by JR King
“She’s got nothing on you,” I heard right next to my right ear, the sound a low, seductive rumble.
I shifted toward Tony, my head swinging fully around. “Beautiful liar.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Do you think she wants him?” I queried in a low voice, watching Alexander and the Lowells. Carina’s dainty fingers brushed with an unpretentious invitation over her collarbone, their tips lingering to rub the soft spot at the base of her neck.
“C’mon, pretty girl. Everyone wants a piece of him,” he answered in conspiratorial tone. “Men, women, kids, the Pope.”
“He’s mine.” I smiled and pinched my stomach.
“Elena, Tony,” Alexander stuck his oar in, “won’t you say hello to the Lowells? Don’t just sit there gathering dust.”
Decoding his despicable order, my brow wrinkled, eyelashes opening wider. I was scandalized that his words were uttered with little emotion and introspection.
“She has a fiancé,” Tony’s voice caressed my ears again. “It was about play, not love. You play along now, and don’t wear your feelings on your sleeves. Her family values friendly relationships.” He got up and put his hands on my shoulders, pulling me up.
I smiled coolly and scrambled to the trio.
“Elena Anderson,” Alexander’s smooth rasp announced me, a lascivious smile filling his handsome face. I noticed that it curled the corner of his mouth, deepening his dimple. God, I wanted to punch the smile right off his face.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Mason offered, grinning.
“Indeed it is,” murmured Carina, watching me like a hawk.
The men started talking shop, and Alexander let his hand rest on my wrist. I stood in silence while their words dribbled around me, the tip of my tongue tracing the centre of my upper lip. Best to take it all with a pinch of salt, I told myself.
Carina beat a hasty retreat. “See you at the wedding, guys.” I saw the sway of her hips as she walked past me in long strides, her grace putting mine to shame.
Excusing myself, I ensconced myself back in my chair. Her wedding? There’s no way I was going to attend it. I shuffled Carina’s cheesy suggestion into a filing cabin in my headspace.
While a waiter topped off my glass, I stared at the pale-yellow liquid bubbling to a white froth on top. I picked up my glass with a hand that trembled lightly, swallowing a mouthful of the refilled liquid.
“Baby, I’m back.” I caught eye of Alexander’s Frey Wille cufflinks as he took his seat, realizing they looked like a replica of cyclone-shaped abstract art. More than anything else, I found myself wanting his hands on me. I watched his fingertips toy absently with the stem of his flute; he slid them up and down without ever reaching the condensation.
I swallowed a bliss-filled moan.
“Little pet, I have a face, and it’s quite handsome. Keep your eyes steadfast on my hand, and I won’t be responsible for what my fingers do underneath the table linens.”
“No…I was…the hunger…I was thinking your cufflinks,” I spoke a tad nonsensically, grabbing hold of his arm. I whipped my head toward him, and saw he was watching me with an amused look in his eyes.
With his knee, he nudged my thigh and came closer to whisper. “I think you’re awesome.”
“You say this because you want us to attend Carina’s wedding.”
Throwing his head back in laughter, he attracted the attention of our tablemates. “Sweetheart,” he draped his arm behind me on top of the back of my chair, his fingertips brushing up possessively against my shoulder. “I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed a dinner event held here.”
Playful Alexander was a sight to behold.
After the three-course meal, I stood on the sidelines during his interview with a Boston Globe reporter.
Josef Montgomery—a reporter who’d covered both my mother’s death and my father’s disappearance—watched me fidgeting with a curious expression. He walked over to me.
I delayed Ray’s rescue effort by putting up two fingers with deft assuredness as a means of time span I was about to use. He acquiesced with a single nod, and I spun toward the reporter. “The bad penny always turns up.”
“Mitchell Christiansen agreed to sit down with me, Ms. D’Souza.”
In my mind, I hit the roof. “So?”
“Is there anything you’d like to get out in the open?”
I wanted to threaten his private life too, giving him a taste of his own medicine. I kept telling myself to cut it out. “No.”
“How’s life with Alexander Turner?”
“Great. Get lost.”
He gave me one more soul-gripping stare, then turned on his heel and walked away.
I stepped back and shook my foggy head. As if Alexander could sense me talking about him, his head snapped in my direction, his gaze narrowing fractionally. What he’d said at home flooded back into my mind. I realized I was dangerously close to violating his rules.
He came closer to me and held my eyes with a lust-incarnated smile, and the battleship grey in his eyes told me he knew of my blind compulsion to please him. “Tell me, Elena.” His sensual stare illuminated the air between us; everything disappeared but the sound of his breathing and his hands on me.
“A reporter questioned me about Mitchell.”
“Wait, I didn’t hear you,” he dramatically lifted a hand to his ear, “did you say a reporter asked you about Mitchell?”
I could barely breathe. “He knows me—did a sickening piece on my parents.” I paused and looked up. “He wants to interview me. I think he’s writing a piece on you.”
For a few seconds, he seemed to be deliberating. “Was it the grey-haired guy wearing jeans and a turtleneck under his sports jacket?”
I nodded.
He smiled. “We’re sleeping over at your grandparents’ house?”
I nodded again. He looked into my eyes for another minute before pulling away, apparently satisfied, and pressed his hand to the small of my back.
I made him a drink—in the limo—while he called Jerry.
“Kill the damn story. He’s a piece of shit, really, a waste of time and space. Take your pick.” He whipped his hand through the air around us. “He solicited her personally right after I turned him down! Do I look fucking gullible to you?”
I flinched, afraid Alexander would accidentally smack me.
He reined in his sudden movement and threw his phone on the other seat. “You did well, Elena. What do you fancy tonight?”
“My pet,” I gave him a little grin, “I’d like to watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory and eat ice cream.”
His fingertips skimmed over my shoulder. “How about we sample Häagen Dazs ice creams while watching reruns? We both get two picks. Will you share your pints with me?”
“You’re the best.” Our lips melded together when he kissed me. I carefully used my tongue to caress him, and by the time he detached his face, he no longer seemed angry.
We split pints until I felt high.
Perhaps it was Carina’s gorgeous appearance, perhaps it was the realization that she had a huge career, perhaps it was the reporter’s presence reminding me of my past, perhaps it was the awareness that I could become rich like Carina if I went to Zürich and claimed what was legally mine, but later that night I felt sick.
I ended up purging myself.
Alexander Turner
The Layoff Predicament
Bit by bit, winter thawed. Snow turned black and melted into dirt water. I missed Katherine like crazy. By mid March, the honeymoon period was over. Elena and I still communicated through sex, but now we’d settled into a comfortable tempo rather than a jumpy and restless one. Springtime meant Baselworld, a watch and jewelry trade show held in Switzerland. A hobby of mine was collecting timepieces. Elena wasn’t feeling well enough to accompany me, so I skipped the show and meetings this year altogether. Not just women, men go through rough times as well. To dismiss the sentiments, I looked a
t it simplistically. When a Red Sox pitcher had a bad night, it didn’t mean he was a bad pitcher. Shit happens all the time. The coach just called for a timeout, patted him on the back and got someone else to finish the game. That’s why I loved having two friends.
Support. Men needed it too.
Perfect time to give the mansion a LEED makeover. Remember my electricity bills? With a modernized spa poolhouse, I’d managed to considerably reduce the total. Are you familiar with such standards?
It wasn’t commercial skullduggery.
Think green buildings when you hear LEED. The entire poolhouse got heated and cooled in smart ways. Passively via an expansive wall of sliding glass doors on one side and an uninterrupted slot of operable windows on the other, and actively via a roof designed for solar hot water panels used to heat not only the pool, but also the high-performance structure. Specific heat-generating tubing beneath the wooden floor supplemented the low consumption fireplace, and the overall perimeter contained flash and batt insulation, thus retaining heat longer and minimizing energy use as well as keeping the poolhouse cool in the warmer months. During summer, cooling would be solely passive, achieved via natural ventilation and evaporative ventilation. To demonstrate, as continuous breezes sweep over the sexy pool, water evaporated and cooled the air blowing through the sliding glass doors, all the way to the back of the structure, rolling out linear clerestory windows. Frigging pretty and practical, don’t you think? Of course this wouldn’t work for the marble flooring of the mansion, but a continuous slot of windows made a big difference.
I’d been working late all week, Thursday evening was no exception.
Michael was one of the smartest men I’d ever met. He knew how to delegate duties to quick-witted financial controllers and chief accounting officers while he specifically focused on strategic issues, performance measurements, and growth-related processes. Since I’d hired him, he created key financial and non-financial performance metrics to provide feedback on numerous business models. With his CFO skill set, he was on his way to becoming a true leader. But see, there was nothing I hated more than budget meetings and layoff suggestions. Leaning back in my comfy office chair, I tried to concentrate on the stream of annual figures spewing from his mouth. In terms of holistic thinking, his numbers as well as the regulatory reporting seemed on point. I wondered why economists and sharp-edged financial types had such obsessive affinities for exacting numbers. Could they get a hard-on from just staring at the numbers?
Maybe so.
As Michael rattled on and on about layoffs and how much employees were going to cost this year versus how much we’d save the next year if we cleaned house, he grimaced. “Dude, you’re not listening.”
My fingers raked through my hair. “What’s the bottom line, Mike? Regardless of strategy and process, I’m not interested in firing key employees in the foreseeable future.”
As with most questions, the answer to this one was simple. Conversely, he kept droning on and on about value chain, premium cost savings, outplacement costs, more shitty metrics, treating my family of employees as fucking units. Units? What about their names? Colorful bar graphics on my iPad’s screen showed average employee age and standard deviation numbers. Yawn. I’d been listening to this all week. My dick was soundly asleep, hibernating even. Happened once in a while.
Hamilton drove me home around 10 PM. The air was cool and clean, a stoic trace of autumn in it. Hearing my footsteps shuffle across the granite walkway, I realized just how much I was dragging. I stripped off my jacket, vest, and tie before closing the front door with a soft click. While padding through the foyer, I heard peals of oohs and aahs rising. My steps broke into a jog. Two security guards surrounded someone who was lying on the floor. Zeroing in on the unresponsive body, a stab of despair knifed through me.
“Out! Everyone out!”
They exited the room with their tails between their legs.
My arms full, I bundled off with Elena to a secluded sitting room not far ahead. I gently unfurled her on the sofa and positioned her head on a pillow. I spread her disheveled hair on the side and combed the locks with my long fingers, caressing her beautiful face. I was really being as gentle as I could, seeing her in this lethargic state divested me of my willpower.
Hamilton arrived, scowled, “What have you done?”
My mouth crooked ruefully at having that thrown in my face with unshakable certainty. “It appears she’s fainted,” I answered, uplifting her back to place a soft pillow underneath for lumbar support.
He loosened the girdle of her wrap dress, pausing for a second to estimate the circumference of her body, which was vital to put her into a recovery position. Placing her on her side so she was only supported by one leg and one arm, he opened her airways by tilting her head back and lifting her chin. I monitored her breathing and pulse continuously.
Following his actions, I asked, “So?” Hamilton didn’t usually take the long way around an important issue.
His scowl faded and he rolled his eyes. “I think a bit scatterbrained, she’s also dehydrated.”
A chill of wariness shot through me. I couldn’t tell dick from any of what I saw before me. “How so dehydrated?”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck lifting. Hamilton had that serious look in his eyes that said something serious was going on. He forced open her eyelid again. “The yellow matter might be an eating disorder. Is she bulimic?”
“Not to my knowledge.” My mind was going in a thousand directions. Only now I realized how thin she looked. As my thumb stroked her left hand knuckles up and down, I made a resolve to grill her on this matter.
Elena rattled her eyelids. “Uh.” Her nose seemed a little bunged up, and she tried to clear her throat.
I bent forward to give her a kiss. “Take deep breaths, everything’s going swimmingly.”
“What happened, Elena?” inquired Hamilton.
She looked petrified, her complexion sallow. Casting her eyes down, she sputtered with a long, suffering sigh, “I shouldn’t have skipped dinner.”
“Let’s dispense with the lies, Elena. You’re dehydrated, and we both know why.” A flush of fear hit her face and her eyes came up to mine as Hamilton took her to task.
“I’m done with this bullshit,” I added. No screaming, I was really good. “Does he look like Donald fucking Duck to you? Answer him.”
Her eyes slid to the floor. “It’s a habit I need to work on…I stopped taking it…almost,” she mewed despondently, like a lost kitten. We waited, watched the tension leave her body.
Hamilton softly continued, “What did you take, Elena?”
“I-Ipecac syrup.”
Alexander Turner
The Fight
Physical fitness was of paramount importance to me. Elena’s prognosis was good, but it was difficult to digest that, at some point, she’d started using Ipecac syrup. Unwilling to sit, I paced back and forth in the playroom. The pressure of anger was high, and I was trying to remain calm so I wouldn’t lose my temper. Belatedly, I recognized the signs and aggravation of Elena’s disorder, and my lack of insight. Punishments spiraled through my head, teeming with sadistic options and safe choices I could make.
“You win, Elena. I’ll commission a sound system in every en-suite bathroom.” My jaw tight, I was working on controlling my increasing tone as I made this ridiculous suggestion.
She looked childishly crestfallen, like I’d taken away her favorite toy. “That’s insane.”
I cocked my eyebrows. “It isn’t. This humbugging will stop.”
“Will it now? Suddenly you care?” In contrast to before, her voice changed on this accusatory statement, it went a note higher.
With a raging financial crisis, my company was in that hostile place where we had to regroup and strategize how not to deep-six any of my employees. By the time I returned home, the urge for sex competed against weariness, and most nights, I threw in the towel. Elena’s revelation had turned the tables; I was now
in a sadistic mood.
“Any form of self-harm is forbidden.” I held out my hands and paused to look around the warm room, then stood against the wall and crossed them over my chest. Leaning back, I also crossed my legs at the ankles. It might seem like a calm pose, but there was nothing calm in the way I felt as I looked at her. “Is there a particular punishment you had in mind?”
She struggled with unsteady footing. “Ale…sir, please listen to me.” Her voice was calm but her body trembled, tears streaking down her face.
“Listen to you? Excuses; I don’t want to hear them.”
“But it’s okay for me to listen to them?” She stood tall in spite of her haze of tears and my glare that should have had her cowering like weak prey. “You gave me excuses all week.” Her voice started shaking when she thrust her hand toward me. “You don’t come home for dinner, and when you do arrive, you shower, engage in small talk, then fall asleep. I’m not stupid.”
I took a step toward her, my voice low as I prodded. “Being tired is my excuse for what exactly? What is it you think I’m hiding from you? Do you think I’m gallivanting around Boston at night?”
“You’re having an affair,” she popped out bluntly. Her face hardened, her expression turning to ice. “You promised you wouldn’t lie to me.” Her voice was laden with sarcasm. She rubbed her chin and continued. “I know I gained a little weight. I kept it all bottled up, kept eating without thinking.” Me, I saw hella red. My fists curled, and in my effort not to slap her, I took a step back and leaned against the wall, yet again. “I want you, ALEXANDER. You belong to me! Mine! How could you forget?” She shook her head. “Taking the syrup felt familiar in a way I knew I’d lose the weight fast.”