Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1

by Blair Babylon

  Arthur was still casually watching the deer, off in the deep grass. “Does he work in your chambers?”

  “Oh, no. I would have chosen different chambers.”

  “Ah. Anything else you want to tell me about him?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Who his friends were? What his major was or what profession he is in now? Just so I won’t say something wrong.”

  “It sounds more like you’re fishing for information.”

  “Oh, no. I’m just an indolent earl, remember. I have no ulterior motives.”

  “Arthur, you aren’t planning to look him up, are you?”

  “Now, why would I do that? I will concentrate my efforts on you.” He looked from the deer back down at her, his eyes smiling and kind. “I’m far more interested in helping you with your little dilemma.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Not at all. I’m fascinated by you, and I have much to consider about our evenings, our experiences. Let me see if I’ve got it all: no shoving or crowding you up against walls or other things, no grabbing the back of your neck, no restraints, and no beds.”

  Gen was exhausted just listening to that litany of thou shalt nots. “You can’t work around all that. No one can. I’m just going to have to find some other way to make sure no one finds out about it.”

  She let go of his grip and finally—finally!—shook the crazies out of her hands.

  When she saw him watching her, she dropped her hands to her sides, ashamed again.

  He said, “We’ll start with those as your hard limits. As you trust me more, as you become more comfortable, we’ll reevaluate what you want. We’ll always discuss it first.”

  The air was still restless in Gen’s lungs. “Okay.”

  “But here are my conditions,” Arthur said.

  “Oh?” Gen almost jumped backward. She hadn’t known about this. “Like what?”

  “You’re mine, now,” he said. “While we do this, you’re mine. No other men.”

  “I haven’t dated anyone in years and certainly not in the last couple of months while we were supposed to be dating.”

  “Good. I can do with you what I will, as long as I observe your hard limits. You’ll do what I say, when I say it, willingly, compliantly.”

  That was awfully weird. “What if I don’t want to?”

  “You’ll do it even if you don’t want to.”

  “What if it scares me? What if it’s something that I didn’t think to tell you or something that upsets me and I freak out?”

  “You’ll have safewords, words or other signals that will mean to slow down or to stop entirely. We both will.”

  “I don’t know how that works.”

  “We’ll discuss it. We’ll practice. This is the important part: In reality, when we’re working, you have all the power. You are the one in control because if you utter those words, I am honor-bound to stop.”

  “Okay,” Gen said, breathing hard.

  “Other than those words, when we’re alone, you belong to me, body and soul.”

  “That’s kind of scary,” she said.

  “You don’t have to make any decisions other than whether it’s too much and you want to slow down or stop. If it gets to that, quite honestly, I’m not paying close enough attention. It would mean that I’ve made a mistake.”

  “What do you mean, not make decisions? That sounds very retro.”

  “You don’t have to think about it anymore.”

  “I do overthink things,” she fretted.

  “Give all your fear to me. You don’t have to be afraid. You just have to feel, to experience, and to be mine.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “You have been,” he said. “You’ve been doing it for months.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  He held out his hand, palm up. “Take my hand.”

  Gen laid her fingers in his and held on.

  The smile that Arthur gave her was pleased, calmly pleased. “Good,” he said.

  She couldn’t help but be just a little proud of herself at his praise.

  “Just like that,” he said. “You were afraid, but I told you what to do. You didn’t think about it. You didn’t agonize over it. You didn’t think about your fear and your past. You just did what I told you to.”

  She had been doing it for months. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “I want to talk more about these safewords.”

  “Understandable.”

  “And we can’t do that in court or when we’re dealing with your lawsuit,” Gen said.

  “Of course. In that, I am yours.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I guess you are.”

  “Shall we begin?” he asked, still holding her hand.

  Okay, this might be the adventure of a lifetime. She might need therapy afterward, but she might be okay.

  She needed therapy now, anyway. She probably wouldn’t be worse off.

  If she wanted evidence that this might work out, she could cite that she could touch him now, she was holding his hand, and she had kissed him. She hadn’t been able to do those things with anyone just a couple months ago. Not at all. She would have had a panic attack just thinking about them.

  And she liked Arthur.

  They were friends, and they laughed together.

  And . . . more.

  Gen said, “Yes. Let’s begin.”

  He tugged her hand, only enough to shift her balance so that she stepped toward him. Her fingers splayed on his shirt, and his rounded pectoral muscle beneath the soft cotton twitched under her hand.

  “Good,” he said.

  Her face warmed at his words again.

  Arthur positioned her hand on his shoulder, nearly reaching around his neck. He always adjusted her arms around him, every time they were close like this and every time they danced at the parties and balls.

  He bent, lowering his face until his lips almost touched hers.

  “Say you’re mine, pet.”

  Gen braced herself and whispered, “I’m yours.”

  His voice was deeper and husky when he told her, “Kiss me.”

  The breeze freshened around her legs, cooling her skin, and the thick grass of the meadow stretched around them. Hills rose in the distance, past the deer that grazed so far away. Sunshine warmed her arms and back.

  Arthur curled his arm up, his fingers turning in hers, and he positioned her other hand on his chest, too.

  She was steadier on her feet, and it felt like he was holding her in his arms without holding her down. His other arm dangled at his side. His warm breath feathered on her lips.

  The deer hooted and grunted on the other side of the field. The scent of sun-baked grass mixed with Arthur’s cologne, cinnamon, dark wood, and a faint hint of musk.

  It felt nothing like a small, dark, smelly room, late at night, after she’d had too much to drink and gone home with the wrong guy.

  Gen rose up on her toes that last fraction of an inch and pressed her lips to his.

  She didn’t even feel the need to shake out her hands.

  GREEN LIGHT

  Green light.

  The dry grass brushed Arthur’s jeans, scratching on the denim, and the sun was dropping in the sky.

  Arthur held out his hand, palm up. “Take my hand.”

  Gen was watching him, her dark eyes wide, and she laid her fingers across his palm. The breeze blew her thick, dark hair around her head.

  It was a good thing that Arthur was an English nobleman, a man who had been raised to be able to control every aspect of his demeanor and his emotions.

  She had just given him the green light to seduce her.

  The impulse seized him to grab her, tumble her to the mud and grass out here in the deer park, and have his way with her, but he wouldn’t.

  No, he had a very special seduction planned for Genevieve.

  If she had merely been an innocent virgin, he would have ruined her
, changed her into a wanton woman who appreciated sex in its most depraved forms.

  But Gen was scared and broken.

  Arthur wanted to build her into a new woman, one who was bold and strong, one who would go out into the world as an alpha female and fuck men until they begged for mercy.

  Not Arthur, of course. He would be the one man who could match her, but that would be later.

  That would be after she had become as strong and beautiful as pristine marble, a Galatea to his Pygmalion. He would remake this broken woman into something sturdier, stronger, and a formidable, eternal paragon in a world of mere humans.

  More defiant. More inviolable.

  More British.

  He would make sure that no one could ever break her again.

  It wasn’t just a seduction, though. It was much more like an intelligence operation, like turning a person into an asset that could be used. If he could convince someone to betray their country, their family, and everything they held to their heart, if Arthur could break a person into a compliant agent who would chew a cyanide pill rather than inform on him, he could rebuild Gen.

  He was more than cultivating her. He was turning her.

  In his job, if he screwed up turning an asset, he could blackmail them into silence at the very least.

  He couldn’t fail with Gen. He had to watch, to assess, to adjust his tactics until he found success with her.

  He hated what had happened to her.

  Finding that rapist was on his list of personal projects. If Gen would just slip a few times and give Arthur just a few tidbits of information or one really good one, Arthur would find that man and destroy him.

  Gen’s fingers held his hand.

  “Come,” Arthur said. “Come see Spencer House.”

  GAMES

  After Gen and Arthur had walked back to the house through the golden fields of grass drying in the afternoon sunlight, Arthur told the staff that they would be dining out that night as he had not called ahead to arrange supper at Spencer House.

  Gen saw several housekeepers sigh with relief.

  A staff lady showed Gen to a bedroom, suggesting that she might freshen up before supper.

  Blue fabric upholstered the walls and curtains, and the room was as soothing as a summer sky skimmed with clouds. Pale gold velvet covered the chairs around the breakfast table as well as the small divan at the footboard of the bed. The comforter on the bed was made out of cream silk, the same cream silk that lined the insides of the blue curtains that fell from the wooden canopy above the bed.

  The effect was modern with an antique feel, as if the bed were saying, This is reminiscent of how this room looked in Tudor times, but all this beautiful fabric is new for you.

  Gen glanced around the room, taking stock of the furniture. The little divan at the end of the bed was suitable to sit down on to put on shoes, but a statuesque woman such as herself couldn’t lie down on it. Her head would flop over one of the rolled arms, and her knees would hang over the other. Ridiculous.

  Maybe she could fold up the comforter and sleep on the floor. She nudged the carpet with her tennis shoe. The blue carpeting was pretty well padded underneath. Sleeping on the floor might be a good option.

  The too-tight black dress that came just above her knees was laid out on her bed, and the Christian Louboutin pumps sat primly on the floor below the spread skirt.

  Guess someone wanted her to wear that dress. Gen hadn’t even packed it.

  She flung a pair of black lace panties on top of the dress.

  Those, she had brought in her bag. Just in case.

  Gen showered and packed herself into the dress, struggling to zip it up. The zipper was one of those fragile little contraptions wedged under the dress’s armpit, and Gen had been eating too well at all those charity suppers. No matter how much she walked Ruckus around Hyde Park, those sauces and desserts and drinks added up. She inhaled and wiggled the zipper up.

  Luckily, the dress had good structure, and the whalebones made it look like she had gained those few pounds in her boobs.

  Expensive clothes create optical illusions that the cheap ones don’t. They were like the skinny mirrors that department stores have in their fitting rooms, but the dresses worked all the time.

  She brushed her hair but left it down around her shoulders. For work, she twisted it up tightly in buns on the back of her head. Leaving it down felt good.

  A shimmering two-seater was waiting for them as they descended the steps from the front doors of Spencer House. The blued steel car looked like a bullet with speed grooves.

  She asked him, “An Aston Martin? Seriously?”

  “Of course. They’re fantastic cars,” Arthur said, again dressed in a dark blue suit. He walked down the steps with her. “Simply beautiful.”

  Glowing light from the sunset played over the car’s sleek curves. The headlights didn’t look like the narrowed, angry eyes of a BMW. Instead, the slim lights and rounded bonnet appeared to look at the world with a cultured, very British side glance.

  She asked, “Are you sure you’re not a spy?”

  Arthur laughed, and his laugh rang off the gray tiles that shingled the house. “I’m an unemployed earl with far too much money and no responsibilities. MI6 would have to have lost their collective marbles to recruit me.”

  She squinted at him, trying not to laugh. “That’s exactly what you’d say if you were a spy.”

  He shrugged, but he was still smiling. “I guess you’ve got me there.”

  When he looked at her, his eyes were the same color as the shining blue-gray car.

  She wondered whether he did that by accident, or whether everything in the world that was beautiful was that same color as his silvery eyes.

  Driving to the restaurant was alternately as thrilling as a roller coaster and as sedate as a pleasure cruise.

  On long straightaways between rock walls and square-trimmed hedges, Arthur opened up the throttle on the Aston Martin DB11 to zoom through the countryside.

  The G-force pressed Gen back in her seat. She laughed every time he did it.

  As they coasted through towns and past houses, Arthur told Gen little stories.

  One crofter’s house had post and rail fences around it. Arthur and George, Ifan’s youngest grandson, used to jump horses over the fences when they were children until Ifan caught them and chewed them out at the danger to the horses and themselves. Ifan taught him to jump horses properly and set up a steeplechase course with hedges and troughs to practice. Arthur’s grandfather had approved of the sport of steeplechase, since it was a proper sport for a gentleman, and so he had bought Arthur a properly trained steeplechase horse. He had gotten quite good when he had come home during the summers, to the point where he had ridden for the British national team in international competitions when he was in high school.

  Another house farther away was owned by a lady who baked cookies, different ones all the time. During the summer, he and George used to ride the horses to her house every day for a cookie as if they were playing the lottery. “Some days, she made delicate chocolate zebra cookies like crisp croissants, and sometimes, she made oatmeal raisin rock cakes.”

  The restaurant was about twenty miles away in a mid-sized town. The parking lot held several sleek Rolls Royces and Bentleys.

  Arthur explained, “This is one of the few overpriced places around here.”

  After a fawning hostess had seated them at a center table in the crowded main room, a waiter took their orders. The tables were spaced a bit apart, allowing the waiters to push carts between the tables. Classical music wafted over the quiet conversation.

  Arthur leaned back in his chair as they waited for the soup course to arrive. He said, “You look smashing in that dress.”

  “Thanks,” she said, pleased but also thanking the genius seamstress somewhere who had so expertly sewn the boning in it.

  He asked, “What are you wearing under it?”

  Gen glanced behind herself, but t
he waiter guy had already gone through the doors, thank goodness. Other guests were engrossed in their food or their conversations.

  She said, “Underwear.”

  “Those weren’t laid out for you.”

  “Did you have someone lay out the dress?”

  “Of course, but panties were not laid out with it.”

  “How do you know that?” she whispered.

  “Because I told her not to.”

  Gen was not going to be able to look any of his staff in their eyes. “Oh my God.”

  Arthur’s voice was deep. “Take them off.”

  Gen looked around again. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But, someone might see.”

  “You should have about thirty seconds before the gentleman returns with the soup. You might want to hurry, pet.”

  He stared at her, smiling, his silvery eyes calm and confident.

  He wanted to see her do it.

  The people around them chattered and pinged their silverware on the china plates.

  Arthur smiled a little more, maybe at her hesitation.

  Did he think that she wouldn’t do it?

  Hey, she might have a psychological block about being touched right now, and she might be from the Texan backcountry, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t up to whatever he could think of.

  Actually, she wanted to watch the look on Arthur’s face while she did it.

  Gen smiled back at him.

  She pinched the bit of lace on her hips through her skirt and tugged downward. The panties slid down, loosening around her legs and rubbing between them.

  Arthur drew one side of his lower lip inside his mouth and bit down on it.

  Geez, he was sexy when he did that.

  She leaned forward to lift her butt off the chair a little and slid the panties down to her knees.

  Gen hooked one finger in her underwear as they slid down her calves, and she stepped out of them, snagging the lace on the high, fuck-me heels of the red-soled shoes. She yanked and jiggled the panties free.

  “Did it,” she said.

  Arthur leaned forward. The intensity of his gaze made his eyes look like molten silver. “Hand them to me under the table.”