The king-sized bed that stood against one wall was dressed in ecru and trimmed with subtle threads of gold glinting in the winter sunlight.
Nice, the bedroom was nice, but Gen kind of wished that she had grabbed the red and green Rose of Sharon quilt that her mother had made when Gen was a kid. The quilt was a little threadbare, but the cotton still smelled like sunlight.
The bedroom smelled slightly like fresh glue, like maybe the carpeting was new, but even more like the huge bowl of rose potpourri that stood between two vases packed full of fresh, white roses. The flowers reflected in the mirror of the dresser they stood on.
“Is the room all right?” she heard Arthur say.
Gen spun.
Arthur was leaning against the door frame, again dressed in the longest-legged denim jeans that Gen had ever seen. He had to have those custom made. No one made inseams that long.
The bruises on his face made her think of lemon juice seeping out of an eggplant.
“The room is beautiful. I can’t believe it, it’s so beautiful.”
“I’ve never had a babysitter before.”
Mr. Royston Fothergill and the two women looked at each other and high-tailed it out of the room, excusing themselves to squeeze by Arthur. When they were gone, he walked over and sat on a chair, the chair beside the loveseat. The chair, loveseat, and coffee table filled some of the space in the huge bedroom.
When Arthur sat, he eased himself into the chair.
She said, “You were in a car accident last night. Don’t you think you should beg off from the party tonight, take it easy?”
Arthur shrugged, his broad shoulders lifting carelessly, except that his left shoulder didn’t drop as quickly as the other. He looked stiff, and he was still leaning over, his hands braced on his knees, breathing through his nose. “The benefit is for some earthquake, somewhere. If I don’t go, others will be less inclined to do the right thing. Occasionally, I’m a good influence, no matter what people say.”
He really shouldn’t be running around the city all beat up like that.
Gen was standing in front of him, and she balled up her hands and set them on her hips. “Can’t you just send them a check? We could stay in, maybe order some food from Mumbai Take-Away?”
Arthur looked up, his gaze climbing from her pantsuit knees all the way up to her eyes.
Looking down at him was a new experience. His cheekbones were even more pronounced, and his chin more triangular.
His head dipped as he swallowed. He didn’t blink, and his silvery eyes were opened wide. The swelling was going down fast on the bruised one. His dark eyelashes were so thick that it almost looked like he was wearing eyeliner, except she was close enough to see that he wasn’t.
He said, “Maybe we could do that, sometime. Maybe we could watch a movie.”
“I’m not propositioning you. I’m not suggesting Netflix and chill. You look like you’ve been run over by a truck, and maybe you shouldn’t go out tonight.”
“I was merely suggesting, some night that I don’t have a scheduled engagement, perhaps we could watch a movie and get some take-away.” His eyes were so silver-blue that they looked luminous. “Maybe we could make popcorn.”
“Yeah,” Gen said. Her breath was stuck in her chest like she couldn’t quite inhale, and he hadn’t looked away from her. “I’d like that.”
“But we can’t tonight,” he said, sitting back in the chair and rubbing his hand over the shadow on his cheek. “We have an event, and I should shave before we go.”
“You don’t have to,” Gen said. “You look fine.”
“I should at least shave. I am thought to be thoroughly disreputable already.”
“Those bruises look horrid, and a little bit of scruff on a man isn’t a bad thing.”
A slow smile started at the corners of his mouth. “It isn’t?”
“No.” My God. What was she saying? “I think it looks good on you.”
He watched her for another moment, that smile spreading across his mouth. He said, “Then I’ll just trim it up a bit around the edges. We are running late, and the sooner we make an appearance, the sooner we can leave tonight.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
Arthur grabbed the arms of the chair and pushed, levering himself to standing. He didn’t wince, but one of his dark eyebrows twitched downward.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “That looked like it hurt.”
“I’m fine.” He straightened and sucked in a breath. “The A&E doctor prescribed some pills. I’ll take some for tonight so that I don’t embarrass myself.”
WHAT HE WOULD DO
Christopher
Hours later, sometime near midnight, Gen held Arthur’s warm, huge hand as he leaned against the wall of the elevator.
She asked him, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” he slurred. “A little buzzed. No problem.”
Oliver, the driver who had relieved Pippa and driven the Rolls Royce to the hotel where the charity event had been held, was staring at Arthur. His dark eyes were huge on his face as he looked on with horror.
“He’s never like this,” Oliver said for the thousandth time.
“I think it was the pain pills,” Gen whispered to Oliver. “And then his brother was there, and the two of them were matching shots in some sort of unspoken machismo drinking contest, but Christopher wasn’t on Oxycontin for bruised ribs.”
“My ribs are properly broken,” Arthur said, “not bruised. I know what it bloody well feels like. Some thugs jumped me in Cairo a few years ago and broke my ribs. Got my wallet but not the flash drive they were after. Thugs. Assholes. Thugs.” He mumbled something else, maybe in some other language, but Gen couldn’t make it out.
The elevator doors slid apart.
Gen said, “Come on, honey. Let’s get you to bed.”
“All right. If you insist.”
From anyone else, that might have sounded leering and smarmy, but Arthur’s monotone voice just sounded exhausted.
Gen led Arthur out of the elevator, and he walked under his own power, not stumbling, not falling all over things and slobbering, but he wove when he walked. He crowded up next to her, veering when he walked, and for a moment, her face was practically lying on his shoulder. Traces of the sweet spices and musk of his cologne clung to the warm skin on his neck, and a faint whiff of whiskey fell from his breath.
Oliver peered around Arthur at Gen. Oliver’s Caribbean accent lilted when he asked, “Do you want me to stay? Help you get him to his room?”
It was after ten o’clock, so all the other staff had gone home. The dark apartment stretched across the building. The dim floor lights were glowing puffballs in the blackness.
Arthur told Oliver, “Thank you, but we’re fine. Gen doesn’t need to help me to bed at all. I am never drunk. And I’m certainly never hung over.”
Several gossip websites had published photographic evidence to the contrary, but okay, whatever Arthur needed to believe to get him through the night.
He was thoroughly wasted at the moment. Every time he leaned against something, he fell asleep. His silvery eyes had dulled to gray-blue, and he hadn’t opened them fully when she had led him from the car.
Oliver glanced at Gen. “What do you think, Miss? Are you all right?”
Arthur leaned against the wall and stared at his feet. “No one needs to help me to bed. I’m fine. Thank you both for your concern. Oliver, we won’t need your services. Good night.”
Oliver was still looking around Arthur’s shoulder at Gen. His skin was browner but not much lighter than the arm of Arthur’s tuxedo. “Miss?”
Gen had liked Oliver from the moment she’d met him, his easy formality and gentleness had made it easy to do so, and she didn’t want to get him in trouble. “We’ll be fine. I’m sure he’ll be fine. I’ll follow him to his bedroom and then leave him there.”
Arthur left them standing in the foyer as he walked, carefull
y and in a mostly straight line, across the long, dark living room. Someone must have closed the thick, glass doors that ran across the room because the traffic outside was almost silent.
Gen told Oliver, “He isn’t even swaying. I guess we’ll be fine.”
“All right.” Oliver held out a white card for her between two stubby fingers. “I’ll wait in the car downstairs for five minutes. Even after that, you can call me, and I’ll come right back.”
She smiled at him, “Thank you,” but she took the card.
Oliver stepped into the elevator, and Gen chased Arthur through the living room. “Arthur? Honey? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, walking slowly. He reached out and touched the railing that divided the living room area from the step-down dining room but didn’t falter.
“I know you’re fine. I just want to make sure you get to bed all right.”
“I’m fine.” He trailed his fingers down the railing.
“I have never seen someone drink so much, and you fell asleep in the car on the way back.”
“I hardly slept last night.”
“It was really hard to wake you up.”
“Ask the dorm mothers at Le Rosey how hard it was to wake me up for class. I sleep like the dead.” He was still slurring his words.
“Just let me see you to your room.” She caught up with him and took his hand.
Arthur pulled his hand away and stopped in the short hallway that led to his bedroom, which was far away from the guest bedroom where Gen was supposed to sleep. “Don’t.”
“Look, this might be just an arrangement, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. A friend would pour you into bed and take your shoes off.”
He was standing right in front of her in the dark, and the lights of London shone in through the glass wall and glinted in his eyes in the dark.
“And then what?” he asked. “And then you, also having had too much to drink—”
“I haven’t had too much to drink.” Maybe a few, but not too many.
“—would kiss my forehead good night, and I’d reach for you and pull you into bed with me.”
“This isn’t a stupid, shallow movie where the pretty people fall into bed for no good reason. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe you couldn’t resist me. Maybe I will cast my spell on you.”
“Oh, good grief, Arthur. You make it sound like you’re the ancient British god of sex.”
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m the reincarnated Druidic Young God, and that’s why every woman I meet hands me her panties and leaves with a smile on her face.”
“Or maybe you’re drunk and full of yourself, honey.” Gen mused about it, there in the dark penthouse above London because she had had too much to drink. “Besides, sex is just poking and vague hip movements, maybe some moaning or squirming.”
In the shadows, Arthur leaned on the railing, a dark figure in the darker room. “Are you a virgin?”
“Oh, God, no.” Gen waved one hand.
He said, “You sound like you are.”
“I assure you, I’m not. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
He shrugged, the shoulders of his silhouette rising and falling. “The fuss is the best part.”
“Everyone does the same fuss. It’s all just more of the same.”
“Oh, no, it’s not.”
“Your fuss can’t be so different than everyone else’s. What could you do to a woman that’s so different?”
He stepped toward her.
Gen didn’t step back, not this time. Maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the tequila punch, but the warm, spiced scent of his cologne drifted through the night to her, and something darker, more masculine, as his shadow loomed above her.
He ducked his head and whispered near her shoulder. “First, I’d turn her around so that she was facing this wall, here.” He tapped the white plaster that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I’d press my body against her back as I kissed the nape of her neck and her shoulders that I had been looking at all night but couldn’t touch.”
“Oh, a wall. That’s not so different.” She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, but she managed to say it.
He whispered, “I’d caress her ass and hips with my hands as I held her here, my mouth hot on her skin, and just as she was so sensitive that everything felt like pleasure, I would begin to bite. I would spin her around and kiss her mouth and touch her until she was begging for me to take her.”
Arthur’s breath brushed Gen’s bare shoulder while he spoke, and she could feel the hard consonants on her skin, puffs of warmth when he said spin and begging.
His hand touched her hip.
He said, “Then, I’d shove her over the back of that sofa over there—”
They both glanced at the low couch, the creamy leather visible in the darkness.
His voice was lower, hoarser, as he whispered, “—with her hanging down the other side and all the blood rushing to her head, her dark hair draped over the couch, and with her legs off the floor and kicking and her gorgeous ass in the air. I’d bury my tongue between her legs and eat her pussy from behind until she screamed from a blinding orgasm like she had never felt before.”
Gen said, “Um—” Her voice sounded more breathless, and her lips felt swollen even though he hadn’t kissed her at all.
His hand warmed her hip through her dress.
“After that,” he turned back to where his mouth was near her shoulder again, whispering, “I would spin her around, force her to her knees, and fuck her mouth and deep into her throat with my fist wrapped in her long, dark hair.”
Gen swallowed, suddenly aware of her tongue in her mouth and her long, dark hair down her back.
“And then I would pick her up in my arms, kiss her hard, and take her over to that chair by the fireplace,” Gen glanced over at the white chair that had looked so respectable until just then, “and I’d let her ride me until she came again, panting, and she collapsed against me.”
Could he do all that? It seemed unbelievable that a man could be so extravagant, sexually.
Or, maybe it was beyond Gen’s experience that a man would be so extravagant, sexually.
She asked, “And then?”
He growled near her ear, whispering, “And then I’d lay her lush, sumptuous body down on the floor, on that soft, thick rug over there in front of the fireplace. I’d take her slowly, gently, until she was quivering in my arms and her orgasm started deep inside her, spreading throughout her body, shaking her down into her very soul, devastating her. Hours. I’d stay with her for hours until that night was the most amazing in her life, the one that she would measure all others against.”
Gen stared at the rug and at the cold fireplace—a dark square with mirrored tiles that reflected the London lights outside—where such a thing might happen. The room’s warm air seemed stuck in her chest so that she could barely breathe.
Arthur stepped back, maybe half a step, leaving her turned aside. She struggled to keep her wobbly knees from folding.
Good Lord, she would have slid right down the wall to the floor.
“That’s not quite the same kind of fuss.” She licked her lips, which felt unaccountably swollen under her tongue.
When Gen looked back at Arthur, he was standing back, but he was watching her. Darkness filled the room, gathering in the corners and shadows.
Arthur didn’t move as he stood, still as a ghost. When she looked at the way that he was turned, she knew he must be watching her.
Gen entirely believed him. No wonder women reacted that way around him. It was like they could sense what he could do to them, what he would do to them.
She had a decision to make, right here. Her shaking legs and her leaden feet bound her to the floor, but she had to move.
Should she walk away or step toward him?
Back or forward?
Choose.
There in the shadows, Arthur was so tall that his shoulder
s blocked the white wall behind him. Once he grabbed her, she would be helpless. He could do anything to her. He could hurt her. He could hurt her more.
Gen slid her toe to the side. “I had better go to my room now.”
He stepped farther away and opened his hand toward the hallway that led to her room, as gentlemanly as always, and nodded as she scurried away.
When she turned and looked back, he was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching her go.
BUSINESS MEETING
Arthur looked out the plate glass window. The city of London—glass, steel, and tarmac with occasional rivers of green or dormant-yellow grass—spread out fifteen stories below.
He sat on the one side of a long conference table with twelve other people, an even mix of men and women and a multi-cultural cross-section of upper-crust Britain. All wore business suits as tailored and expensive as his suit. All looked manicured, coiffed, and very wealthy.
Arthur was one of the younger people at the table, he estimated. Most of the other board members were in their forties and well beyond.
Where had Gen gone that morning?
Arthur had awakened at six o’clock in the godforsaken morning, still dressed in his stale tuxedo with his ribs and his face and his skull pounding in time with the flashing numbers on the clock beside the bed. God above, he was never wamble-cropped after a night of drinking—his liver was a glorious pinnacle of evolution—but that morning, he felt absolutely wretched.
Mixing Oxycontin with vodka was a terrible idea. He made a note of it.
By the time he had crawled out of the sheets and made himself presentable, Gen was already gone.
Pippa had been drinking coffee in the kitchen, she looked at him with knowingness in her brown eyes. She had crossed her arms and smirked at him. “Rough morning?”
Oliver must have narced to the rest of the staff. Arthur had long suspected that his staff collaborated on keeping tabs on him. They may even use some sort of phone app to facilitate it. He had caught them furtively checking their phones too many times.
“Where’s Gen?” Arthur asked her, pouring himself a cup of coffee and praying that it was strong.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 19