by May Sage
She was replying to the email while grinding the coffee when her company phone beeped discreetly. A new email.
She frowned; FedEx was confirming a delivery addressed to her, arriving today, here at the office. She hadn't bought anything, and she never put her name down on company orders, so it made little sense. She dismissed it, and brought Cal his espresso.
"Still sticking to your gross green stuff?" the man asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Matcha isn't gross."
She found herself blushing. She’d tried it out after Desmond had mentioned it at Sarabeth’s; a month later, she was addicted. Matcha was ground tea leaves, and had practically as much caffeine as coffee—a lot more than most other kinds of tea, but instead of getting a caffeine high, it seemed to help her energy level throughout the day. Plus, it did taste a lot better than coffee, as far as she was concerned.
"It's like drinking mud," Cal argued with a grimace.
She shrugged. "I like it. And it keeps me awake and functional, so there."
"I like you awake and functional," her boss admitted. "So feel free to carry on ordering it. Just don't make me drink the stuff."
"Deal. I have good news from Hong Kong."
The morning passed in a blur, like every other day; emails first, and around nine o'clock, when normal business hours started, a few emergencies popped up. Two assistants begged her to reschedule appointments, someone had found an error in a contract, there was an update on a corporate lawsuit—a woman was blaming K.P.'s drugs for her mother's death, when the woman had suffered from about twelve other ailments. Every doctor out there was in their corner.
At eleven, the lobby rang to inform her that an express delivery had arrived. Normal mail went through to get sorted by the secretarial office, but she dealt with expresses addressed to the right department, to ensure that urgent correspondence was dealt with in a timely manner. When she got downstairs, she frowned at the white and blue box with her name on it.
Normally, express contracts overnighted for Cal had a special code, like "John Smith" and "Aladdin" in the subtitles. But this package was addressed to Kathryn Woodrow.
She remembered the email notification she'd received so many hours ago. Who the hell could it have been from?
She hadn't had the time to make friends, her mom and dad didn't have her new work details, and her big sister had never sent her anything.
She froze. Could it be from Natalie? A threat of some kind? Another video? It could also have come from Wallace.
"Are you all right, miss?" the concierge asked, visibly concerned.
She must have blanched.
"I'm just fine, Will," she replied, trying her best to smile. "Say, do you guys check parcels?"
The man frowned. "We don't open them if we don't have to, but we scan them for explosives, security, that kind of thing. If it looks like there could be something dangerous, we open."
She nodded. So, at least, it wasn't an actual bomb or anything like that.
"All right. Thanks."
Feeling like a zombie, she rushed back to her floor and locked herself in the toilet, the obnoxious parcel on her lap. Ryn forced herself to breathe in and out, before finally tearing it open.
She stared at the contents of the box in disbelief and confusion, as relief poured through her veins. Relief, and something else.
There was no sender's name, no note. Ryn left the toilet and returned to her desk, putting the box down next to her, when Cal came out of his office. His eyes went to the parcel, and he tilted his head.
"You draw?" he asked her.
"Paint," she corrected. "I paint. Well, I used to."
There was every art supply she could have wanted in the box: good quality paper, as well as a humongous box of crayons—the best quality. Also, watercolor paint, and oil paint. Amazing brushes she was just dying to get her hands on. Fucking expensive stuff she would have hesitated to buy, although her new salary allowed for a few treats.
He nodded. "Taking it up again? Good. We all need a hobby. Are you ready to get downtown for lunch with the Frays?"
She nodded her head, willing herself to return to the present. "Of course. Let me just grab my tablet, I've taken notes of our previous meetings."
As she looked through her desk for the device, her heart skipped a bit. However many times she ran it through her brain, she was pretty certain that there was only one person who could have had the money and knowledge necessary to have sent her that parcel.
Desmond King.
He was the only person who knew she used to paint, who knew she'd stopped, who knew where she worked, and who could have spent five hundred bucks on supplies without a thought.
At first, she was grateful, excited, almost giddy, but by the end of the day, Ryn was pissed off.
He hadn’t been able to bully her into taking some time off, so now he sent her some stuff to ensure she spent some time away from work. That would have been okay if she’d been his little sister, his friend, or even his damn wife, but he was totally overreaching with her. They didn’t know each other at all; she was just a girl he’d decided to take pity on. Fuck. Didn’t he realize how worthless that made her feel?
She had half a mind to chuck the whole thing in the trash. But it was really good paint, so she placed it in her biggest empty drawer. She’d just return it. That was the way forward. Next time she saw him, she’d give him the box and tell him to leave her alone. She could take care of herself, dammit.
Fuck him.
13
Red Light
Four weeks ago
Kathryn’s demeanor had completely changed once he’d confronted her about Wallace in the car. She’d been perfectly poised, playing a role, like a sub who had been given a character in a scene. Now, she’d dropped the mask. She didn’t know where to look, keeping her eyes down and away from him. She remained one step behind him as they walked inside his building.
Desmond greeted the doorman, and the concierge, a charming blonde woman who tilted her hat to him.
A small gasp escaped Kathryn’s lips.
He turned to her, glad to see a sign a life. Her eyes went right to the floor, staying there as though the red toenails peeping out of her beige platform heels were the most exciting thing she’d seen in her lifetime.
“Well?” he prompted. Realizing that his snapping might have seemed cold and demanding to someone who didn’t realize that it was his default tone, he added, “You seemed surprised."
She nodded. "I just realized I know the building. I mean, I've never been here, but I saw a sketch of it when I first started at K.C.”
Desmond was surprised. "You recognized the building from a sketch."
A sketch she'd seen years ago.
She shrugged. "I studied art. I like to imagine what things look like. And the design was distinctive."
Until then, she’d been a chess piece from his opponent’s game. The other guy’s queen, so to speak. He’d desired her first, then he’d started to abhor the very sight of her. But now, Desmond looked in her brown eyes and noticed her. Her, the person. The woman who’d studied art. She’d given him a piece of herself, uncovering one layer.
He hated her for that. Seeing the woman meant becoming all too aware of what had happened to her. Right under his nose.
Without willing his body to move, he placed his hand on the small of her back, lightly, and pulled her forward. When he became conscious of his movement, he was careful to keep her at a distance, to avoid herding her too close to him.
The last thing she needed was to imagine that he had designs on her right now. So he kept her at arm’s length. His hand stayed on her back, though. He had to ensure that she walked next to him, not behind.
"This was one of the first buildings my brothers and I bought. We needed a place in town; commuting from Long Island every day was taking up some valuable time. It was a dump, and the owner sold it cheap in 2009, after the economy collapsed. It wasn’t until we got a contractor to l
ook into the details that we realized just what we'd gotten ourselves into. There was mold, the insulation was rotting, and the antediluvian wiring had been nibbled by rats."
She grimaced. "Gross."
"Very. After you," he said when the elevator's doors opened in front of them.
She looked up in surprise. He was truly laying it on thick, but he had to make her understand, however he could, that she mattered.
Kathryn stepped in and he followed suit, frowning, because when she'd walked in the metal box, she'd moved away from his hand.
He felt the loss of her warmth, and he didn't like it.
Desmond folded his hands behind his back to prevent himself from touching her again. She certainly didn't need him to take liberties now.
To fill the stuffy silence, he continued talking about the building.
"As there are twelve floors, we decided to make it a commercial project, converting most of the place into apartments. Financially, it made sense. But King Pharmaceutics, K.T.T. and K.O.K. weren't adequate umbrellas for a building project, so we created K.C.. When it took off, to structure the three companies adequately, we formed King Industries."
“K.T.T. and K.O.K.?” Kathryn repeated, tilting her head in curiosity.
“Kings of the Tower, and Kinks of Kings. They’re two businesses my father created. The Tower, of course, and a luxury adult-toy line,” he added, smiling. “There’s a suitable front for both businesses, of course, but I like to tell it like it is. Both companies are profitable, but my brothers are too ambitious to settle for riding on the success of our father. We bought a majority share of a crumbling pharma company and turned it around."
"Your brothers are the only ambitious ones?" she asked, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips.
He shrugged.
"Oh, I aim to excel, but I might have been content with the existing workload. My brothers? Not so much. Our father gave us shares when we were born; we had access to them at twenty-one. I was the first to cash in. I sat on the money. When Callum got his share, he started looking into investing elsewhere. I think it might have to do with the fact that there wasn't too much room for growth in our family businesses. Companies like K.O.K. and K.T.T. don't need too many executives. I could have managed them both; what would have been left for him? He opened up therapy clinics first, but they were too easy to manage, not quite grand enough for Callum. By the time he found something he wanted to invest in, our younger brother, Maverick, had gotten his money, too. Callum convinced us to jump in with him. We found this place the following year. By then, we were all working around the clock and the hour of commute per day was eating into precious time where we could have been working, or sleeping."
"Or eating, supposedly."
He shrugged. "We ate at work. The first few years were intense."
"But worth it?"
His smile was easy and relaxed now. Desmond glanced at the woman. Talking to her was so easy.
"But worth it,” he confirmed.
The elevator stopped and beeped when they reached the last floor.
"The penthouse," she said, rolling her eyes, like she'd expected nothing else.
He smiled. "The penthouse. If you own a building, might as well get a view."
He keyed in a code on the control panel to his right, and the elevator's doors opened inside his home. The lights came on, illuminating the clean, white, open space.
Only then did he stop to consider what he was doing.
Kathryn Woodrow was a woman. As a rule, he never, ever let a woman inside his place. Hadn't for years, since he'd learned his lesson.
Desmond was entirely omnisexual. He appreciated the female and male form equally. Never had he stopped to think that there should be a difference until he was told that a man was supposed to be attracted to women, by an old teacher who’d been raised in another era. The concept completely evaded him. When he watched porn as a teen, he’d grown hard watching the male actors pump their dicks, and he’d grown hard seeing actresses rub their pussies. Sex needn’t be complicated with boundaries. When he moved past porn, he found that he came just as hard regardless of whether it was a man or a woman sucking his cock. Society made no sense to him, in various regards.
That said, there were differences between men and women. Mostly, their way of thinking. Men took things at face value, while women had a tendency to read between the lines. When he said to a lover that he intended to play for a night and wasn't interested in more, men believed him. A lot of women found reasons to hope for more. If he looked at them a little too long, if he kissed them too softly. And definitely when he took them to his place.
He even avoided female staff after a while. Three of his female housekeepers had had a crush on him. One of them had been married. One of his assistants had doodled Mrs. King on her diary. He was young, still, and attractive. Rich, too. A lot of women fantasized about that sort of thing. Dealing with men was just simpler.
He dismissed the wave of unease. Kathryn Woodrow wasn't in search of Mr. Right. She wouldn't read more into the situation. If she jumped to conclusions, she'd imagine he wanted to fuck her, not wed her.
"Come on in."
14
Unbalanced
Now
Desmond stood behind his desk, looking far into the distance through his large window, and attempting to focus. In vain. He was restless and distracted, for the first time in decades.
"Mr. King? I have this year’s list,” said Hester, walking into his office.
She stopped and frowned, surprised to not find him behind his desk, no doubt.
"Thank you, Hester," said he, extending his hand to take the piece of paper she was holding.
She came closer and gave it to him. He was confused at the first glance.
"What is this?"
Hester was growing more concerned by the second, he could tell.
"The list of potential charities you could support in memory of your mother, Mr. King. You always want it done on the first of September."
He wouldn't have had to ask if he hadn't been so damn distracted of late.
"Yes, of course. I'll run it by my brothers. Thank you for remembering, Hester. I should pay you more."
"You should," she echoed with an enthusiastic nod. "But seriously, what's wrong with you at the moment?"
Very good question. He countered it with one of his own. "Do you find this job too taxing? Do you still have time to see your friends, relax, go out?"
Hester tilted her head. "Friends?" she repeated, as if the concept was entirely foreign to her.
He grimaced. "That bad?"
His assistant shrugged in response. "Some people prioritize their careers and others prefer to socialize and relax. We can't have it all. I chose this."
"Why?" he prompted.
"Financial security is a big part of it, but I am also very driven and ambitious. It's in my DNA. Something to do with growing up in the foster-care system, and having very little for the better part of my life, according to my roommate. She's a shrink," Hester added.
Desmond lifted a surprised brow. He hadn't known that she’d been a foster kid. He didn't know much about Hester at all, come to think of it. Not on a personal level. Hell, what did she drink, tea or coffee?
"If you were burning out, would you feel comfortable letting me know? Stepping back to take care of yourself?"
Hester didn't need to think on her answer. "No, sir. You'd replace me without a second of hesitation."
And she probably wasn't wrong. He was that kind of an asshole. Christ.
"Is that an invitation to take some time off?"
Desmond chuckled. "It is. If you need it."
He wondered whether he'd ever seen her real smile before this day; it seemed to entirely illuminate her from the inside out. Hester had always been attractive, but right now, even he couldn't deny that his transparent, unfairly perfect assistant was downright beautiful.
"Thank you, sir. I sure would like a couple of days off. My ro
ommate and I were talking about going to a spa. You know, getting pampered and massaged for two days nonstop. I could use a Friday and Monday off when it's convenient."
Desmond nodded. "Take this weekend. Most of our hotels have spa facilities. Book yourself and your roommate in on the company card. You deserve it."
That had been easy enough. Now, if only he could convince a certain contrary woman to also take care of herself, maybe he'd stop worrying about her at the back of his mind for most of his waking hours. And his sleeping ones.
Hester was still beaming when she left his office. Just as she reached his door, she turned back to him and added, "Maybe I should also book you in for a massage. You do look dreadful."
Didn't he know it.
"I'm glad to know I can always count on you to say it like it is, Hester."
"Seriously, though. You need to chill. Take up kickboxing or something, maybe.”
Desmond froze.
You need to chill.
There was one way he “chilled” and that certainly wasn’t kickboxing.
Shit. He’d put his current fatigue down to exhaustion, because he hadn't slept very well for weeks, but now that Hester had pointed it out, he didn't think that was the core of the problem.
No, the issue was that he hadn't let off some steam with a partner. Not at home, and not at The Tower. Sex was an integral part of who he was, and he hadn't fucked anyone in ages.
His life was carefully balanced; there was a time for business, a time for family, and he’d also taken some time for his pleasures.
The latter part had proved difficult these last few weeks.
Desmond had regular friends he played with. Not only the Parkers; there also was an underwear model with a spectacular nine-inch cock and a wonderful ass who was currently in town, as well as a dozen people he regularly played with at The Tower.
He went there every week, three or four times, to take care of the administrative side of things. His usual schedule on nights he was on duty was finishing work at Kings and Knights by six, then heading back to his place to eat and relax before going to The Tower by eight o'clock. The manager in charge made him aware of any issues he needed to address, and he worked for three or four hours—running through applications from new members, for instance. Desmond also personally took care of the renewal of any memberships, particularly the few members who attended for free.