by Tia Siren
Okay, you're horny, she told herself. It's not surprising, is it? When was the last time you had a guy? She tried to remember. More than a year ago, she concluded. A guy named Jeff. She'd gone to high school with him, and he'd called her out of the blue. He'd told her he'd always liked her and that at school he'd never had the courage to ask her on a date. She'd found his excuse charming. He told her it was because he thought she was way out of his league.
“I'd have gone on a date with you, Jeff,” she'd told him. She remembered it was she who'd taken the initiative after the movie. In the car on the way home, she'd reached across for his zipper and slowly pulled it down. He'd almost crashed the car. Both of them knew the area well and decided to drive down to the creek, where they got out and made love in the cool evening air. But you didn't come, she reminded herself. He was so quick, you didn't get any pleasure out of it. Hell, even more reason to feel horny. When was the last time you came? To her shame, Alina couldn't remember.
“There, what do you think of the place?” Ryan asked, snapping her out of her train of thought.
They had just rounded a bend in the driveway, the place where the house suddenly came into view. It was the point where most visitors looked on in awe at the mansion. It was unlike anything Alina had ever seen. Sure, she'd seen such houses in magazines and on TV programs, but never with her own eyes. It was beautiful, but she also found it imposing. The great front door, guarded by two stone lions, wasn't welcoming. If she were his wife, she would take the lions away and replace them with stone troughs full of flowers. What she did like were the window shutters. They gave the place a European feel.
“Wow, it's beautiful,” she told Ryan. “It's so nice of you to put me up. I could have stayed in a hotel for a few nights until I got sorted out.”
“The place has twelve bedrooms. You could live here for years and we'd never meet,” he said. “Besides, I get lonely sometimes.” She looked at him in disbelief. A billionaire like him, lonely. How? It was quite an admission for a man of his type to make, she thought.
She caught another wave of Ryan's aftershave, and the thoughts she'd had before all came flooding back. “Come in,” he said, putting his weight against the giant oak door. “This is John. If you want anything while you are here, just let him know. You won't understand what he says though.” Alina gave Ryan a puzzled look. “He's Scottish,” he said, clearing the mystery.
“Ah. Nice to meet you, John.” She went to shake his hand.
“No. He's a butler, and apparently they don't shake hands,” Ryan said, still amused by John's standoffish nature.
“No, sir, we do not. It's not our place.”
Alina almost burst out laughing. Was he being serious? What kind of world did he live in?
“Okay, I'll let John show you to your room. I'm sure you'll want to freshen up.” After the long journey, the thought of a hot bath or shower was too much to turn down. She nodded gratefully. “When you're ready, come back down. We're having a party around the pool.”
“Sure.” Alina wondered what form one of his parties took. She didn't imagine he was the type to sit around the dinner table, drinking wine and talking politics. No, she was sure the type of party he enjoyed involved much more than that.
The room John showed her too was so beautiful, she stood in the middle of it and held her breath. So this was how the other half lived. Her room was bigger than the whole upper floor of her parents’ home. How did people get so rich? She hoped to find out in the coming weeks.
She allowed herself to fall back onto the king-sized bed and almost disappeared into the softness of it. Don't close your eyes or you'll fall asleep, she told herself. Get a shower and go to the party.
Although she was only twenty, she wasn't much of a party animal. She preferred sitting around a table with friends and talking. She heaved herself off the bed and walked to a door, behind which she assumed there was a bathroom. She was right, only it wasn't a bathroom as she knew them. This bathroom was more like a Roman bath house. There was black granite on all surfaces, a huge bath on lions’ feet, and a shower behind glass. It was the most enormous shower she'd ever seen. She was torn. Bath or shower? Shower. She'd fall asleep in a bath.
She got undressed and stood under the powerful jet of warm water. She took the shampoo and began to wash her hair. If Alina had known that at school she'd been most boys’ masturbation fantasy, she wouldn't have been quite so dissatisfied with her body. She liked her legs and thighs but hated her stomach. To her, it sagged and bulged in all the wrong places, and her breasts were too large. She was sick and tired of men staring at her chest when they should be looking at her face. She was reasonably satisfied with her behind, although she often looked at it in the mirror, searching for the tiniest evidence of cellulite. There was none, and her dissatisfaction with her stomach was ill-founded. Any boy who had ever seen it, and not many had, thought it was soft and seductively feminine.
Her room had everything. She'd brought her own hair dryer, but when she switched on the one in the room, she was almost blown away. It fanned her dark hair and dried it in no time. She had long hair. It swept down to the center of her back, in long shiny waves. She didn't wear much makeup. She didn't need much. Her skin was unblemished and fresh. She applied a little eye shadow and lip gloss.
Hell, it's all creased, she thought as she fished around in her bag for something to wear. The only thing that had escaped the baggage handler’s wrath was a tiny black circle skirt. She wondered if she dared appear in it. She had no choice, though. She added a black silk top with spaghetti straps and stood in front of the mirror. She was pleased she had; her nipples protruded through the material, making her look like a cheap hooker. She gave a whoop of frustration. Then it came to her: all the Regency British movies she'd seen, the butler with an iron in his hand. John was very obliging and in no time returned to her room with her knee-length skirt and a navy blouse, both impeccably pressed.
Feeling more comfortable in her conservative clothes, she went downstairs. Ryan had pointed to a door when he'd mentioned the party. She could hear music and decided to follow the sound. The door took her from the entrance hall into a huge living room. Although the house probably had been built in the 1920s, the room was contemporary in decoration. When she looked out the window, she found herself looking at the backyard. There was a large, well-manicured lawn with the kind of stripes her father always tried to get on his lawn but never did. At each side of the lawn were flower beds with a dazzling array of colorful foliage.
The French doors were open, and Alina stepped outside. It was then that she noticed the music was coming from a separate building across the lawn. When she was halfway across the turf, she heard the sound of water and screams.
“Hi. Welcome to one of my famous parties,” Ryan said. His white pants were gone, and he was wearing a pair of tight-fitting swimming shorts and no shirt. Obviously just out of the pool, his body was covered in tiny drops of water. Keep your eyes up, she told herself, painfully aware of the considerable bulge down below.
“Come on, let's get you a drink,” he said. The pool was large, as big as most municipal pools. It was housed in a building with an arched roof and glass doors that opened to the lawn.
“Are they...?” she exclaimed.
Ryan followed Alina's eyes. He laughed. “Yes, looks like it.” In one corner there were a number of sun beds covered in red leather mattresses. A couple was making love on one, both totally naked and in full view of everybody. The strange thing to Alina was that nobody seemed to care, or for that matter even looked. She, on the other hand, couldn't take her eyes away. The man, on top, was a so good looking, she instantly wanted to swap with the women whose moans were getting louder by the second.
She hurriedly turned away and looked at the pool. It was full of topless women and a few men, who she assumed were Ryan's friends. She counted five guys and sixteen girls. The guys looked so happy; it made Alina wonder if any of them would ever settle down with just on
e woman. Most of them looked to be in their thirties, and she was sure they'd spent the last ten years fooling around with dozens of women at parties like this. She'd have to be careful to not get involved with a man like that. There was no way she was ever going to share her husband with anybody. She closed her eyes in embarrassment as the woman in the corner reached her climax.
Ryan handed her a drink, a long crystal glass full of real champagne. She took a sip and then another. “That's nice.”
“First time you've ever had real champagne?” he asked.
“I think so. Everyone calls sparkling wine champagne, but it isn't, is it?”
“No. Champagne comes from an area in France of the same name. Most of the stuff people think is champagne is just white wine with a few bubbles.”
A dark girl pulled herself from the pool and came to talk to them. “Hi. I'm Zoey,” she said.
“Alina. Nice to meet you.”
“You too. Ryan told me you were coming.”
“Are you his girlfriend?” Alina asked. She was a very beautiful woman, the type she imagined Ryan liked.
Zoey laughed. “No. We're friends. I organize the girls for his pool parties.”
“Do you mean they are call—”
“Call girls? No.” Zoey forgave Alina's innocence. “College friends of mine. Women who like a good time and love having a few dollars spent on them.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Come into the water,” Zoey said.
“I don't have any swimming things.” Alina shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other. She felt uncomfortable. It was more like an orgy than a party.
“You're wearing underwear, aren't you?”
“Of course,” she exclaimed.
“Then bra and panties. On second thought, topless and panties. Come on.” Zoey stepped forward and put her hands on the buttons of Alina's blouse.
“I think she'd rather not,” Ryan said. Zoey looked wounded and dived back into the pool. A minute later she had her legs wrapped around some blond guy. “Don't worry about her. She's a nympho. Guys or gals, she doesn't care.” Somebody turned the music up, and everyone got out of the pool and started to dance. “Are you shocked?” Ryan asked. His smoldering eyes burned into hers, and she suddenly felt very aroused. It was a surreal scene. Here she was, a serious young woman, fully dressed while a group of women shook their naked breasts at a much smaller group of men while dancing to some hit she knew was at least fifteen years old.
“No, I'm not shocked. I just haven't ever been to quite such a...” she wanted to find the right word to prevent offending him. “Lively party.”
“No. I don't suppose you have.”
He reached toward a chair a grabbed the T-shirt sitting there. “Come on. Let's go outside and leave them to it.”
Alina was thankful for the suggestion. They walked back onto the lawn and sat down in a couple of wicker chairs. “I'm glad you're here,” he said.
“Why did you choose me?” She'd been dying to ask. Halfway down a glass of champagne, she dared to ask.
“Because you were the best.”
“I don't believe that.”
“Well, on Monday you will meet Steffi. She'll tell you the same.”
“But there must have been hundreds of applicants from experienced PAs.”
“Yes, there were.”
She looked at the damp hairs on his inner thighs. They all seemed to be screaming at her to touch them. “Then I don't understand.”
“Simple. I decided a while back to help young people whenever possible. You were the most qualified in the under twenty-five category, so you got the job.”
Alina took another sip of her drink, but her glass was empty. She realized she'd drunk the rest of it in one go when she’d been looking at his thighs. “But that's illegal—age discrimination.”
“Who the hell cares? I got what I wanted. That's all that matters.”
From that moment, it was quite clear to her that Ryan Jacobson always got what he wanted. “Well I'm glad you chose me. It's a great opportunity. I won't let you down.”
“I know you won't,” he said confidently. “What kind of a place do you want to live in? You can stay here for a few weeks, or as long as you want for that matter. But I'm sure at some point you'll want some freedom.”
“I don't know what LA has to offer.”
“A lot. I have hundreds of apartments in the city. You can have one of your choosing.” He went to fetch some more champagne.
It was all too good to be true. Her own apartment. “It depends on what I can afford,” she said when he returned.
He ran his hand through his hair and sat back. “What do you mean afford?”
“Well, I'm sure LA is very expensive, and I don't suppose I'll be able to—”
“You don't have to pay for it. Tell you what, tomorrow I'll take you for a ride around and show you a few places. You can take your pick.”
Most girls would have been ecstatic about the opportunity to live in a luxury apartment free of charge, but Alina wondered what his motives were, and she could only come to one conclusion: He wanted to make her reliant on him so she felt obliged to give herself to him. “No, Mr. Jacobson. I don't want a free place. I'd rather pay for my own apartment, even if it's a tiny studio.”
It was the first time Ryan had ever heard a woman turn down one of his offers, and he wasn't used to it. He was sure she'd change her mind once he showed her a few penthouses.
“Okay. Whatever you want.”
“Why do you feel lonely sometimes?” she asked, but then she regretted it.
“What do you mean?”
“You told me when we stopped to look at the house after I'd arrived that you get lonely sometimes.”
He let out a sigh. A half-naked woman came outside. “Come on, Ryan, I want you in the pool.”
He waved her away and concentrated on the question Alina had asked. “I find it hard to trust people. That's why I'm not married.”
She didn't know what to say. She fiddled with her hair and drank some more. “Why do you think that is?” The look he gave her made her sit up straight. “Sorry, Mr. Jacobson. It's none of my business.”
“Ryan. Call me Ryan. It's okay. I'm just not used to opening up to people; that's all.” But she was different, he told himself. She wasn't like the girls in the pool. He could never imagine her wiggling her tits around and being frivolous. She was the real deal. Beautiful, serious, good-humored, and he imagined one day a perfect wife. “My dad left us when I was six, and my mom couldn't cope. She killed herself when I was ten.” Now it was his turn to down his champagne in one go. “I shouldn't have burdened you with that. Just ignore it.”
But how could she? He was now even more attractive to her. A man with such a terrible upbringing, a virtual orphan, who had managed to drag himself out of such a horrendous situation and become one of America's richest men. She was sure most people would have turned to drugs and violence. “But that doesn't mean it will happen to you. I'm sure you could find a woman who would be faithful to you. In fact, I know you could.”
“Maybe. Perhaps one day. But hey, there's still plenty of life left in the old dog before I need to get tied down,” he said, his face suddenly brighter. Alina saw through the pretense, though.
*****
On her first day at work, Alina couldn't believe her luck. She was working in beautiful surroundings with a great salary and an important position in the company. Steffi was kind to her, as were all her other colleagues.
“Why do some people say Mr. Jacobson is bad to his tenants?” Alina asked when they sat down for a cup of coffee.
“It's the nature of his business, I'm afraid,” Steffi said. “It's just economics, and sometimes some poor unsuspecting people get in the way. But that's life.”
“I understand he buys dilapidated buildings and refurbishes them, then charges higher rents.”
“That's right. It’s just, sometimes some people don't want a better apartment wher
e they have to pay more. He's not a bad man, just very driven and focused on his business.”
“I know he's not a bad man. In fact, he's a very kind man indeed.”
“Are you two talking about me?” Ryan asked. “Caught you.” He was in good spirits; Carl had just called to tell him the papers were ready at the solicitors.
“No, Mr. Jacobson, we aren't,” Steffi lied.
“Alina, can you come to my office?” Alina wondered what she'd done wrong. She followed him. When he sat down, he noticed how great she looked. The perfect PA. In fact, he was turned on by her. She was dressed simply but stylishly in a black skirt, blue blouse, and black jacket. Any woman wearing stockings and heels, as she was, was a likely target for his attention, and his eyes soon drifted to her legs. “I wondered how you were doing on your first day?”
She sighed with relief. “Very well, thanks. Steffi is great. We're getting along just fine.”
“Great. Steffi will be here another four weeks to help you. By then I expect you to know most things. Okay?” He was different at work, far less relaxed. But of course he was. He was the boss of a multimillion-dollar business. There was no time for fooling around.
“Go ask Steffi if there are any messages, please.”
Alina disappeared for a moment and came back with the news that a woman named Cindy had rung, and that the mayor of LA wanted to speak to him about the development of the old post office.
“Whose Cindy?” Alina asked when she got back to her desk.