“I’m not with anyone,” Julianne responded with a sense of shame and dread. Then this queasy feeling suddenly gave way to desperation. “But please don’t kill me! I swear I won’t tell a soul. I’m going to call a cab right now and go straight home to New York.”
“Kill you? New York? Home?” The gentleman replied with genuine astonishment. “I had nothing of the sort on my mind! Besides, if you came all this way from New York, it’s going to take hours at this rate. Come on. You can accompany me.”
“But what about your date?”
“Date?” The gentleman smiled and nodded slowly. “We don’t bring dates. We find them. Over on Royale Island, and speaking of which, they’re going to take off shortly. Believe it or not, these people are punctual about getting to the island to act out all their vices. Come with me.”
He grabbed her hand. A surge of excitement and fear crashed into Julianne’s mind.
“I’m sorry,” she replied as she attempted to pull her hand free. “I don’t even have the money and I’m in way over my head as it is.”
In response, the gentleman spun Julianne into his arms, as though the two were engaged in a passionate tango dance. He kissed her hard. She felt her tongue gently brush up against his. Whatever objections Julianne had to her present situation were gone. As soon as the gentleman let her go, Julianne stumbled backward and swooned. She turned and blew a raspberry, before giggling like an infant crashing from a sugar high. He grabbed her hand once more. Julianne would put up absolutely no resistance this time. She was in his carnal thrall.
“Let’s get on the boat!” He grinned like the Devil himself.
**********************************************************
The mysterious gentleman still hadn’t revealed his name when he led Julianne back into the Estate for a quick glass of whatever she wanted before their departure. It was like stepping into a private mansion in Beverly Hills reserved for the world’s biggest celebrities. Their gait was fast. He quickly asked her what she was drinking. Julianne ordered a gin and tonic—the drinks were already included, apparently. Before they headed back outside toward the yacht, Julianne reached into her purse and slipped a twenty-dollar bill into a famished tip jar. The bartender watched Julianne as though she possessed two heads. For this crowd, the tip jar was a joke.
Julianne held to the gentleman’s shoulder, as he escorted her down the docks and straight for The Olympian. She sipped her gin and tonic. For a brief moment, the landscape appeared to tilt downward, as though a bowling ball had been dropped onto a balancing scale. For one terrifying moment, Julianne feared that something had been mixed into her drink without her knowledge. But this was not the case. She had, quite simply, never tasted a better gin and tonic in her life. This was the second time, within a three-minute window, that Julianne found herself enraptured by the superior quality of living that the members of the private Royale Island Yacht Club.
“Are you okay?” asked the stranger.
“Oh yes,” replied Julianne in a hedonistic daze. “Yes, I’ve just never done anything like this before.”
“Well, I’m happy to bring you into the fold,” he smiled ambiguously.
“Why are you doing this exactly?” Julianne pondered.
The stranger turned. With his eyes, he loosened her dress and watched it drop to the ground.
“I think you know why I’m doing this.”
It was obvious to Julianne that he was undressing her mentally. It made her ever so slightly wet. The stranger nodded to the two bouncers standing on opposite sides of the platform. They stood aside, as he led Julianne onto this expansive regal palace, resting peacefully above sea level. Julianne wondered to herself if this is what it felt like to step onto the R.M.S. Titanic for the first time. This was a level of exorbitant wealth, power, and influence that Julianne never could have pictured in her most extravagant and deviant dreams. This was a lifestyle to which she could easily become acclimated.
As Julianne continued to survey the interior of the grand old Olympian, Shannon approached in a shimmering black ball gown. Simon appeared to be joined to Shannon’s hip. This was a woman who apparently had the innate gift of reducing grown men – especially those in their twenties – to sex-starved servants. For the rest of the evening, whenever she saw Shannon and her boy toy together, Julianne couldn’t help but wonder whether to be envious or disturbed by Shannon’s supernatural skills. At this particular moment, however, Julianne was still waiting for the penny to drop. She figured it was only a matter of time before some imposing and menacing bouncer informed Julianne that some egregious mistake had been made, and that she’d need to be tossed overboard forthwith.
“Julianne!” Shannon walked over to Julianne and kissed her on the cheeks. “I am so happy you could make it.”
“Well,” Julianne blushed. “I just got lucky, I guess.”
Shannon nodded in acknowledgement.
“So how were you able to gather all that money so quickly? Let me guess. You have an uncle? No! A grandparent: the last surviving grandparent by the looks of it.”
It was immediately apparent to Julianne that Shannon was inexperienced in conversing on a normal level. She chose to let the comment slip away unnoticed.
“I took care of it,” the stranger interjected.
“Ah. Julianne, I see you’ve met Mr. Erickson.”
“Call me Ben,” replied Ben Erickson. Julianne was expecting something more exotic than Ben Erickson, but at least she could now put a name to his incandescent face.
“Nice to finally meet, you Ben!” quipped Julianne before shaking his hand. “Julianne Wallace. A pleasure.”
Julianne reckoned this was a milestone in her life: the first man she kissed without bothering to learn his name beforehand.
“Ben, is this how you ordinarily kick off a courtship?” Shannon joked.
“You know me,” said Ben. “I’m instinctive in all areas of my life. I saw this ravishing woman in a breathtaking dress like this and I thought I’d make my presence known.”
Julianne choked her beaming smile down in an attempt to keep up her poised and sophisticated disposition. But internally, she was shrieking like a teenager at a trending boy band concert. He likes the dress! She thought. Oh, thank you Trisha. Thank you so much for pushing me into this insane plan. I cannot wait to have this man inside me.
“So you weren’t kidding,” observed Shannon as she turned toward Julianne. “It sounds like this young lady hit the jackpot.”
Shannon winked to Julianne as if to say, go and get it.
Julianne studied Simon for a moment. It didn’t take long for Julianne to figure out that Simon was the sort of individual he could only process a single thought at a time. He was vacancy incarnate. Throughout the conversation, he appeared to make a conscious effort to tune out every single word uttered by the three grown-ups standing before him. Simon was unable to clear even one square inch of space out of his mind; he could only handle so much brain power to keep his concentration focused on how he was going to make Shannon come later on.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” said Shannon before disappearing above deck with Simon. Ben and Julianne watched them and turned to each other.
“Should we follow?” Ben asked his plus one.
“Why? What’s up there?”
“The view. The view of Royale Island. Darling, you’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
“To be honest, Ben, I’ve only been on this yacht for a minute or two and already I feel like I’ve seen everything.”
Ben leaned forward and allowed his eyes to sparkle. Julianne felt hypnotized.
“Oh, you have no idea.”
CHAPTER Four
Ben Erickson led Julianne Wallace up to the boat deck. The swarms of anonymous billionaires, bankers, lobbyists, producers, and entrepreneurs were beginning to pair off into a series of illicit couplings. The time was now one minute past midnight. For the Royale Island Yacht Club, this was the equivalent of find
ing yourself stranded in the middle of gridlock on a blocked-up freeway. But they needn’t have worried. The engines purred softly as the Olympian prepared to embark on its voyage toward Royale Island.
Julianne and Ben headed toward the Olympian’s stern. They found an empty spot along the railing and claimed it. Ben turned and leaned his back against the freshly painted white bars. Julianne continued to enjoy her exquisite gin and tonic, while she leaned forward in the opposite direction and looked ahead onto the dark and murky horizon. A midnight fog had set in, and the moon was nowhere to be found. As the Olympian slowly cruised away from the pier, a smattering of polite applause followed. The Olympian rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees before heading into the path of a thick and ominous fog.
Julianne didn’t quite know what to make of it. She thought about calling Trisha one last time, just to make sure that Trisha hadn’t accidentally directed Julianne toward a completely different yacht club. But little did Julianne realize that the modern world was about to leave her for a time. There was no wireless connection at the Royale Island Yacht Club; a receptionist was on hand to receive any emergency calls. Naturally, as the odd multinational collapsed, it was occasionally necessary for yacht club staff to interrupt the fleshy delights of its members. But these instances were rare. The Royale Island Yacht Club provided an excuse for the exceedingly wealthy to disappear from connected society and step into an insular little world. Julianne’s stomach was taut with bulging knots.
“Looks pretty dark out there,” Julianne commented.
“It’s just a mild fog,” replied Ben. “Wait until we get closer and closer to Royale Island. You’ll never see anything like it.”
Julianne turned back to Ben and laughed.
“Listen, like I said, I already feel like—“
“I know. You’ve seen everything.”
Julianne felt her confidence turn itself up a few notches. She tilted her chin upward, looked Ben directly in the eye, and shot him a lustful stare.
“But I know I haven’t seen everything.”
Ben raised both of his eyebrows and grinned.
“What are you looking forward to seeing the most?”
“You.”
“You’re an unusually forward woman, Julianne.”
“You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing,” Julianne flirted.
“Not at all. I like my ladies more forward than most. You’re passing every last one of my auditions.”
“Auditions?” Julianne asked sharply.
“Julianne, you have to understand something. The Royale Island Yacht Club is not an online dating service. One does not come here or join us to meet the love of his, or her, life. The Royale Island Yacht Club is a unique privilege for the selective upper classes. We can’t, and we do not, allow anyone into the Royale Island Yacht Club unless they are thoroughly vetted.”
“So I guess I’m not in the club yet.”
“Not yet…but you might be. If you play your cards right.”
Ben leaned forward and kissed Julianne softly. Her lips brushed up against his and she smiled sweetly.
“I don’t know what to do with this drink,” Julianne commented, as she looked around for a place to put her gin and tonic for the time being. Ben grabbed it and tossed the spirits overboard.
“We’ll get you another one,” said Ben, as he kissed her once more. Julianne could feel his erection growing and throbbing inside his trousers. She could also feel her carefully chosen V-neck panties soaking gradually in Julianne’s juices.
“May I ask you a question?” Julianne took a gamble. “Of course, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”
“I have no difficulty with answering…hmm, most questions.”
“So you said the Royale Island Yacht Club was not the kind of place to fall in love.”
“That’s right.”
“Well…does it happen?”
“From time to time, of course. Occasionally, people fall in love here by accident. Generally, though, our pleasures tend to be more…visceral, if you know what I mean.”
“But have you ever fallen in love?” Julianne pushed the matter further.
“A long time ago,” replied Ben without a trace of emotion in his voice.
“But never with another club member?”
“No. No, we all…well, most of us are on the same page about what we’re looking for. And we’re looking for is a good time! Everyone thinks it’s so easy being rich, but you’d be surprised. There’s always a million different problems weighing down on your mind. Then, everybody on your board tells you about how ‘important’ it is for hard-working people to turn their brains off, but it’s a lot tougher than you think. That’s the beauty of the Royale Island Yacht Club. Nothing exists beyond this fog. Once the skies clear up for us, the world as we know it…it isn’t there, Julianne. There is no real world out here. There aren’t even laws.”
“No laws?” Julianne’s voice quivered.
“You can do anything out here. You can gamble, you can do drugs, you can buy drugs or sell drugs – more potent and pure than you could ever experience back there in the real world – and as for sex, well, look around you.”
Julianne did just that. She was surrounded by some of the secret rulers of the world, all swooping themselves over the women they had brought on board the yacht.
“How many of these women, would you say, are in fact, escorts?”
“To be honest, I’d assume all of them.”
“With the exception of the delightful Shannon Cashmere, you’d be correct.”
“Is that boy she hangs around with a male prostitute?”
Ben threw his head back into the air and cackled. Julianne sighed, nearly inducing a heart attack in the process. Oh thank God, he laughs. He’s actually a human being!
“No, he isn’t. But he might as well be. She has a rotating stable of men. But she likes to bring Simon out here because he’s especially game for the orgies. Some of these younger guys, they don’t see the appeal. But that’s because they’re all terrified of seeing other men with their dicks hanging out.”
Julianne finally began to process the sheer volume of escorts in her presence.
“Wow,” she chuckled. “I’ve never seen so many prostitutes rounded up in one place. Is this a convention or a sting operation?”
Ben smiled again. In doing so, he bore his teeth once more. Whenever he did so, Julianne worried she might swoon herself into a fainting fit and accidentally throw herself overboard.
“You’re a funny girl,” said Ben. “I like that.”
“Why thank you,” replied Julianne. Ben steered the conversation back on course.
“Again, the finest on the East Coast. But you see, escorts…escorts were never my cup of tea.”
“So who did you come with?”
“Nobody.”
“Do you normally come here alone?”
“Yes, on the yacht. I almost never bring anyone else.”
“But hold on, what do you do out here if you’re only coming alone?”
“There are more people at the club, Julianne. More yachts will be on their way, too.”
“So is there a certain special someone waiting for you at the club?”
“There’s a woman I like to have fun with. Then again, I’ve just met you. So I don’t think I’m going to be requiring her services this evening…”
Before Ben and Julianne could embrace once again, Julianne noticed a beam of light piercing through the heavy grey fog. At first, Julianne mistook it for a lighthouse. She squinted. The Estate was coming into focus, as the Olympian prepared to free itself from the inclement weather.
“Is that it?” Julianne turned to Ben.
“That’s the one,” he replied. “Listen, are you a little chilly by chance?”
“What makes you say that?”
“The backless dress for thing. I’m in a suit, and if I’m chilly, then I’m sure you most certainly are. Would you like my jacket?
”
“No, I’ll survive. But thank you.”
“Well, it’s going to take a little while before we’re ready to disembark. It could take anywhere between forty-five minutes to an hour, in fact. So what do you say we go back downstairs and make ourselves a little more comfortable?”
“I’ve never turned down ‘comfortable’ as an option. I’d be delighted.”
Ben linked his arm with Julianne’s. They slowly yet confidently stepped across the stern and toward the staircase. Ben, ever the gentleman, gestured toward Julianne to head down to the lower decks. He followed closely behind. But Julianne wasn’t prepared for the sight that she was about to behold.
Julianne hadn’t paid much heed to the passing of time. But they couldn’t have been on top of the boat deck for longer than ten minutes. But apparently, a ten-minute interval is all the members of the Royale Island Yacht Club needed.
Less than half of the individuals downstairs were fully dressed. All else were luxuriating in various states of savage sexual abandon. Julianne had never seen so many naked asses pointing up to the ceiling in her life. Everywhere she looked, there were members of this mysterious black tie elite climbing inside of highly valued and exotic escorts. In one corner of the yacht, a tuxedo-wearing younger gentleman, wearing a red bandana over his face, was sprinkling a shower of hundred-dollar bills over the voluptuous nude blonde who was vigorously riding him. In another corner, two perky brunettes were contorted into the 69 stance to an audience of sixty-something billionaires who could no longer get it up.
Julianne turned back to Ben. She was overwhelmed. She felt a fainting fit stewing within her. Ben noticed she had turned pale. He gently placed his hands over her hips in an effort to placate Julianne’s visible anxiety.
Billionaire Romance: Royal Island Yacht Club Page 3