by Adira August
A long silence. Then - “What am I supposed to write about this ‘companion’ who’s suing you?” Janet asked. “You won’t tell me anything about anything, so I’m just going to repeat her side with no response?”
“I don’t talk about things I cannot talk about.” He said. “I only wanted to give you a heads-up before you spoke to Ms. Rivers. Have a good day, J.J.”
They both hung up. Where the hell is Avia? It was already four o’clock. And what had she been doing with Ben Hart for five hours?
Janet swiveled her chair slowly around to the window. She was too caught up in her thoughts to notice the view. It wasn’t much of a view, anyway, as her office was on the east side of the building. It was bright in the morning, though, and didn’t distract her with mountain vistas.
Why did he call? Notes. He kept telling her to read Avia’s notes. Avia signed a nondisclosure agreement. He doesn’t talk about what he doesn’t talk about and she should read Avia’s notes. A slow smile. She picked up her cell.
Avia sucked noisily on her straw to get the last drops of her chocolate malt. Her first priority on leaving what she thought of as “The Castle” had been sugar. Datamining really takes it out of a girl, she thought.
But raising her blood sugar wasn’t the only reason she was parked in the lot of the Sonic. After all, she could have drunk the malt while driving back to the office. She needed a minute. Or a day.
In the future, Ben’s car would ferry her to and from their Sessions. This was partly to protect the privacy of their arrangement, but also to protect her, as he said she’d be distracted on leaving and often on driving to the Castle. He also said, “The Session starts when Eustace puts you in the car and ends when you step out at home.” She suspected he had some car sex in mind.
She also had to admit he was right. She was distracted, and not just by the swiftness of going from interviewing journalist to sex partner to a billionaire in a matter of hours.
She was distracted by her memories and her body’s response to her memories. Flashes of what he’d done kept coming to mind. The sound of his voice. The intensity of his gaze. The feel of him, of hands and fingers … the vision of him, nude at her request, revealing all of his solid, gracefully developed body and -
-Text alert. She came back to herself with a start. He’s right. That’s no way to drive safely. She grabbed her cell. It was J.J.
CALL ME NOW
Avia cleared her throat and chased thoughts of megawatt orgasms from her mind as she tapped J.J.’s name on her screen.
“If you’re driving pull over,” Janet ordered as soon as she answered.
“I am not driving. I am safely at standstill in a fast food place trying to get type two diabetes.” Avia answered.
“Good,” her boss said. “Call your contact at the Adams County Clerk’s office. They should still be open, and find out everything about this lawsuit. Maybe she can fax us the filing. Then meet me for dinner at Stinky Pete’s.”
“You buying?” Avia asked.
“The Week is buying. This is an all-business dinner. So get calling. It’s almost four-fifteen and they close at four-thirty.”
“Aye-aye, Cap-” But J.J. had already hung up.
Feet pounding steadily, Ben Hart ran along the top of the Curtain Wall. It was eleven feet to the top of the double stone edifice and its four-foot parapet. Only the intersections of bridges to the Keep interrupted the parapet walls.
The three-foot wide space between the exterior and interior walls was filled with well-tamped earth, topped by a thick layer of fine black cinders. The perfect jogging path.
The wall meandered around the grounds immediately adjacent to the house, providing a two point three mile track Ben ran every day in the late afternoon. “Surveying your domain” as Hugo jokingly put it. “Taking time to think,” was how Ben did. In the morning, he swam a mile in the indoor pool on the second floor. These things, plus yoga, climbing and skiing when he could fit them in, composed his fitness routine.
He wasn’t a martial arts guy, though he did have a trainer he saw sporadically who encouraged him to work out with a body bag. Ben told him he wasn’t sure what executive in which boardroom he was likely to need to punch out. He was joking. He hardly ever met with anyone in a boardroom.
Though, I did have a great meeting with Sondra in one, he thought as he rounded a curve into the southern border. She’d been one of his Companions, and he’d taken her there to teach her self-restraint. There’d been a meeting of several casino executives in the next office, on the other side of the interior door. He’d quietly unlocked the doorknob. Refused to allow her to wear a gag. And he’d taken his time.
Which, of course, brought him to thoughts of Ms. Rivers. Avienne.
He ran easily along the walled pathway, his mind wandering off on its own track …
… grabbing a fistful of her golden hair as he slammed the length of his body into her, pressing her hard into a wall, tilting her head back until her sweet full lips parted, panting, wanting, wanting him, his mouth crushing hers, tongue sweeping inside as hers came to meet his, stroke for stroke, her breasts pressing into his chest, his other hand cupping her pussy, fingers pressing her cunt through her skirt. She moaned and squirmed against him, her breath hitching deep in her throat …
STOP THIS.
Ben told his cock to go back to sleep. It was never going to happen. He never kissed his Companions. Never let on how much he ached to give in to his desire to mindlessly power-fuck them and feel them writhe with pleasure underneath him, pull at him, wanting him, begging him for more. But he refused at this point in his life to end up in the thrall of a woman. And that was the end result of such sex.
Benedict Valor Hart believed in love. The kind of love he’d grown up with. Devotional. Totally committed. Wanting everything else less than union of mind, body and spirit with his lover. He believed in marriage. In Fidelity. Loyalty. He believed love was not some emotion that ebbed and flowed, intensified or faded, that was different from one person to the next.
Love was something you did. Actions. Choices. Sacrifices. Constancy. And he wouldn’t settle for less. Not in himself and not in his lifetime companion. He supposed it was why he always capitalized “Companion” in his mind. It was a designator. A descriptor. But a lifetime companion had a different capitalized designator: Wife.
“There’s no lawsuit,” Avia whispered as she plopped into the booth across from Janet. The two women were a study in contrasts, Avia at 24, tall and athletic with short unstructured dark blond waves and Janet Julia Johnson, almost 40, softly rounded. Her satiny black hair hung like a curtain down her back, her bangs cutting a precise straight line above her deep brown eyes.
J.J.'s family was a potpourri of Americana, stretching back to the 17th century in one line, and 13,000 yrs at another. The Dutch and French genes vied with the Korean, the Native American and the African. The result was a brilliant, feisty, competitive, independent woman who suffered no fools, gladly or otherwise.
“What do you mean, no lawsuit?” Janet asked as she looked around for a waiter. “Margarita?” She presumed Avia would want her favorite drink at the popular Mexican restaurant.
“Love one, but - better not. I have a lot of work left to do tonight.” She sighed. “Cola with lime, I think.” She pulled out her notebook.
Their server appeared and Janet ordered the drinks and two green chili flautas with sour cream. And guacamole. She didn’t bother to ask Avia what she wanted. The first time they’d eaten there and both had the flauta, they had wolfed them down without pausing for breath. On the last bite, which they took simultaneously, Avia announced it was nice to finally experience mutual orgasm. They never ate anything else at Pete’s.
“Okay, so…” Avia flipped through her pad. “There’s no lawsuit because there’s no lawsuit. No one’s filed anything.”
“So where’d the story come from?” Janet asked.
“A letter of intent to sue. Her lawyer to his lawyer.
All private. Except a copy was sent anonymously to local media outlets.”
Janet frowned. “That’s interesting. He’s a nationally-known figure. If they wanted to slander him, why keep it local?”
“I know, right?” Avia agreed.
“Go over your notes for me,” Janet said.
Avia referred to her notes and gave her boss a detailed account of her visit to the Castle, including the fish having right of way and the estimated length of the hallway in the Keep.
“Wait, wait,” Janet stopped her at one point. “He had prototypes in the room and he told you this before you signed the NDA?” Janet asked.
“Obviously,” Avia said. “Or I wouldn’t mention it. So I guess he called you?” Janet nodded. “He also told me something else before he signed it. That every woman had to sign the same NDA before he’d ask them to be a Companion.”
The server came with their drinks. Avia waited until he left and leaned across the table. “That means, the woman who is feeding the media this story, if she was a Companion, signed one, too.”
“Yeah,” Janet agreed. “She must have.”
“Okay. Well, after I talked to my contact, I took the time to actually read the thing and -”
“You signed an NDA without reading it?” Janet couldn’t believe this. “Did he explain it or have an attorney there?”
“No,” said Avia, impatient, waving away the objection. “That’s not important, just listen. If this woman who is supposedly going to sue him also signed one of these, she can’t say anything that actually happened. She can’t even say she was his Companion, technically, but apparently that term was leaked on Twitter at some point. But beyond that - “
“- why would she risk the kinds of consequences he can bring down on her by revealing facts of the relationship? Do you think it’s all lies?” Janet asked.
Avia shrugged. “I think she hasn’t said anything that couldn’t be gotten from a public source or else is false to fact.”
“She’s blackmailing him,” Janet said. “And using the media to do it. He always was a very smart guy.”
“You lost me.”
“When Ben called me he said I should look at your notes. He also said he couldn’t talk about what he couldn’t talk about. But if you have the NDA to read and he told you before you signed it what it was for …” Janet stopped. “Avia. Did he just talk to you or … did you … you didn’t … fucking NDA,” she finished in obvious frustration.
Avia faced her boss with her interview expression: slightly curious, open, noncommittal. Whatever J.J. suspected, she couldn’t ask outright. Avia wanted to distract her from the obvious and correct conclusion.
This sudden urge to protect the journey she was on as a Companion was new to her. She didn’t have time to examine it now, but it was fierce and compelling.
She sipped her drink. “Hey, it’s okay.” She reassured her boss and friend. “We had conversation after I signed it that he said was outside the scope of the NDA. You know, that I can talk about. I have plenty for the erotica assignment. He even showed me one of the prototypes. But the details of that would fall under nondisclosure.”
Janet looked very relieved. If they had conversation after that was outside the NDA … then it wasn’t about Avia, herself.
Avia sat forward and lowered her voice. “So you think he had me sign it just so I could read it and you’d figure out she’s blackmailing him? Or her lawyer is?”
“That’s exactly what I think.” The relief in Janet’s voice was palpable.
“And she went to the press, but just locally, to tell him she’s not afraid to go public," Avia said, figuring it out as she spoke. "To smear him. The letter threatens exposure if he doesn’t pay up. His lawyer contacts hers and Hart pays. They’ll call it an ‘out-of-court settlement.’ Only there’re no court documents. Because even sealed documents get leaked. No way to expose anything.”
Janet was nodding her agreement. “Clever. This’ll make a great angle on what everyone else rushed into print with. Give me five hundred words for the sidebar for morning release.”
“Not yet, okay, J.J.? I want to interview her.”
“If you can get her to talk to you, great.” Janet said.
The server set two hot plates of soul-elevating heaven down in front of them. They both stopped talking.
Ben jogged around the corner to the eastern wall, the helicopter pad bastion coming into view, a suspended walkway leading to the upper bailey of the Keep. The bailey being the terrace they’d eaten lunch on.
Because there were planter boxes from wall to wall bordering the space around the Companion’s Room with well-established evergreens, Avia hadn’t realized the space girdled the entire Keep. Or, that if she tried to push through the plants, many alarms would be triggered.
Ben Hart knew himself well. He knew he loved his privacy, his Keep, his “castle” and his life. There was so much more he wanted to accomplish before a person became more important to him than all of that.
He also knew that Dominant wasn’t a role he played; it was who he was. He hadn’t exactly lied to Avia when he said he wasn’t much of one. In terms of books, of the kinds of things many D/s couples did in real life, he wasn’t. There was so much he didn’t want to control that people expected him to.
But in sex there was only one way for him. He’d have total submission, complete control. Always. In Companion or Wife. It was his quest for that, that led him to the Ecstatic Orgasm. After a series of unsatisfying D/s relationships within the BDSM community, he’d stopped having relationships, and sex, to see if he could learn what it was he really needed. He’d delved into psychology, anthropology, primatology, neurology.
He kept hearing oblique references to some kind of mystical orgasm. He thought it was a myth until he’d experienced it, himself. At twenty-four, at the hands of a Buddhist sage with whom he’d studied Sahaja, she’d taken him beyond lust, beyond wanting, to moment - to void ... to ecstasy.
For six years, he’d had the goal of taking a woman on that same journey. After his last Companion relationship ended so badly, he’d spent a few weeks examining the history of his failure to sustain the relationships.
The weeks had stretched to four long months. He’d found no answers. Yet, he refused to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. He refused to even consider another Companion until he had some kind of plan.
Then Avienne Grace Rivers stepped out of a Security Vehicle and into his Domain. He very much did not want her to become personal. He warned himself when he shook her hand. Warm and strong. And noted her frank, open expression. He liked her. He was beginning to think he liked her from the moment he saw her stocking top on his monitor.
She’d seduced him simply by existing.
What made her so different he’d broken his own vow not to have another Companion until he’d figured out how to succeed? What made him act so … impulsively … against everything he’d learned about self-discipline?
Every one of his Companions had already been in a Dominant/submissive relationship or had been seeking one and knew what that entailed. Every one had been eager to submit to him. They all knew what they wanted from him.
But how many of them wanted you?
He slowed to a walk for the last half mile to cool down. His thoughts scattered, unfocused.
“Did you go someplace and masturbate?”
Then that little smile, as if his answer pleased her. He’d felt the twinge of humiliation, the boy caught with his hand in his pants, before he answered. And even though he understood humiliation, knew exactly what was happening to him and why, his cock reacted and he couldn’t hide it. And that made it worse. And better.
Then she’d had him turn away and he thought the respite from her scrutiny would allow him to regain control. But he’d had to face her again, too soon.
When she asked how long he’d had the erection, she undid him. Instantly her breasts were under his hands again, nipples hardeni
ng, she was quickly losing control … His cock reached eight o’clock and it was all he could do remain still when he hungered to take the three strides that would bring him to her, pinion her arms to her sides with his own, take her mouth as he …
Hang on. He halted just before the bridge leading to his private rooms in the Keep. Remembering …
“How long did you have the erection?”
“Since I unbuttoned your blouse.”
“Continuously?” She’d sounded surprised.
“Yes.”
Something in her face had changed. The tightness around her eyes and mouth relaxed. Her lips parted, not quite smiling.
“Okay,” she’d said. Then she walked right past him, through the doors.
Ben moved on. Excited. She needed to know that he wanted her. Not sex, her. Just as he’d had to know she wanted him. She’d been reminding him of himself since she’d investigated the door lock on first entering his Keep.
He’d been thinking of it all wrong, in terms of Doms and subs. He needed to be thinking in terms of Alpha males and Alpha females. None of his Companions had ever been Alpha females.
Until now.
The server took their plates away and brought coffee for Avia.
“What’s your next step on the erotica assignment?” Janet asked.
“Interviewing a reader,” Avia responded, opening to a clean page in her notebook and looking at her friend expectantly. Janet realized what Avia had in mind.
“Nooonononono, you have to go find volunteers,” Janet said.
“You did volunteer.” Avia told her. “When you gave me those books from your own library. You’re up, J.J.” Avia finished firmly and noted the date, time and location on her pad.
“You are so fucking irritating when you get like this.” Janet complained. But she bowed to the runaway train that was Avia Rivers on the track of a story. “Well, what?” She asked.
“I want to confirm first,” Avia began putting her professional face on, “That you did read the books recreationally, not only for a purely business purpose.”