by Selena Kitt
Well, I thought, that just makes me sad. "You just cut off people who become a problem?"
He shook his head. "Of course. That's human nature. Connections become anchors. Love becomes a burden. I wouldn't want to be an inconvenience to you."
Jesus Christ. What had happened to this guy to make him this way? Was this why he always seemed just a little disconnected, a little apart from the world? I had to help him somehow. I knew, of course, that probably be the best thing for me to do was cut and run because I couldn't save someone who didn't want to save themselves. I knew that much. But I just don't learn. That's a problem I have.
“Don't be a shithead,” I advised him. “I'm not going to cut and run.”
“Oh?” he said. “Then you'll stay? Enjoy fine wine and good sex and the high life with me for a little while? 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may?'”
God, he really was kind of a shithead. But there was hope for him. I'd seen it in him, glimpsed it under his distant exterior, in his moments of candor. I didn't want him to die, and if the only person who knew his plan was me, I had to try, right?
I always tried. I'd taken care of my mom. I'd taken care of Felicia. I took care of all my broken boyfriends, too. I wouldn't be me if I didn't take care of everyone around me.
I set my shoulders. “No,” I said. “I'm not gathering any rosebuds. Obviously what I'm going to do is convince you not to kill yourself. Duh.”
That got his attention. He sat up ever so slightly straighter in his chair. “Oh?” he asked. “Is that a challenge?” His eyes took on a predatory gleam, the same gleam he got that first night we met, when I had explained to him the protocols of artists.
Ruthlessly I stabbed a slice of lamb while I glared at him from across the table. “Not everything is a fucking challenge, you goddamn weirdo.”
“Oh.” He placed his hand over his chest. “You wound me, Madame.”
I saw what he was doing. He was acting like some kind of comic relief character in a movie to keep me at a distance. I wasn't going to let him get away with it any more. Just because he had gobs of money and had shrugged off all earthly attachments and was looking to upgrade to the afterlife and I was still paying down student debt and hadn't given my spiritual life a single thought since that really bad 'shroom trip my junior year in college didn't mean he could just mess with me and keep me at arms length, as if he were somehow better than me, more enlightened.
I liked Malcolm Ward. I especially liked the glimpses of the passionate man beneath the cool, distant, ironic facade he put up for the world. When we fucked, he lost his armor. He wanted me to submit to him, let him do what he wanted with me just to feel less at odds, less out of control? Well that was just fine with me. I'd slip under that hard shell and find his tender parts and remind him just how much he should be feeling.
Rage. Pain. Betrayal.
The thing was, those things weren't bad. They just were. And by the way, they made damn good art. And after they were done, there were other things to feel, like a lust for life, or a lust for me. Only when could feel could he express himself through art, and when he did I was certain he would remember why he had held on to this life for so long already.
I squared my shoulders. “I'll help you finish your masterpiece,” I said.
That seemed to knock him off balance. “You will?” he said. “But I thought you wanted me to stick around, although god knows why. You'd probably be better off without having to deal with me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I probably would. But I'm really bad at doing things that are good for me.”
“Oh?” He smiled. “Are you?”
I felt like he was mocking me. “Yeah. I am. You want to know what I ate for lunch last Friday? Half a block of store brand cheddar cheese because it was the only thing I had in the house and I didn't even have time to stop for food while I was organizing that stupid auction. I do shit that's terrible for me all the time. Store brand cheese gets the job done, so that's what I eat.”
I realized he was staring at me in vague horror. He'd probably never had to eat store brand cheese in his life. “Hey,” I said, “don't judge me. A cheese-lunch is pretty delicious.”
“But not,” he said, “nutritionally sound.”
I rolled my eyes. “Exactly. But like I said, I'm good at doing things that are bad for me. So don't worry about me. I'm the best at surviving on Cheez Whiz and street vendor hot dogs.”
Malcolm looked pained. “Are you comparing me to street vendor hot dogs?” he asked.
“Nutritionally,” I told him. “Don't worry, you're hung better. My point is that you don't need to be nutritionally sound, uh, emotionally speaking. You're still delicious.” This metaphor had gone bad places. I tried to salvage it. “I'll survive somehow.”
He watched me for a long few seconds, his dark eyes contemplative. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I suspect you always do.”
“It's a talent,” I told him. “I'll totally teach it to you.” Triumphantly I speared a tip of asparagus and shoved it into my mouth, where it melted in a delicious mush of butter and salt. I chewed it with relish before swallowing.
Malcolm was still watching me with that pensive, thoughtful expression on his face. “So...” he said at last. “You are going to try to convince me to not kill myself?”
“I am,” I said. “It would be a total waste of a perfectly good person if you were to go through with it.”
“I was going to donate all my organs and my body to science,” he replied. “That wouldn't have been a waste at all.”
“Yeah, well, you'll still be using them for a while so tell the scientists to cancel the party.”
He smiled a bit at that. “You are a strange woman,” he said. “I think that's why I like you so much.”
“You charmer.”
He appeared to reach a decision. “Very well, you may attempt to convince me not to kill myself.”
I rolled my eyes. “How gracious of you—” I began, but abruptly his spine straightened and his chin lifted.
“Don't interrupt,” he commanded.
Ah. The billionaire businessman again. A glimpse of who he had been before he had lost his closest friend and his company, all that he had lived for. The man in control. Suddenly I wondered if this was such a good idea. Well, fine, more of a bad idea than it was already. But I shut my mouth. I could play the role he wanted.
He seemed pleased by my acquiescence. “Good. If we do this, then I must ask for things in return from you.”
I gulped. “What kind of things?”
He smiled. “Nothing you haven't already given me. Submission. Conversation. Your body. Your mind.” He pinned me with those startling eyes, dark and almost sinister in the low ambient light. “Your thoughts. Your memories.”
Hooboy. But fine, whatever. I'd poured it all out before. What did I care if he knew things about me? He'd already opened himself up wider than I ever would have to a person I barely knew. “Okay,” I said.
“I mean it, Sadie. I want to know all about you.”
I nodded. “I understand. I mean, I don't know why, I don't think I'm that interesting, but I'll do it. From now on, I'm an open book to you.”
He tilted his head. “Do you really not know why I find you so fascinating?” he asked. “Why I envy you so much?”
My mouth dropped open. “Envy me?” I said. In a hundred million years that would never, ever have occurred to me.
He nodded slightly. “Envy you,” he repeated. “Part of me wants to break you, you make me so jealous. Part of me just wants to hold you and make sure nothing touches you again. Keep you just the way you are.”
His words left me feeling queer and messed up inside, defensive. “You can't break me,” I blurted without thinking. “I won't let you.”
Silence descended on our table, and I licked my lips again. His intense stare made me nervous, but I refused to show it. Well, mostly. Beneath the table, my hands fiddled with my napkin, twisting and turning it, rhythmically
pressing it into a ball and letting it spring back.
“I'll see which side wins out,” he said at last.
“Okay,” I told him. “Then I guess we're both going to try our best.”
He smiled. "Yes, we will. Now why don't you eat? You'll feel better after you do."
With a sigh, I finally acquiesced to his urging and dug in again. The food was delicious, and for a while we ate in silence. My mind whirled, revolving around the bombshells that had just been dropped onto my mental landscape. I had been worried my life was becoming boring, but now it was far too exciting for my own good. I already had second thoughts about this; Malcolm Ward needed therapy, not an affair, but as it was this was probably the best he was going to get.
After I had finished my main course, I set my fork and knife down and dabbed at my lips with my napkin. He was right, a bit of food had done me a world of good, and my thoughts were beginning to calm from the turmoil of his revelations and my own planning. "So," I said at last, "what do you want to do now?
He smiled and polished off his wine. To my admittedly-drunken eyes, he didn't seem at all inebriated. "I think we should board my boat and head out into international waters," he said. "Shut off our cell phones, cloister ourselves away where no one will bother us for a while. Float around on the sea. Make art. Make love."
Make love. The very words sent a delicious stab of heat through me as I remembered the passion of our previous fuck sessions. I wanted very badly to sleep with him again. I felt addicted to him. And I was already here. Already a party to his flight. The only thing I had to lose was my sanity. It'd been a while since I'd done that, though the older I got the less the idea appealed to me.
But he had said I was alive, and he made me feel alive. I'd been drifting along for a while, taking care of business, taking care of Felicia and her numerous problems. Maybe I was just a fixer at heart.
You really have no business trying, I told myself. This is a fool's game, and you are not a fool.
If only I could convince myself of that fact, my life would be a lot easier.
"I imagine this is much like becoming involved with someone who is terminally ill," Malcolm said, interrupting my thoughts. "But all things end. That is the way of the world."
I reached across the table and grabbed his hand, and it was cool and dry in my hot palm, as though he were already halfway to dead. "I don't want this to end just yet," I said. "Let's go sailing."
Chapter Eleven
Malcolm didn't waste any time. After our final course—a warm chocolate soufflé—he drew a small pad of paper from his back pocket and wrote something down—in French, of course—before carefully selecting an enormous wade of bills from the depths of his wallet, wrapping them in the piece of paper, then placing the whole burrito on the table. He put a heavy glass on top of them, to keep the half-folded stacks from popping open again.
Hush money, I thought to myself. Money to pay for the meal, money to keep Dominic from spilling the beans to the FBI. Or would it be the CIA, since we were out of U. S. jurisdiction? I had no idea. The famous infighting between departments was probably why we weren't already on a prison plane back to the states.
Smoothly, Malcolm stood, and I sensed a change in him. A purpose. I couldn't help but let my eyes wander over his body, and I noted, before it was obscured by the fall of his coat, that his cock was hard and straining against his trousers. My breath caught.
He looked down at me, his face cool but his eyes burning. “I have to make a few quick phone calls. I think you should go to the ladies room and remove your panties,” he suggested mildly, but I could tell from the hard edge beneath his voice that it was more of a command than a suggestion.
Well, I'd agreed to this. I nodded and stood up, tottering back to the bathroom again, toting my purse. When I reached it, I took out my cell phone and turned it off so it couldn't be used to track us, then I hiked up my skirt and slid my panties down my legs. The crotch was already wet with anticipation, and I stuffed them into my purse for safekeeping.
The wine was wearing off, and I was starting to get a headache, but it didn't matter. I stood in the middle of the tiny bathroom and smoothed my skirt over my generous hips, adjusted my bra over my modest breasts, and tried to look presentable. Civilized, even. Not like a tramp from Jersey who was about to get fucked good and hard.
The very thought sent a rush of heat between my legs, and I had to take a few deep breaths to cool the flush from my cheeks.
Throwing my shoulders back, I left the bathroom and re-entered the dining room.
Malcolm was behind the bar, talking on the phone in what I recognized as Japanese. I wondered who he was calling, but decided it didn't matter. He was making arrangements. That was what he did. That was how the moneyed world operated, I had learned. You made arrangements, and things happened, just the way you wanted them to. I gathered my coat from the chair where I had left it and noted the stack of bills was already gone.
After another minute, Malcolm hung up the phone. He turned to me. “Put your coat on,” he said. “We're going for a walk.”
That much was obvious, but something in the way he said it made me think the particular walk we were going to go on would be a bit longer than the walk we'd taken to get here. I nodded and shrugged into my coat. Malcolm put his broad, warm hand on my back and, to my surprise, ushered me into the kitchen.
It was small, but very modern. Slick steel gleamed, brushed and burnished to a fine shine. The great sink was full of dishes, and Dominic was standing over it, washing them with a curious intensity that I only realized was deliberate when we slipped past him and out a back door into an alleyway. He hadn't looked at us, I realized, because he was pretending to not know where we had gone.
Did Malcolm think the police were already on their way? I realized that his cell phone was still back at the apartment. If it had been tracked, Don would know Malcolm's haunts in Dubrovnik. It was obviously a place he came to often, or often enough to have an apartment here. My heart picked up the pace and a queer feeling spread through my belly, a tight anticipation not unlike desire. The thought of being on the run from the feds in a foreign country, a handsome billionaire at my side—well, I'm not totally immune to the thrill of sex and danger. Malcolm took my hand and led me out into the dark, medieval night.
Together we wove through the back alleys of old Dubrovnik, my hand clutched in his, though neither of us said a word. Would we even make it to the boat? I wondered. Or did Malcolm think we had enough time to go back to the flat and get our things? All those clothes, just wasted. I had the important things I needed in my possession, but I felt a pang at all those warm clothes newly bought languishing in a flat, never to be worn.
Oh well. It wouldn't be the first time I'd fled and left everything behind.
After what seemed like a hundred twists and turns, Malcolm led me up a narrow staircase and into a higher alleyway. Above us the clouds had parted, letting the moon shine down for a few moments, and the ghostly light bathed the curiously quiet city. Far away I could hear the occasional car in the city outside the walls, but here it was quiet. The chilly ocean breeze whistling past my ears was the predominant sound. We came to a halt, and all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Two white and black scooters were parked in the alleyway next to a door leading into the building we'd just scaled. Policija was emblazoned on the sides. Malcolm turned to me, and I was gobsmacked to see him smile.
“They're in here, watching the street outside my apartment,” he whispered. “Let's see how good you are at submitting to me now.”
My whole body tensed, and to my utter shock he unbuttoned his fine coat, unzipped his pants, and freed his erection to the night air before mounting one of the scooters. Placing one hand on the back and one on the handlebars to brace himself, he smiled at me.
“Suck my cock, Sadie.”
I'm not ashamed to admit I was quietly freaking out. This was... well, this was serious. What if they came ba
ck? What if someone saw us? His hot, hard shaft thrust at me from his trousers, and I felt a blazing, melting heat twine its way through my core. It was terrifying, and unbearably arousing. Like fucking your boyfriend in your parents' bed, when they could come home at any moment. Except way, way more dangerous.
My eyes met his, and he smirked. He didn't think I would do it.
Maybe we were more alike than I'd thought, because I found I couldn't back down from a challenge either.
I stepped forward and wrapped my hand around his cock.
The hiss of breath between his teeth was all I needed to spur me on. Acutely aware of how exposed we were to whoever might decide to walk down the alleyway, or peek from between the curtains above us, I let my hands glide over his thighs and bent down, my hair falling around my face, shielding me from his gaze.
His cock thrust up at me. I'd wanted to taste it since he first touched me and made me come. Now was my chance. I extended my tongue and gave it a soft, tentative lick, swiping the tip of my tongue against the soft slit, lapping up the sweet precum beaded there.
Malcolm hissed again. “Jesus,” he muttered, and I smiled. Another chink in his armor. Feel it, I wanted to say to him. You want to leave this behind? But I didn't. Instead I opened my mouth as wide as I could and swallowed his cock whole.
His hips bucked, thrusting down my throat, and I gulped, savoring the dark, earthy taste of his skin, the heaviness of his cock lying against my tongue. I wanted him to lose himself in the sensation, wanted him to feel as alive as he thought I was. I sucked hard and pulled back, and his pelvis followed me, as though he couldn't bear to give up the heat of my mouth and the tight seal of my lips.
Loosely I looped my fingers around his shaft and picked up a quick rhythm, giving just enough friction to tease him as I sucked and licked the soft head of his cock. I must have been doing something right because he groaned and nearly fell off the scooter as he tried to reach my mouth.
I denied him, pulling back and back the further forward he thrust, until he was standing up and I was kneeling in the street. Cold cobblestones bit into my knees, but the heat rolling from Malcolm was enough to keep me warm.