"No kidding. So what was Eric's favorite position?" I asked.
"Doggy-style," she answered right away. "Problem was, he liked that position a little too much. We had to save that until he was ready to come, because he'd just blow right away otherwise. He just couldn't hold it. Soon as he had this big ass of mine up against him, he was just...bam, done."
I shook my head. "You are shameless."
"Hey, you asked. And besides, I ain't with him anymore, so it's not like you have to see him again."
"So then...what's your favorite position?"
"You answer first," Layla said.
"I don't have one. I like all the positions equally." I couldn't hold back a grin. "And yes, we talk dirty. Makes it that much hotter."
"Tried that with Eric a few times. He just...he couldn't deliver the lines without both of us cracking up. It always ended up sounding like a joke. I don't know. The guy I slept with before Eric liked to talk dirty, though. God, he was good at it, too. Too bad he talked a better game than he could actually deliver."
"That was...Tom, wasn't it?" I asked.
"Yeah. Tom. That boy was fine as hell. He did two things really, really well, and that was basically all he had going on, except for being sexy. He could talk dirty like no one's business, and I mean he could get me wet and ready just by talking. And he could eat pussy for hours. Like, legit, that was the only way he could make me come, and Jesus, I've still never come harder than when Tom had his tongue working me. But if he wasn't doing those two things, forget it. His dick was forgettable at best, which isn't really a deal-breaker if the guy knows how to use what he's got, but Tom didn't. He and I were just fuck-buddies, though. I don't think I even know his last name, come to think of it."
"Kurzweil. Tom Kurzweil," I filled in.
"How the hell do you know that?"
I shrugged. "He told me, when he introduced himself. He was like this...caricature of a person. He swaggered everywhere, and he'd shove his hand at you and squeeze yours hard as he could, and he'd be all like 'Tom, Tom Kurzweil. Pleasure to meet you, buddy.' Like, for real? Who for real says their first name twice when they introduce themselves? And Tom called everyone buddy."
"How do you know all this?"
"You dated Tom for six months, Layla. Is something wrong with your memory?"
She stared at me. "I wouldn't say we dated. We fucked, and that was it."
"Okay, well, whatever. You brought him over all the time, and he introduced himself to me at least three times, the same way every time. He was a douchebag and I never got what you saw in him."
"Aside from his six-pack and those fuck-me dimples?"
"He used more hair product than I did."
Layla laughed. "He was kind of a douche."
"So you just kept him around because he was good at cunnilingus?"
"Yeah, basically," she said with a shrug.
"See what I mean? You need better standards. I don't remember you ever bringing around a guy who was...I don't even know...the whole package, I guess. They were all either hot douchebags or losers who weren't exactly ugly. It's like you choose guys intentionally who you know there's no chance of falling for."
The humor was gone, now. Layla wasn't looking at me, she wasn't laughing anymore, and she wasn't shooting back at me with a snarky reply. All I got from her was a small shrug. "I told you. Falling for a guy? That's just not my style."
"And I told you, you need a new style."
"Know any other mysterious, available, billionaire sex gods?" She looked at me with a sharp, cutting expression. "And do not say Harris. We aren't going there."
I held up my hands in surrender. "I wasn't going to."
"You were thinking it, though."
"He's a good guy, Layla. A great guy. He's saved my life more than once. He taught me to shoot a gun. He's even killed for me. And knowing how well Roth pays, I guarantee you he's not hurting for money. And he's good-looking. I mean, I'm with Roth for life, but Harris...well, let's just say I don't understand your reticence."
The scuff of a shoe echoed from above us, and we both craned our necks to look up. Harris stood two decks up, his expression inscrutable, impassive, green eyes glittering. He stared down at us for a moment, then turned and vanished.
Layla smacked my arm. "That's the second time he's overheard us talking about him. Or rather, you trying to fix me up with him. It's not happening, so please, for my sake, for the sake of our friendship, please let it go." Yet, she glanced back up again, to where Harris had been standing.
I held up my hands again. "Fine. Not another word from me, I swear."
"Perfect. Thanks." And just like that, she was gone.
Was I out of line? Maybe. I don't know. My friend wasn't just horny, she was lonely. I could tell that much. She was with me, so it wasn't the loneliness of being actually by herself, alone, but rather the kind of loneliness that stems from not having someone to share her life with, someone to talk to at night in whispers across a shared pillow, someone to hold her. Despite her somewhat harsh description of her relationship with Eric, I had a feeling she missed him. She may not have loved him, but she'd spent three years with him, lived with him, spent every day in his company, every night in his bed. That meant something, no matter how much she may have claimed otherwise. The way he'd let her go had hurt badly, I could see that much as well.
I ruminated on the deck by myself for a while, and then I heard a quiet footstep, and assumed it was Layla come back to talk. I didn't turn to look, just spoke facing the water. "Listen, hookerface, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed it. I promise you I won't bring up Harris again."
"I'm not who you were expecting, clearly," I heard Harris say behind me.
"Shit, Harris--" I said, turning with a jump.
He leaned against the railing beside me, a bottle of beer in his hand, an unlit cigarette pinched between the index and middle fingers of the same hand. "It's a subject you would do well to forget, Kyrie. For her sake, and mine. As she has said more than once, it's not happening. I appreciate your good intentions, but...no." His voice was how it always sounded, low but not particularly deep, cool, even, hard. Yet, because I knew him, I could hear a certain tone, a wistfulness, perhaps? A strain of regret, maybe? I wasn't sure, and with Harris, it was impossible to tell. "A man like me is not the right type for a woman like her."
"She doesn't have a type, Harris. That's the point. The guys she's dated or whatever...they're all over the place. Black, white, Italian, buff, skinny, short, tall, and everything in between."
"Why are you telling me this?" Harris asked, then tilted the bottle to his lips, swallowing a mouthful of beer.
"I don't know. I just think you and Layla--"
"We aren't compatible, Kyrie."
"If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought I'd be compatible with a man like Valentine, I would have laughed at you. And that's before knowing about his involvement in my father's death."
He sighed, dug in his hip pocket and produced a lighter, then lit his cigarette. "You are fixated on this, aren't you?"
"I didn't know you smoked," I said.
"There's a lot you probably don't know about me." He took a long drag, letting it out slowly. "But I don't consider myself a smoker since I don't do it often or regularly. It's a vice I allow myself once in a while."
I let the silence hang for a while then, by way of changing the subject, I asked, "So when will we be back Stateside?"
He lifted a shoulder. "Depending on the weather, I'd say a month? Give or take a week either way."
"I need some bridal magazines. Can you get some for me next time you go ashore?"
He nodded. "Sure thing." A glance. "Roth would never say it this bluntly, so it's up to me. This wedding will be extremely small and private. It's not going to be a traditional wedding. It can't be, not if we want to keep Vitaly off our scent."
I didn't mention that Roth had said pretty much that exactly.
"So Roth wants to keep running," I
said.
Harris didn't answer right away, inhaling instead, blowing out a stream of smoke, and then he did it again. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. "Taking on a man like Vitaly Karahalios is no small undertaking, Kyrie. He's out for blood, and he plays a long game. If it were just me, I'd go after him. If it were just Roth, I'd go after him. But it's not. Not anymore. Vitaly has made it clear he's willing to spill innocent blood, and that's not a risk either of us are willing to take. Your brother, your mother, Layla, Roth's parents, even Robert. Vitaly is aware of them all and will target them if we force his hand. He's completely capable of slaughtering all of them if we go after him and fail to take him out the first time. It's a complex situation, Kyrie, so I wouldn't necessarily call it running. I would call it prudence. I would call it avoiding collateral damage."
I nodded. "I guess I see your point. It just...it doesn't sit well with me."
"Me neither. But let Roth and me worry about that, okay? Keeping you--all of you--safe...that's my job. So you just focus on planning this wedding."
"Thanks, Harris."
He nodded, extinguished his cigarette on the side of his now-empty beer bottle, then tossed the butt inside. "Of course, Kyrie."
He started to walk away, but I stopped him as a thought occurred to me. "Harris?"
"Yeah?"
"Layla...she's getting a little bit of cabin fever. Plus, all this is getting to her. The sudden change, life on a ship without work to do...it's bugging her. So just...keep an eye on her, please? I don't want her to do anything rash."
"She is prone to making rash decisions, isn't she?"
"Under the right circumstances, yes. When she decides she's had enough, she's capable of just about anything."
Harris nodded. "I'll have both eyes on her, all the time. Nothing will happen to Layla, you have my word."
I knew Harris's word was good, but I still had a strange, unsettling, niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach.
3
FAREWELL, MANHATTAN
I sat in the back of the car, a black Mercedes-Maybach Pullman limousine. It was luxurious beyond compare, soft and supple quilted tan leather, soothing classical music piped in crystal-clear surround sound via invisible speakers. There were a thousand other details that made the car worth more than half a million dollars. I sat in the rear passenger seat, staring out the window gazing up, up, up. Tinted, reflective glass rocketed skyward to a dizzying height, and I saw the face of a Manhattan highrise that had been the scene of a life-changing series of events for me. Up there, on the very topmost three floors was Roth's former home. My former home, really. In what seemed like a lifetime ago I'd stood behind a pair of rich mahogany French doors, my heart hammering, waiting to meet the man who essentially owned me.
I'd been blindfolded. My heart had hammered like a drum. Fear had pumped through my veins in place of blood. Yet through it all, there had been an element of excitement. Seduction, even, that began from the first moment I'd heard his voice, sensed his presence, smelled the spicy undertone of his cologne, felt the brush of his fingers on my shoulder. He'd owned me, financially, but from that first moment, he'd also owned my body, my soul, my heart.
When we first made love, he'd taken possession of my whole being.
I could never go back, now. I could never be a normal girl, dating normal guys. Even if I wanted to--which I didn't--the experience of Valentine Roth had ruined me for all other men.
And it had all started a few hundred vertical feet away from where I sat. The place where Roth was right now personally attending the sale of his building. His home, the core of his company. I wondered if he would walk the halls once more, visit the shower where we'd done...such delicious things to each other. The bedroom, where he'd finally allowed me, of all people, to see the real him, to know him, taste him, feel him.
I thought about the library up there, where Gina Karahalios had shot me in the knee and then kidnapped me. The hallway near the foyer, where I'd first encountered Roth...where I'd seen Eliza's dead body. Eliza, Roth's housekeeper, friend, and one of the few people other than Robert, Harris, and me that he truly trusted or cared for. Eliza, the namesake of our ship.
I inhaled sharply, then blinked. I ignored Layla's curious glance at me and focused on breathing and pretending it was just another day. People passed by on the sidewalk just a few feet away, staring curiously, but the windows were mirrored, preventing anyone from seeing in.
Long, long minutes later--fifteen minutes, or maybe an hour, I'd lost track, lost in memory--Harris emerged from the rotating doors at the entrance, followed closely by Roth. God, Roth. All seventy-six-point-eight blond-haired, blue-eyed, gloriously gorgeous inches of him, clad in a trim black bespoke suit, crisp white button-down, no tie, top two buttons undone, striding confidently toward the limousine, unfastening the center button of his suit jacket as Harris opened the back door for him. I knew from his expression that my Valentine wasn't in a good mood. He had on what I thought of as his "shit-kicking" face, brows drawn, lips pressed in a thin flat line, jaw muscles flexing, eyes glittering and shifting.
Harris took the driver's seat, buckled his seat belt and checked his mirrors. "All set, sir?" He glanced in the rear-view mirror through the lowered partition between the front and rear seats.
Layla, sitting in a rear-facing jump seat, glanced from me to Roth and back, and then slid toward the passenger door. "Hang on, Harris, I'm coming up front."
She exited and took the front seat beside Harris, who shot another glance back at Roth. A nod from Roth, and Harris pulled the long, powerful vehicle out into the stream of traffic, and then closed the partition.
I waited a few minutes more in silence as Roth stared out the window, brooding. Finally I reached out and pried his hand open, threading my fingers through his. "Babe? You okay?"
He shook his head. "No. I hate selling that building. I built it from the ground up. I formed the construction company myself, handpicked the foreman and architect, and chose all the subcontractors myself. Every tile, every slab of marble and every board foot of imported wood, every door handle and cabinet pull and roll of carpeting...I chose it all myself. My handprints are in the foundation. I poured the first load of concrete. It was the first place since I left England as an eighteen year-old boy that really felt like home, you know? It just...sucks."
"You didn't have to sell it."
He glanced at me, finally. "Yes, I did. Number one, we need the cash. Number two, could either of us have walked into that library ever again? I couldn't. I just...couldn't. I went through the bedrooms, the kitchen, and all the other rooms. But the library...I just couldn't go in. Couldn't stand to see the place where she...where Gina...." He shook his head, once, sharply, and then rested his chin in his other hand. "I couldn't. And, besides, for better or worse, I'm done with New York."
"So now what?"
"Now...Robert condenses the businesses that remain into one umbrella company." Another glance at me, this time with a small smile. "We're calling the new structure St. Claire, Incorporated. You're on the board, and you have your own majority share."
"What?" I stared at him; he never ceased to amaze me.
"You and I are the controlling shareholders, each of us owning a third of the shares, with the remaining third split between a few others."
"So...what does being a majority shareholder entail?" I asked.
He shrugged. "As much or as little as you want. You can become involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, if you want; I can teach you anything you need to know that you don't know already. Or, you can just sit back and do nothing and collect the earnings, which will go directly into your personal bank accounts."
Ah, yes, my private bank accounts. Roth had set them up for me after Harris and I had rescued him from Gina. They were my insurance, in case anything happened to Roth, or if--god forbid--I either left or became separated from Roth. The accounts were mine, and only mine. He had no access to them. In my purse there were debi
t cards, checkbooks, and a slip of paper with series of codes written on it, allowing me access to...six accounts? Seven? I wasn't sure. There were a whole bunch of Swiss and offshore accounts, each in my name.
They contained, in total, something in the neighborhood of eight hundred million dollars.
Every once in a while, I would remember I had that money, and I would try to imagine what it meant. Eight hundred million dollars. It was a gobsmacking amount of money. Enough that I could live in utterly ridiculous luxury for the rest of my life and never have to work another day, never have to pay taxes--something that was handled without my needing to do a thing. I wasn't sure how he'd worked that magic, and didn't honestly care; he wasn't a criminal anymore, so it was all legal. Of that I was positive.
"I tend to forget about those bank accounts, honestly," I said.
Roth laughed. "How do you forget about nearly a billion dollars, Kyrie?"
I strived to look innocent. "Out of sight, out of mind? I don't use the money since you take care of everything for me." I shrugged as if it didn't matter, which to me it really didn't. I had total confidence in Roth's ability to provide for us financially. "So...why did you add me to the business, and why name it after me?"
He grinned, a cute, sexy tilt of his lips. "Because you're half of me, sweetheart. And everything I have is yours. All of it is meaningless, without you." He turned toward me, finally. "I've never exactly been poor, but I can tell you without hesitation that I would live my life in utter poverty, as long as I could do it with you."
I shook my head. "Roth, baby. You're a spoiled brat. You have no idea what poverty is like. But...I believe you."
He laughed. "I only said I'd do it, not that I'd like it."
"You would hate it."
He nodded seriously. "I'm sure I would. I have a taste for the best things in life. But I assure you, my love, if we were to somehow lose everything, every penny, every company and subsidiary and property and stock share, we wouldn't remain poor for long. I would work day and night until you were provided for as you deserve."
"I know it, Valentine. I have absolute faith in you."
He just smiled and squeezed my hand. After another few minutes of silence, the vehicle stopping and starting and weaving through traffic, I recognized that our path was leading to the airport. "So, where next?"
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