by Christa Wick
His arms tightened around me and his face turned to stone. "You don't get to decide which it is, only whether you'll use your safe word. The next time you disobey, I'm going to spank that sweet ass until it's very pink and sore and then I'm going to fuck it."
My expression widened as the rest of me shrank, my body tightening protectively at the threat. Squeezing my arms between us, I hugged myself to control a building shake. And then I realized with a sharp pang that there likely would never be a next time. I had come under his control for one night during an audition for a gig I probably wouldn't get. He and I would be as much strangers by tomorrow morning as we had been yesterday.
Hell, I still didn't know the bastard's name!
Staring at me, his mouth quirked. "There's a lot going on in that head of yours, baby doll."
I frowned, hoping at the same time that he wouldn't order me to tell him what I was thinking. That would make the next time I disobeyed him immediate, and I wasn't certain I would mind him spanking and fucking me. Judging by the sudden flare of heat and fresh moisture between my thighs, I rather thought I might like it. But I hadn't survived on the streets as a teen by doing what felt good.
Another kiss, this one landing at the corner of my mouth as he chuckled at me. "That's enough for one night. I wouldn't want to upset your world too much with our first meeting. I have a feeling you're a runner."
"Do I look like a runner?" I snarked. Pulling back, I studied him as all the questions I was afraid to ask collided inside my head. Mostly, I desperately wanted to know what made him so confident there would be another meeting between us.
"You know what I mean, Alexa." His hand tapped lightly at my ass as he stared back -- almost like he was warning me to rein in the snark or I'd get the spanking right then. "You rabbit if you get the sense someone is going to push you out of your comfort zone. You camouflage yourself..."
He ran the back of a finger over my half sleeve of tattoos before caressing the tip over my mouth as I started to protest. He curled his palm around the back of my neck and ghosted a kiss against my lips before delivering the verbal punch to which he had been building.
"And when you can't hide, you run."
"The audition is over," I said flatly. Unwinding my hands from around my stomach, I pushed off from him, teetered on the high heels for a second then walked to the couch where he had placed my duffel. I yanked out an oversized shirt to cover my torso. It fell beyond the lower curve of my bottom, letting me remove the expensive fetish underwear that had been provided for the shoot and replace them with my own lacy panties.
Approaching the couch, he sat on an armrest, thick arms crossing his chest as he silently watched. I put leggings on next then pulled the beach trick every girl knows of getting my bra back on without taking the shirt off. After slipping on a pair of Skechers, I rooted around the bag for my cell phone.
"There's a driver to take you home." Reaching alongside my duffel, he grabbed the panties I had worn for the shoot and tucked one edge in his waistband.
"No need," I snapped. "I'll use a cab."
His casual, amused slouch disappeared. He rose quickly to capture my wrist and a length of hair. Burying his nose against my neck, he inhaled deeply.
"You smell like pure sex, Alexa. I can almost taste your juices," he growled. "There's no way in hell I'm letting a stranger drive you home."
The heat of his breath against my neck blasted any desire I had to argue. But I would be damned, on general principle, if I let him boss me around. I opened my mouth to argue.
His grip on my hair tightened. "You're really aching for that spanking, baby doll."
He nipped at my ear then took the phone from my hand and grabbed my bag.
"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I challenged. This he-man shit was getting old, no matter what kind of response it provoked in my girlie bits.
"I told you, the club driver will see you home." Facing me as he jumped off the stage, he grinned. "And to make sure you don't foolishly put yourself at risk by disobeying me, I'm walking you to the limo."
I spent maybe five seconds huffing and tapping my shoe at him before he moved toward the stage. The look in his eye promised he was about to deliver on ever dirty, delicious threat he had just made.
"Okay!" I blurted and turned toward the steps.
I didn't want to let him win, but there was no way in hell I was willing to find out just how much I might like getting spanked and fucked by my mystery man.
********************
What should have been a thirty-minute ride from the Century Club to my crappy little apartment turned into a ninety-minute ordeal stuck in Chicago traffic. Of course, I slept through most of it. And had just a bit or ten of caviar and pate on crackers that probably cost as much as my weekly grocery bill.
All while listening to Billie Holiday sing Strange Fruit and other tunes in her timeless voice.
Okay -- so maybe not an ordeal and it didn't cost me like the cab would have. It would have been silly not to enjoy the buttery soft leather seats or to slip my Skechers off and curl my toes in the plush carpet in search of some inner calm.
I found it, too -- that inner calm. I completely put HIM out of my mind all the way up until I slid the key in my apartment lock just as my house phone began bleating insistently. Dropping my bag in the entry hall, I scooped the phone up. Half expecting my mystery man to not only somehow have my phone number but also to be calling to check up on me, I was a little relieved to hear Lena's voice on the other end.
A little relieved, but also a little disappointed.
"Oh my god!" she screeched, halfway into my greeting. "Are you sitting down?"
"Lena, honey," I teased. "You know my phone is in the entry hall. Where the hell am I supposed to be sitting?"
"Go sit down right now!"
With my stomach already twisting in knots, I rushed to the lonely sofa that populated half my postage stamp of a living room.
"Are you sitting?" she demanded again, her voice more breathless than mine even though I had been the one running.
"Yes," I huffed. "Don't make me reach through the phone and strangle you. What's wrong? Or right?"
"So very, very right," she squealed. "I'm not saying it's a given, but they want to see you tomorrow. Little sister, I think you're gonna get the deal!"
I sat, stunned, as I processed her words. How could they have come to a decision in the ninety minutes it took for me to arrive home? Ninety plus, my body amended as it flushed with the memory of how the time had passed from Rick leaving the auditorium to the limo driver shutting me inside the vehicle. I had experienced at least another twenty minutes of the sensual torment that was my mystery man -- Mr. Football.
"Hallo, anybody home?" Lena teased. "Did you not hear me say they want to see you tomorrow about inking a deal?"
"Are you sure?" The question emerged as a squeak, a nervous lump blocking the passage of air over my vocal chords. "I mean, are you going to the meeting with me?"
"About that..." she hesitated.
I should have known by her use of "little sister," her subconscious tick that the deal might not be as good for me as she presented but would certainly make her bank account a little healthier. Not that I didn't love Lena, but she was an agent first and a friend and mentor second.
"Spill, big sister." I said, my eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. Age and her role as my agent dictated the big/little split. Lena would be swimming in fabric if she dared to try on a size 6.
"They don't want the deal agented," she said. "But you know you can ask me anything about the terms, right?"
Puzzled, I collapsed against the sofa cushion. A little wave of dizziness raced through me. What kind of modeling contract for that much money went through without an agent?
"They're still giving me a finder's fee if you sign--"
She sucked a hard breath in, making me think she had revealed something she wasn't supposed to.
"How much?" I asked.
>
"That's...uh..."
The line went silent. I heard her flicking the edge of something, probably the check they'd already written her.
"Lena," I warned, alarm bells starting to blare at me with the same intensity I'd experienced at the club.
"It's subject to a non-disclosure agreement -- the same reason why I can't be with you at the meeting," she admitted. "But it's big -- take a year off big. You'll get an idea when you see how much they're offering you."
Stunned, I said nothing as I reflected on the day's events. The call out of nowhere to hustle my ass to the club, the crazy long release they'd made me sign, the sudden change in terms under the house master's steady hands.
"Baby sister," she started, her voice shaky. "Just tell me you'll read through their offer before deciding. This could make you huge. Really, really huge--"
"I'm already huge," I joked in self-deprecation.
"Be serious for a second, Alexa!"
A flustered Lena was a new creature I'd never thought to see. Sitting up, I took a deep breath and gave her the opportunity to earn her finder's fee. "Okay, convince me."
"Well, the club is owned by the Kehoe Investment Trust Group. Century's members are all individually richer than god."
She took a breath and I thought I could hear the sound of a cash register ringing in her head.
"You name it and they have at least one member that qualifies, from billionaire manufacturers, tech giants, oil magnates, princes, big time athletes from baseball, football--"
"What did you say?" I interrupted, an old image from the front pages of the Chicago Tribune bubbling up from the dregs of my memory.
"Princes--" she started and I shoved in again.
"No, you said football." I had only been jokingly calling him Mr. Football in my head, but there had been something more than those black tights caressing his gorgeous ass that had struck me as familiar.
"Good job, Agent Kelly," I joked, standing and walking to my bedroom where my laptop waited on a nightstand. "You've convinced me to go to the meeting."
"Really?" She sounded happy, like she was high on rainbow fumes and unicorn farts.
"Really," I lied. I just wanted her off the phone so I could do a little research. I mean, I most likely would go to the meeting to hear what the company had to offer, but I wasn't promising not to walk out before they even shoved the first piece of paper in my face.
"Okay," she chirped. "I'll text and email you the address. Call me right back if you don't get it!"
"Sure," I answered and hung up before she could work on me some more. I fired the laptop up. While I waited for the browser to load, my cell phone buzzed from the hallway. I retrieved it, read the address and texted her a quick "got it" as I returned to the bedroom.
I dropped the phone on the mattress and pulled the laptop onto my thighs. My fingers bounced lightly against the keys as I tried to remember enough details to fill in the search field.
Football+Player+Injury
I backspaced, erasing the mention of injury because what football player didn't have one? He had been in a car wreck if I remembered correctly -- the cause of that scar along his shoulder.
Football+Player+Car+Accident+Shoulder+Career+Ending+Chicago
I hit enter and waited while the screen refreshed. I scrolled past the obvious misses, players I knew he wasn't. And then I found him, my mystery man.
Jake Morgan, star quarterback, his career over six years ago in a car wreck that happened after a fancy party for his thirtieth birthday. Female passenger, a twenty-something socialite I had never heard of. Cause of accident not provided. Charges filed -- none. Number of vehicles -- one. Fatalities -- one.
All the air left my body. Leaning against the headboard for support, I clicked on the woman's name.
Linsey King.
Twenty-six, her too thin body looking more like it belonged to a woman in her thirties. No hint of her relationship to Jake Morgan or why she'd been in the car with him. A picture of her mother and father, the man's stern mouth pressed into an uncompromising line of grief and anger.
I closed the browser and laptop, not wanting to know more about Jake Morgan or the woman he had lost six years ago. It was enough that I knew who he was -- a fast driving, playboy athlete who had once been a god among men with all the status and money he could ever want.
Armed with that knowledge, I would never surrender to him again.
********************
Lena had instructed me to arrive at the Kehoe building in downtown Chicago at exactly 2 pm and to ask for Marjolein Dekker, Mr. Kehoe's executive assistant. With nothing better to do and desperately trying to distract my mind from thoughts of Jake Morgan, the prior evening's encounter with him at the club and his shadowed past, I went through all the company's news feeds for the last two years and every page of its website.
What the hell it was doing with anything related to clothing manufacturing, especially of the kinky variety that came in plus-sizes, was beyond me. KITG was primarily a global real estate conglomerate, with hotels, resorts, business complexes, and residential developments, all of them so highly upscale even the executive assistants were probably close enough to God to sniff His butt. And not a single woman shown on the website failed to resemble some standard Cosmo or Vogue beauty, super slim and with an exterior so hard I could have bounced a brick off her.
That wasn't Marjolein Dekker at all. Beautiful, yes, but then I'm not biased against big girls, which comes in pretty damn handy since I am one. The long hair she kept trapped in a bun was an artful mix of brown and dark gold. Far younger than I expected, her flawless skin, glamorous pout and innocent blue eyes made it impossible to tell where she fit on an age scale of twenty to thirty.
Neither was she one of the cool automatons the website had threatened me with encountering. Spotting me exiting the elevator, Marjolein's face lit up and she swung her luxurious hips at me in a brisk walk, a smile on her face and in her eyes as she extended her hand in greeting.
"Miss Hunt!" Curling her fingers around mine, she squeezed like a twelve-year-old girl being introduced to Justin Bieber backstage. "I'm so happy to meet you. I've heard marvelous feedback about the audition!"
A little wave of dizziness bumped against me and I'm sure my jaw hit the floor because her cheeks flushed and she started to stutter.
"Not...not that I've seen any...anything at all. Dylan would never allow that...but Rick gave you two thumbs up and Jake..." She laughed nervously. "Well, I guess I better leave something for Mr. Kehoe to negotiate with!"
She rolled her bright blue eyes and smiled then lifted her clipboard for emphasis. "Guess that's why I'll always be an executive assistant and not an executive. I show my excitement too easily and couldn't strike a good bargain if my life depended on it!"
I matched her smile, utterly charmed by the bubbly blonde and knowing I had the opposite problem. I hid my excitement and absolutely buried my infrequent joy in fear of it all being ripped from me.
Casting a nervous glance around to see if any onlookers had witnessed our awkward exchange, I withdrew my hand from hers. "Will there be a long wait before Mr. Kehoe can see me?"
Truth be told, I was nervous as hell about meeting Dylan Kehoe -- especially if I was going to be alone with him and he had taken a look at Rick's pictures of me. Closing in on forty, Kehoe ran a multi-billion dollar investment group with a supposedly iron hand (which more than likely explained his ownership of Century Club). Not at all a self-made man, he had inherited the fortune, along with his unnamed siblings who seemed happy to stay out of the limelight. He was handsome, too, in an icily remote way with his impeccably tailored suit and thousand-dollar haircut.
After meeting Jake, however, Kehoe's standard good looks didn't do a thing for me. I had studied Dylan's pictures that morning, trying to find a spark of something within me that resembled arousal. My mind kept reverting to Jake, the way the leggings hugged his fine ass, how his hands and mouth had resolutely worked my fle
sh, the dark framing around his jewel-like eyes that increased their intensity, and the slightly pugnacious nose and jaw telegraphing his implacable will. Next to Jake and how he had so quickly and thoroughly rocked my world, Dylan Kehoe was nothing but a handsome meat bag.
"Should only be a few minutes, Miss Hunt," Marjolein answered as she shuffled through the papers on her clipboard. "I was instructed that you should wait in the meeting room."
She extended her arm in the direction of a double set of doors, the elegance of her gesture reminding me of countless game show hostesses. Not an inapt analogy for the meeting. Something certainly waited for me behind those doors -- maybe a chance at financial independence, maybe something dangerous and unpleasant.
Marjolein's hand landed comfortingly against the back of my shoulder and she leaned in to whisper in my ear. "Don't look so nervous. Worst that can happen is he doesn't say 'yes' or you decide to say 'no,' right?"
I nodded, my feet finally carrying me toward the double set of doors so eerily reminiscent of those leading into the club's auditorium. I sucked a deep breath in as Marjolein pushed against their wooden weight.
I would not think about the prior night. That was a one off. Kehoe and his company had been testing me, trying to determine how hungry I was for the job, whether I had the mettle to be one of the public faces for a very, very private line of clothing. They had no idea just how much mettle I possessed, how much strife I'd already faced in life. Only the opinion of the people I loved could actually hurt me, and I had found a solution to that dilemma years ago.
Love no one.
A hard motto to live by, but my life had only gotten easier after I took the words firmly and protectively to heart.
"I'm not allowed to go any further," Marjolein chirped as she stopped at the room's threshold. "Mr. Kehoe set up the tables, cards and refreshments on his own."
The cards she referenced faced away from the room's entry. They and the tables they were set upon formed a horseshoe. I deduced from their uniform eight-by-ten size and the picture easels they rested upon that they were prints of images from my sessions at Century Club.