Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (41 page)

A sound cut through my haze and I looked up to Leon, puzzled. The sound was laughter. Leon was laughing hysterically.

He tossed down the papers on his desk and leaned back in his chair. There were a few last hitches of laughter before he turned to me, barely able to contain his glee. For a moment, he composed himself and studied me, then another round of laughter erupted from him and he was rubbing his eyes, apparently so amused with himself that he was brought to tears.

I sat in my chair, front and center stage for this little show. Flashes of anger sparked inside of me; I felt left out of his little joke.

“What’s so funny?” I asked defiantly. My brow furrowed as I watched him. It was as if he laughed at my inner desires for him, forever unrealized.

“This file,” Leon said, containing his laughter. “Trust me, this is very funny.”

My anger dissipated into confusion. I stumbled over my thoughts as I desperately searched for what could have gone wrong with this match. I had gone over the file numerous times before I felt satisfied that this would at least prove a good start. All my effort to make sure there was no room for error had resulted in Leon roaring in laughter. How?

“Why?” I asked, containing my confusion and hoping I sounded assertive, knowing I didn’t. “Marilyn Benedict is as close a match as I typically find. She has a similar educational background. All her interests are either the same as yours or they line up very well. She’s not too young nor is she too old, and she’s very attractive, I can assure you. Her sexual proclivities are even the same as yours!”

Leon watched me curiously as I made the case for Marilyn. Yet he seemed to only grow more delighted with every word I spoke.

“She is very attractive, no doubt about that.” Leon said. “And yes, her sexual proclivities are definitely in line with mine.”

I studied Leon closely, trying to understand the meaning of what he was saying, feeling that I was just on the brink of getting what he meant. Yet I was still in the dark.

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

“Marilyn Benedict is a former lover of mine,” Leon said, laughing again. “You tried to set me up with a woman who I was already with.”

Marilyn’s seemingly perfect match, the unsettling feeling I had when talking to her, Leon’s laughter when he saw the folder, his amusement when I defended my choice, it all clicked. Marilyn was his ex. I had tried to match Leon Christensen with his ex-girlfriend.

“Marilyn Benedict is your ex-girlfriend,” I said slowly, shaking my head. It was too crazy to just be coincidence.

“No,” Leon said. “She is a former lover, not a former girlfriend. I had to break things off when she became a little too attached.”

I felt a bizarre mixture of relief and exasperation. Leon Christensen would not be out of my life just yet, but I was back at square one.

“We met at one of my clubs. She seemed like the perfect sub. We had been a pair, which is different than a couple, for a few weeks. Marilyn had been perfect in every way in the art of submission. It was if she could read my mind in what I wanted her to do. What I demanded of her. With her, it really was an art.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Would you like to hear the whole story?”

“Tell me as much as you can. Since this is a recent relationship, and especially since she seems to match up with you so well, at least on paper, it’s relevant. The whole story might help me in the future when I work on a case file for you.”

My answer was clinical. I did need the information from him about this relationship. Everything I said was the truth, but it was not the whole truth. There was something deeper inside me that desperately needed to hear about what made Leon Christensen tick. This wasn’t solely about finishing this project. There was no way I was going to reveal any of that, however.

“Like I said, we met at a club. She didn’t approach me, that wouldn’t be very sub like. At this point, I was already established in the role of a Dom, so I didn’t need an initiation like Mrs. Robinson gave me. There is a subtle way for subs to approach Doms, and Marilyn gave me all the signals. I approached her and before the night was through, we had already built up a rapport. Do you want to hear just how she first showed me just how submissive she could be? She really did enjoy pleasing.”

Leon’s face turned placid as he waited for my response. I finished writing a brief overview of what he had just said and looked up to him.

“No, you can just give me the relevant details about how your relationship developed and then deteriorated. I don’t need the details about how good she was at sucking your dick or how much she liked to be chained up. So spare me.” My heart fluttered when I looked at him and spoke those words. When I said “your dick”, I felt a pang of anxiety in my heart and between my legs.

“Alright,” he said, smiling politely. “We established our Dom-sub relationship quickly. Yet it was always within that context. We didn’t go on typical dates. I never brought her to a movie or a show.” Leon paused to laugh slightly. “Sure, there were a few dinners, but typically it was all within the boundaries of Dom-sub. It wasn’t a romantic relationship in any normal terms. After sex, we didn’t cuddle.”

“How did the relationship deteriorate?”

“She started to become emotionally attached. It’s somewhat typical that Dom-sub relationships break up if anybody gets attached. Even people into our sexual lifestyle are normal people who fall in love and have feelings. It happens. So as I knew that the relationship was essentially over anyway, I began to push her away. Her feelings were not normal. She was obsessive.”

“What do you mean, obsessive?”

“I let her sleep at my place a few times. Most of the time, I’d have her sleep at the foot of the bed,” Leon said, eyeing me and smiling. “I woke up once and she was lying next to me, snuggled up and staring at me, wide awake.” Leon paused and took a sip of water. “Also, she was excellent with computers. She broke into my computer while I was asleep and read all my emails. The only reason I found out is because I can see the last time that I logged in.”

“Marilyn studied my entire life. Wherever I showed up, she happened to be there. If I went out to restaurants with prospective investors or friends, she would be seated a few tables away, sometimes alone, sometimes with a girlfriend or two. It was no coincidence. When I began to act disinterested and push her away, she only clung tighter. On one occasion, I flatly refused to see her. She showed up at my place with another girl, trying to seduce me.”

“Did that work?” I asked curiously.

“No, I sent her away. It did work when she came back with two other girls though.” Leon winked at me. I leveled a cool look back at him and motioned with my hand for him to continue.

“What was the breaking point?”

“It was all becoming a breaking point. But it culminated in an incident when she attacked a woman. The woman was an investor. There was nothing outside of business between us. I didn’t even make a single flirtatious remark. She was a married woman with kids, I didn’t want to offend her and ruin our business deal.”

Another flare of anger passed through me. Apparently this woman was too good to offend while I had been all too perfect to offend with vile and misogynistic innuendoes.

“Marilyn saw us out to dinner. I didn’t see her, she was hiding in the restaurant. As I walked out, Marilyn came up behind us and struck the woman from behind and ran. Luckily the investor never saw who it was, but before Marilyn ran off, she looked me square in the eyes. When the police came, I told them I didn’t see who it was and it must have been a failed robbery or something.

“After that, I broke it off completely, something I typically don’t have to do. Normally, the women in my life leave when they see that there is no future. Yet Marilyn has yet to let go, even after I’ve had a restraining order placed against her. She shows up at my clubs sometimes and random events, despite the restraining order.”

I wrote furiously to get everything he was saying down. I read over it quickly when Leon paused his story.

“Wait, why would Marilyn be jealous of another woman if she already brought other women for you to have sex with? It doesn’t make sense that she would all of a sudden become jealous.”

“She was only aggressive with women she saw as a threat. A woman brought into our sexual relationship wasn’t a threat. There would be no replacing Marilyn with such a woman. But a woman that I would bring out to dinner and be seen with in public, that could be a woman who would become my new sub. And Marilyn knows that I only operate with one sub. It’s not that I maintain one sexual partner, but that I only have this special relationship with one woman at a time. Marilyn sought to protect her role in our relationship. So I knew that it had to end.”

I read over my notes again and underlined a passage.

“You said that normally you don’t have to end things, how do things normally end in your relationship?”

“Like I said, normally, the woman leaves the relationship once feelings develop and she realizes that I will never share those feelings.”

“So you believe yourself incapable of returning romantic feelings?”

“Yes, I don’t believe in love,” Leon said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Yet you maintain monogamous sexual relationships within the context of dominant and submissive relationships?”

“No, they are hardly monogamous. I sleep with whomever I please, whenever I please.”

“You said that you only keep one relationship at a time?” I asked, prodding him with my questions.

“Yes,” he said curtly.

“Why is it then, if you really believe yourself incapable of romantic feelings for a woman, that you maintain a singular relationship with a woman? I understand you like to sleep around, but you only explore this type of relationship that has a deeper significance to you with one person at a time, making it somewhat of a monogamous situation, even if you have sex with other people.”

Leon eyed me with distaste. His smile was gone and he was holding back a frown. He picked up the folder and tossed it over to me. Then he smiled slightly.

“You know, I bet Marilyn was very convincing. I imagine that you had thought you had struck gold when she walked into your office, strutting her tight little figure with all those lists of interests that match up with mine. Did you even bother to do a background check?”

I flustered as I spoke. “Of course we do background checks, but they take a few days and she walked in on a referral. I wanted to at least present her file to you before—”

Leon interrupted me mid-sentence, waving his hand as if to brush away a fly. “Well, when that background check comes back, you’ll find that Marilyn has never been to college. I doubt she even graduated high school, but one can always be surprised. Her interests are probably bullshit as well, but I wouldn’t know; I never asked her about herself.”

Leon’s voice was razor sharp, cutting deep into my efforts.

“Marilyn is as crazy as they come. The old stereotype is true, unfortunately, that the crazier they are the better they are in bed, but she’s unmanageable. You must not be very good at your job, Miss Facet.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Well, if a person like Marilyn could fool you so easily, then you must not be very good at your job. How many times have you tried to set people up with violent, obsessive matches? You might want to consider a new career. It’s never too late to start over.”

My face grew hot with rage. Leon leered at me as he leaned back in his chair. A new fantasy arose in my mind of me slapping him across that smug face of his. I could slip handcuffs on him and show him just how I felt about his little accusations.

“I’ve got lots of jobs at one of my clubs. I mean, the clubs that are under Stills’s name, of course,” Leon said, winking at me. “You don’t look like you could bartend too well, and it does take a few weeks to acclimate. No, I’d want you to be able to start working right away. I could always use another server. You’d wear black leather underwear and high top boots. You’d look absolutely fantastic walking in those boots and leather thongs. I can just imagine—”

“Excuse me!” I interrupted angrily. I started to rise and Leon began again.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. No, you’re much better suited for a different job. A figure like that deserves to be admired not just by the patrons in the sitting area, but the entire club. I could have you as a go-go dancer in one of the cages that hang above the dance floor. You might not make as much money at first, but I’m sure you can learn a few tricks that will make people tip well.”

I rose from my chair and gave Leon a look of stone. My face was all thorns and poison, scrunched up in anger directed at this pig sitting before me.

“No, you’d want to make more money right away, right? I mean, you probably do very well while failing at matchmaking. I could have you on stage. You and two other girls. Would you want to be the one with the toys, or the one who gets the toys? I promise that they start out small and work up to the large ones. I’m sure I could find a man who might want to perform with you as well, I can just see you—”

My temper exploded into shreds. I kicked the chair out from behind me and stood before his desk, red-faced and enraged.

“Stop!” I yelled. “You can quit your bullshit attempts to offend me because it’s done. You’re a fucking pig, a goddamn little boy who likes to push the buttons of women who see past all your petty little defenses. Oh yes, I bet you feel so happy about yourself that you can imagine all these offensive things to say to me to try to degrade me. But you’re just a crude, little boy whose only imagination stretches to vile porn he’s seen on the Internet. It’s no wonder that you’re so pathetic it takes your best friend to try to have you set up with a partner. It’s obviously because no woman in her right mind would want to stay with you. You’re not alone because you choose to be, you’re alone because you’re a goddamn coward.”

Leon stood up abruptly. He didn’t look at me. The muscles in his face fell slack and his eyes stared far into the distance. It was as if he had instantly deflated. He pushed his chair back and walked past me without acknowledging my presence in the slightest. It was as if I had turned into a ghost, nothing more than an apparition that was mildly annoying.