Good In Bed

by Bromberg, K

  “December. He studies all night. I figure I won’t get laid again until the night of the test.”

  “The Monroe beauties!” a man in his sixties said, holding his hand out to us.

  “Mr. Jebbet!” Isabelle cried.

  “Drake, please.” He kissed her cheek. “You’re not sixteen anymore.”

  Drake Jebbet had been a top photographer when our mother was working. He’d taken black-and-white pictures of us that still hung on Mom’s walls.

  As Isabelle answered questions about her children with delight, I happened to look over her shoulder at the bar.

  He was there.

  Byron Crowne. Alone in a custom-tailored tuxedo that he wore as if it wasn’t formal at all. He was looking at me while he tipped his scotch.

  Should I have acted surprised to see him? Or was he surprised to see me?

  “Can I get you a drink?” I asked Jebbet and Isabelle.

  He held up his Old Fashioned. “I’m good.”

  “I’m driving,” Isabelle replied.

  “Back in a bit.”

  Jebbet offered his arm to Isabelle. “Do you remember Veronica Bash? From Vogue?”

  I let him take my sister to have her own good time while I headed for Crowne, keeping my composure despite a banging heart and knees that suddenly had a hard time balancing on my heels.

  Deliberate steps. One foot in front of the other. Pearls rolling against my neck, silk swishing against my curves. Every place his eyes touched came awake under the heat of his attention.

  “Hello,” he said when I got there and leaned my hip against the stool next to him. “Have a seat.”

  “You always get your way, don’t you?”

  He smirked, leaning an elbow on the bar. “Not always.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t expected him to ever admit losing.

  “For instance, you’re still standing.”

  Without thinking, I slid onto the seat. Did I do it because I didn’t want to disappoint him or because I wanted to be right about him getting his way? Could both be true?

  “Don’t ask me for any specifics about the case,” I said, crossing my legs. “I can talk to you in public, but I’m not tanking my career for you.”

  “Fair enough. What would you like to talk about?”

  “What brings you to an event for a cause you don’t give a damn about?”

  “I could ask you the same question, or I could ask you what you’re drinking.”

  Admitting he didn’t give a damn was fair. Implying I didn’t was less so. Asking what I wanted to drink in the same sentence was just plain impressive.

  “Ginger ale with lime, please.”

  With barely a gesture, he called for the bartender, who bent across the bar to hear him because Byron Crowne didn’t raise his voice or lean over for any man. Only when I got my drink did he sit, and when I arched my foot to give him another inch of room, the heel of my shoe slid off and dangled from my toes.

  The fantasy began here, with his hand on my knee, uncrossing my legs and pushing them open so he could get his hand up my skirt to touch panties so wet I was sure they’d soaked through the silk of my dress.

  I didn’t know if I was fantasizing or playing out a scene that had already started.

  “This is an auspicious meeting,” he said, laying his right hand on my heel with tenderness, care, and even respect. My heart jumped when he touched me, but my arousal had a life of its own, demanding I stay still for him. “I owe you an explanation in person.”

  With a gentleness I never would have attributed to Byron Crowne, he took the heel of my shoe in his left hand and, with his right hand on the bridge, pushed my shoe back onto my foot with quiet strength and reverential confidence.

  “For what?” I asked, both shoes on and his hand still resting on my foot.

  His gaze met mine. Coupled with his strong hand lingering on my stockings, the entire fantasy played itself out with a new beginning.

  I added to the question to define the reality before me. “What do you owe me an explanation for?”

  His hands. He had to move them off my ankle before I exploded, but I didn’t want him to. Ever. And his eyes. He had to look away—but when he did, I would be utterly unmoored.

  “I owe you an explanation for what I’m going to have to do if you pursue this.” He leaned back, sliding his hands away, and reality reentered my consciousness like the curling smoke of an incoming cloud. “When you came to the job site to challenge me, I was glad. I don’t like things to be too easy. I work best in a fight. But see, the problem for the enemy—and I hate to think of such a beautiful creature as an enemy—the problem is…I always win. And not just win.”

  A battlefield burned in his eyes. It was terrifying.

  He was terrible. Everyone knew it. People knew who he was. I could be seen with him. He’d touched me. They’d seen, and they’d think I was weak and awestruck. They’d tsk and shake their heads.

  He’d drawn me in like a fish on a hook.

  Finally, he looked away to arc his fingers over his short glass of amber whiskey. The spell moved from his eyes to the articulation of his strong hands. I wanted to tear myself away so I’d know if anyone saw us. I could do damage control, except I couldn’t control myself. His hands were works of art as the fingers pivoted on the glass and lifted it to his face.

  “I will ruin you, Ms. Monroe.” He sipped, green eyes watching me over the rim, then placed the drink back on the bar in a languid arch. “I don’t want to, so since you gave me the courtesy of a warning, I’ll do the same for you.”

  “I thought courtesy was a thin veneer on selfishness.”

  “It is. If you don’t want to be destroyed, you’ll remove the obstacles to me developing the Bel-Air property.”

  The fantasy I’d built snapped like a twig underfoot. With each word he spoke, a sapling of rage grew in its place. “Is that a threat?”

  “The stock answer is that it’s a fact. Maybe it’s that. But it’s more. It’s a warning and also…” He took a chest-expanding breath with a look of regret and even powerlessness over who he was. It was the most tangible expression of his humanity I’d seen, and though my fury was still growing, I let him finish out of respect for it. “I have to offer a profound apology now, when I’m inclined to make it and you’re most likely to hear it.”

  I uncrossed my legs and pressed my knees together, leaning toward him so I didn’t have to raise my voice. “You’ve lost your mind if you think this will be that easy.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “That you’ve lost your mind?”

  “That I don’t like it easy.” He locked eyes with me again, but his gaze went deeper. He didn’t look at me but into me. “I understand now. You need the fight too.”

  I did. And it needed to be seen so there were no misunderstandings.

  “Let me warn you,” I said before taking a sip of my ginger ale. It chilled the heat in my chest. “As a courtesy. The EPF had a shit record before I came on. But now? Every arrogant asshole developer like you asks for permission, not forgiveness, because you won’t get it. They all thought they could buy a workaround, and every single one of them was forced, by me, to comply with the law. Sheikhs and Chinese businessmen. Corporations who tried to buy us off. And you? You’ll comply. Because I’m going to make your life a hell of lawsuits and neighborhood pushback. You’re going to be labeled a criminal and a failure. When I’m done with you, you’ll need my permission to dig a hole in your own backyard.”

  The winner walked away first, leaving their opponent staring at an empty chair, but his smirk held me there because it was the smile of a man who’d won. If I walked on that note, I’d be running away.

  “So, you’re in,” he said. “Despite what I just told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I already knew you were worthy.” He tipped back the last of his drink before placing his glass exactly in the wet ring it had left on the bar. “You’re tough. Persistent. Smart. A little
cunning.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I did my homework. Have you done yours?”

  He pushed his glass across the bar, tracing a track of condensation, before leaving me there, staring at his empty barstool like a loser.

  Chapter 4

  OLIVIA

  Linda Lee wasn’t a bullshitter, but she had a gift for coming at people sideways, fooling them with direct talk and short sentences that gave them the impression that she didn’t have underlying motivations. She made and maintained relationships with people who knew people who knew people in an asymmetrical web of connections she kept in her head.

  This talent made her an excellent investigator. She worked mostly for journalists, cross-checking assumption against fact. I’d met her four years before, when she’d asked for a sit-down about the Gold Line extension impact statements, and I wound up telling her about the dynamics of my family. She countered with her own.

  We sat on a planter ledge outside my office building. We’d ordered from different food trucks. I had a Southern fried chicken salad, and she had a sausage on a stick. Her glasses were oversized black frames around prescription lenses that reduced the disarming sharpness of her brown eyes. Straight, black hair cascaded over each shoulder. She wore no makeup except carefully applied bright-red lipstick.

  “One hundred twenty-two properties in LA County alone,” Linda said, flipping through the notebook she’d laid between us. “No liens. No safety issues. Every complaint rectified on time. No debt he can’t manage. I mean, the Crownes, right?” She bit the tip of her sausage while holding a napkin against her chest to protect her black sweater.

  “Right. I know all that.”

  We spoke softly in the shade of an old ficus. The street was crowded with tourists and strangers, but you never knew who was around.

  “Engaged once. Samantha Bettencourt of the Grosse Pointe Bettencourts. The party was on the family yacht. It was insane. Justin Beckett and Brad Sinclair had a fistfight”

  “That party was five years ago.”

  “Six.” She blew on the sausage. “She died fourteen months after the announcement.”

  “How?”

  “Broken light in the pool. Electrocuted.”

  “Yikes.”

  “He hasn’t dated anyone since she died. Every socialite and actress in LA is trying to pin him down. But nothing. He’s seen alone or brings his sister to events.”

  “He’s been celibate for five years and change?”

  “Didn’t say that.” In three bites, she exposed half the stick, chewing with her hand over her mouth. I waited until she’d swallowed and touched the corners of her lips with her napkin. “He’s got a thing for normals.”

  “Normals?” I asked. She did have a way with words.

  “Women with regular jobs. Regular families. Not like him. Not even like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “You’re half in, half out. No?”

  She was right. Because of my mother, I knew plenty of people in what could have been called high society, but I didn’t really travel in those circles. Even in my private schools, the kids with Crowne-sized wealth usually hadn’t socialized with kids without it.

  So, I wasn’t his type. Good. That was actually helpful. Now maybe my desire would obey the scolding of my common sense.

  “Where does he meet the normals?”

  “He has a little house in Silver Lake. On Edgecliff Street. He goes to bars on the East Side… uses his real name but doesn’t say anything about his money. He spends a few weeks fucking them, and they go their separate ways. I found one woman in Frogtown. Waitress. Said it was the best week of her life but had no idea he wasn’t just a handsome stranger who didn’t want a commitment.”

  My brain lit up with an image. I was on my hands and knees, and he was behind me, shoving his cock in while yanking back my hair, growling, You want it like this.

  I had to take a breath and look away as a bolt of liquid heat shot from my spine to the throb between my legs. I stabbed my salad and ate it, chewing slowly.

  “So,” I said after swallowing, “these women are the only thing he doesn’t completely own or completely destroy.”

  My body wanted me to be one of those women. It wanted his fist closing around my hair and his hands moving it like a doll’s. It wanted him to helm the best week of its life, then walk away undestroyed and unowned.

  Linda slid the last of her sausage off the stick with her fingers and popped it in her mouth.

  “Point is,” she said as she pinched her napkin, “he’s completely undistracted from work. He’s got nothing else to do but fight you.”

  “And he loves a fight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that all you have?”

  “For now.” She closed her notebook. “Am I off the clock?”

  “Yes. How are you feeling?”

  “Only a tiny bit stressed that there might be sausage on my face.”

  I looked at her closely, already aware there wasn’t a speck of food on her cheek or lips, but she needed to know I wasn’t being casual about it. “You’re clean.”

  Until her shoulders relaxed and her chest expanded with a full, deep breath, I wouldn’t have noticed how tense she was. Her OCD might never be under control completely, but she managed her outward appearance beautifully.

  “Thank you.” She took off her glasses. “So… how bad do you want him?”

  “Who?” I knew exactly who she meant.

  “When I started talking about who Byron Crowne took home, you went blank.”

  I’d sent her to find out about his personal life, so she’d expected me to press for details and ask questions. Instead, I’d let my mind wander to places and pass locked gates I rarely opened in public. “I was paying attention.”

  I’d decided to deflect, but Linda Lee wasn’t the kind of conversationalist who got slapped off course. “You looked like you were watching a porno in your head.”

  Facts were facts.

  “He’s a nice-looking guy, and it’s been a while.” I snapped the top of my salad closed. “Which means nothing. I don’t need the complications.”

  “Okay.” She said it as if she wanted to believe me.

  She should have because I wasn’t lying. I was getting pregnant, and I didn’t need to start a thing with a guy who’d want to be the father. Especially not a guy who saw me as a conquest.

  You’re tough. Persistent. Smart. A little cunning.

  “How’s the babymaking going?” she asked, fishing a bottle of sanitizer out of her bag.

  “Nothing. Not this month.”

  “Ah, sorry about that.”

  “Linda,” I said.

  She squeezed a lump of gel into her palm. “Yeah?”

  “Byron said he’d done his homework on me. If you did research on me, what would you find?”

  She rubbed her hands together. “I don’t do opposition research on friends.”

  “Is that a policy?”

  “It’s the first time anyone’s asked. I don’t want it to be weird.”

  It was weird. It was weird to ask her, and it was weird to care what the subject of one of the many lawsuits I was heading knew about me.

  “Yeah. Never mind.”

  The EPF had already background-checked me. I was clean. What else mattered?

  I already knew you were worthy.

  Byron hadn’t said that as if my worthiness was based in my lawfulness. He’d sounded as if he’d noticed something no one else had. Something that made me less than clean yet more appealing. He could have been acting that way to scare me, or maybe dirtiness was what he enjoyed in an opponent.

  Maybe that was something Linda wouldn’t understand. Maybe it was something only a man like Byron could see.

  Standing on Wilshire Boulevard in a lunchtime crowd, waiting for Linda to touch everything in her bag to make sure it was there, I remembered his eyes seeing inside me, his gaze a physical presence. I heard his voice in my he
ad.

  I see you.

  You are worthy.

  I will destroy you.

  * * *

  My little two-bedroom house at the base of the Runyon Canyon was squeezed between apartment buildings, which made it cheap to buy and hard to sell. But I hadn’t bought it just to sell it. It was central to everything in the city, close to my mother, and it was all mine.

  Once the sun went down and the air cooled off, Runyon Canyon was the perfect place for a jog. The iron-gated trailhead with its blond stone pillars was only two blocks from my house. The hills were challenging but not brutal, and the streets were wide enough to avoid getting sideswiped around blind turns. The slivers of scenery were like little rewards for a jog well taken.

  I was the only jogger heading up toward Fire Road when a man blew past me on the left. With my earbuds in, I couldn’t hear the crickets or owls, and if there had been other runners that night, I wouldn’t have heard them coming up behind me. So, he took me by surprise.

  Using his speed as a benchmark, I picked up the pace, closing the gap between us. He was fast. I was faster, and if I wasn’t, I would be before we hit Clouds Rest.

  He was fit and had longer legs. His wet T-shirt stuck to the bulging muscles of his back as I came within reach. As if he could feel me behind him, he pumped faster. I chased, sweat pouring off me, using the energy I needed to complete the run.

  The dirt trail narrowed, twisting up the mountain. He was too far ahead to catch at this pace.

  I sprinted up the hill. The music in my earbuds couldn’t get past the whoosh of breath in my ears and the pounding of my heart.

  I had him. I could practically smell his sweat and adrenaline. He might keep running, but if I pushed, I’d beat him to the bench at Clouds Rest.

  “On your left,” I gasped when we were almost shoulder to shoulder, and I passed on the last few steps.

  I didn’t have to look at him as we reached the crest of the hill at the same time, because it didn’t matter who he was. It only mattered that I’d caught him.

  With his hand on the single lamppost, he looked at me and he barked out a laugh.