Sold at the Ski Resort

by Juliana Conners

  “Alec would never have asked anything so personal.”

  “He would have asked you about your golf handicap and the usual tedious crap he always asks. I want readers to know who you are. Not the financial guru, not the motivational speaker. Beneath the surface, who are you?”

  “Tell me, Ms. Matthews, why are you working at The Reporter?”

  “You’re avoiding my question.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “My dad worked there. He died covering a story, and I guess I wanted to carry on his legacy.”

  “You’re carrying on his legacy by answering questions from someone who wants to know what’ll happen if he sends his colleague unsolicited dick pics?”

  I resisted the urge to visibly grimace. Answering that question hadn’t been one of my proudest columns, but Henry had insisted I do it, for the shock value. He’d said “no press is bad press” and that it would rocket me to stardom, but that wasn’t exactly the kind of stardom I’d had in mind. I wanted real journalist credentials, not cheap laughs or edgy social media shares.

  “It’s temporary,” I insisted. “Once I prove myself to my boss, I’ll—”

  “And how do you hope to do that?”

  “I’m working on a story.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Who’s interviewing who here?” I asked and then laughed. “Back to my question. Is Linda’s betrayal the reason you’ve never settled down?”

  He gave a slight nod. “One of them.”

  “What are the other reasons?”

  “Time and desire.”

  “I understand time, but not so much the desire. I’ve seen photos of you with some of the world’s most beautiful women. You didn’t desire them?”

  “Being attracted to someone and desiring them isn’t the same.”

  Needing to understand his reasoning, for personal reasons as much as story reasons, I leaned forward. “How so?”

  “Desire is when you long for someone or something and, if that desire is strong enough, it leads to motivation. I’ve never desired settling down with anyone enough to make it happen.”

  Interesting.

  “Since Linda, you haven’t desired anyone?”

  “Many times, and in many different ways. For instance, I desire you, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to act on it.”

  To hide my shock, I laughed.

  “There’s a compliment in there somewhere. Time to move on, I think.”

  He mirrored my body language and leaned forward.

  “You don’t think you’re desirable?”

  “Not that I’ve been told,” I said, scanning Alec’s interview questions. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  “If it’s what you want.”

  “I do.”

  The subject matter was getting too personal, and I decided the best course of action was to follow Alec’s guidelines. The next question I asked Wyatt concerned the business principles he applied when managing his company.

  The rest of the interview, while enjoyable, wasn’t nearly as breathtaking as the beginning, but it was much safer for my panties and heart.

  I glanced at my watch. Four hours had passed, but it seemed like one, and I had more information than I could possibly use.

  I pressed stop on the voice recorder, and said, “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Palmer. I really appreciate it. Before we go to print, I’ll send you a proof copy for your approval.”

  “No need. I trust you’ll give an accurate representation. You don’t strike me as a hack.”

  I appreciated the compliment.

  “I’m not. I only write the truth.”

  “Can I have your number in case I want to add anything?”

  “Sure. I’d like it if you called me.” Heat flamed my cheeks, and I shook my head. “For the story, I mean. I can give you a temporary number for now. I lost my phone last night when I was at a Christmas party.”

  “That’s unfortunate. Did you call to ask if they’d found it?”

  “I went back today, but no luck. I left my temporary number. I hope I get a call to say they did find it because it has pictures of my grandma. I don’t want to lose them.”

  “Are you close to her?”

  “I was,” I said, scribbling down my new and old numbers. “She passed last year. After my dad died, my mom couldn’t handle it and took off. My grandma raised me. I still live in her rent-controlled apartment.”

  I looked up from the scrap of paper into his concerned and sympathetic eyes, and the desire he’d talked about welled up inside of me.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to spill my guts.”

  “I like hearing about your life. Maybe you could tell me more over dinner sometime.”

  “Dinner? Sure. Sometime.”

  I was uncertain if he’d asked me out or if he was being polite. Perhaps he meant there would be more occasions for me to interview him in the future—which I’d welcome for my career. I didn’t want to get a big head and assume he meant he was interested in me, even though his statements had certainly indicated that he was.

  Powerful men flirted with a lot of women, I told myself. It was just what they did, and I shouldn’t think it meant much.

  I handed him the paper with my numbers on it, and said, “Thanks again for your time, Mr. Palmer.”

  “It’s Wyatt.”

  When he reached for the paper, our hands brushed, and my pulse thundered. There was no way he didn’t notice my intake of breath.

  “My pleasure, Ms. Matthews.”

  ***

  I was happy to get out of Wyatt’s apartment and into the elevator. Not because I was glad to get away from Wyatt; I could have stayed there all day talking to him. The reason I was happy was because my attraction, or should I say my desire, for him was way too much to deal with.

  He seemed to like me, but maybe I’d imagined that. Despite what he’d said, no way would a man like Wyatt— one of the world’s wealthiest men— be attracted to a broke college graduate who wrote a sarcasm-laced advice column.

  Before I left The Avalon, I stopped by the café to grab the hot chocolate I’d promised myself. When I reached the counter, my phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket and answered.

  “This is Jimmy from Expose Club. We found your phone. Come by tonight after nine.”

  He hung up before I was able to get a word in. I pushed his rudeness away and focused on my phone being found. Relief, the size of Niagara Falls, washed over me.

  Excitement and fear soon replaced the relief. Had the masked man found my phone? If he had, had he looked through it before I’d locked it? I’d hold out hope that a cleaning lady or someone else had been the one to find it. Otherwise going back to the club could be a mistake I’d live to regret.

  I forgot all about the hot chocolate I had been wanting. My nipples tightened to points and anticipation clenched my gut.

  This isn’t because I wanted anything to happen when I went back, I told myself. Fight or flight was the reason for my body’s reaction and nothing else.

  Yeah, right, I thought, and a bear doesn’t shit in the woods.

  Chapter 10 – Wyatt Palmer

  As soon as Paige left my apartment, I’d called Jimmy and asked if a girl had come into the club looking for a phone. He’d said someone called Patricia had. She’d left her number. I’d asked him to call her to let her know her phone had been found, and to instruct her that she was to come back tonight at nine.

  He’d tried to ask if he should report her for breaking club rules. I’d told him I would handle it and that it was none of his business. Jimmy knew his place, and shut up about snitching on her.

  I glanced at the time. One minute to nine and she still hadn’t arrived. But, if the photos of her grandmother meant as much to her as she’d claimed and if she wanted her phone back, the little mouse would come. I smiled at the unintended pun.

  It had been years since I’d enjoyed an interview so much. They were usually a necessary evil I put up with, but tal
king to her was like chatting with an old friend.

  Paige, while inexperienced, was intelligent, sexy and sweet and everything I didn’t know I desired. For years, I’d contracted subs who looked tough as nails on the outside but who were soft and submissive on the inside. The opposite could be said of Paige. She looked soft and submissive on the outside, but beneath was a ballsy woman.

  Not since Linda had a woman called to me as much as Paige did, and that terrified me. Inviting her to come back to the club was a dangerous move for both of us, but one I couldn’t resist.

  Today, I got an idea of why she wanted the story. She wanted to prove her worth to Henry, and she saw her exposé on the club as her way to do that. If the other members found out she was a journalist who had secretly brought a camera in, she would never work another day in her life.

  Too many influential people from governors to members of Congress to late night TV show hosts were members. People who had too much to lose if their sexual persuasions or kinks got out. I knew I should expose her intentions but I also couldn’t imagine being so heartless. I decided I’d do what I could to change her mind before she did something she’d regret for the rest of her life.

  I could call Alec or Henry and let them know what she was up to, but Alec would ruin her career before it had even begun. He was a vindictive son of a bitch only out for himself.

  For now, Paige didn’t need to know I was the man she’d spent the afternoon talking to, laughing and flirting with. Guilt twisted my stomach into a pretzel, but not even that was enough to convince me to reveal who I was.

  If I wasn’t dead set against falling in love, we could have had something. But I would only break her heart. I huffed out a laugh. Whose heartbreak worried me more? Hers or mine?

  The lights in my room were as dim as they had been last night and I wore the same mask and black pants. I was curious to see if she would play. To see how far she’d go. Or if she was in denial about what she’d experienced.

  I had a feeling she would be game. The way she shifted every so often on my sofa in my apartment, showed me her ass still throbbed from the punishment I’d given.

  My pager beeped. Jimmy was on his way up with her.

  It was nine exactly. Seemed she’d learned her lesson on lateness. Blood surged into my cock, but I wouldn’t fuck her. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t sate my desire some other way, though.

  Jimmy knocked, and without waiting for a reply, he opened the door. He stood back and allowed Paige to step in. Her tense shoulders and the way she glanced around the room like a cornered creature, showed me her nerves.

  After our interview, she must have gone home to change because now she wore a pair of thigh-high fuck-me boots, black leggings, and a fitted sweater dress that skimmed the top of her thighs. Not appropriate attire for a sex club, but in time she’d learn.

  When Jimmy left, I remained in the shadows and stayed silent. I simply watched her. I had the advantage, and I planned to use it. She began her usual nervous habits of smoothing her hair, playing with her fingers, and biting her lip and inner cheek. It was surprising how much I knew— and loved— her ticks when I had only been with her two times, and once was in a completely professional manner.

  “I know you’re here,” she said. “Stop hiding.”

  “I recall telling you last night that when a sub comes into my room, she gets undressed and assumes the position.” I made an effort to keep my voice low and even. “You also seem to have forgotten how to address me.”

  She lifted her head and stared in the direction of my voice.

  “Last night was different. I’m here for my phone and nothing else. Can I have it, please?”

  I stepped from the shadows, and said, “If you want it, you can have it.”

  The innuendo behind my words was evident. I took a few stalking steps toward her and didn’t miss the uptake in her breath. I stood behind her and gently wrapped my hand around her throat. Her head fell back and rested on my chest. The same sweet vanilla perfume she wore last night and today drifted upwards, and the Neanderthal inside of me beat at my chest wanting to take control.

  Reaching up, I brushed the pad of my thumbs over her lower lip. Her tongue snaked out and flicked over the tip, and a groan sounded in my throat. The little mouse came to play. Maybe that wasn’t her intention when she came into the club or when she got into the elevator, not even when she came into the room, but now it was.

  I lowered my lips to her ear and whispered, “I need you to answer a question for me.”

  I pressed my hand down the front of her body and smoothed it over her breasts before resting it on her chest.

  “How did you get Vivian’s invitation?”

  Five heartbeats passed before she answered. “I know someone who can get anything for anyone. I didn’t ask any questions. I just handed him the money. I didn’t know who owned the invitation. I thought I would be on the main floor, not in a private room.”

  Beneath the thick fabric of her sweater, I felt the hardening of her nipple.

  “No one asked you to come here and spy on the other members or me?”

  She shook her head and swallowed hard. “No one. This is all my doing. All my idea.”

  Satisfied she was telling me the truth, I said, “You have two choices, Ms. Matthews. I can give you your phone, and you can leave, or I can give you something else, and you can stay.” My hands found their way to the curve of her waist, and I pressed my crotch against her lower back, clarifying what one choice meant. “What’s it to be?”

  Chapter 11 – Paige Matthews

  “You know everything, don’t you? Who I am and what I do for a living?”

  I needed to get away and fast. Terror seized me, and I felt like I would collapse. If his hands weren’t wrapped around my waist, I might have. I was way out of my depth. How did I think I’d ever get away with doing something so idiotic?

  “Everything,” he confirmed, in a dangerously low voice.

  I was having the worst kind of Stockholm syndrome reaction right now because I was alarmingly turned on. So much so that one flick of his finger against my clit would make me climax.

  “Did you think a hack like you could come to Expose and tell the world its secrets?”

  From behind me, he ran his hands up my arms and through my hair, gathering it into a tight ponytail. His erection pressed against my lower back and I was powerless to stop the whimper escaping from my throat. Damn my body— including my vocal chords— for betraying me by wanting him so much and showing him how much I wanted him.

  “Are you one of those journalists who’ve justified their devious and dishonest tactics to themselves? Do you think by exposing the indulgences and secrets of the rich and famous you’re somehow doing the world a service?” he asked.

  He didn’t wait for me to answer before continuing. “I thought The Reporter was a reputable paper, not a supermarket rag. Whatever your reasons for sneaking a phone in here, don’t make innocent people your victims. They don’t deserve it. You have a promising career, Little Mouse. Don’t ruin it before it’s begun.”

  Was he threatening me or warning me off? Either way, he was right. A story shouldn’t make me feel guilty or like a piece of scum. A story should make me feel the way I’d felt when I left the interview with Wyatt Palmer today. A story should make me feel good about my job and good about myself, and right now I felt neither.

  Before I even left Wyatt’s I’d decided to kill the story. Who was I to reveal what happened at Expose? Especially since what they did wasn’t wrong. I’d experienced one night, and because of that, I wanted more, more and more. So maybe they felt the exact same way, and weren’t so different from me.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “It’s not about what I’m going to do,” he replied, giving my hair a tug. “It’s about what you’re going to do. Tell me, why did you become a journalist? Was it to write lies and hurt people?”

  I had no answer for him because it was the
same question I’d been asking myself repeatedly all day.

  “I wish I could answer that, but I don’t know anymore.” I pressed myself against his rock-hard body, relishing the warmth seeping through my clothes. “If you let me go, I won’t breathe a word to anyone about what happens here or about anything I saw… or experienced… last night.”

  “I already know you won’t say a word, Mouse. I know you’re a good person who won’t deliberately hurt others. But you still haven’t told me what you want. Your phone, or something else?”

  If I said I’d come for my phone and nothing else, he would know I was lying, and if I told myself I’d come for my phone and nothing else, I would know I was lying, too.

  As much as my body and mind battled over my desires, I couldn’t help wanting to take what the man in the mask offered. I wanted him to do what he did last night. I wanted him to do more than that. So much more. The only time I had stopped thinking about him was when I was with Wyatt, but now my need for the stranger consumed me.

  Fate wasn’t something I believed in. I believed you made things happen for yourself, but meeting him seemed fated. That, for some reason, he was supposed to be part of my life. Whether that reason was to teach me a lesson about where I wanted my career to go, or to teach me a lesson about my wants and desires, I didn’t know.

  “Aren’t you going to take your mask off? It’s not fair that you know who I am but I don’t know your name or what you look like.”

  He nuzzled his nose against the shell of my ear, and I shivered.

  “Your phone, or something else?”

  From the way he moved against me, I could tell he was getting impatient.

  If I pushed him and refused to answer, how would he respond? Would he do what he wanted anyway?

  Going against the warning voice in my head, I whispered, “Something else.”

  “Did you say something, Little Mouse? I don’t think I heard you.”

  “You heard me, Master.”

  He bit my earlobe, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to hurt, and then said, “When your Master tells you to do something, you do it. That’s one punishment. You’ve been in my room for five minutes and have only addressed me once in the appropriate manner. We’re up to two punishments already.”