by Eden Myles
But the man behind the desk was youngish, early forties. He was tall like me, but slim and polished in his dark Italian pinstripe suit. He was much paler than the spray-tanned executives I saw all day, and he sported a lot of dark hair that was longer than was strictly au courant among the upper class. He had combed it carefully back over his ears, and that, combined with the round, wire-rimmed glasses he wore, lent him the look of someone who had stepped out of one of the photographs on the walls. He was clean-shaven, but his chin and throat were shadowed by what I suspected was a strong beard if he didn’t shave twice a day. He looked up from the file he was working over, and the strangest expression passed over his face.
I was shocked by the piercing blue of his eyes and the sudden, unwavering attention he focused on me. His look was like a physical weight, pushing against me, stopping me dead in my tracks. Normally I solicited blank looks. Mr. Wilkins usually looked right through me in the morning. The other girls in the pool hardly remembered I worked there.
“Ms. Christopoulos,” he said, looking me over from head to toe. “Thank you for visiting me this morning.” His voice was deep and resonating. He spoke with long vowels and a vaguely European inflection. I knew he’d been born in London, that his parents had moved here to New York City when he was still a young boy. I knew from the records I handled that he kept flats in all the major cities throughout Europe. All very luxurious, all very exclusive. He was friends with some of the most powerful men in the world, yet no one seemed to really know Ian Sterling.
He continued to stare at me unflinchingly like he expected me to respond in some way. I didn’t know what to say, so I took a step toward him instead. His eyes were such a wintry blue that they looked like the eyes of a Siberian Husky, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was their real color, or if he was wearing colored contact lenses.
My wandering thoughts turned me into a klutz, as usual. I stepped right into the pathway of a glass chair and nearly pitched forward, twisting my ankle as I tried to catch myself against the edge of the big glass desk. I knew I was going down whether I liked it or not, and I was halfway there when I felt Mr. Sterling catch my elbow and steady me. I never saw him leave his seat; he was just suddenly right there, holding me up. He was even bigger than I’d thought. Finally, I thought, and it was a ridiculous thought to have under the circumstances, someone taller than I am.
“Are you all right, Ms. Christopoulos?”
I wobbled uncertainly in my sensible pumps. “Um,” I said, which was a pretty typical response for me when faced with a beautiful man totally out of my league. I noticed he smelled good this close, something light and airy like vanilla. It didn’t quite cover up his own warm male scent. “Thank you,” I offered, my ears burning.
He kept his hand on my arm as he guided me down into one of those ludicrous glass chairs. Then, much to my surprise, he went to one knee on the floor before me to check on my ankle. “I apologize for that. I should have warned you in advance.” He let go of my arm so he could take my ankle in both hands and run his thumbs along the sides. He had strong, work-roughened hands for a CEO, and his touch made the little nerves jump along my leg, which in turn made my stomach clench up in a funny and altogether unfamiliar way. “If it hurts, I can call a paramedic for you,” he offered.
I found myself staring down at him, at all his carefully combed and jelled hair. From this angle, he was all shoulders and muscle that tampered down evenly to a trim waist and ass. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Sterling. I’m fine,” I said, mortified that I was thinking about Mr. Sterling’s ass. It really wasn’t like me at all.
He stood back up, and I felt an irrational instinct to cringe in my seat. I realized that he was at least six and a half feet tall, that his dark, suited presence filled the suite as starkly as the black-and-white antique erotica filled his wall. “I’m glad it isn’t bad,” he said in a dry, noncommittal tone as he moved around the edge of his glass desk to take his seat once more.
Great first impression, Evie, I thought. Now he thinks you have all the grace of a wounded water buffalo.
His desk was immaculate, unlike my workstation downstairs. I looked over the smooth stones and shells he had collected in one corner, wondering if there was any significance to them. At the other corner stood a browning, antique vase with an assortment of flowers in them, the arrangement starkly Ikebana. One of the flowers was a tiger lily, but only one. He sat down, resting his elbows on the one open manila file on the desk, and pinnacled his fingers together. He gave me a direct, non-nonsense look that left me swallowing against the knot growing in my throat. I knew I was about to be canned. “Mr. Wilkins has good things to say about your performance, Ms. Christopoulos.” He paused and blinked very slowly at me. “May I call you Evelyn?”
No one called me Evelyn, not even my parents. I wondered if that was a good sign or not. I immediately said, “Everyone calls me Evie.”
“That’s a shame. Evelyn is a beautiful name. It means ‘Desired’ in old German. I think it suits you better.”
I squirmed in my seat, then sat up a little straighter. My ankle was still very sore, but I ignored it. I thought maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t going to can me after all. “Yes,” I finally managed.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes. You can call me Evelyn.”
He quirked a smile. “And so I shall.” He stared at me directly through those old-fashioned eyeglasses and spread one heavily beringed hand over the file. He moved his fingers in a slow, circular pattern as if he were idly drawing designs there. Most people don’t know that I can read upside down. I knew it was my file he was touching. He never took his eyes off me. “Let me cut to the chase, Evelyn. A new position has opened up and I thought of you.”
My whole body heaved upward with relief, and for a long moment I couldn’t speak at all. “I’m not fired, then?” I said, and then kicked myself mentally for not thinking before opening my big, fat, Greek mouth.
“Not last I checked, no,” he said. His eyes glinted with amusement. “Would that have distressed you, were it true?”
“Yes, of course,” I answered, the first smart thing I’d said all morning. “I like working the pool.”
“You like making all those phone calls all day?”
“Oh yes.”
He pressed his lips together with interest. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disappointed by my answer. “What about your job interests you?”
I realized I was being interviewed for the position right now. My whole body broke out in an all-over sweat. I hoped I hadn’t flubbed it just yet. I didn’t know how to answer his question correctly so I opted for the truth. “I like talking to people. I like having people talk to me.”
Again he blinked. I hoped that was a good sign. “Do you like having me talk to you, Evelyn?”
I told the truth. “Yes.”
“What about talking to me do you like?”
I was at a loss for words. I thought bosses asked you more basic questions in an interview like What are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you think you can improve on? I wondered what the position was that I was applying for. Was I here to replace the unfriendly receptionist out front? Was that the reason for her hostility? The silence drew out between us, making me want to squirm under the weight of his scrutiny. I started worrying about my hives. Finally, I decided I had to say something to fill the void. “I don’t know.” My voice was so low it was almost inaudible, yet in the sterile vastness of the room, it echoed.
“You don’t know why you like talking to me?” Mrs. Sterling said. He narrowed his wolfish blue eyes and the tip of his tongue wetted his mouth as he chose his next words. “Is it because you trust me?”
I watched the wet tip of his tongue moving over his lips. There was a word that Clarissa used for guys she liked. Fuckable. It just popped into my head in that moment. Mr. Sterling was tall and powerfully built. He wore glasses. He was so very fuckable. That was why I liked talking to him. But of course, I co
uldn’t say that. So I just nodded.
“How much do you trust me?” he asked. “I mean…instinctively.”
I licked my own lips nervously in response. I had been licking them all along, I realized, and now my mouth had that gummy lipstick taste. I reached up to brush a wayward lock of hair out of my eyes and realized to my extreme horror that my very rebellious hair was falling down around me despite my best efforts to pin it up. “Very much,” I told him. I couldn’t rationalize it, but yes, I trusted him. I didn’t just want him. I trusted him implicitly.
“Are you a virgin, Evelyn?”
The question caught me so off guard that the whole room seemed to shift in a surreal way around me, like I was on a carousel moving too fast. My hand grew absolutely still in the process of hooking long wayward strands of dark hair behind my ears. “I…I don’t understand.”
One of his eyebrows ticked up. His fingers continued to trail along my file folder. His voice was a low, intimate rumble in his chest. “I’m wondering if you’ve ever had sexual relations with a man before. The position I’m considering you for is best served by a virgin. It’s not a necessity, of course, but it is my personal preference.”
I should have gotten angry right then and there. I couldn’t believe his audacity! Instead, I sat stunned, wondering if he was being serious or not. Maybe this was his way of testing me? Was this some kind of joke? “I don’t understand,” I said again. “What kind of job is it?”
“I’m looking for a courtesan.”
Now I did get angry. Finally, I was angry. I’d been called a lot of things in my life—a beanstalk, a bookworm, a tight-ass, other unflattering things—but no one had ever accused me of being a whore! Not even Shawn. “I don’t do that. I’m not a hooker,” I said with indignation, my voice low and growling.
I expected anger in the face of my outburst. Instead, he looked even more interested, as if my anger proved something to him. As if it enlivened him. His hand grew absolutely still. I realized he’d disrupted the file he was touching, and that his hand now rested on a picture of me, taken from my resume. It was an unflattering picture. I never photographed well. “I’m not interested in a hooker, Evelyn. I am interested in a courtesan. They are not the same thing.”
“How are they different?” I said, my voice rising in pitch and volume. I wanted to get up, to leave his office immediately, maybe even press charges for sexual harassment, but I was afraid I’d fall down again and make a fool of myself.
“Well, for one thing, my courtesan will be mine and mine alone. I’m not interested in sharing her with anyone else, and that includes husbands or boyfriends. For another, she will have certain duties to perform…”
“I’m sure,” I said drolly.
He continued on, undaunted. “…including acting as my escort at certain public functions, a confidante and companion at home, and, of course, my most trusted friend. We would trust each other implicitly. I have certain expectation of her, of course.” He paused to let that sink in. “I expect my courtesan to be well heeled, intelligent, and to engage me in interesting conversation. I expect her to be strong and confident, but to also know her place. The position is not without compensation, of course.” He sharpened his look at me as if he were x-raying me with his eyes, seeing past the layers of my clothing and skin and observing something inside of me, something that squirmed. “I’ve seen the books you read, Evelyn. Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot. I’ve heard you speak on the phone. I’ve read your resume.” Again he touched the file folder and my godawful resume picture as if these things were very important to him. “I know you’re an intelligent woman.”
I sat there, blinking at Mr. Sterling like a person gone blind. “I’m sure you can hire a lot of girls for the things you want, Mr. Sterling…”
“I don’t want ‘a lot of girls,’” he answered tersely. He sounded vaguely annoyed by my suggestion. “And I don’t want just any girl. I want the girl. I want an intelligent girl. And I want a virgin.”
“And you always get what you want, right?”
He indicated the whole of the office with a flick of his hand as if to say What do you think?
“Why me? And why a virgin?” I asked. I was very interested in knowing what kind of obsessive hunger Mr. Sterling had for virgins. Call it morbid curiosity.
Mr. Sterling rose slowly from his seat once more and came around the glass desk until he was standing right in front of me. He leaned down and put his hands on the armrests of my chair, boxing me in. His heat engulfed me. “I want her unattached…untouched. I want to be her first. I want to be the first man to touch her inside. I want a virgin,” he said, as if his request was all very sensible, as if his word were law.
I had stopped breathing. I sat there, suffering his presence. “Perhaps I’m not.”
“Perhaps you are.”
“Most women my age aren’t, you know.”
“Are you most women, Evelyn?” he asked, glaring at me searchingly through the reflective lenses of his glasses. “Are you untouched?”
“I’m…” I stopped. I decided I didn’t want to have this conversation with him, or with anyone. The surge of anger I’d felt earlier was ebbing away, replaced by a strange, abiding sadness. It was none of his business what my nonexistent sex life was like!
He narrowed his eyes and licked his lips again like a cat in human form. It was a decidedly lascivious gesture, and he meant it that way. “All you need to do is say no, Evelyn, and this interview is over. Then you can go back downstairs to the pool and your little job and never worry about this again.” He said the pool like it was a dirty word, like it was beneath him, and me.
I sat in silence for a long time. I looked at him and worked at not shivering or cowering under his almost reptilian gaze. I’d always been a sensible girl, a good girl, and what he was proposing was ludicrous. It was old-fashioned, autocratic. It was indecent. Immoral. So why wasn’t I leaving? Why wasn’t I telling him to go to hell?
“Yes,” he said after a short while, “or no, Ms. Christopoulos?”
We were back to formalities.
I kept wanting to say the word, to say no, to shout it in his face, but after a lengthy silence, I felt him move closer to me. He smiled in a vaguely wicked way and lowered his head so he was actually scenting the front of my body, not touching, but making me quiver inside anyway. I had no doubts about what he was scenting. He knew how wet I was suddenly. He could smell it. I could smell it in the heated closeness between us.
He lifted his head, slowly, until he was back at the level of my face. There he laid an almost chaste kiss on the corner of my mouth. He tasted like heat and peppermints. I let him do it. I didn’t even protest when he moved the softness of his mouth and the roughness of his cheek to kiss me more directly on the lips. His hand went to my left breast where he thumbed my hardening nipple through the softness of my blouse. His teeth were hard against my mouth, like he meant to bite me.
We stayed that way for an agonizing length of time. And then, finally, he said against my mouth, “May I take your silence for a yes? Is that a yes, Evelyn?”
I made a rumbly noise in my throat. Yes, no…I don’t know.
“Yes?” He looked at me demandingly, through those glasses. No one had ever looked at me like that, with such hunger. He impaled me with his look. “Say it,” he said, and kissed me again, a deep, rough kiss that left my mouth numb and tingling. His fingers closed over my nipple, pinching it so suddenly I gasped into his mouth. “Say. It.”
“Yes.”
It was the maddest thing I’d ever said.
A look of profound satisfaction overcame his face. He put his hands around my waist and lifted me easily from the chair, turned, and deposited me on the glassy edge of the desk. “Dear, sweet Christ, yes,” he said as if all his prayers had been answered in that moment. He bent to me, cupped the back of my head, and kissed me harshly, completely, breathing into me. His fingers dug into my coiffure so the little bit remaining came undone and long dark
hair showered down around us both. He kissed me fiercely, sticking his tongue deep inside my mouth, almost all the way down my throat. I made a half-groaning, half-choking noise. I expected him to draw back in response to that sound. Instead, he surprised me.
He pushed me down so we knocked the beautiful antique vase full of Japanese flowers over and my loosened hair unraveled all over his files and ink blotter. He grasped my face harshly in his big hands and kissed me like he meant to consume me. A small part of my mind whispered that this wasn’t proper, or smart, or anything like me. But a greater part reveled in the feel of his hand gripping my curves and jerking me this way and that so he had better access to first my mouth, and then my throat. His teeth grazed me, nibbled me, but didn’t bite. Meanwhile, his hands worked at my blouse, undoing it with a coordination and speed that impressed me.
The room was suddenly very cool against my damp and newly bared skin. He groaned with satisfaction at the front closer of my push-up bra, undid it, and then he was right there, his rough tongue finding an already hardened nipple and licking it, wetting it thoroughly before blowing upon it so it was harder still. He moved back and forth between both nipples, licking and then sucking upon them, his tongue moving in lazy circles, his teeth nipping only very gently. I let out a small cry of surprise, the delicious tingling sensation moving like a vibrating wire from my breasts to my groin and then lower still, between my legs. I writhed upon the desk for him, helpless to stop him even when his hand moved down my body, his touch heavy, hot and demanding. He kept the glasses on, observing my reactions with a scowling concentration that made my whole body flutter with fear and anticipation.
I realized my interview was far from over. I desperately wished I was thinner. I wished I was beautiful. I wished his office suite was darker, not all bright, clinical lights. I almost scooted backwards on the desk away from him, but he held me in place, pinned me to the desk.
He finally stopped tormenting me so he could grip me at the hips, twisting my sensible, navy blue business skirt around my legs. It took me a moment to realize just what he was doing. I almost said no, and then realized the absurdity of the statement. If I said no, he’d stop. I didn’t want him to stop. I had never experienced anything like this before, even with Shawn. My ex-boyfriend’s blind pawing at my boobs during late-night TV-watching sessions simply didn’t count at all.