Beautiful Stranger (10 page)

“I came here to talk to you,” I said. I must have sounded minuscule, and I needed to find some power to put behind the words I wanted to give him. I didn’t want to be how I was with Andy initially: easily bulldozed.
After six years, I realized the problem was I’d never really cared enough to fight for anything.

He smiled. “I figured as much. Do you want to sit?”

I shook my head.

“Do you want something to drink?” He walked over to a small bar in the corner and held up a crystal bottle filled with amber liquid. Without thinking, I nodded, and he poured two glasses.

Handing it to me, he whispered, “Just two fingers today, Petal.”

I surrendered to my laugh. “Thank you. I’m sorry, this whole situation is just . . . eating at me.”

He raised an eyebrow but seemed to rethink lacing further innuendo into the moment. “Likewise.”

“I feel a little out of my depth with you,” I started.

He laughed, but not rudely. “I can tell.”

“See, before what happened in the club? I’d been with the same guy since I was twenty-one.”

Max took a sip of his drink and then stared down into the glass, listening. I considered how much I really wanted to tell him about Andy, and me, and who we were together.

“Andy was older. More established, more settled. It was fine,” I said. “It was always
fine
. I think a lot of relationships end up that way, just sort of . . . fine. Easy. Whatever. He wasn’t my best friend; he wasn’t really my lover. We cohabitated. We had a routine.”

I was loyal; he banged women all over Chicago.

“So what happened? What detonated?”

I paused, looking at him. Had I used that word with Max? I thought back, and realized no, I hadn’t. I’d used that to describe my life when I left, but I’d never shared it with him. I felt goose bumps spread along my arms. A million answers flashed through my head, but the one that I gave him was “I got tired of being so old when I was so young.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me? You’re a complete puzzle, Sara.”

Looking up at him, I said, “For what we’ve done together, you don’t need to know more than that I left a lot of unhappiness in Chicago and am not looking to be involved with anyone.”

“But then you found me at the club,” he said.

“If I remember correctly,” I said, dragging my finger down the front of his shirt, “you found me.”

“Right,” he said, and smiled, but for the first time I could remember, his eyes didn’t do it first. Or even later. “And here we are.”

“Here we are,” I agreed. “I figured it was my one wild moment.” I looked out the window, at the billowing white clouds, looking for all the world so solid, and hearty as if I could leap from this floor and catch one and go somewhere, anywhere, where I would feel sure of what I was about to say. “But I’ve seen you a few
times since then and . . . I like you. I just don’t want things to get crazy, or off track.”

“I understand you perfectly.”

Did he? He couldn’t possibly. And in truth, it didn’t matter whether he understood that even more important than my life staying on track was my need for it not to be as safe as it had been in Chicago. Safe was a nightmare. Safe was a lie.

“One night a week,” I said. “I’ll be yours one night a week.”

He stared at me with that calm reflective expression and I realized that every time I’d seen him before this, he’d been showing every card he had. His smile was complete honesty. His laughter was him being perfectly real. But this expression was his mask.

My stomach tightened painfully. “If you even want to see me again, that is.”

“I absolutely do,” he assured me. “I’m just not entirely sure what you’re saying.”

I stood up and walked over to the window. I felt him move behind me and I said, “I feel like the only way I can handle it right now is to give it a clear boundary. Outside that boundary, I’m here to work, to build a life. But inside that boundary . . .” I trailed off, closing my eyes and just letting the idea take hold. The idea of Max’s hands, and his mouth. His sculpted torso and the thick length of him pressing into me again and
again. “We can do anything. When I’m with you I don’t want to worry about anything else.”

He moved to the side, so that I could turn my head just slightly and look right at him, and stared directly into my eyes. He smiled. The mask was gone, the midafternoon sun blazed into the room, and his eyes looked like green caught on fire.

“You’re offering only your body to me.”

“Yeah.” I was the first to look away.

“You’ll truly only give me one night a week?”

I winced. “Yes.”

“So you want to have . . . what? Some sort of committed fling?”

I laughed and said, “I certainly don’t like the idea of you whoring your way across the boroughs. So, yes, that’s part of the deal. If you even do that.”

He scratched his jaw, not answering my implied question. “What night? The same night all the time?”

I hadn’t really thought this part through, but I nodded, winging it. “Fridays.”

“If I’m not to see other women, what if I have a work function, or an event on a Thursday or a Saturday that requires a date?”

My chest twisted with anxiety. “No. No public appearances. I guess you can take your mom.”

“You’re a demanding little thing.” His smile followed his words and grew slowly, like a low-burning
fire. “This feels so organized. That hasn’t been our modus operandi, to date, little Petal.”

“I know,” I allowed. “But this is the only way that felt sane to me. I don’t want to be in the papers with you.”

His eyebrows pulled together. “Why that specifically?”

Shaking my head, I realized I’d said too much. I murmured, “I just don’t.”

“Do I get any say in how this goes?” he asked. “Do we just meet at your flat and fuck all night?”

I ran my index finger down his chest again, venturing lower, to his belt buckle. Here was the part I hoped he was up for and the part that scared me most. After the club, the restaurant, the fund-raiser, I was starting to feel like an adrenaline junkie. I didn’t want to give that up, either.

“I think we’ve done pretty well so far. I don’t want to go to my apartment. Or yours, for that matter. Text me where I should be, and generally what to expect so I know what to wear. I don’t care about the rest.”

I lifted myself on my toes, kissed him. It started out teasing, but then turned deep enough to make me want to take back everything I’d said and give myself to him every night of the week. But he pulled away first, breathing heavily.

“I can avoid photographers, but I’ve become obsessed with taking pictures of you. That’s my only condition. No faces, but photos are allowed.”

A shiver moved up my spine and I stared up at him. The thought of having proof of him touching my bare skin, of him looking at pictures of us together and getting hard, made a hot flush spread up my chest to my cheeks. He noticed, smiling and running the backs of his fingers along my jaw.

“When this ends, you delete them,” I said.

He nodded immediately. “Of course.”

“I’ll see you Friday then.” I reached inside his jacket, taking a moment to run my hand over the hard lines of his chest before pulling his phone from his inside pocket and dialing my cell number. It rang in my purse. I could sense his amused smile without even looking up at his face. I slipped his phone back in his pocket, turned, and walked away, knowing if I looked over my shoulder at him, I’d walk back.

I waved goodbye to his mother and took the long elevator ride back to the lobby, thinking about that cell camera of his all the way down.

Two blocks away my phone buzzed in my purse.

Meet me Friday at 11th and Kent in Brooklyn. 6:00. Have a cab bring you and stay in it until I’ve opened the door. You may come straight from work.

Back when I was young and naïve, Demitri Gerard had been the second client I ever took on. He’d had a small but profitable antiques business in North London. On paper, Demitri’s business was nothing special: he paid his bills on time, had a steady client list, and made more money a year than what he put out on expenditures. But what was truly exceptional about Demitri was his uncanny ability to sniff out rare finds that few people knew existed. Pieces that, in the right hands, sold for small fortunes to collectors around the globe.

He’d needed capital to expand and, I’d later learned, to bankroll a long list of informants who kept him apprised of what was to be found and where. Informants who made him a very, very rich man. Legally, of course.

In fact, Demitri Gerard had become so successful he currently owned twelve warehouses in New York City alone, the largest of which stood at Eleventh and Kent.

Pulling the paper from my pocket, I entered the code Demitri had given me on the phone this morning. The alarm
beeped twice before the door buzzed, the lock disengaging with a loud, metallic click. With a quick wave to my driver, I opened the heavy steel door, hearing my car pull away from the curb as I stepped inside.

A freight elevator took me to the fifth floor and I slipped off my jacket, rolling up my sleeves as I looked around. Clean, cement walls and floors, bay lighting suspended from a beamed ceiling. Demitri used these buildings to house collections that would later be sold at auction or moved to various dealers. Thank fuck this collection had yet to sell.

Sunlight still poured through the dingy and cracked windows that lined two walls of the warehouse, and row after row of draped mirrors filled the space. I crossed the room, stirring up small plumes of dust with my footsteps, and lifted the plastic covering from the only piece of furniture in the entire warehouse: a red velvet chaise I’d had delivered earlier that day. I smiled, running my hands along the curved back, and imagining how gorgeous Sara would look later, naked and begging on top of it.

Perfect.

I spent the next hour carefully uncovering each of the mirrors and arranging them around the space, angling each one toward the chaise I’d placed in the center. Some were ornate, with wide gilded frames and glass that had become speckled and hazy around the edges with time. Others were more delicate, simple filigree or rich, gleaming wood.

The sun had ducked behind the surrounding buildings
by the time I’d finished, but still shone bright enough that I wouldn’t need to turn on any of the fluorescent lamps overhead. Soft light filtered though the warped glass and I checked my watch, noting that Sara would be here any moment.

For the first time since I’d devised this little plan, I considered the possibility that she might not show up at all, and how disappointing that would be. Which was strange. Most women were easy to read, wanting me for my money or the notoriety that came with being seen on my arm. But not Sara. I’d never had to work even remotely this hard to get a woman’s attention before, and I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that. Was I honestly that much of a cliché? Only wanting what I couldn’t have? I pacified myself with the fact that we were both adults, we were both getting what we wanted, and would each move on soon enough. No harm done.

Simple.

The fact that she was a stellar shag didn’t hurt, either.

My mobile vibrated from across the room, and with a final glance around, I let myself into the lift and traveled the short ride down to the empty lobby.

Her head snapped up at the sound of the door, and my dick got hard at the sight of her standing there expectant, unsure.

Easy, mate. Let’s get her inside before we ravage her.

“Hello,” I said, bending to kiss her cheek. “You look beautiful.” Her scent was already familiar, a little something
like summer and citrus. I stepped outside and paid the driver, turning back to her as he drove away.

“That was pretty presumptuous of you,” she said, lifting a brow. Her hair was smooth with just the slightest bit of wave in it tonight, the front held in place with a small silver barrette. I imagined what it would look like later, that prim little clip gone, tangled and wild after I’d fucked her. “Especially considering I already paid him.”

I looked back in the direction of the cab before shaking my head with a smile. “Let’s just say that lack of confidence has never been my hang-up.”

“What is your hang-up then?” she asked.

“I don’t think I have one, actually. I think that’s why you like me.”

“
Like
is a pretty strong word,” she said, the corner of her mouth curving up into a smirk.

“Touché, devil child.” I grinned as I opened the door, indicating that she lead the way.

We were silent as we walked to the elevator and throughout the short ride up, but a new, heavy sense of anticipation seemed to pulse all around us.

The lift opened directly into the warehouse, but instead of moving inside, Sara turned to face me.

“Before we go in there,” she said, nodding toward the room, “I need you to tell me that there are no chains or, like,
implements
inside.”

I laughed, only now seeing how bad this looked, how
much trust she was placing in me by coming here. I promised myself I’d make it worth it.

“No shackles or whips, I promise.” I leaned down, kissed her ear. “There may be a little light spanking, but let’s see how the night goes first, shall we?” I swatted her on the behind before I walked past her to lead us inside.

“Wow,” she said, a hint of color still blooming across her cheeks as she crossed the threshold.

So many contradictions.

I let myself watch as she took in the room, turning slowly. Burgundy wrap dress, legs that went on for miles and ended in sky-high black heels.

“Wow,” she repeated.

“I’m glad you approve.”

She ran a finger along the surface of a large silver mirror, her eyes meeting mine in the reflection. “I’m sensing a theme here.”

“If by theme you mean that watching you gets me off, then yes.” I sat in one of the large window frames, stretching my legs out in front of me. “I love watching you come. But, even more, I love the way
you
get off on being watched.”