Bartered Betrayal - The Billionaire's Wife 08 (3 page)

"Do you sculpt in your underwear?"

I pursed my lips. "I'm sure I can make it worth your while. Maybe it'll be a nice juicy tidbit for the tabloids. Recently Estranged Wife of Billionaire Businessman... I don't know... Goes Mad or whatever."

"Are you crazy?"

"How would I know if I were crazy? Crazy people never know they're crazy." Like Anton. He didn't really seem to think of himself as a crazy person, but he kind of was. Maybe I was crazy, too.

...Yeah, probably.

Jake scratched the side of his nose. "Yeah, okay," he said after a minute. "That sounds like it has a good hook. Give someone an exclusive deal for the photos, move a ton of copy. How long do you think it'll take you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. My big pieces take at least a couple months, but if I really work on it... maybe three, four weeks?"

“Good,” he said. “That's good, a good amount of time. A month. Long enough to be titillating and drag out the suspense, but short enough to hold their attention.”

I stopped and tucked the table legs under my arm before sticking my hand out. He stared at it like it was a snake waiting to bite.

“Shake on it,” I said. “You get the exclusive photos, and I'll act like a crazy person to make them worth selling.”

“So you want the world to see you acting crazy?”

I shrugged. “No such thing as bad publicity, right?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” he muttered, but after a moment he grabbed my hand in his gloved one and gave me a good shake, nice and firm. I squeezed his fingers as hard as I could.

“Ow,” he said.

“I know your face, now,” I said. “Don't forget that.”

He grimaced, and I smiled, feeling good for the first time since I'd walked out of Anton's house.

*

Sculpting takes a while. A long while. Clay is a very warm medium, very responsive. Every interaction you have with it is preserved. Even when you're beating it to death with a two-by-four.

I worked naked except for a pair of panties. A little nod to Anton's command, telling me never to wear underwear again. Well, I'd goddamn wear underwear if I felt like it, and I did feel like it. More specifically, I didn't feel like getting clay stuck in my snatch.

But I still thought of Anton while I worked. Not necessarily the beating of the clay, but the sheer physicality of the task I'd set before me put me in mind of other physical activities. Wet clay slithered under my hands as I smoothed it out. With every pound and hard push, it responded to me, the way Anton did.

Every time I had to climb on top of my sculpture, I thought of Anton. I thought of riding his face, of riding his cock. I thought about him when I had to straddle my creation and push it into new shapes, my clay-covered ass in the air. I'd presented myself to him this way, and he had taken me without thinking twice about it. I remembered the feel of his hands on my hips, his cock in my pussy. I remembered how raw and animal we were, and I channeled it. Slowly, surely, my work began to take shape, and I knew even before it became recognizable that it was the best work I'd ever done.

I left my blinds up and turned the lights on in my apartment while I pounded clay. Not my favorite way to work, but definitely the only way to let Jake take pictures without alerting everyone that we were in collusion. I leaned out the window when I became so hot and covered in sweat that I couldn't take it any more, my body burning with effort and memories. I didn't bother to put clothes on. The world had already seen me. It wasn't like I was giving anyone a show who didn't want it. Besides, I worked mostly at night so Jake could get the best light from inside my apartment, so it wasn't like I was walking down the street with my tits hanging out in broad daylight.

I slept on my mattresses when I was too tired to work any more. I washed my mouth out with water, ate blocks of dry noodles, and stared into space, reliving the past three weeks.

Anton invaded my head even when I wasn't thinking about him. I'd stretch out, trying to work the kinks from my back, and I would remember the way his hands felt as they massaged away my tension. It didn't matter what the tension was over—even if it was over him and his insatiable needs—just his touch calmed me. I'd been addicted to him, and now that I was doing my detox, I started to see how unhealthy we had been.

And yet I still missed it.

It's hard to work with a hole in your chest. Inside me, there was a void, an aching sadness that I couldn't chase away. No matter how hard I kicked my sculpture, no matter how hard I pounded it, it remained. More than once I rained my fists down on a particular lump of stubborn clay only to find myself sobbing, my hands bruised as tears ran down my face. I was a hole with a woman wrapped around it, and it felt like that would never change.

*

I lost track of time. The tabloids must have come out, because people started knocking on my door and ringing my bell, asking me if they could have a few words with me. Sadie came by, and even though I knew she had a key, she didn't barge in. Instead she knocked on the door until Mrs. Andersen told her to go to hell and die, and I heard her audibly sigh and shove some money through the crack under the door. When I opened it later that night I found a garbage bag full of my old work clothes sitting on my doorstep with a few blankets, soap, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and some shampoo and conditioner. It made me smile. Good old Sadie. She knew what was really important to an artist. Sleep and a shower.

Anton didn't show up.

But I didn't expect him to. I had to call him to me. I had to let him know it was okay.

I worked harder.

*

A knock on the door, again, sometime during the second week. I looked up from my meticulous detail work and wiped sweat from my face. I was starting to get so lost in my art that I now didn't jump immediately when someone knocked on my door. It felt strange, but also freeing.
No,
I thought,
I don't have to get up and answer the door for you. Go away.

They kept knocking. And knocking.

An unpleasant sense of deja vu swept over me. That was how this had all started, hadn't it? My father knocking on my door, refusing to go away until he tricked me into saving him from his own stupidity. The knocking increased in intensity.

I was decently dressed at least. Detail work is less strenuous, and my apartment was cold. I still hadn't bothered turning on the heat. That would dry the clay out too quickly, and I needed it to remain pliable. Standing up, I stretched and told myself that I still didn't need to hop to. I could just walk casually across my floor and check to see who it was. I did just that, pressing my eye to the peephole.

It wasn't just deja vu. My father stood on my doorstep. Again.

Full circle. Here we were. I opened the door.

My father stood there, hand raised, a look of incredulity on his face, as though he hadn't expected me to open the door. Truthfully, I hadn't expected to do so either. I'd told him I'd never wanted to see him again, and that was the truth.

Yeah, well, we all do things we don't want to do. Might as well get them out of the way, right?

"What?" I said.

He lowered his knocking fist, but didn't seem to know what to do with it afterward. He seemed awkward, as though he didn't know where to start. His hands floated uselessly in front of him, without purpose, until he finally shoved them in his pockets.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Okay," I told him, and started to close the door.

Then he knew what to do with his hand. His palm slapped against it, preventing me from shutting it all the way. I made an annoyed noise and paused, waiting for him to tell me whatever was on his mind.

"That's it?" he said. "Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?" I asked him.

His lips thinned. "That you forgive me?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, I don't. Now go away."

"Felicia, please!" The desperation in his voice sent a little tickle of suspicion through me. I was getting cynical. Actually cynical. At least when it came to him. Bout damn time.

"What?" I said. "What do you want? I mean, really? What do you really want?"

His hands found each other, began pulling and plucking at themselves. "I... I need you to talk to your husband."

I almost laughed in his face. I wasn't talking to my husband for myself. What made him think I'd do it for him? "Why?" I said. I couldn't keep the amusement from my voice.

The look of dejection on his face was comical to me now. "He's taken over the company. Kicked me out. I'm... I'm not on the hook for the debt any more, but I have nothing."

I quirked an eyebrow. "And?"

He blinked. "And what? I can't rebuild my life without that money, Felicia. I have a car and some clothes to my name. That's it."

I smiled. "So?"

A scowl crossed his face. "Your mother married me to avoid a life of poverty," he said. "She's in her sixties. She can't start working now, and her sobriety... this will threaten her sobriety."

I must be an idiot, because I considered his words for more than a fraction of a second before actually laughing. "Dad," I told him, one of the few times I'd ever called him that, "I can't help you. And I can't help mom. I have my own problems right now.

"But your inheritance!" he said as I started to close the door. "I know your prenuptial agreement leaves you nothing! I would give you everything."

Everything?
I wondered. "No," I said. "You'd give me money. And I don't want money." Money made life easier a lot of the time, but it sure as fuck wasn't everything. The ache in my chest that had begun to return now that I wasn't wholly focused on my work was enough to attest to that. What did money mean when you just wanted to curl up and cry? What did it mean when you couldn't pick up the phone and speak to someone you cared for? What did it mean when you had no one to trust?

It hadn't meant anything to Anton, I realized. Anton was one of the richest men in the world, and yet so poor in love that he had to buy a wife because love hurt him so badly he didn't want to feel it again. I pitied him. I wanted to help him. My fingers itched.

"What do you want?" my father asked. "Tell me, I'll give it to you."

I looked at him, old and bent and penniless, his greed causing him to overreach so far that he had lost everything. I pitied him, too. But I couldn't help him. And I didn't really want to.

"Nothing," I said. "Go away. If you come back, I'll call the police."

I started to close the door again, but he shoved his way inside. "Felicia!" he shouted. "Felicia, you have to help me!" His hands found my shoulders, and he was shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. My father never touched me. Shocked, I let him shake me before snapping back to reality, twisting out of his grip. He was so weak now, so small. He couldn't hurt me any more. I heaved, pushing him away, and ran to my tools. One of my salvaged two-by-fours leaned against the wall, and I grabbed it, brandishing it in front of me.

"Leave," I told him.

He started to cry, but I found he couldn't move me any more. I knew what was really important, and it wasn't the past and the damage already done.

Eventually, he left, and I locked the door behind him.

With trembling hands I went back to work.

*

I stopped sleeping so much. I dreamed about Anton too frequently: his voice, his smile, his surprised laugh. I dreamed about his hands on me, racing up my thighs, his breath on my pussy, his tongue deep inside me, clinging to me wherever he could find purchase, like a man afraid of being swept away. I dreamed of grinding my clit into his face. I dreamed of being tied up, wrapped in plastic, fucked until neither of us was afraid any more.

Stranger things have happened.

I made love to my clay. My fingers caressed it, thinking of Anton's skin. I pushed against it with my heels, my back arching, my mind wandering to our couplings. My thighs always rubbed together at inconvenient times, and I would flush as I tried to carve out the patterns of my head into the flesh of my creation.

It was beautiful, if I did say so myself. Beautiful and dangerous. Everything was there that made me think of Anton. No one who looked at it would think I was speaking of anyone else. It was my greatest work to date. Midday, when I should have been sleeping but couldn't stop thinking about it, I would get up and touch it through the wet towels I'd laid over it, preserving its plasticity until the last moment when I would dry it and fire it. I'd peek at it, and I would see all my hopes and dreams in it. My hands would wander my body, and I would grind my fingers into my pussy, thinking about Anton, but every time I came I never felt satisfied. Release eluded me.

I chased my memories of Anton, carved them into the clay, and hoped it would be enough.

*

In the middle of the third week the major part of my sculpture was done, hollowed out and in pieces, ready to be fired and put back together again. Then I would paint it. In the meantime, I had to get to the rest of it. But first I had to figure out how to get it to the kiln. I have a good friend who owns a great kiln for firing clay, but getting a piece there was usually a product of several friends helping me load it into borrowed or rented trucks. Right now, I didn't want to talk to anyone. My voice was rusty with disuse. I had to go to the only person I knew who could maybe help. Luckily he was right across the street, hanging out in an empty apartment across from mine.

"Hey, Jake," I said when he opened the door. The smell of take-out Chinese hit my nose, and my mouth watered.

He smiled at me, a huge predatory grin. Not half as sexy on him as the one that Anton sported. My heart gave a little twist, but I shoved it away. "Felicia!" he said, clearly happy to see me. And why not? I'd probably already made him gobs of money. Good for him.

"I need help to get part of my work to the kiln."

"Can I take pictures?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, god, of course. Just give me a hand."