Losing Control (8 page)

I wonder what Malcolm has told him. “But you aren’t family.”

He leans closer, so close I can smell his aftershave and beneath that his warm male smell. Happiness is not a warm puppy. It’s the deeply masculine smell of someone who has got his big arms wrapped around you so you are wallowing in his scent. And right now, I’m tempted to climb over the table and into his lap—he smells just that good.

“For the money, you can pretend, can’t you?” he asks.

When he draws back, the gleam in his eyes is one of satisfaction and pure masculine desire. How will I work for him for three months and not beg for a spot in his bed?

“I don’t even know what that means. Am I going to do anything illegal?” I ask.

He taps the paper with his well-manicured finger. “Not until you sign.”

I can turn away from him. I can beg Malcolm for help, but the vision of my mother turning away from me, of Dr. Chen asking me when, of all those medical bills piled up in the corner . . . I could deliver packages for Malcolm for years and never get out from under that debt.

There’s really no need for me to think even one more second about this. I scrawl my illegible signature across the straight black line next to Ian’s finger. “Nice pen to go with your nice car,” I say, handing the heavy rollerball back to him.

“Everything I have is nice,” he says, and the innuendo makes my tongue feel two sizes too big for my mouth.

“How’s your mother, Malcolm?” Ian asks, never once taking his eyes off mine.

“She’s fine.” Malcolm responds tightly. It’s apparent to all of us that she really isn’t fine.

“Still down in Atlantic City?”

He nods brusquely and I feel bad because Malcolm’s mom has a gambling problem, which is partly the reason why he’s into half this shit.

“You should get her out of there. Atlantic City kills people.” Ian’s nonchalant attitude is suddenly grim. Apparently he does have more than one expression. This one looks scary. I prefer his smirk. Folding the contract in thirds, he stands. Business is over.

“I look forward to working with you…” he pauses and a fiendish gleam appears in his eyes. “Bunny.”

“You really are the devil,” I gasp as I catch his reference to our earlier encounter when he told me I was small prey.

“Ah, stroke my ego a little more. It’s my second favorite nickname.” This time he winks at me.

“What’s your first?” I ask like a halfwit.

“God,” he whispers in my ear and walks out.

“What’d he say?”

“Bruce Wayne,” I lie. The box is still lying there, and I guess there isn’t anything to do but take it home.

Mom’s asleep but snoring softly, her rhythm sounding perfectly healthy. I set the box on the table, make up my bed, and go into the bathroom to run through my nightly ritual of facial scrub and moisturizer. As I brush my teeth, I wander back into the living room and stare at the crumpled box.

Finally I climb onto the mattress and situate the box between my legs. Opening it means something. If I return it to him again, I think he’ll back off. After flicking the light off, I set it on the floor and crawl under the covers. And lie there. And wonder. And wonder some more.

With a curse, I sit up quickly and turn the light back on. Ripping off the bow, I pull off the lid of the box revealing the golden tissue inside. I push it away and see a riot of gorgeous, mouth-watering lace in every tropical shade in the beach crayon box—from aqua to coral to sand. But as I lift out the items reverently, I notice that there are only bottoms. Everything we bought, but just the bottoms.

There’s an envelope and in it are the three hundred-dollar bills, still perfectly creased, and a small MP3 player. I grab my earbuds and listen. His smooth voice plays out like a velvet chocolate spread—sinful and completely irresistible.

“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep the tops or the bottoms. Did I want to imagine your breasts wearing the silk or satin or your sinful secret part? I opted for the latter. You know where the rest of the sets are. Come and get them.”

I
CALL
THE
NUMBER
HE
leaves for me at the end of the message even though it is very late. He answers on the first ring.

“I thought you didn’t want to have sex with people you paid. Something about contaminated inkwells.”

He laughs and the low sound vibrates throughout my body. “I’ve decided that I’m particularly skilled at compartmentalizing, so I’m going to make an exception.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“Probably not. You’re not ready for it. But it can be drilled down to the fact that I’m not interested in self-denial.”

“You should look into it. I hear it’s character building. Anyway, thanks for the awkwardly intimate gift.”

“You’re welcome. I prefer to think of it as generous and intimate rather than awkward. And my character was set at the age of fifteen. It’s immutable now.”

“Fifteen?” There’s a story there.

“Yes.” He offers me nothing more, and I’m not ready to push.

“Are you always so confident and knowing? It’s not attractive.”

“Then I guess you’ll have no problem resisting me.”

I stick out my tongue again since he can’t see me being childish. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

“Who says we’ll be sleeping? I anticipate a lot of rigorous activity followed by a complete loss of consciousness.”

“That’s not sleeping?”

“No, that’s fucking until you’re nearly dead.”

“Sounds terrible.” It sounds amazing. I’ve never had someone talk to me so boldly. They certainly don’t talk like that in the movies. It’s more about showing soft lights and wide-opened mouths. Although I wouldn’t turn that down, either.

“Tell me about yourself,” he invites, and in the background I hear the rustle of sheets as he gets more comfortable. There’s not a doubt in my mind, he’s nude. I wonder what he looks like in his bed, his golden skin contrasting against his white sheets. Does he touch himself? Malcolm always has his hands down his pants. When I asked him about it once, he said his balls itched. I figured that was a sign of some kind of STI and never asked again.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you’ll share with me. I can see that you aren’t much for social media. Your Facebook profile hasn’t been updated since your mom was deemed cancer-free three years ago.”

“I’m just not that social.” I’m not sure why I’m talking to him. I have to get up in a few hours for work, but I can’t put the phone down. Not while he still wants to hear me. “I’m Sophie Corielli’s daughter, a bike courier.”
I’m boring.
“Who are you, besides a rich man?”

He ignores my question and asks his own. “Is it just you and your mother, Tiny?”

I glance over at the wall separating the living room and my mom. “Yes, just the two of us. My father died when I was a baby. He was a delivery man, too. Trucks, though. Large scale items. Made more money.”

“My father passed of a heart attack when I was thirteen.”
My character was set at the age of fifteen.

“Then you understand.”

“I do.” His words are like a balm, a soothing cloth on my aching heart.

“It’s not like I want to work for Malcolm.”
Or turn you down.
“But my circumstances . . . I don’t have better options.“

“Your mother needs you. Is it dire? Malcolm seemed to think so.”

My first instinct is to deny and pretend, like I have for the past four weeks, that everything will be fine. But he’s so understanding, his voice almost caring, that I find myself telling him things I never intended.

“During the year that mom was fighting cancer, I didn’t have time for friends, not girls or boys and when we came out victorious at the end, I found many of my friends had moved on. And by then I just wanted to spend time with my mother more than anything. She’d become my best friend. We do everything together. Go to museums, the park. We love going to the Central Park Zoo. I can’t imagine my life without her.” I fall silent for a moment, my throat tight with emotion. “Yes, it’s dire. That’s a really good word for it.”

“You’ll be alone then? If she is gone?”

I nod, which he can’t see, but he seems to sense the answer. “I know what that feels like. I want to help you, which is why—against my better judgment—I’ve agreed to let you do this project with me. I could offer you a thousand different positions working for me, but I sense that you wouldn’t accept because your sense of fair play would be offended. Somehow you think that doing these things for Malcolm, you’ve earned it.”

“Yes.” My voice is nearly inaudible. “I guess I figure that no one gets hurt that way. That I’m not taking advantage of anyone. That my debt is paid. But hey, if you want to just give me a million, I guess I’d be okay with that.”

“A personal jackpot? It’s yours. I’ll send a cashier’s check over in the morning.” He’s dead serious.

“I wish I could accept it.”

“But you won’t because you think you can do this job for me, right? What if I said that you could deliver packages for me and earn the same money?”

“I’d know I was ripping you off.”

“And you’d never sleep with me then, would you?”

“No, because it would feel like you were paying me for sex.” I hurry and add, “Not that I’m going to ever have sex with you anyway.”

“Of course.” His voice is colored with mild amusement. “Good night, Tiny. I’ll be thinking of you wearing the peach-colored panties with the flowers. You have very good taste.”

After he hangs up, I pull the box onto my lap. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t resist. Inside I find a coral pair of panties. The lace is shaped in little rosettes with vines and leaves weaving them together. The band has side bows made out of some soft stretchy material. I’m surprised that the lace isn’t itchy but rather conforms to the curves of my butt like it was custom-made. I don’t know what to believe. Did he really buy all this stuff just to get me into bed? If he only knew. I’m way easier than that. Maybe that’s how the rich do it, though. Like, they exchange presents as a courting ritual. If he expected one in return, then he was going to be sorely disappointed.

That night I sleep in the forbidden panties and dream of being chased in Central Park by a big lion. I hide under a park bench and the lion transforms into Ian, only he’s in his Batman garb and the rustling of his cape tells me it’s windy. I hop backwards and hunch down to make my small body less noticeable. As his big black cape is wafting in the wind, he leans forward to wave a carrot at me.

I creep out and grab the carrot with my paws. I’m nibbling when the net falls around me. I wake up, my little bunny heart pounding five thousand beats-per-minute. Taking a deep breath, I orient myself. Ian scares and attracts me at the same time and by the accelerated rate of my heartbeat, it seems the best thing I can do is to stay away—or as away as I can now that I’m his indentured servant.

Despite the expert fit of the panties, I feel constricted, as if he’s tightening his hold on me through my dreams. I can’t escape him—and worse, I don’t even want to.

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
, I
WAKE
to the default ring tone on my phone and I know even before I answer it is Ian. “Bunny.” He sounds pleased.

“I don’t really like the name Bunny. I had bad dreams about being a bunny last night.”

“What was I doing?"

“Why do you think you were in my dream? I said I had a nightmare about being a bunny.”

“I’m imprinted in your brain now. It’s why you knew it was me before you even heard my voice.”

“Huh.” I don’t know how he knows this, so I remain silent.

“So what was I doing?”

“You were wearing your Batman costume, holding a carrot.” I’m not good at subterfuge.

“Did you come out and get your carrot?” The last word comes out slowly. There’s some high-level player skill at work here. He’s making the name of a vegetable sound like a sexy caress. I press my palm to my forehead like I’m a Victorian maiden. I’m not swooning, though, I’m trying to keep my emotions in check.

“I think you were going to kill me, but I woke up before that gruesome event occurred.”

“If you suffered death at my hands, bunny, it would be in my bed and you’d still be breathing after you rode it out.”

I cough at his explicit suggestion that he’d be giving me an orgasm. “So is the gift part of the extras that come with the job you want me to do?" It had bugged me last night.

“No,” he says curtly. “What we do together is between us and completely separate from the job.”

I’m not sure what to think of that. How do you keep those things separate? Maybe that’s another rich people thing. "I think you play in areas above my pay grade.”

“We’re all equals when it comes to the personal, Victoria.”

I guess he means that we all get the same hurt if someone breaks our heart, no matter how fat the wallet is.

“So if I break your heart, you’ll eat a carton of Ben and Jerry’s to recover?”

“Maybe. What flavor?”

A reluctant laugh tumbles out. “I’m a fan of cookie dough, you?” My hand drops away and I slide back under the covers.

“I like vanilla bean. The original. There’s a place over on Second and Twenty-Third that serves up homemade ice cream. I’ll take you there.” Everything he says is like a declarative. There’s no asking. He only orders and directs. I suppose that’s how you get into a position of earning $27 million a frigging day.

“Do you really earn $27 million a day? How is that even possible?”

“Stock valuation of a holding company increases exponentially, thus rendering you wealthier at the end of the year than you started in the beginning. Averaging out the increase results in a per-day amount. It makes the financial page journalists wet between their legs. Overall, it’s meaningless unless you are cashing out a position.”

“I understood only every other word of that sentence.” I’m snuggled under my covers and the phone is pressed to my ear. Too bad I wasn’t wearing my headphones. There’s something awfully intimate about being in bed while talking on the phone. It’s not exactly like he’s right there whispering in my ear but it almost feels like he is. “If you have so much money, then why me?”