Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (38 page)

I’d waited because, as much as I desired Hope, as much as I needed to take her body physically, I
did
respect her mind, and her will, too. She’d had the nerve to speak up in that meeting today, and what was more, I knew she’d have said the same thing even if she hadn’t been sleeping with me.

Because she thought for herself, and she told the truth. And because she believed in me, and she’d believed in what she’d said. She wouldn’t have agreed with me to be a yes-man, the way so many people did. That had come from her heart, and Hope’s heart was a very pure place.

Her imagination, though…not so much. That had been a very dirty little fantasy indeed, which was the other reason I’d asked her to tell me, besides that telling me had aroused her so much. I’d wanted to know what she imagined, what excited her most. I wanted to hear her secrets, and I wanted her to give them up to me.

Her “no” had meant “no.” Now, I wanted to show her the meaning of “yes.”

At the moment, though, I had a problem. Hope was half-naked, trembling, still stroking herself as if she couldn’t stop, wearing a pair of shoes that made a man’s mind go irresistibly to wrists tied with ribbons, to bound hands dragged overhead and fastened down tight while she arched her back and thrashed from side to side and couldn’t get away.

Or maybe that was just me.

Meanwhile, here I was, as hard as iron, sitting next to a half-naked woman who wanted me to spank her and tie her down and fuck her. All of which I was more than willing to do. But she was hungry, too.

So difficult.

I picked up the phone built into the armrest, pressed a button, and Charles said, “Yes?”

“We’re ready,” I said. “Restaurant.” I couldn’t even remember the name. Hopefully he did. But then, he’d presumably been less distracted than I had.

“Five minutes,” he said, and clicked off.

“Sweetheart,” I told Hope, who’d sat up again, looking horribly self-conscious, “you’ve got five minutes to put yourself back in order.”

“Oh,” she said, patting at her hair, then seeming to realize just how undressed she was. She pulled her dress down and started to fasten it again with hasty hands, as if I hadn’t just watched her, dressed in the sweetest scraps of barely-there lingerie a man could hope to see, pleasuring herself into one toe-curling orgasm after another. “Are we having dinner?
Now?”

“Yeh,” I said. “We are, because you’re hungry, and I want to make you happy tonight and give you exactly what you want. But I’m afraid I can’t give you your fantasy, because nobody but me is going to watch you come. Ever.”

“Well,” she said, doing up the tie on her dress and beginning to look wonderfully cross, “that’s kind of the point of a fantasy, isn’t it? And if you didn’t want to know, you shouldn’t have asked.”

I took her hand, which had been shoving at her hair, set it on my thigh, covered it with mine, and held it there. “I wanted to know. I loved hearing. And if you think it’s going to be hard for you to behave yourself during dinner? Imagine how
I
feel.”

“What? You just said you didn’t want anybody to know.
I
sure don’t want them to know. It was a
fantasy.
That doesn’t mean I actually want to
do
it.”

“Mm. But what’s killing me, you see, is that I’ve got to sit through the entire evening and watch you while I’m feeling like this, knowing what you want me to do, counting the minutes until I get to take you home and make all the rest of it come true.”

And I did. By the end of the evening, Hope’s pretty bottom had been gorgeously pink and thoroughly warmed, she’d been tied to my bed and fucked to a point where she’d feel it tomorrow, and she’d told me she was mine.

She may even have used the word “slave.” I can’t remember.

Hope

I still had something to discuss with Hemi. Last night hadn’t exactly been the time, but the next morning, I knew I couldn’t put it off.

Too bad it was another thing he wouldn’t want to hear, and that there was no amount of sex that would make him like it.

I slept late, the effects of the day before probably catching up with me, and woke up alone, still feeling draggy and a tiny bit tender, which last part wasn’t exactly horrible to notice, or to remember.

It wasn’t that Hemi had actually been rough. He never was, not really, no matter what he told me beforehand to excite me. More that he’d paid me a
lot
of attention, and when you worked anything out that hard, you were bound to be sore the next day.

I did finally get myself out of bed and get dressed, though, then went in search of intelligent life. I found Hemi in his office, his back to me, absolutely still and completely focused, and decided not to disturb him. The one benefit of yesterday’s meeting, besides that I’d found out where I stood—which was useful, if not comforting, to know—was that I understood better the kinds of pressures he faced, and how alone he was in facing them.

Designing a brilliant line wasn’t enough. You also had to sell it, and now that the heat of the moment was over, I couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if things didn’t work out. With the risky launch, or with that other thing. With Anika.

I knew, even though Hemi never mentioned it, that she was still there at the back of his mind. I suspected that was one reason he’d been so possessive with me since I’d moved in, which was why I hadn’t pushed back harder than I had. He was afraid of losing his money, and the power that came with it. And he was afraid of losing me, which was stupid, but at the same time…I got it. I probably felt a little bit the same way about Karen.

You never just reacted to what was happening now. You reacted to everything that had happened before, and that’s what Hemi was doing. I sometimes thought that I knew him better than he knew himself, because I saw that, and I wasn’t sure he did. But then, it was always easier to see inside other people than it was to look in the mirror.

This clearly wasn’t the time to charge in there and have a chat about that, though, so I left him undisturbed and went into the kitchen, where I found Karen. She’d apparently also slept in after a shift that had ended at midnight, and was looking a little zombified herself this morning.

I made myself a cup of tea and shoved a couple pieces of wholegrain bread into the toaster while Karen poured herself an enormous bowl of cereal and made a very messy smoothie that seemed to involve most of the contents of the produce drawer, not to mention a couple cartons of yogurt.

I asked her, when she was sucking the drink down in big gulps of viscous, nearly purple liquid, “Are you OK if Hemi and I take off this morning for an hour or so?”

She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Uh…Hope. I can turn on the stove by myself and everything now.”

“It’s not that,” I tried to explain, because Hemi wasn’t the only person I’d been thinking about over the past couple days. “It’s that you and I haven’t been spending as much time together since we moved in here. I’m sure you’re glad to have your own room, but still—it’s pretty different, isn’t it? You might be feeling a little neglected, even, by your big sister,” I tried to joke. “So if you want to do something later…go shopping, maybe? Go to the movies?”

She didn’t seem to be feeling neglected, because she said, “I
went
to the movies last night, remember? I have to go again tonight, too. It’s pretty much killed my craving for popcorn, I’ll tell you that. Anyway, no, thanks. I want to go over to Mandy’s. We’re going to check out the thrift stores. And besides, shopping in the sportswear section of Saks doesn’t exactly add to your street cred, you know?” With that, she finished off the smoothie and started in on her Cheerios as if she had to grab them before they got away.

The thrift stores? Street cred? That was a new development. Karen had never cared much about clothes. Lately, though, she’d been experimenting, branching out from her previous Happy Geek presentation in sometimes startling ways. Today, for example, she’d adopted a grunge look that I was having a little trouble adjusting to. Heavy black eyeliner, dark lipstick, a black T-shirt that slipped off one shoulder and had apparently come pre-ripped, and a short gray skirt.

“Matter of fact,” she said, after finally wrestling her breakfast into submission and climbing off her stool, but at least taking her bowl and glass with her today, “I should leave right now.”

That was the moment when Hemi walked into the kitchen. He took a long look at Karen, and she put her dishes in the sink and said, “So, hey, I’m off. Brooklyn calls. And yes, I asked Hope.” Well, she’d
told
Hope, at least. “Enjoy your walk or whatever.”

When she started to head past Hemi, though, he said, “Two things. First, clean up after yourself, please.”

She sighed, but said, “Right,” swept her fruit and vegetable trimmings into the garbage, shoved her Cheerios box into the cupboard and, at a hard look from Hemi, put the milk carton back into the fridge and slammed the door before slotting her dirty dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher.

“Satisfied?” she asked him, shoving the dishwasher shut with a knee.

He said, “Not entirely. You’ll also need to change before you go anywhere.”

“Why?” she asked. “I’m fine. This is what everybody wears. Besides, I have to wear an ugly uniform to school, and an ugly uniform to work. This is my only chance to express myself.”

“No.”

Karen’s dark brows drew together behind her glasses, her expression turning stubborn, a look I recognized from her childhood, though I’d been seeing it more lately than I had since she’d been about four. “What? Why not?”

“Because it’s too sexually suggestive,” he said, leaping boldly into the breach, where brave women—well, where I—feared to tread.

“It is
not,”
Karen said. “It’s grunge, that’s all. And anyway—
ha.
That’s all you
do,
is design stuff for women so they look sexy. And I’m not twelve, I’m sixteen. I’m allowed to look like somebody who might occasionally want to attract the attention of the opposite sex.”

Hemi could match anybody on earth in the Hard Expression department, though, and he was doing it. Storm clouds ahead for sure, and time for me to step in, as I should have done from the start, instead of sitting back and letting him do my job for me. Why had I done that, anyway? “Well, yes, sweetie,” I said. “It is. Suggestive, I mean.”

What was, you’re wondering? The pair of over-the-knee black stockings she was wearing with her clunky black shoes, that was what. Karen’s legs were long, and the skirt didn’t exactly reach her knees. In fact, there were a good four inches of long, slim thigh between the skirt’s hem and the tops of the stockings.

It was a look, yes. What
kind
of look, though…It had bothered me when I’d seen it, but I was never sure how hard to come down on her. I’d never
had
to come down on her. She’d been snarky, always, but studious and responsible, too. But then, that was partially because she’d been sick for months, if not years, and we’d always been in fairly desperate straits financially. When you were right at the edge, you tended to cling together for balance.

Now, though…things were different.

“This skirt isn’t even that short,” she said, which was technically true. “Am I suddenly going to parochial school? Are you guys going to get out a ruler?”

“You’re right,” Hemi said, causing Karen to look very startled indeed. “And if you take off the stockings, you’re all good.”

Did that settle it? Of course it didn’t. “That makes absolutely no sense,” she said. “Then I’d be
less
covered up. You want to put Hope into a burqa, fine. I mean,
not
fine, because I don’t see why she has to do what you say. But whatever.
I’m
not your girlfriend.”

“You’re not my
fiancée,
no,” Hemi said. “But you’re sixteen, and I’m responsible for you.”

“Actually,” she said, “you’re not. Hope is. And how can she be your fiancée if…”

That was too far, though, and even she saw it. She shut up, and I said in one big hurry, because the alternative was actually leaping between them waving a flag, “Hemi doesn’t tell me what to wear.” At her snort, I added, “Does he try sometimes? Yes. That doesn’t mean I listen, unless I think he’s right on rational reflection. He
is
a designer, you know.”