And how did she get all this money from such a lowly, down-on-the-ground position? I think the question answers itself. Some might say she bent over backwards for such rewards. And they wouldn’t know just how right they were...
Tatiana Watkins wore tight skirts and shiny stockings and made sure her breasts were just right and pert (thank goodness Mr. Watkins had given her those! He might have gotten the apartment and everything else, but he couldn’t take her gargantuan man-made tits back! Oh no sirree!)
She had once strode confidently and bent down willingly while dropping off papers for Mr. Lerrington (her boss, the main boss, the big boss) to show him some cleavage and then, when he once closed the door while she’d been lingering at his desk tinkering with this and that and putting pencils in her mouth and fluttering her eyes, she’d bent another way. Over his desk. And let him enter her from behind. (You might say she bent over forwards here...)
It had been quick. The man (in his late sixties now) wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and Tatiana had wondered if he’d even hardened up fully, but he’d been satisfied in the end. He’d fumbled with her panties and poked around trying to get them free to expose her nicely lubed up entrance (she’d taken care of that in the bathroom, because she’d been hoping to do some bending already for several weeks and knew Frankie Lerrington wouldn’t get her juices going, so every time she’d needed to drop off some papers she’d go to the ladies room and splash on some Lube-da-Lube Extreme.)
“Oh, you’re so wet, honey. So wet forya fucken daddy, huh? So fucken wet, m-hmm, m-hmmm. Bring dat fuckin ass here, honey. Lemme slap dat fuckin tight and sexy ass, oh yeah!”
Mr. Lerrington is Texan.
He liked slapping. She’d expected it. She’d taken it in her stride, and focused on the notes he’d been making on his blotter while she’d been bent over on said desk (PICK UP SUGAR FOR MELISSA; CALL WATKINS IN FOR...; FIND OUT WHEN WATKINS WAS HIRED.) She suppressed a yawn once or twice, and just waited for the old man to fire. She’d never done an old man before (Doc Ramsey had not been old, per se), but Tatiana had never been picky about the type of man she did, only the quality of his wallet. Declan Cox had been the exception. A welcome exception. A Sweet Temptation. He’d been the only man she’d done and would continue to do despite his small wallet (at the time.) Declan Cox had reminded her of what it had been like to be seventeen again, chasing the quarterback because he’s so damned hot.
Declan had reminded her of what it had been like to be even younger, sixteen, chasing someone else, getting him...and being illicitly in love with him.
But she didn’t like thinking that far back in her life. Because that had ended badly.
She’d gotten the quarterback, of course, done him twice under the school bleachers and three times in the back of his truck. Plus a few more times when she hadn’t been busy with...someone else. She’d gone down on him, hoped he’d go down on her (he never did), and then dumped him when she’d found his wallet was nowhere near the size of his...uh-huh.
The next guy she’d gone for had a belly the size of Mount Rushmore, and a wallet the size of the moon. But her career as a Card-Carrying Gold Digger had begun even long before that guy. The quarterback had been a mere glitch. But there were others, so many others: Doc Ramsey, Father Kingsley, oh and that young dude with the black hair and a tongue like a serpent. Ooh, he’d been good! Even before Mount Rushmore Wallet Man, she’d known the power of her body, known its effects on men.
Life had been good. Mr. Watkins (Jeffrey of all names!) had been a mediocre middle, an acceptable average: Not falling over because of an oversized paunch, but nothing to write home about in the looks department. He was a lawyer, and a damn good one (she knew this now, never before having understood how absolutely fucked she would be because of that air-tight pre-nup he’d put together for them!)
Of course she’d signed the damn pre-nup. Caught cheating? What for? Jeffrey Watkins was fuckin loaded! The man was (is!) a money-juggernaut, and he was hemorrhaging in her direction. She’d initially had no need for satisfying herself with other men, Jeffrey wasn’t bad in bed. A little...irregular...maybe. A little...distracted...perhaps. But not bad.
And when she’d been desperate, she’d pulled out her E.L James, turned to the page where they do it in the elevator, and pleasured herself. There. Finished. Satisfied. Mmmmm.
She’d do that, at a max, five times a week. She could live with two days without climax. Just. And when she couldn’t, she’d take the Yellows, and that would give her a few more days...
She’d have sex with her man—Mr. Jeffrey Watkins—at least three times a month. Not bad. Not bad for newlyweds.
But oh damn did she fuck his credit card on a daily basis. She rode that plastic like an untamed horse.
Tatiana had discovered a long time ago that she got off on dough, moolah, hard CASH, baby. This was her turn-on. Five thousand dollars at Bloomingdales, seven Gs at Tiffany’s, four hundred bucks for a breakfast on Fifth. This is what she lived for!
Until Declan Cox came along.
And then she’d gotten just straight vanilla horny. Him and that black guy, oh, fuck me he was sexy...
She never got the black dude. He’s a sexy monster. Perkins, was it? Anyway...she had plans for him, too. All she needed was to get him alone...
They were playing for the NFL now, both of them, this Perkins and Mr. Cocksssss. So getting either one of them alone was difficult.
She was in Lerrington’s office right now, not bending, sitting, on his desk, with her legs wide, her knee-high dress rucked up to just above her upper thighs. Thinking of hard cash...
A fuck a day keeps the loan-sharks at bay, she always believed. A fuck a day keeps my backup plans with Declan Cox alive and well, was another mantra of hers.
It was December. In Declan and Blaze’s mind it would be December of “Year Four.” Tatiana had worked her way up to Lerrington six months ago (the day she bent over forward with the Lube-da-Lube.) They were currently having a...meeting...in his office. They always had a meeting at around twelve every afternoon. And then she would go to Tiffany’s. With his credit card...
Lerrington: “Oh mah baybee! Oh mah, oh mah! OH GOD, I’M A GONNA CUM’N, YOU SEXY FUCKING WHOARE!”
She sighed, waited... Lerrington wasn’t coming yet, but his belly was bouncing jovially against her upper thigh as she sat wide-legged on his mahogany desk. His white hair flung around lightly in wisps, his face was red from exertion. She needed to watch it with him, a little too much strain and you never knew with a ticker his age...
She thought of his Porsche, the black one. She thought of his Tuesday Porsche. The red one. She thought of his Friday Lexus. The silver one. And she thought of the “Bonus Diamond Necklace” she’d received last week after bending on her knees for him a few days before that and being his WHOARE, BABY!
She actually got factually and actually moist when she thought of that necklace now. Really, truly, turned on. Lube-da-Lube was becoming a less and less regular purchase for her these days.
She got in on the motion: “Mmmmm, Frankie, baby. Mmmmm... Tell me what you gonna buy for me tomorrow, baby.”
Frank Lerrington had a Stetson hanging from his wall and a souvenir Republic of Texas flag on his desk. Frank Lerrington hated the city, hated it with a passion. But Frank Lerrington also liked the nightlife in NYC. You just don’t get finger-lickin sexy skin-joints like these down in Texas, yeehaw! “I’m-a goin-a buy you the whole fuckin store my sexy deeelishus honeybunch. Da whole-a goddamn— OH, OH YEAH, OH YEAH.”
The whole fucking store? Oh, baby, oh yeah, oh fuck me YEAH!
He fucked her.
And she actually tightened.
Frank Lerrington had made her horny now.
Honest-to-goodness diamond-studded mothafuckin hornAY!
-2-
She’d been OK the last three years. She’d watched the news and followed his life—Declan Cox, on the rise. She’d dreamed of him (especially in the bath) and
touched herself while eating ice cream and pretending it was his dashing fingers inside her, his adroit hand. Those muscles, that POWER!
She’d buy Hello! magazine whenever he’d been on the cover (which was often.) She’d followed his conquests. She had a scrapbook of every chick he’d slept with and which the papers had found out about. Oh, my Declan Cox, you’re such a NAUGHTY one!
She’d ponder whether his current prize (usually some low-down skank in a honky-tonk somewhere) was more attractive than Tatiana herself. She’d ponder what he saw in them. Did he love them? He’d never told her he loved her. In fact, the only time she’d pressed him on it, he’d gazed at her fiercely with a deathly glare and told her the only girl he’d ever loved—would ever love!—had been the one Tatiana hated so much. Right, the tattoo-freak. That DJing bitch!
Tatiana had dropped the subject immediately. She could live with Declan not loving her. Heck, she didn’t love him either! Not one bit! But she couldn’t live with mention of...that shaved-hair skank! Blaze. Blaze freaking Ryleigh!
Tatiana hated her. Just, simply, fucken hated her! Why? She couldn’t for the life of her explain it, but she loathed the innocent looking woman. The girl! How is it, you tell me, that a mere child like this Ryleigh—no tits, no muscle tone, zero money!—could get Declan Cox’s blood so hot!?
The wretch was no more than a witch, I tellya. That’s the only explanation for it. Blaze Ryleigh is one of those manipulative, lying witches. And she cast a spell on Declan Cox. For him to be so madly...obsessed...with her, so much so that he’d denied Tatiana what she’d wanted at first—it just wasn’t normal. Not only had he denied her, but also her two naked, ready-and-willing supermodel best-friends!
It just is not normal.
Voodoo or some shit.
So, that’s what it is. Yes, yes. Sure. There’s something...ungodly...about Blaze Ryleigh. Yes. Makes sense. Yes. That’s why she hates her. Yes...
Truth is, as much as Tatiana pretended to despise Declan, she couldn’t. She just could not. The man—the sexy and lustful man—was a genius. He’d beaten her at her own game, and she actually respected him for it!
She wasn’t jealous, not at all. She knew it was over with him and her. The sex had been good (AMAZING!) but it was also over. She’d screwed him over with the photos, he’d screwed her over with the recordings—one for one. And my oh my, the way he did it! Hmpf-hmpf-hmpf! Style! She couldn’t hold it against him. The boy was vicious, conniving, manipulative. (It made her horny just thinking of it.)
She had to hand it to him: the underhandedness, the slyness, the downright audacity of it all...had been pure genius. Pure mad genius!
So she held a special place in her heart for Declan Cox, accepted her defeat at his hands with dignity, and respected him.
Of course, she had her own cards up her sleeve... Tatiana never played without a card up her sleeve. And she’d never planned on using that card. What for? But now...
She’d known, in her many nights of self-pleasuring while dreaming of him, that he and she would never come together again. And if they did, it would be pure backstabbing, pure hate, pure murder (with a lot of sex sprinkled in) but Tatiana Watkins and Declan Cox were so far from the Disney version of a romance that she was under no illusions that they would ever have one.
Heck, she didn’t even want one! Tatiana Watkins was not a romantic person as such. She never had been (except for Michael Ulworth, the boy she’d been with at sixteen, but let’s not think of that, Tatty... Not ever.)
No, the closest thing in Hollywood for the kind of relationship that Tatiana and Declan might ever have would be Twilight For Adults—you know, Edward goes psycho and sucks all of Bella’s blood away in one swoop and then kills himself by opening up a sub-machine gun on the Volturi.
Yeah, something like that.
So, under these non-illusions, she put together her scrapbook, each time (while she carefully snip-snip-snipped the picture of the broad he was currently with) making comments like: “Oh, Decky Baby, she looks like she has an eighties perm! You can do better than that!” Or “Hmmmm, bet she was a good lay, huh, honey? But not as good as Tutty-Tatiana, hmmm?” (She liked crooning these words out.) Or, “Hmmm, redhead, like Sammy, huh? You like Sammy more than me? Do you?”
And speaking of Sammy—where was she these days?
Tatiana had lived with her mistakes, lived with her sins, but her two other friends had not taken it in their stride when their respective husbands had gotten the pictures sent to them by Declan Cocksucker. Samantha Ryder (and oh boy could she ride! Even when her name had changed to Krissta) and Dalya Somerset had not had the experience to deal with the loss of their husbands like Tatiana had. Tatiana had known what she was doing. She’d been at the game ever since Doc Ramsey and Father Kingsley. So when Deck had sent Jeffrey Watkins the pics, well, she’d been filled with a sort of Touché awe for the man.
The other girls broke apart, each of them incensed. Live by the sword, Tatiana had said to them. But they didn’t get it.
So they’d lost touch. Now it was just little ole Tatiana, on her own, in her bath, and playing with her scrappy-scrap scrapbook of Deckmeister Cox.
She’d gotten this paralegal job after the divorce, had lost the apartment in Brooklyn Heights and so had kicked around in Bushwick for a bit (oh, Christ, what a fucking shithole of a place to live in!), but then had taken the bull by the horns...or Horn if you may. She’d started with Martin in accounting (he drives a BMW) and that had gone well, but he’d gotten a little clingy.
It moved her out of Bushwick and to the city at least.
Then she’d moved onto Louis (also Accounting, but he drove a Mercedes Benz). That had also been good, that had been fun. She’d gotten a little Mazda out of that.
But now, oh my, now...she had the Big Fish (big where it mattered, at least; big in business, not in anatomy.) She had him, The Main Man, The Guy on Top, The Fat Cat (she used Fat advisedly.) And she was frickin rolling in it now! Not quite Upper East, but close. And she got to use his Lexus sometimes as well. His wife stayed over on Long Island and he only goes over on weekends. Weekdays he’s in the city, has a place on the Upper East. The partners won’t talk. Mad Men and their morals and all. It was—is—the perfect arrangement.
So the old man has some fetishes, some interesting desires, whatever. The dude is KA-BLAM LOADED!
Things had been picking up. She was being faithful to the old dude (after all, why risk access to all that cabbage?) Whenever she got too frustrated she’d think of Declan, in her bath, and play with her Pretty Cutout Pictures.
She’d even gotten that little matter of a lawsuit put together against Deck, just a backup plan, just in case. You know, Two Can Play at That Game and all. Just for fun. Just a little tease, a little threat, to get him into bed with her again...if she wanted him again.
She never intended to hurt Decky-Baby. She was just having Frankie put the thing together for her because she liked to have options. Six months they’d been working on it. Six months of bending over and forwards and backwards for the guy...
Why would she ever use the thing against Deck? They were one and the same. She respected him.
But it did pay to have options... Oh yes it did. And now she knew why, almost as if the gods in heaven had been urging her to put the thing together all those months, Tatiana knew, finally, why!
And she did hear the voices of those gods sometimes, really, but had always thought it had been her imagination, or the pills... But now...she knew it wasn’t! It had all been Meant To Be. Foreordained. Freakin Destiny!
Because all had been slap-dandy. Hunky-dory. Right as rain.
Until that game.
And that tattoo.
And then that fucking bitch arrived.
-3-
Before the TMZ headlines, the ones with him and that skank Blaze in those granulated photos, Tatiana had had no particular dislike for Declan. She’d gotten her fun with him and could live with it. She’d held onto Dec
lan longer than he’d wanted to stay. A total of three months when Declan had planned, maybe, three days? It was a knack she had with men. Barbs to skin. She’d played her curse and cast her spell and enchanted him and kept him drugged by her pheromonal meth and she’d gotten her howling mad fun with him!
So had her friends.
And then the fun was over. No problem. Better to have Fucked and Lost is what she always said.
She’d been surprised. She’d always assumed that a hard man such as he would like it...a little rough. A few bruises, maybe a chain or two, a dog collar... And yet he hadn’t. Not at all. He’d left her the day after she’d made him hurt her a little (and oh my he’d hurt her good! She almost came just thinking about it!) She’d practically had to pull a gun on him for him to treat her like a man!
Anyway, each to his own. Whatever. Go figure.
And then...oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy...then...!
Then he’d sent the photos of her, him, the other two— Wow!
Respect. Aretha Franklin style. She’d actually gotten horny when she’d discovered how conniving Deck had been with her!
Sneaky. And Sexy...
And, of course, now, there was always her backup plan in her mind...
She’d forgotten that plan. Forgotten it completely. Until last Sunday:
She’d watched Deck’s game, because she always watched his games. She’d cheered at the end when they’d won.
And then she saw the tattoo.
She wanted to kill, literally kill, after seeing it.
Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Page 19