With a faint smile, Dominic shoved off the wall and came to me, the slow, rolling walk of a predator.
“The shower, Aleena.” He dipped his head. “I heard you moaning.”
I flushed. Then I shrugged. “I told you that you could teach me all about submitting when we’re in the bedroom, Dominic. Your bedroom.” I glanced around pointedly. “This is mine.” My private quarters, I wanted to add, but I didn’t.
It wasn’t so much that I minded him being here, but the fact that he’d just come in enhanced the feeling that he didn’t see me as a person, but rather a possession he owned.
“True enough.” He held out a hand.
I put mine in his. I didn’t want to feel this way, but it was hard when he closed himself off so abruptly. He pushed up the arm of my robe and looked at my wrist.
“I should have put lotion on these.” He raised my hand and pressed his lips against the inside of my wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to the after part.”
That mollified me a little. Not much though.
“You never answered me,” he said. “About whether or not you enjoyed your shower.”
“It got the job done.” I scowled at him, hoping he’d get the very intentional double meaning.
I saw a glimpse of anger flash across his eyes and then it was gone. He took a step back and I knew the personal part of our discussion was over.
Shrugging it off, I thought about the agenda. “The morning is fairly light—”
He lifted a hand and I fell silent.
“If you don’t mind, I have an interior decorator coming by. She’s a friend. Her name is Annette. It’s been a while since I’ve had my penthouse decorated and I’m ready for a change. I’ll need you to deal with her. I’ve got a morning of phone calls to deal with.”
I frowned. “You were supposed to be talking to Mr. Kim today.”
“We’re rescheduling until his translator is feeling better.” He rubbed at his jaw. “They’re looking to talk again later in the month.”
“Okay.” I picked up my phone from my dresser. “Did you have anything in mind for the decorator?”
“Annette knows what I like.”
I tried not to read anything else into that, but I was picturing the couch in the living room and I wondered if his thoughts had gone where mine had. And then I wondered if his comment had meant that Annette had been bent over that same couch. I pushed it away and tried to focus.
“Understood,” I said. “Is…ah…would you like me to get anything else done while you’re in the office?”
He glanced back at me and then nodded. He made mention of a name I’d heard before and after a few seconds, I placed it. “Start digging up as much as you can on them. How much money they pull in, what their debt is, any notable clients.”
I made a note on my phone, frowning absently as I did so. “This company—it’s not local.”
“No. It’s a matchmaking company down in Philadelphia. I’ve been thinking of branching out and there’s a small company there, owned by a friend, Edward Hall. Eddie’s been planning to retire in a few years and when he heard about
Trouver L’Amour,
he asked if I had plans to expand.” Dominic shrugged and said, “I told him I wouldn’t commit to anything until I had an idea on how things were going here, but if it went well I wouldn’t object to expanding.”
He flashed me a wide smile. “But I plan for things to go well and he knows it. So Eddie told me to keep him in mind, because he spent a long time building his company and he’d like to pass it on into good hands.”
His smile faded and he now simply looked grim. “
Devoted
must have heard about him retiring because they’re moving in on his clients, talking to other people. It looks like they’re pressuring him to sell, staking their claim.”
I waited.
Dominic smiled as he looked away. “I wasn’t sure I’d want to branch out so soon, but I like Philadelphia.”
“So you’re going to force them to sell…to you.”
“They started it,” Dominic said lazily. “If they’d left Eddie alone, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but now…?”
The smile on his face could only be described as predatory, and not in a good way.
I thought I was very, very glad I wouldn’t ever come up against him in business. I wouldn’t last very long. Then I made a few notes on my phone and put it down. He glanced down as if suddenly realizing I was still in my robe. He quickly excused himself so I could dress.
By the time I’d finished and headed downstairs, Dominic was in the kitchen. “Francisco will be in today,” I said. “Is there anything you’d like him to prepare for you this week?”
“Lasagna. For some time later this week, though. I’m in the mood for chicken tonight. I’d like it ready when I get home. I shouldn’t be working late.”
I mentally ran his schedule through my head and compared it to when Francisco normally left. “I’ll talk to him.”
He nodded and came behind me. When he pressed a quick kiss to the delicate skin behind my ear, I shivered. He left without a word.
I closed my eyes and braced my hands on the table.
Normally, I’d go into the office and get to work, but that would involve sitting
down
and that wasn’t something I’d want to do much of. At least not for a little while.
***
I hadn’t known what to expect from Annette Shale.
There were so many different people in Dominic’s world—so many different women. Most of them came and went, but hardly anybody came to his penthouse. Actually, other than his mother and Fawna,
none
of them came to the penthouse.
It felt odd to step aside for the tall, vibrant redhead.
She
was what I’d call exotic.
Vivid red hair—and unless her stylist was very talented, the hair was natural, because her eyebrows were the same shade. Her eyes were shamrock green. Her skin, by contrast, was only a few shades paler than mine.
Not altogether white bread there, I decided, although I couldn’t really figure out just what I was seeing in her. Other than the fact that she was completely gorgeous.
When I smiled at her, she held out a hand and gave me an open, friendly smile and said, “Hello. You must be Aleena. Dominic’s told me about you.”
I shook her hand and stepped aside to let her in. She immediately came inside and tossed her coat and bag across one of the fat leather chairs and propped her hands on her hips.
“Please tell me he’s going to let me do something other than the
Fashion Interior Flavor of the Month
this time.” She glanced over at me.
“Ah…” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to say to that.
Annette laughed and waved a hand. “Ignore me, honey,” she said and I caught the hint of a southern drawl. Not a native New Yorker then, but a transplant like me. “I keep telling that man that he’s allowed to put some personality in his home, but he just wants to go with what’s
current
. I’ve told him a thousand times not to worry about trends. What do you
like
?” She shook her head in tolerant exasperation.
Damn.
I was going to like her.
Did I want to like her, though? I moved a little deeper into the room as I pondered that.
I wasn’t sure. “Have you…” I tripped just the slightest over the words. “Worked with Dominic often?”
“Yes.” She sighed. A faint smile curled her lips as she smoothed a hand down the back of the couch. “I ended up with him by accident, really.”
“How did you accidentally end up working with Dominic Snow?”
She laughed again, the sound full and rich. A smile played on her full lips. “You ask that question like you know the man, Aleena.”
“Well…” I took my time choosing my words. I didn’t want to piss her off, nor did I want to say anything out of place. “Dominic is just a man who seems to know who and how he wants things done.”
“Indeed he does,” Annette agreed. She came around and sat down on the chair, crossing her long legs. She wore a beautiful suit of peacock blue, the colors complimenting her eyes and hair beautifully. She was able to lounge in the chair in that way some women had, like a queen reclining on a throne. She was graceful and gracious and classy.
And nice, dammit. If she wasn’t so nice, I could have disliked her on principle alone.
“Dominic had hired my partner—
former
partner,” she amended. “At the time, my former partner was also my husband. He’d set out to the job and had already taken a sizable deposit from Dominic and then…” Annette paused, a faint laugh escaping her. It didn’t sound like she was amused though. “I came home one day and found that he’d emptied his closet. I wasn’t a fool, so I checked the bank accounts. He’d emptied those as well.”
I tried not to stare at her because I knew she’d think I was either pitying or criticizing her. I wasn’t doing either. I was actually trying to figure out how in the world any man would want to leave someone like her.
She continued with a cynical edge to her voice, “And I have to be honest. I realized I’d been a fool to trust him. I found out he’d been embezzling from the company the two of us had built from the ground up. It was almost bankrupt and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Many of the clients were threatening to sue me, press charges…” Her mouth tightened, then softened. “Dominic came by the office to check on something when I was on the phone with my lawyer. I was on the verge of tears and he heard me. Most people would have left. Not him. He brought me a bottle of water and he sat there and he listened. Then he put me on a retainer.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” The smile on her face was sad now. The smile of a woman who’d learned a hard, ugly lesson and come out wiser for it. “He told me to fire my attorney and had me talking to one of his. Within two weeks, nobody was growling at my door anymore and somehow, they’d tracked down that cockroach I’d married and the tramp he’d run off with. Dominic had me finish the job my husband had been hired to do and he was happy with it, so he hired me to head the team that did the interior design for all of Winter Corporations businesses.” She looked towards one of the windows, a distant expression on her face.
I thought of the man who’d left not that long ago.
The man who tried to tell me he didn’t handle emotion and caring well.
The man who’d tried to pay my asshole ex-manager just so I wouldn’t get fired.
“That…sounds like Dominic,” I said after a moment.
Annette simply nodded.
***
Annette left near four o’clock with a stack of ideas for everything from the living room to the guest room. She said she’d want to talk to Dominic about redoing the house in the Hamptons once she was done with the penthouse. I made a note of it and silently wondered if that meant she’d be doing my place too. I’d have to ask Dominic about that.
Francisco left not long after, leaving chicken in the oven. It would take an hour to finish baking, just in time for Dominic to get home.
Once they were gone, I found myself pacing the living room feeling out of place and stressed. As much as I hated it, I knew why.
Without realizing I’d walked down the hall, I stood in the door of what I was coming to think of as
the
room. My skin heated whenever I thought of it. The bed, with its four posters jutting up into the air, framed against walls of stark white. The hooks, prominently displayed against the wood.
Annette had paused in the doorway when we’d done a walkthrough of the penthouse and she’d just glanced at me, given me a quiet look, but said nothing. I didn’t know if she could see anything on my face, but I knew what I’d seen on hers.
That room didn’t confuse her the way it had me the first time I’d seen it.
And that left me wondering. Did she
know
about Dominic? And if she did, was it because she’d guessed…or for other reasons?
The thought of her
knowing
made me feel kind of miserable inside.
I found my hand going to my grandmother’s necklace, wondering what she would have told me to do about the lump in my stomach. Then I flushed at the thought of my grandmother knowing about that room. I let go of my necklace and decided that it was time to get some work done. I would do my job and pretend that my insides weren’t twisting into knots.
I tried, but I didn’t do a very good job.
Chapter 3
Dominic
Considering I’d spent most of my day reliving a specific morning encounter, I left work feeling fairly accomplished.
I had a number of meetings set up in the near future, including a couple in Philadelphia. Dumb fucks shouldn’t have tried to come play in my pool without talking with me first.
I’d also cleared away a number of other matters and had a teleconference with the board addressing some upcoming issues with the line of hotels and a few other big issues. There was nothing urgent, but Amber and I had worked almost seven hours straight without a break. Lunch had consisted of sandwiches at our desk and if she’d noticed my occasional lack of focus, she was too professional to say. Or she was just used to it by now. Most people who worked closely with me knew how I worked, even if they didn’t realize why.
Some of my mind had been on work.
Everything else had been back at the penthouse and now I was planning on all the things I wanted to do to Aleena.
With
Aleena.
For Aleena.
I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered how I’d left her. I didn’t regret denying her release. That was part of learning how to be a Submissive. No, I regretted that I hadn’t soothed her wrists and made sure she understood that I wasn’t trying to be cruel, but rather build the trust we needed between us for this to work.
When I unlocked the door, the scent of dinner hit me and my stomach growled, grumbling in protest to let me know that the sandwich I’d given it for lunch hadn’t done much good.
I looked around for Aleena. We could eat…first. It would be wise, considering the evening I had planned. We’d both need our energy.
She wasn’t there.
My stomach made another gurgling yowl and I went into the kitchen and found a covered plate waited on the table for me. I tugged over the warming cover, smiling as I uncovered roasted potatoes, asparagus and chicken. It was still steaming and when I cut into it with a fork, it fell apart.