Then came the kiss.
He ate at me like I was supple melon, fruit to be reshaped to his appetite, juices enough to stain his skin. His hands spanned my jaw, holding me tightly in place, and he kissed the same way he fucked: sharp, thorough and intricate. The rhythm that governed was entirely his own.
“There,” I whispered. “That will have to do.”
“You’re really going to make me wait, aren’t you?” He bit my shoulder and paused to inspect the mark. “Little villain.”
“I think you exhausted your quota yesterday as it was,” I teased.
He hauled himself up and began to flick through shirts in the wardrobe. “I didn’t know I had a quota.”
“Oh yes. You evidently haven’t used enough whores, Mr Merchant. You get three shots at anal, six point four blowjobs and if you’re lucky, a massage.”
“I might take you up on the massage later.” He shot an amused look over his shoulder. “Though I’ve had my share of whores three times over, and I think you’re talking shite.”
I perched on the end of the bed, swinging my pretty heels and watching him dress. “How many?”
“What, call girls?”
Crunch. Crunch. The heels crushed the carpet as I walked over and began to do up his buttons. “Yep.”
“I must’ve hired forty or fifty, thinking about it. Maybe more. Though I didn’t fuck all of them.”
My eyebrow shot up, rigid with cynicism, and his snort of derision was comical.
“You must know what it’s like, Leila. Some girls turn up looking more interested in the wallpaper. Or they’re wired. Or they don’t even speak English, for fuck’s sake–they’ve been shipped in from God-knows-where and they’re terrified. My own hand was more likely to get wet…I wasn’t about to fuck them.” He tapped my nose. “So I handed them the envelope for their troubles, and graciously told them to sod off.”
“If you wanted a girl who wanted you, why not just take one out for dinner?”
He shrugged. “For the same reason as all your clients, I imagine.”
I brushed a hair from his shirt–my particular brand of auburn against his white cotton, coiled as if it belonged there. “Not all my clients looked like you,” I said, “and very few would have sent a girl home.”
“Yeah, well…when I take women out, they’re either not subtly slutty enough or they end up like Isobel. I seem to attract the desperate-for-Daddy type.”
My cheeks roared with the sudden flush and he stifled a laugh.
“You, Leila?”
“Only with one guy,” I mumbled.
“Not me?”
“No.” I toyed with his belt buckle as he fastened it. “You’re all different.”
“Good. Because if you ask me to put a collar on you, I won’t be able to do it with a straight face.”
“Saves me having to check your wardrobe for leather trousers.” I grinned.
“If I wanted a girl who wouldn’t shut up and wouldn’t fuck me, I could’ve had any old succubus from the lounge last night.”
I giggled. “Instead, you have suck-you-boss.”
“Stop being so bloody clever and put some clothes on.”
The preceding spank was sharp and fizzy, and I darted away only to topple off my heels. The bed caught me and I struggled onto it before reaching back to undo the shoe straps.
Joseph watched me from the mirror as his tie flew in loops. “If you keep bending over like that, no won’t make a jot of difference.”
When I emerged from the shower ten minutes later, he sat sprawled over the bed, surrounded by newspapers. Even with my back turned, I knew he watched as I patted myself down, slathered on too-cold lotion, selected a close-fitting shirt and smart skirt. If I was going to Elise’s office, I wanted to impress.
“Joe?”
His coffee cup shook as it landed on the saucer. “Mmm?”
“You know later, when I go out with Elise…do they know about us? If she asks, what do I say?”
“The truth, if you want.”
I gawped at him.
“What?” he said. “Kenji knows what I’m like.”
“I can’t tell Elise that! How’s she meant to take me seriously?”
“Why would you want her to do that?”
“What happened to Bach and Dagier being stuffed to the arse end with bright young things?” I mimicked, scowling.
“Leila. I’m teasing you.” He beckoned. I sank down beside him, twisting my damp ringlets into a slide. He tugged a few strands loose and then smiled as he smoothed them behind my ears. “What would you like to tell her?”
“I…I don’t know. You were hardly inconspicuous last night.”
“Didn’t know I was meant to be. You liked it well enough.” His closed fist brushed my chin. “What would you do with another client?”
“Pretend we were dating.” The words felt an odd shape as I said them.
“Well then.” He patted my knee. “Not exactly a lie, in a manner of speaking.”
“But what if she says something to Yves or Sadie or Poppy?”
“I think she’s a bit more professional than that.”
“If you say so.” The paper was clammy beneath my fingers, and I set it back down before the ink spread. “What will you be up to this afternoon, then?”
“Family, mostly. My parents and my sister’s lot live over here.”
“That’ll be nice for you.”
He finished his coffee. “Why, did you want to come?”
Erm. First, I blinked far more than was attractive, and then a scowl pulled my nose up in an aching wrinkle. Joseph shook with laugher.
“Thank fuck for that,” he said.
“Mom, Dad…this is Leila, my whore,” I said drily. “She’s not a bad lawyer either but mostly, I like her girl parts.”
“I don’t know what’s worse.” He sighed. “That I’d actually say it, or that they wouldn’t be surprised.”
* * * *
Our seduction of Redfish complete, we entered what Joseph called the Peacock Phase. Now that our feathers were spread and shining, our territories mapped and our competitors reduced to hissing from afar, we stopped beating around the proverbial bush. We got raw. We got bloody. We were hashing out contracts, and that meant going to war.
I didn’t expect an easy ride purely due to personal connection, but neither did I foresee such scrutiny. With no friendly greeting or warning of wounds, Elise and her colleagues launched straight into their queries, and it was all I could do not to duck.
“This point,” she said curtly, holding up page fourteen, “we’re not happy with–”
“It’s British tax law. Are you well versed?” Joseph cut in. “And then, of course, you won’t need us at all.”
“Much cheaper,” said Yves.
Elise put a nail-bitten hand up to stifle a laugh. It seemed she enjoyed being a madam. “Not that part, Mr Merchant. Regarding billable hours for the negotiations when we will, in effect, be producing much of the text ourselves–”
“I think what Elise is trying to say,” Deacon said as he removed the pen from his mouth, “is that compared to our other quote, this sounds particularly steep.”
Joseph nodded. “When you consider that other houses are quoting you based on theory, though–when they have never performed an acquisition for a pharmaceutical outfit, where the regulations are crucial–you never know what might take them longer. Much longer. They can’t give you specifics for their billable hours.” He gave a passive little shrug. “We can do that. We have.”
“It seems…excessive.” Elise pursed her lips.
“Again, we can only go as fast as local regulations allow. Things will be slower in Britain than over here, but not massively. We can smooth the way.”
Poppy and Sadie sat together again. How well did they know each other, exactly? How much did Sadie share? They watched Joseph as awed spectators at a tennis match, their eyes darting between verbal blows. Matt smiled faintly every time I found my
self glancing in his direction and I returned it ungrudgingly. At the bottom corner of the table, Kenji manned three iPhones, nodding and murmuring between tapping away.
When we took it in turns to reread bits of the contract, Joseph caught my eye and flicked his tongue lightly over his lips. Hours after our sticky kiss, he tasted me. It writhed in the image of his spread legs beneath the table, those boxy, squared shoulders–he was rapt with the lingering flavour and tense at the iron tease. A wolf with little regard for clothing, sheep or no.
The credit card he’d insisted on giving me this morning sat in my purse. I had refused it with vigour, but he took none of it, offering only instructions to buy an outfit to match the shoes. We had reservations for dinner, he said. I blushed beneath my stray curls whenever I remembered. Such plain words shouldn’t have caught me with that kind of heat…but I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d said he was different. He held a similar role to Charlie and yet Master, Sir, he was not.
He was just Joe: sparse yet intimate, and startlingly unfamiliar in the face of our time spent.
We were there for three hours in all and my stomach squealed at the deluge of coffee. I wished I’d eaten a better breakfast. I wished I wasn’t so fascinated by the jargon and the playful, sharp comebacks that were flying around–the game was beautiful, but keeping up exhausted me.
I blamed last night’s wine. I blamed Joseph. Sometimes, watching him work like this, I realized I didn’t want to fuck him half as much as I just wanted to be him.
Chapter 3
“This is classed as lunch?” I shook sugar from my fingers.
“Only in secret. You can’t tell anyone we did this, okay?” Elise pulled another doughnut from the box and pushed it across her desk with one finger. It was like dangling a stationery catalogue in front of an accountant. I could practically smell it.
“If I asked anyone here if they wanted to get baked goods for lunch, they’d think I was on crazy pills,” she said glumly. “But half of them will have vodka for lunch with no complaints, of course.”
More fat slag food. I would need to run a marathon at this rate.
“I love your office,” I said, swallowing. “The lighting is like something from film noir.”
“You like the glass, huh? You should be here in the winter. It’s like being inside a snow globe.” She tore off a pink-frosted chunk and rolled it around her mouth.
“Sounds gorgeous. Our offices back in London are period, so they’re all old arches and beams.”
“What are they like in winter?”
I scowled. “Cold.”
“Bummer.” She laughed. “Quaint though, I bet.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty. It could be worse.” My hand hovered over the box: double chocolate or just chocolate sprinkles? “These were cooked in vegetable oil, right?”
“It’s possible.”
“Obviously one of our five a day.” Sprinkles. I went in for the kill. “I could never do this at home either. Our office is pretty communal.”
“You hit partner and you’ll get square footage all of your own.”
“I’ll be the size of a small country.”
Her eyes widened in amusement. “Then you need to start spinning before work.”
“I go running. Sometimes.”
Elise wrinkled her nose. “In British weather?”
“Yeah. It’s…refreshing.” Slipping on my arse and hurtling toward a bunch of students on the walk of shame was utterly cleansing of my mental palate. “Really.”
Also, I couldn’t afford an overpriced London gym.
“Well, you look good to me.” She crumpled a bakery napkin. “Now. We have a lot to do and only a few hours to do it–we need a game plan. What do you want from this session, Miss Vaughn?” Her accent caught on all the vowels in a manner that was almost seductive.
“Are we billing these hours?”
“Hell yes, madam.” Her shoulders rose in delight and triumph. “Now, what is it you wish to acquire?”
If her voice didn’t make me weak, her skill in shopping did. I know, I’m a disappointing female stereotype in these matters. Elise sketched a map of all the stores we would try for a dress–because we had, on consideration of venue, ascertained that it must be a dress–and scheduled breaks for coffee. She said it was entirely possible that ice cream would be consumed and I told her I appreciated the warning.
“Budget?” Elise barked as we approached a vintage boutique.
“Um…” I lifted the credit card out of my purse, as if staring at it might make the limit appear.
“Awesome.” She inclined her head, curious and awed by the name on the slip of plastic. “No budget required.”
So it began.
In a store swathed in plum velour, I pointed out the shoes that my outfit had to match. She stroked along the butter-soft leather and mewed like a pleased kitten.
“Leger, I think,” she murmured. “Simple shapes.”
It was almost like having my best friend, Clemmie, over–though Clemmie with no budget was probably enough to cause economic collapse in a small European country.
I’d always picked clothes in the same manner that I interpreted law: they made sense. I liked them. Things matched. I had no innate sense of what was fashionable, only of what I thought suited me, and now one without the other seemed such a waste.
We sat on plush sofas in changing rooms the size of my flat, sipping at Champagne flutes and whispering to each other between giggles. Shop stylists swept in with armfuls of clothes: beaded and exuberant, tight and unforgiving, simple and sinful.
A black bandage dress with a square neckline made Elise raise a hand.
“Turn around,” she said, her wrist flicking.
“What do you think?” I glanced over my shoulder. “This one?”
She stalked over and fingered the faint touch of sparkle over my hip. It winked at her in the harsh light like a gem-wrought tattoo. “This one.” She smiled. “See–Leger. I was right after all.”
I peered into the mirror and a stranger stared back. The one thing I’d worn that was more expensive was my own skin–the one men paid to wear. I loved the way the dress bound my breasts against my chest, forcing them to swell just slightly above the bodice, how it nipped in my waist and sucked at my hips. Like it wanted to fuck me.
“We ought to find a place to celebrate,” said Elise. She turned to one of the stylists. “We’ll take it.”
The dress was wrapped in tissue paper that rustled deliciously as the bag swung in my hand. We pottered around a department store while she chose a scarf, and then fell into a booth at a slick little diner.
“Will you be offended if I don’t drink? I’ve had a lot on this trip…I’ve already got a headache from the fizz.” I let the shiny menu slide back onto the table.
“I suppose since I’m being paid, I should stop drinking too. Still. It doesn’t suck,” she added, her teeth wide and white as she grinned.
“Are you even slightly tipsy? I need you to be all vulnerable so I can pull those embarrassing stories out.”
“About Joe?”
“Yep.”
The waiter arrived and we ordered gooey milkshakes.
“I did ask Ken for you.” She rested her chin on a hand. “But he didn’t have much. I’ve heard stuff from their college days but it’s…well…”
“Were they secret geeks?”
She stifled a giggle with nail-bitten fingers. “Probably! But that’s not what I meant. I don’t know. It’s not really embarrassing, it’s just…ugh.” She snorted. “Crude.”
“I can tolerate crude.” I heart crude. I would elope with it to Vegas and pose next to fake, fat Elvis with my cheap bouquet aloft.
“Oh, really?” She stirred her shake with a stripy straw, leaning in. “Do you know what their nicknames were back then?”
“Go on.”
“Ken-Fucky Tied Lickin’ and the Chairman of the Whored.” Her upper lip twitched in disgust.
A great gu
lp of melted ice cream did little to stem my laughter. I couldn’t help it, and yet it seemed so inappropriate, compared to her face. I’d heard Joseph’s nickname from a similarly revolted mouth–his ex, Isobel, had sobbed the moniker on the floor of our office toilets, and as the memory rose and popped like a bubble, my giggles went limp on the air.
“You think it’s funny?” asked Elise.
“I’m sorry. They’re very…um. Visual names.”
“They were giant man sluts, Leila. Proud of it, too. Joseph keeps threatening to use it in his speech at our wedding.”
“You’re engaged? Wow. Congratu–”
“Oh. No.” She sighed.
“I’m sorry.” I cringed. “I didn’t mean to assume–”
“No, no, it’s okay. It’s…complicated.” She gazed forlornly at her empty ring finger. “He’s asked, you know.”
“But you said no?”
“I really do want to marry him, I just…I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. I barely know you,” she said, flustered.
“I think I owe you a shoulder, given your excellent taste in dresses.” And she seemed so buoyantly lonely.
She tugged at her hair. “Maybe I feel that you know what it’s like, you know, being with Joe and all.”
“Being like what?” Kenji was unlikely to be paying her. Ahem.
She leaned in again. “Does he–oh God. I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but…ugh. Does he want to see you with other people?”
Erm. “Yes.” I watched her blink. “He wants a lot of things in that vein, actually.”
He did tell me to be honest, and frankly, after Isobel, I felt like Elise deserved it. Charlotte wriggled in the grip of pleasure–she wanted a playmate. An acolyte.
“And that’s okay with you?” Elise frowned.
“I think so. But then I knew from the beginning. I can understand why you’d feel weird about it if it’d never been your thing and it was suddenly thrust upon you, so to speak.”
Breaking Joseph Page 4