by Selena Kitt
"I chose the wrong thing to do," he said. "I hate golf. I'm not sure you can hate golf and be a CEO. It's just not possible.
"Do you hate it because you're bad at it, or because it's boring and wasteful?" I asked him.
A grin broke across his face. "The latter," he said. "I'm very good at it. I'm very good at most things."
I raised my eyebrows. "And modest, too."
He shrugged. "It is just fact."
Oh really? "And what are you not good at?"
He pursed his lips. "Art. Yet," he said.
I supposed that was true. "You do have talent," I had to admit to him. "There was something in those photos that was very... magnetic."
"It's you," he said, catching me off guard. "You are the magnetic part of those pictures."
I looked away. "I didn't look half as terrible as I usually do in photos," I conceded grudgingly. "But that was maybe the lighting. And I actually took the time to do my make up yesterday."
"And today?" he said as the subway car screeched to a halt. People got off, and people got on. An old hobo staggered through the doors. One of the ones that likes to sing. I hate those guys, because I never have enough cash to give to all of them, and it makes me feel like shit. I know, I know, living in the city, I should be over this by now, but I could have been one of those guys. Anyone could. It's just an accident of birth. Absently I patted my pockets as I tried to formulate an answer to his question.
"I probably dolled myself up a bit," I admitted with a sigh. Just as I'd thought, I didn't have any cash on me. I'd spent the last of it on beer and cigarettes. If I'd had one of those beers still with me, I could have given it to him, but that probably wasn't the wisest decision. I'd feel better, but the next thing you know there's a homeless dude frozen stiff under a bridge.
The hobo clanged a beat-up cane against the subway car pole. "Attention," he said. "Attention please." The car started up and he stumbled, only managing to catch himself at the last moment. He cleared his throat as he straightened up and I looked away. I hated to see people like this. I wish I had Felicia's idealism when it came to the world, but no amount of money was going to change that guy's life. Money could never make him sober, or induce his kids to talk to him again, or whatever terrible, sad story he had hidden away inside.
He gave a little speech in a gruff voice, and then launched into Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby. I wanted to sink into the floor. He held his hat out as he walked up and down the car, and he passed me quickly, seeing that I had nothing. His voice was quite fine, but it was so sad to see his talent wasted on a subway car full of commuters that it mostly made me depressed, and I averted my eyes.
Next to me, Malcolm stood up as the hobo launched into the "never gonna see you" part.
Malcolm flung his arms wide and took a deep breath. "Never gonna see you any more," he sang in harmony, a deep bass voice booming from his chest as he leaned into the man, clearly indicating that he should lead. The man's eyes lit up and together they finished out the first verse in perfect harmony to a smattering of applause. Then Malcolm reached into his inside pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed the man a wad of bills. Then he sat down again.
I stared at Malcolm. I wouldn't have been more surprised if he'd ripped off his skin and revealed himself to be a robot underneath. In fact, I would have been significantly less surprised by his behavior than I had been up to this point.
"I didn't know you could sing," I said stupidly.
He held a hand up and tilted it back and forth, indicating that of his panoply of talents, singing merely fell into the fair to middling range. I watched the hobo counting his haul, his eyes wide as saucers. "How much money did you give him?" I asked in a low voice.
"A little over a thousand," he replied.
I backed away and stared at him. "Are you serious?" I said at last.
"Why shouldn't I?" he said. "What good is it doing me?"
I had no idea. Probably buying me lunch, but that was selfish. "And the singing?"
He shrugged, a little one-shouldered affair, self-deprecating. "Allah will not show mercy to the unmerciful," he told me.
Of all the things I had expected him to say, that certainly wasn't it, but when I opened my mouth and tried to comment on it, we arrived at our destination. The train screeched to a stop and he stood up again, holding his hand out. "Let's go eat," he said.
Without thinking, I put my hand in his and I felt the zing of attraction spark between us. Then he was pulling me to my feet and we were out among the press of people, jostling through the corrals of the underground until we reached the surface, all together, and streamed out into the city.
* * * *
"So are you Muslim?" I asked him finally as the waiter wandered off to the kitchen with our order. The Indian restaurant he'd taken me to was a little out-of-the-way place that I'd never heard of before, and the proprietor seemed to know Malcolm, though he only said, "Welcome back," before ushering us to our table—the best in the house, though that was a dubious honor.
We sat together in the booth, as though we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Where our knees had touched on the subway train, here Malcolm pressed his entire thigh against mine, and I had to remind myself not to swoon. The food also smelled amazing, and Malcolm insisted on ordering for us. I let him. His thigh may or may not have had something to do with the allowance of that liberty. And, well, I know what I like and what I don't, and he hadn't ordered anything that would send up alarm bells for me. Such as too many chickpeas. I like chickpeas, but one of my friends used to live on chickpeas, and they made him gassier than a heifer.
Malcolm looked at me with surprise. "Am I Muslim?" he said. "Why would you ask that?"
I tried to suppress the eye roll that welled up within me, but like a force of nature, it could not be denied. I rolled my eyes. "Because you just spouted some line at me about Allah's mercy."
"Oh, that," he said, as if people quoted the surahs or the hadiths or whatever that had been all the time in casual conversation. "I just think of that line whenever I see someone who needs help."
"Really?" I said. "Why that particular phrase?"
He appeared to think about this for a moment, and then shrugged. "I'm not sure," he said. "I think it resonated with me during the time of my life that I heard it."
"What time was that, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I don't mind your asking," he said. Then he hesitated. "But I think I might mind telling. Please excuse me. That was was an excellent question and I had to shoot it down like that."
I held up my hands. "Don't feel bad on my account," I said. "I'm just trying to get to know you better. Things you say and things you don't say are all part of that."
He smiled. "That's a very interesting way of looking at it. Very eastern, or possibly Kabalistic."
I had to admit to myself, Malcolm Ward got weirder and more interesting the more he talked, which was the opposite of most of the people I had run into. Usually the mysterious people you meet are only mysterious up until the moment they admit to growing a shroom farm in their closet or confess they are bipolar or something else that explains their behavior. So far Malcolm had listed off Shinto and Muslim thought to me. And also reincarnation. "You know a lot about religions," I said. "Did you study them in school or something?"
"I know very little about religions, but I know of a lot of them." He smiled. "It's a hobby of mine, studying religions."
I noted he didn't answer the question about school. "That's a strange hobby for a really rich guy to have," I said. "All the rich guys I know are all about making business deals or picking up hookers or doing blow or golfing until their hands fall off."
"I know," he said. "I don't find the society of people I belong to to be particularly suited for my temperament." His mouth twisted, somewhat ruefully. "But I can't very well move downward to socialize. I don't really fit in anywhere right now."
"Fitting in is overrated," I said. "Especially if you're going to be an arti
st. You need to cultivate that individuality."
"You think so?" he asked. "But if what I say doesn't mean anything to anyone but me, what point is saying it?"
Holy shit, I thought. This conversation was getting far more existential than I was used to. I'd had plenty of conversations about the nature of art, maaaaaaaaan, but they had usually been while I and my friends were high as hell, and they didn't make sense afterward. "Personal satisfaction?" I hazarded.
"Is that why you do it?" he asked me.
I sat back in the booth, not sure how to answer that. Part of art was a fundamental LOOK, LOOK AT ME desire, but essentially you wanted people to look at you because you thought you had something unique and interesting to say. I wasn't sure if I had ever managed to do that. My sales certainly didn't indicate that I resonated with many people. Usually I soothed myself by hoping I had merely transcended human consciousness and touched the realm of the divine or some other such garbage, but I knew it was because I wasn't communicating clearly. Or I was alone.
Not like Felicia. Felicia's art was stunning. Raw and exposed, she peeled back the niceties of society and revealed the emotional muscle and bone and sinew beneath. Her art was nothing like mine. And besides, I hadn't really put paint to canvas in the past month. Or two. Or was it three...?
Horrified, I thought back, trying to remember the last time I'd done any sort of artwork, and I couldn't remember. I gave a bitter little laugh. "I don't know why I do it. Or did it. I don't do art so much any more. I'm usually pretty tired after work." That sounded ungrateful. "I mean, my job is a great job and all and I love working for Lis, but I'm so drained by the time that I get home that I don't have much to say."
The waiter brought our naan and rice, the prelude to our meal, but when he retreated Malcolm put his hand on my knee. Warm ripples of sensation spread out over my skin, and I swallowed, hard. I'd been trying not to think about how close he was, about how every cell in my body seemed magically attuned to his presence. His hand wiped all that pretense away and I caught my breath. "Isn't that something to say in and of itself?" he asked me. "Isn't weariness an emotion?"
I shrugged, feeling silly. "Yeah, but everyone feels that way."
"Then that should resonate with your audience."
I hadn't quite thought about it that way. Yes, saying the same thing over again wasn't new, but that didn't mean I couldn't try to say it in a new way.
Of course, how I was going to do that with paint and bits of flotsam found in Central Park was the question. I liked my mediums. I probably just didn't know how to use them.
"I don't know," I said. "That seems like a long time ago for some reason.
The waiter returned with our meals—the lamb shahi korma for Malcolm, and the saag paneer for me—then retreated, and Malcolm, to my disappointment, removed his hand and began to apportion the dishes. "May I see some of your art some time?" he asked me.
"Yeah, I guess. It's all at my apartment, stored in the spare room in the back. And some of it is in galleries around the city."
"Any nearby?"
I thought. "I don't think so. Not here anyway. Maybe closer to your house. Anton has a piece of mine, I know that."
"I would like very much to see some of it, to witness how a professional does her work." He tore off a bit of naan and used it to sop up some of the sauce before wrapping it around a chunk of lamb and delicately popping it into his mouth. His whole body relaxed when it hit his tongue. "Aaaah," he said. "There is nothing like knowing the peace of a well-seasoned meal."
The expression on his face was one of pure bliss, and I found myself strangely jealous that it should be a hunk of dead farmyard animal that had made him so happy. Our sexual encounters so far had been entirely one-sided, although I suppose Malcolm got quite a bit of pleasure from eating me out, if his straining erections afterward were anything to go by. I felt rather annoyed that I hadn't yet reciprocated, but it made sense. In his studio, in his room, I was the object of study, of worship by the camera lens. But out here in the world, we were two equals. Well, not equals, but we were at least on neutral ground. I slipped my hand under the tablecloth and placed it on the inside of his thigh.
His flesh burned through the fine fabric of his slacks, and the muscles tensed and jumped at my touch. It gave me a wicked, illicit thrill to touch him this way, unseen by anyone else. Serenely I sopped up sauce with my bread and chewed it without comment, but under the table I let my fingers wander over his thighs, dipping between them and then back up, as though I were climbing mountains and fording valleys with my hand. Above the table, his eyes showed no emotion other than bliss. His lids were half closed, and he ate with gusto, commenting here and there about various spices he could taste in the sauces.
Then I slipped my hand up to his groin and his breath hitched in the middle of saying the word turmeric, and I couldn't repress the wicked smile that sliced across my face.
"Sadie," he said, "what are you doing?
I let my hand go still. "Just returning some favors I owe you."
He scowled at that and I wondered if I had misread the situation. His hand on my leg, his thigh pressed against mine... I mean, we'd already been pretty close... didn't he want this?
"You don't owe me any favors," he said. "If you do not want me in the same way, I'd really rather you didn't."
His voice had gone stiff, as stiff as his cock was growing under my palm. I'd messed up somehow.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "You just seemed so happy eating that food, like it was some kind of rare pleasure... I kind of wanted to be the one to put that look on your face." Ugh, it sounded so hokey when it came out of my mouth. Not at all playful the way it sounded in my head.
But he relaxed a bit, and a smile curled the corner of his mouth. "Is that so?" he asked. "Have you ever done anything like this in public?"
I had to think about that. I didn't think private parties counted, and everyone had been doing things and no one noticed because we'd always all been drunk beyond belief... "No," I said.
His hinted smile grew into a real smile at that. "Then let me guide you at it."
I licked my lips. "You've done it?"
"I know what I like," he replied evasively. Propping his elbows on the table, he hid my arm from the view of the rest of the restaurant. "Please, continue."
For some reason, doing it at his direction made it even hotter. I did as he told me, letting my fingers wander up and down, around his crotch and between his legs, feeling the heat growing there. What sort of underwear was he wearing? Boxers? Briefs? The devil wears nada? I wanted to find out, but there was no way for me to draw his cock out into the open without making it completely obvious what I was doing.
"Keep eating," Malcolm reminded me. "Otherwise someone will suspect something is wrong. There's no reason to go wasting a good korma just because you're giving a hand job."
My cheeks flared and I ducked my head, reaching for the bread. I ran into a problem here. How was I supposed to tear the bread with only one hand?
I should have known Malcolm would have the answer for that.
"Turn toward me, just a bit," he said. His voice was remarkably steady, and I wanted to push his boundaries a bit, so did as he bade, and ran my fingers up to his cock again, where I let them stay.
His thick erection burgeoned in his pants, a hard, aching swell against the fabric, and I cupped my hand over it, giving it a little rub. Malcolm let out the tiniest grunt, but just the sound of it made me wet and hot and eager. I glanced around, making sure no one was watching us. The lunchtime crowd had definitely started to fill the place up, and though we were in a corner booth, one would only have to glance over at us, take note of my hand in his lap, and deduce what we were doing.
It was so dangerous. Illegal. How long had it been since I'd done something illegal?
Granted, I was with one of the richest men in the city and riches tend to make legal troubles go away, so even if we were outed there would probably be no repercus
sions. Except perhaps in the papers or the gossip mills.
His cock felt good against my palm.
I licked my lips as Malcolm tore off a piece of bread for me, but when I extended a hand to take it, he held it just out of my reach.
"Food for favors," he said. "If you do exactly what I say, you'll have the best meal of your life."
I pressed my lips together and let my hand go still. "Okay," I said.
He smiled. "Good. Hike up your skirt."
My breath caught. He was turning the tables on me. I rather thought I might like it. Reaching down, I lifted the hem of my skirt, just as he had done about an hour before, in his bedroom, the precursor to giving me the sweetest head I'd ever received. I shivered at the memory, the echo of pleasure sending hot spears of desire through my body, my pussy growing wet and slick with the thought. As I lifted the skirt past my thighs, Malcolm dipped the piece of bread in sauce and wrapped up a cube of cheese in it. "Open your mouth," he instructed.
I did.
He popped the morsel inside, placing it on my tongue like a priest giving sacrament, and I closed my lips on his fingers, giving them a good, long suck. Blood darkened his cheeks and his pupils dilated at the sensation. "Very nice," he murmured. "Now push your panties aside and put your fingers on your clit."
Almost as if I were in a trance, my fingers went to the apex of my thighs and slid the crotch of my panties over my vulva. I was wet and aching, the flesh of my pussy burning hot and soaked with my juices. I wanted very much for him to touch me there again, but doing it to myself under his supervision was somehow just as good, if different.