing up.
“I don’t intend on doing that. You’re highly mistaken,” I said, raising my chin at him. Casper was smiling again – a forced plastic smile that hid the fury that he was feeling inside. But Casper Argent was too polished; he was too much of a gentleman to show it outwardly. And that set my teeth on edge. I wanted him to be furious, to show his anger, to show some sort of emotion other than lust.
“I can see what you’re trying to do, Lily, as much as you might deny it. You’re trying to hold me down, pretending to be mad at me because you think that would somehow change me. Well, it’s not working,” Casper said, standing in front of me with his legs spread apart.
I huffed and looked away from him. What he was saying wasn’t making any sense to me. I wasn’t trying to change him. Why was he fixed on that? I was upset because he thought he could have his way with me, try and lure me with a lucrative job offer, and then just use me. How could he not see that I wasn’t going to be his puppet?
“Whatever, Casper. I don’t care anymore. I just want this trip to end so I can go back to my normal life,” I snapped at him.
“Good,” he said and then walked away in the direction of his bedroom. The one that we’d had sex in the previous day on our way to Hawaii.
“I’ll be in my office. Feel free to use the bedroom if you want to take a quick nap or something,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow at him. He had a study and a bedroom and a lounge on the jet? How many wings were there on this aircraft?
I didn’t respond to him but merely looked away, back toward the clouds that we were whizzing past. From the corner of my eye, I sensed him looking at me for a while longer before walking out of the room.
For the first time, I was relieved that Casper was gone.
****
The next few hours were the most stressful of my life. I had nothing to do but to continue staring out of the window, hoping against hope that this plane would land soon. I was exhausted, bored, and my mind was racing at the same time. I wanted to be home in my pajamas, helping Zoe with her craft projects and not thinking about all this. It was all Casper’s fault.
He hadn’t once come back out to the lounge since he’d left the room, and already I was beginning to miss his presence. I wished he would lash out at me, say something, say anything… but instead, he had chosen to lock himself up in his study and forget about these troubles. Maybe they weren’t troubles, maybe nothing troubled him. Perhaps I was just a nagging problem that he wished he could get rid of as quickly as possible.
The seatbelt sign suddenly came on, and I buckled myself in. Finally. We were going to land. Three hours of constantly thinking about the man I couldn’t have had made me feel drained and tired. Besides, I still had that hangover headache. I was miserable.
I clutched the sides of my seat as the plane landed gently. I could see the runway racing by as the aircraft finally came to a halt.
Just when I was unbuckling the seatbelt, Casper walked into the room again.
“Hope you’ve had a good flight,” he said, standing with his hands crossed in front of him like he was going to personally escort me out.
I stood up and reached for my shoulder bag that was hanging from the back of the seat.
“What do you care, Casper? I wish you’d stop pretending to care and just be real, for once,” I said, in a low, bitter voice.
He cleared his throat but he said nothing.
I had slung my bag over my shoulder and brushed my curls with my fingers before he said another word.
“I hope you have a good, normal life, the one you’ve been stressing on. Thank you for coming with me to Hawaii,” he said with a blank expression on his face. I couldn’t read his eyes or his face. I had no idea what thoughts were running through him. He was being robotically polite, because Casper Argent knew no other way.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Just stay out of my life, Casper,” I said, and I had no idea what made me say that. Maybe I was trying to get a reaction from him. I was hoping perhaps that he would snap at me, say something to make me fling my arms around his neck and beg him for forgiveness for everything I had said to him.
Did I want his forgiveness? What had I done to feel sorry for? I suppose I was feeling suddenly desperate because I knew this was the end. This was the last time I would ever see him, and he wasn’t doing anything to make me stay. He was emotionless and ineffectual. He didn’t seem to care that I was going to go away and he would never see me again.
So, even though I’d said that to him, I remained standing in front of him, my fingers hooked on the strap of my bag at my shoulder. Casper looked back at me blankly, not making a move in my direction or asking me any questions.
“And you should stay out of mine.” His words came out of nowhere, slicing through the air and through my soul.
The tears came gushing out, hot tears rolling down my cheeks, and my lips quivered as I faced him. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I couldn’t believe he could be that cruel.
I whipped around and ran out of the lounge toward the exit doors. I didn’t care anymore who saw me crying. As I climbed hurriedly down the steps, the same chauffeur who had driven me to this place the day before was now loading my suitcase into the back of the same car. Casper had arranged for everything.
Before I got in the car, I couldn’t stop myself from turning back. Only Katrina stood at the aircraft’s door, her plastic smile pasted on her face. Stupidly, I waved at her and smiled through my tears. She flinched and then waved back at me. Perhaps she had seen hundreds of women leave Casper Argent’s private jet with tears in their eyes. Had I turned into one of those women? Into a handsome billionaire’s one-night stand?
I turned my face away ashamedly and slid into the car. The chauffeur closed the door gently after me and got into the front.
I was trying to stifle my tears, but they kept pouring out. I forced myself to not look back at the aircraft. I didn’t want to know whether Casper had appeared at the door. All I knew was that he’d made no attempt to follow me; he didn’t try to stop me from crying
or storming out.
I felt like I meant nothing to him. Even the words he had used to describe me to his friends were just empty compliments. He’d probably used those words on all the women he’d had sex with on his plane. I didn’t know what to think anymore. All I knew was that I was finally going home, and I would hopefully never have to see Casper Argent ever again.
Chapter 17
I didn’t bother to get out of my pajamas or robe for the next week. I still had my dissertation to complete, and I pretty much stayed at home, only leaving the confines of my small apartment to empty the trash.
It had been over seven days since I’d stormed out of Casper Argent’s aircraft and was driven to my apartment in silence by a uniformed chauffeur. I hadn’t been sleeping much, and it was plain to see that my anxiety had nothing to do with my dissertation, and entirely to do with the man I couldn’t get out of my mind.
My curls had turned frizzy from the lack of regular brushing. I didn’t bother with eating full meals any longer and just raided the pantry for anything available to simply heat in the microwave and eat out of its packaging in front of the television. Even Marla stayed away from me. She didn’t want Zoe to see me like this.
“You got a babysitter?” I asked her, when she came to see me again.
Marla worked as a nurse, usually on night shifts, and was the kind of girl who was always dressed like she was going for a fancy dinner.
She had just walked through the door, carrying two big paper bags full of groceries that she believed I needed. She had seen me eating junk for the past week and had done my shopping for me. I resented her a little for mothering me this way, but she was my best friend. She knew exactly what I wanted, and I knew that, too.