“Well, you could get a part-time job?”
He laughed. “Yeah, right, making six bucks an hour steaming coffee and milk foam at
Starbuck’s.”
“So, how much are you getting for this?”
He shrugged again. “Usually she gives two or three hundred for something like this.”
“Does that include sleeping with her?”
“Naw. That’s usually another few hundred bucks.” He leaned closer to Riley and
whispered, “Sometimes, if she gets really drunk, and I take her home and she passes out, the next
morning she won’t remember a thing, so I make her think we had great sex, and she’ll give me
five hundred bucks.”
Riley laughed, finding it all absurd. “Wow, that’s quite a scheme you have going there.”
“It pays the bills,” the man said with perfect unconcern. Then he eyed her a bit more
closely, his eyes running slowly over her, as if , for the first time, he was seeing her as an
attractive woman. “What do you do, then, if you don’t make a living off your old man?”
The two talked for awhile, happy in each other’s company because both were pretty
much outsiders with most of the guests. The young man talked to Riley about his dreams of
owning his own computer chip manufacture company. She told him about her bar and her sex
club.
“No shit,” he said. “Wow! That’s wild!”
Riley laughed at the enthusiasm in his young eyes. Suddenly, she became aware of Heron
standing a few feet from them.
His striking face was hard and cold. “Excuse me, but I hope I may not be interrupting.
I’ve been looking for you, Riley. They started the auction five minutes ago.”
She saw that the reception hall was empty of guests, except for the three of them. From
another room, they could hear the auctioneer introducing an art piece.
She gathered her purse. “Oh, I’m sorry. We didn’t realize everyone was gone.”
“They rang the warning bell twenty minutes ago.” Heron flicked a look at the young man.
“But, it might be understandable that you didn’t hear it, seeing that you were so occupied.” He
looked at Riley. “I’d appreciate if you’d come along now however you may be enjoying your
small, private affair.”
At first, Riley was shocked and could only stare at him as he turned away. Then she
found her tongue. “Look, I don’t know what bug has gotten up your ass, Heron, but you’re the
one who invited me here.”
The young man muffled a laugh.
Heron turned back. “Yes, I’m quite aware of that. I wasn’t too sure that you were,” he
said with reasonableness that had the hackles rising even more in Riley.
“Well, as soon as we arrived, you deserted me, and you’ve been ignoring me ever since.
That’s fine with me. You think you have certain social obligations to meet because you’re such
an important man from such an important family and, after all, I’m only the mistress. But don’t
throw a hissy fit when you find me fending for myself just fine.”
Riley stalked past Heron. The young man burst out laughing, the laugh high and almost
hysterical. Heron turned and gave him a hard look, making the young man laugh even harder.
“I…I’m sorry, but…” the young man gasped in his chortling. “But, man, does she have
one over you.”
Heron turned and stalked away, leaving the young man laughing gleefully.
The auction was in earnest as he entered the room. He stopped short when he saw Riley
standing just after the door, waiting for him. Without a word, he led her down the aisle, to the
second row up front, to the two aisle seats.
For close to an hour, the two did not speak or look at one another, sitting in their chairs,
next to one another as if they were perfect strangers. For her part, Riley could still sense the
displeasure that was stewing inside Heron. She was baffled as to why he should be so irritated
with her, and decided the best way to handle such unpredictability of her escort was to ignore it.
Like an adult would ignore a child’s sulk because he didn’t get his way.
She tried to be interested in the auction items that came up for bids. Most of the items
easily shot up to over a million dollars at the beginning of the bidding, items that were
completely out of Riley’s range of interest because they were so out of the reach of her own bank
account. So, it was hard for her to take any real interest in them. A few times, she’d look around
at the others, and she would see a few of the other women barely suppressing their boredom,
some of them trying to discreetly listen to their messages or text messaging on their cell phones.
A couple of times, she thought she recognized a famous painting that she vaguely
remembered reading had been stolen a few years ago. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get a
closer look at the painting, then dismissed her suspicions, thinking that a world reknown auction
house like Sotheby’s would know better than to do a high-brow “fencing” for stolen art.
Barely holding back a yawn, Riley picked up the thick program that featured articles on
each of the auction items, and began to read their descriptions. As she read the history of a pearl
necklace that was supposed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth, she felt the hair on her neck
bristle. She turned her head and saw that Heron was staring at her. Without haste, he turned away
and watched the bidding on the stage. Riley frowned, then shrugged off her puzzlement and went
back to reading her program. Several minutes later, she sensed his eyes again and turned hers to
them, dark and brooding as they studied her.
She raised a mocking eyebrow at him. “Is there something I can help you with?” she said
politely.
That seemed to snap Heron out of some sort of spell. He gave her a chilling smile. “It’s
amazing that you’ve not had your neck broken with that mouth of yours. Especially by a man.”
Riley went back to her reading. “If you weren’t so rich, you’d have experienced by now
what it was like to be slapped down by a woman.”
“You seem to be more than willing to make up for that lack in my education. So, why go
out with me?”
She studied him for a moment. “I may not be a sucker for money, but I sure am for
looks.”
Then she leaned closer to him and put her hand to his crotch and was very pleased to find
him hard and swollen. She gave his penis a long, slow squeeze, and whispered in his ear, “Not to
mention a man who’s hung like a horse.”
Heron jerked in his seat, shifted to dislodge her hand, and gave a cursory glance around
him.
Riley almost laughed at the shocked look on his face. “Oh, my God! You’ve never been
felt up, have you. Definitely not in public, but I’m betting not in private, either.”
He looked at her with irritation, a slow flush creeping up his face. “Women I’m used to
being with observed certain behaviors in their appropriate settings, if that is what you mean.”
“You mean you never sat in the back seat of her daddy’s Buick and played doctor with a
girl?”
“That sounds revolting,” Heron said with disgust.
Riley gave a very mischievous smile. “It sure was a lot of fun, though.”
A man sitting behind them leaned forward and hissed, “Do you mind? It’s hard to hear
the bids with you chattering away like that.”
Riley turned to the man and gave him a cool look and went back to reading her program.
Heron looked a little stunned, and a little mortified, realizing that he was failing to
observe social decorum while in public. He had acted no less like a school boy talking in class,
disrupting the lesson. He looked over at Riley and studied her bent head, seeing her profile calm,
unperturbed. It was her, he thought with some resentment. When he was with Riley, she made
him act in ways that he had never acted before, such as forgetting polite consideration of others
while in public and not paying attention in boardroom meetings because he was fascinated by a
linen handkerchief that had her lipstick on it. Masturbating her in a public bar. Heron closed his
eyes as he remembered.
When he was with Riley, she made him forget who he was, and where he was. Or, maybe
he was just slipping, he thought grimly. He was letting her get him under his skin. But there was
no reason to think that it wasn’t anything he could control. Riley was just a woman with whom
he was currently having an affair. She was no different from all the other women he saw in the
past. Maybe a bit more cocky, much more sly in a woman than he was used to. But nothing that
he couldn’t handle. He just had to watch himself more carefully, then, when he was around her.
Resolute, he turned his head to the stage where the bid was currently on a Whistler’s painting.
For the next ten minutes or so, Heron followed the auction with little interest, wondering
when it would be polite to leave. When a pair of combs came up, his interest was pricked a little.
“Right, now here is a one of a kind,” the auctioneer waved his hand at the display. “It was
given to Wallace Simpson, before she became Duchess of Yorkshire, by the very Duke himself,
crafted by Faberge.”
As with all Faberge creations, the combs were elaborate, colorful, stunning, with
excellent craftsmanship, with peacocks carved out of iridescent aqua-green opal to mimic the
dense fine feathers, the tail fan exploding with colors of gems and different colored enamels as
well as mother-of-pearl and moonstones. The tips of the feathers were topped with diamonds.
The auctioneer detailed out the combs. “Each comb is encrusted with three carats of
diamond, as well as tanzanite, Australian opals, citrine, peridot. You name it, all the colors of the
rainbow.”
Heron gave the combs a long look. They were so beautiful, and so feminine, and he could
clearly see them holding back the thick curls of Riley’s long black hair, the combs bursting with
vibrant colors amongst the thick, dense black. He wanted to bid on them, rather badly, because
he wanted to be able to put them in her hair tonight, once they were at home, and then take her to
bed while she wore them.
He turned and found himself staring at Riley’s profile again, her head bent as she read the
program. She was chewing absently on a thumb nail, a habit Heron had come to recognize as a
sign of concentration. Her thick black curls were piled on top of her head with pins and clips,
leaving her nape exposed, wispy tendril curls escaping. The wide diamond collar caught his eyes,
and for the first time that evening, he examined it. It was quite dazzling. It was something that an
elder woman, a matriarch of a wealthy family, would have worn, to show off her family jewels
as well as to symbolize wealth and power. On an aged and scrawny neck of an elder woman, the
collar would still have appeared impressive, dramatic.
But on the neck of a much younger woman, one who was the mistress of a wealthy man,
the collar revealed her to be a plaything for the man. The one long train of diamond links with its
large teardrop end that hung down her deliberately naked back added even more to that allusion,
suggestive of a leash. Anyone with even just a simple imagination could easily picture the man
taking old of that leash once they were in the privacy of his penthouse and using it to pull his
plaything to him, and then wrapping that leash around his fist so that he could hold her fast to
him as he devoured her mouth. And her grayish, kittenish eyes would be partly submissive,
partly sulky, partly defiant, partly wicked. But in their depths would be lurking a hint of her
demand.
Heron mentally shook the image out of his head, and he realized that he had been
imagining himself as that man pulling on the diamond leash and the woman with those sinful
eyes was Riley. Feeling his penis swollen once again, almost painfully hard this time, he shifted
in his seat. He was determined to look away, and this time for rest of the auction, remembering
his earlier promise to regain his control.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off the diamond chain that fell down Riley’s back. Without
thinking, he reached out and touched the chain with this fingertips, his eyes on her bent head.
Riley turned her head and saw the heat in Heron’s dark eyes as he lightly stroked the
diamond chain. A warmth spread inside her, her body answering to the silent demand in his eyes
that he was not in a position to enforce on her. She shuddered a little when she felt his long
fingers trailing the chain down her spine, like a man lovingly stroking the leash on a favorite pet.
She stiffened when his hand stopped at the diamond teardrop which was barely an inch from the
crack of her buttocks, holding her breath as she waited to see if he would be so daring as to
linger further down.
Heron did slip his hand just beneath the folds of the back line of the dress that barely
covered her crack. Riley gasped and instinctively arched her back. Then she felt his finger
between the cheeks of her buttocks, and she closed her eyes, her thighs clenching as heat spread
and tightened in her loins.
She opened her eyes when she felt Heron press his open mouth on her bare shoulder.
Without knowing it, she lifted a hand and thrust it into his hair, turning her head to press her lips
against his temple. Heron lifted his head and their lips met hungrily. He slipped his hand around
her waist and pulled her closer to him.
“Excuse me,” a cold male voice said. “EXCUSE ME.”
The curt indignant demand penetrated the fog of passion that Riley and Heron were
wrapped in. Both turned their head and met the coldly disapproving gaze of the man who had
told them to be quiet earlier.
“I so sorry to interrupt,” the man said, his voice dripping with heavy sarcasm. “But would
you like them to turn the lights off for you?”
Heron thrust Riley from him and turned right about face in his seat and locked his eyes to
the stage, a deep red creeping up his face. Next to him, Riley’s body shook as she muffled her
laughter with a hand pressed over her mouth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next morning, Heron attended the weekly meeting with his father, brother, and
company’s vice president. As was his usual participation in such meetings, he mostly listened to
the presentation and discussion of the current issues that were presented by the various vice
presidents of their own department, once or twice interjecting with a pointed question, often
jotting down on his notepad.
Two and a half hours later, the meeting adjourned, and most of the vice presidents
instantly flipped opened their cell phones to listen to their voicemails.