by Ava Lore
“What's in it for me?”
I smiled at him. “Someone to listen to you,” I told him. “And a happy wife. I've heard that's very important.”
Anton chuckled at that, then he pulled me to him and his mouth descended on mine.
Desire rose up in me, an inferno that I couldn't tamp down, no matter how I tried. It spread like wildfire over me, sweeping away my determination. My skin slipped and slid on his, our thighs, our chests, our arms and legs and cock and mound, all were smashed together in the hot, soapy steam. His kiss lifted me up as he nipped at my lips with his teeth, but somehow I found the strength to resist him. My pussy and ass were still aching from our earlier encounter, and I was tired.
He drew back and looked down at me. “Already attempting to bargain with me?” he asked.
Beneath his words I heard a knife balanced on edge, and I hastened to assure him this was not the case. “Not at all,” I said as he ran his hands down my sides. Somehow I was on my tiptoes, my arms around his neck. How did these things keep happening? “I'm just...”
His hands squeezed my backside, and I gasped, stumbling into him. His hardening erection slid against my abdomen.
“I still want to fuck your ass,” he said conversationally.
“Yes,” I said. “I... I think I want that, too.”
“Then turn around.”
It took all my strength, but I managed it. “N—no.”
He stilled. “What did you say?”
“You said I could say no,” I told him. “So... no.”
He seemed to think about this. “I did say that. What would you like to do instead?”
I sighed and let my forehead fall against his shoulder. “Sleep.”
I could feel the confusion radiating from him. “Sleep?” he said, as though it were a foreign word he'd never heard before. “You mean... sleep sleep?”
“Yeah. I'd like to get out, dry off, get in bed, and fall unconscious.”
He didn't say anything for a moment. “I don't suppose you'd let me fuck you while you're asleep, would you?” he said.
Indignant, I drew back, ready to give him a piece of my mind, and he laughed. “Relax, Felicia. I would never.”
“That's goddamn right. Which reminds me, shouldn't I have a safeword or something?”
His mouth twisted. “Yes, you should,” he said. “Especially given how you responded to me this afternoon. I've been very irresponsible not to give you one.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to bestow upon me the word that would keep me safe from whatever horrors he wanted to visit upon me.
He smiled. “How about... Jonathan?”
I made a face. “My dad's name? Ew. Ew, ew, ew. No, that's gross.” I gave him a little shove as he laughed at me again. “You are gross, Anton Waters.”
“I never claimed otherwise,” he told me. “Fine, you pick.”
I chewed my lip and absently drew away from him, letting the water cascade over me and wash the soap away. “How about... Trixie?”
This time it was Anton's turn to make a face. “Trixie?” he said. “What kind of name is that?”
“My first dog's name,” I said defensively.
“Well, it'll definitely stop me in my tracks,” he said. “Very well. Trixie it is.”
“Good,” I said, washed the last of the soap from my body, then pushed past him and got out.
“Where are you going?” he wanted to know.
“To sleep!” I told him, grabbing a towel and exiting the bathroom.
I was already snuggled in bed and half-dreaming when he slid under the covers with me. He reached out and pulled me to him. I didn't resist. Laying my cheek on his bare shoulder, I reveled in the warmth we shared and kept my eyes firmly shut. I wouldn't be tempted by the hard thighs pressed against mine. Not at all.
“I have to return to New York tomorrow,” he said after a moment. “I canceled meetings left and right to come here.”
“Hmm,” I said. Meetings. Boring.
“We'll need to make living arrangements,” he continued, and I heard an edge come into his voice, a bit of a strain. “I meant to discuss them with you before we wed, but...”
He trailed off. I was beginning to suspect that he was feeling a little embarrassed about his hasty decision to marry me without any kind of notice to anyone, let alone me. His need to control everything around him was a weakness, and I knew I could use it to find the answers I sought.
Anton cleared his throat. “Anyway, my schedule is packed tomorrow afternoon. I've arranged for an assistant to help you organize your things and plan out the next few weeks while we settle in.”
I saw an opening. “I actually have an assistant,” I said.
“You do?” He sounded amused.
“Yes. And by assistant, I mean a friend who needs a job.”
He was quiet. “Very well. I will give the job to your friend. Conditionally based on performance.”
Oooh, that would go over well with Sadie. “Done,” I said. Hey, she needed rent.
He continued. “And we'll talk about the honeymoon this weekend...”
My ears perked up at that. “Honeymoon?” I said. “Where?”
He ran his fingers through my hair. An affectionate gesture. I yawned. “Anywhere you like,” he said. He was starting to sound far away. “And I think we should still go shopping for your wedding boudoir.”
“Boudoir?” I mumbled.
“Yes. You'll need toys and things that are all your own.”
A fetish and sex toy shopping spree all for me. How romantic.
“Well,” I said, “I already liked that buttplug you used. We can keep that. There. That's one thing off the list.”
“You like it?” Anton said, and he sounded far away to my foggy brain. “We will keep it. Consider it one of my wedding presents to you.”
Who the fuck gives a buttplug to the wife they barely even know as a wedding present? I wanted to ask him, but I was too tired. Besides, I already knew the answer: Anton Waters did.
Anton Waters did a lot of strange things. And I wanted to know why.
But for now, I needed to sleep, so I drifted off, nestled against Anton's chest, listening to the beat of his heart.
I slept like a baby.
Chapter Five:
Bartered Submission
So it turns out that when you get secretly married to one of the richest guys on the planet, it doesn't stay a secret for long.
I slept on the plane back to New York while Anton worked. His desire to bone until we both ended up in the Emergency Room with third degree burns on our genitals seemed to be doused in the cold light of a hundred and fifty urgent emails dinging on his phone the next morning. We'd grabbed only coffee and pastries for breakfast in Anton's haste to get back to work. By the time the plane touched down, the news was spreading, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it reached people I knew, if it hadn't already. Sadie had a really big mouth.
"Keep your head down," Anton advised as we ducked into his town car.
"What?" I said, looking around. "Why?"
Anton gave an exasperated sigh. "Because," he said patiently, as though explaining something to a very small child or a particularly dim hamster, "there's paparazzi everywhere, and you just gave them a great shot of your face. Congratulations."
"What?" Shit!" I was not at my chipper best. Slingshotting to Nevada and back had made me crazy jetlagged and I wasn't even sure what time it was. All I knew is that I wanted a Filet o' Fish and a Dr. Pepper the size of my arm, and my chances of getting one were vanishing with every merry ding of Anton's phone. I let my hair fall over my cheeks as the driver—sadly, not Zachary—shut my door, and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized the windows were tinted to hell and back.
"It's inevitable that we will be uncovered," Anton said as he scrolled through yet another email, "but you may perhaps wish to do so on your own terms." He gave me an almost teasing look from the corner of his eye. "Makeup, perhaps. A
nd you might want to have your hair done."
Distressed, I patted my face and hair, but to my surprise, Anton reached out and grabbed my hand. "You look lovely, Felicia," he said before releasing me. "Don't worry about it too much."
"Easy for you to say," I snapped at him. "Not all of us were born into this world with perfect looks."
His brows twitched. "You think I look perfect?"
Oh, jeez. "Don't be a girl," I said. "You practically rolled out of bed and into your clothes this morning, and you look like you could be on GQ."
"I have been on GQ. And there's nothing wrong with being a girl."
"Yes, I know, but if they were daily they'd just show up at your door every morning and take a photo."
Anton tilted his head, and I saw that faint smile on his face suddenly bloom into... dare I say? Almost a full blown grin. No teeth yet. I'd get there someday.
"Thank you, Felicia," he said.
We stared at each other for a long moment, until the air between us crackled and sizzled.
He broke contact first and shifted in his seat, as though he had suddenly become uncomfortable. "At any rate," he said, far more brusquely than usual, "we need to talk about living arrangements."
"What?" I said. "Oh. Right. Shouldn't I just come... live with you?" Crap. I didn't know where he lived. Or what his house looked like. What if it was one of those really spare modern places with chairs you couldn't sit in? Did it have a sex dungeon? It had to have a sex dungeon. If it didn't have a sex dungeon I was going to have to question everything I knew about Anton Waters, which still wasn't much.
But every minute I spent with him taught me more.
His phone rang. Checking the screen, he cursed under his breath. "Sorry, Felicia, I have to take this."
"Sure," I said, and pretended to inspect my nails as I observed him from the corner of my eye.
"Waters," he said into the phone. "Yes. Yes. No. That's not going to work." I listened as the person on the other line burbled for a while. Anton sat with the phone to his ear and smiled that faint smile. He was like a Buddha. A business Buddha. Eventually the person on the other end of the line realized he was talking to a brick wall and trailed off. Anton waited.
He'd used this very same tactic with me, and it was incredibly effective. After a moment the voice burbled again, this time sounding very contrite.
"Yes, thank you," Anton told them, and hung up, then dialed a new number. "Arthur, I need to speak to Don Schmidt as soon as I get into the office. Yes, clear that appointment." The whole time he spoke in a slow, calm manner, his voice almost soothing, unless, I suppose, you had fucked up in some way. Then it probably sounded like a bomb about to go off. Unpredictable. And yet I'd never heard him yell, and he'd only become closed off and angry once or twice with me in private.
He had incredible control. I'd observed last night that his need for control was consuming, and could be a weakness. Say what you like about my father, but he tried to teach me—between rounds at the golf course when he forced me to be his caddy—about the business world. Some of it had sunk in, despite my best efforts, and I found myself falling back on them now, trying to decipher the enigma Anton presented. Before our ill-fated shopping trip, I'd read up on him on the internet.
Anton Waters. No known family, though he had said that his parents died in a car crash when he was young in several interviews. He got his start in real estate, flipping properties like pancakes as the bubble swelled. Money flowed from his real estate ventures into finance and manufacturing, and he was known throughout the business world as a man who made no attachments. He held no trust in others, and others held no trust in him. His only hobby, apparently, was cooking.
And crazy sex. Couldn't forget that part.
Anton hung up and turned to me. “Where were we? Oh, yes, living arrangements.”
“Am I not coming to live with you?” I asked.
“Do you want to?” His green eyes bored into mine, intense in the dim light inside the car. Outside the sky was gray with late-autumn clouds, and everything was gloomy. Strange how his eyes burned so brightly, even in this light.
“I don't know,” I said. “I don't even know where you live.”
“I have a mansion on Central Park West,” he said.
“Of course you do.”
He smiled faintly at that. “But if you would like to live separately for a while, I have no problems with that, as long as we are together for the agreed-upon number of nights as stipulated in our prenup.”
I put a hand to my forehead and began to rub little circles over my nose. “How many was that again?” I asked. “Per week?”
“Three,” he said. “Or ten days in a row per month. Open to negotiation, of course.”
Of course. Anton was a very particular man, but for a guy who was famed for no attachments, he had attached himself to me in a very big way, without even knowing me.
“I think I'll move in with you,” I said. “But I need a place to sculpt.”
His eyes widened a bit at my answer—perhaps our first encounter, when I barged into his office and demanded to know who the hell he thought he was, trying to arrange a marriage with me, had left a more lasting impression on him than my current, slightly softer feelings. Nevertheless, he recovered quickly. “Of course,” he said. “Would you like to keep your apartment as your studio, or something closer to... home?”
Hmm. Studio in Manhattan, or studio anywhere else in the world? Gee, what a dilemma. I opened my mouth to tell him to move my shit to an expensive little corner apartment in one of the arty districts, but then I shut my mouth again. My apartment was mine. Did I really want to leave it behind just because I was technically moving up in the world? “I'll keep my apartment,” I said after a moment. “I like it there.”
He nodded. “Very well. You can pack up your personal effects if you wish, or I can arrange to have that done for you.”
“How fast can it be done?”
“By tonight, if you like.”
I like to keep it real, but not that real. If I didn't have to wrap up my shitty mismatched glasses personally, then I'm not going to. “Yeah, have someone move that stuff,” I told him. “Anyway, what's on the agenda for today?”
A vague look of regret passed over his face. “I'll be in meetings and at work all today, but I will be home in time to take you out to dinner tonight. In the meantime, why don't you take the time to get acquainted with your new home, and perhaps call your, ahem, new personal assistant?”
Personal assistant? Oh, right! Sadie. She is going to plotz. “Great. Coffee with girlfriend, dinner with, um...” I trailed off. “You,” I finished awkwardly.
The shutters behind his eyes closed, and I sighed inwardly. Good going.
“Husband,” he supplied.
“Husband,” I said. “Sorry, it's all a bit sudden and a little weird.”
To my surprise, he rubbed a finger against his temple, and his shoulders relaxed. I hadn't even noticed them tensing. “You are right,” he said. “This is very sudden for you. I'm sorry.”
I could only nod as the car slowed down, and then we were at Anton's house.
*
"Jesus shit," Sadie said when I opened the door later that day, and I have to say I agreed with her assessment. Anton had dropped me off at the house, telling me to explore to my heart's content, then given me a quick kiss on the cheek and jetted off to work, leaving me with a battered suitcase and an overwhelming desire for some McDonald's. I'd called Sadie immediately and told her where to meet me—with a Filet o' Fish—and set about exploring.
And holy shit. A mansion on Central Park West. Even in my father's wildest dreams he couldn't have afforded this place.
Five floors and a basement. That's all I can really say about it. Huge. Wood floors, stained glass, a garden, a terrace, and, high on the fifth floor, the master bedroom underneath a skylight, painted white, lined with bookshelves and filled with light, even on this cloudy day. It was sick. Just sick.
"This is just sick," Sadie said. "I love it."
"That's what I thought!" I told her. "But that's not the best part. Anton wants me to have a personal assistant, and I told him I already had one."
She cocked an eyebrow. "You do?"
And I'm the thick one? "You, dummy."
Sadie failed to faint at my feet in gratitude. "What if I don't want to be your personal assistant?" she said. "What do I look like, the help?"
I rolled my eyes and pulled her to the back of the ground floor where the kitchen and breakfast nook stood, looking out onto the garden. "Don't you get it?" I said. "This is free money. You get hired, we spend the day hanging out together, you get paid and don't report back to Anton any of the suspect stuff I do, and we all go home happy."
"What suspect stuff?"
"Like figuring out what makes him tick," I told her. "Here, have some coffee. It took me like fifteen minutes to figure out how to use Anton's crazy coffee maker so you'd better drink some."
Sadie pulled away. "Felicia," she said, which she never says unless she is trying to be serious with me. "What is with you calling him Anton all of a sudden? And why would he want me to report back to him?"
I poured her some coffee and shoved it into her hands. "He's got some control issues. And I think we're on a first name basis now. You know, since we're married and all."
"Yeah. Which reminds me, you might not want to go on the internet today."
I blinked. "What?" I hadn't even thought to check my email yet. My phone was almost out of battery life and I'd left my charger in my apartment, which was way out of reach now. I'd had to turn it on and write down Sadie's number and call her from the landline—Landline! How quaint!—in the living room.
"You're all over it." She sat down at the kitchen table—a gorgeous wrought iron and glass affair—and sipped her coffee. I stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at her.
"What?" I said again.
"Don't worry," she told me. "I hacked into your Facebook account and made it private, and then I sent a really flattering photo of you to a couple of celebrity gossip blogs."