Charmed (4 page)

“That is not funn—” Shirley stopped in mid-sentence. Her brows knitted together in concern. “Girl, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Shirley looked over her shoulder warily. “Please don’t tell me you can see dead people too?”

Chloe shook her head at Shirley, yet she didn’t say anything. She was too intent on the happenings going on in the apartment next door.

The Rominovs were at it again.

Before her trip to Las Vegas, they seemed like a nice couple, very much in love for you never saw one without the other. However, Chloe now knew the reason for such an attachment. Mr. Rominov was abusive and controlling. The beatings were so bad at times she had to resort to sleeping in her bathroom. The ceramic tiles helped to blanket the noise. The crash of breaking glass made Chloe jump, causing her to knock over her wineglass. Instinctively she grabbed for the glass and set it upright, while Shirley stopped the flow of wine with her napkin, preventing it from running off the table onto the floor.

“Girl, you’re scaring the shit out of me!”

“I-I’m sorry…” But Chloe jumped again as she heard the distinct sound of flesh meeting flesh. Coming out of her chair, she grabbed her plate and threw it in the sink. Breaking it into several pieces. Gripping the edge of the kitchen counter, she gritted her teeth in frustration. “I can’t stand it when he beats her.”

“Who?” Shirley asked, coming out of her seat as well.

“The man next door,” Chloe groaned as she ran her hand through her hair in frustration. “He does it almost every night. I can hear them plain as day as if they were standing in front of me.”

“You can hear through walls?” Shirley asked, her eyes widening like a deer in the headlights.

Chloe sighed, nodding her head. “I can hear through walls, floors, even glass. I can hear the guy below us, he’s watching wrestling. And Mrs. Parks, across the hall, is talking to her niece on the phone. She needs a ride to the doctor’s office tomorrow. She has to go in for her weekly chemo session.”

“Now that’s one skill I wish I had. Then I could spy on my coworkers to see if they were talking about me behind my back.”

“No, you don’t because you can’t turn it off,” Chloe whispered. She wrapped her arms around her body. She felt like the world was literally closing in around her. “And you can’t block it out when someone is getting the living daylights beat out of them.”

“How about we call the police?”

“It won’t do any good. I have done that a couple of times. The police simply took him down to the station but she refused to press charges. I’ve talked with her and offered her my protection, but she refused. She even went so far as to tell me to keep my nose out of her business. That my calls to the police had caused her beatings to become even worse.” Chloe turned her head as emotions welled up inside her.

Shirley closed the short distance between them and put an arm around her shoulders.

“Girl, you’ve done all you can do. It’s up to her if she wants to really change the situation.”

“How can she if she’s scared to death?” Chloe cried, stepping away from her.

“Are you scared for her or for yourself?”

Chloe looked at her best friend a long moment then she sighed wearily. There was no hiding from Shirley. She knew her almost better than she knew herself. “Both, I guess. I don’t know myself anymore, Shirley. How would you feel if you could no longer feel the sun on your skin or the food you eat practically makes your skin crawl? Then to make matters worse the person who did this to me doesn’t give a damn!”

“You still haven’t heard from him?”

Chloe shook her head. Ever since they’d left Vegas, she’d heard nothing from Tristan. The man had practically tried to physically prevent her from leaving his hotel that day but as soon as she was gone, the bastard had forgotten her. He’d sent no apology letters or flowers to make up for what he’d done to her.

“No, but I should be hearing from him soon. Mr. Dobson finished drawing up the papers two days ago. I have a meeting with him tomorrow to sign them. Once that’s done, he will forward them to Tristan’s corporate offices by the end of the week.”

“Well, at least you beat him to the punch. Soon you’ll be a free woman again.”

Although Chloe smiled at her friend, inside she was anything but happy. In a sense she would be free once the divorce was finalized. But deep down, Chloe knew she would never be completely free of Tristan because every time she experienced a discomfort or a new facet of this thing she’d become, she thought of him. And then there were the other times… When she thought about the last time they’d been together. And how his cock had brought her to immeasurable heights no other man had been able to.

* * * * *

Tristan looked down at the papers lying on his desk. His barrister, Mr. Finneus Winthrop, had just hand-delivered them an hour ago. What was the bloody world coming to? he thought. Vampires didn’t divorce. It was only one mate for them until death.

But here he was listening to his solicitor, one of the very few humans who knew he was a six-hundred-year-old vampire, drone on and on about the particulars of the divorce settlement.

“It seems pretty simple actually, Tristan. The petitioner, your estranged wife, wants to be granted a divorce as soon as possible. Due to the lack of children and the brevity of your marital state, she has not asked for child support or alimony.

“She has also requested that no common property be splintered. In particular, she names a twenty-five-unit apartment building, amongst other various properties, which she wants to remain in her possession. In a nutshell, you’re a very lucky man. She wants nothing from you.”

She wanted nothing from him? Tristan snorted.

She wasn’t even going to exact revenge for what he’d done to her by taking half of his empire. That’s what any woman in her right mind would have done. But she’d done something that cut him to the quick even more, she wanted no part of him—not his assets, nor him.

Tristan sat incredulous as the reality of the situation sank in. He couldn’t believe how the one woman he’d chosen as his mate, out of the hundreds he’d known over the centuries, didn’t want anything to do with him. Tristan grudgingly admitted to himself that he had no one to blame but himself. Despite all of his misgivings and basic morals, he’d charmed her, used his magic to bend her to his will, knowing full well that she had no chance once his hypnotic spell was cast. But he did it anyway because he wanted her so damn badly.

He’d been such a vain fool! For he simply assumed that, once they were married, his looks and his sexual prowess would be enough to overcome all of her objections. But they didn’t. And it was his own bloody vanity that kept him from going after her.

“Tristan, you need to sign here and here.” Tristan looked at the fountain pen Mr. Winthrop held out to him. He took it from his grasp then placed the tip on the dotted line. He sat there impassively as the ink began to pool into a tiny puddle on the page.

“You are ruining the document,” Mr. Winthrop exclaimed, snatching the pen from him. “What’s gotten into you?”

Tristan looked at Mr. Winthrop as if he was looking through him. “My wife, Finneus. She’s gotten to me. Do me a favor and hold off any phone calls from her attorney. I’m going to take a trip to Atlanta to visit the little minx. Hopefully, when I return, I will not need your services for this particular matter again. Good day.”

Mr. Winthrop nodded his balding head acquiescently. He gathered up his leather briefcase and let himself out of Tristan’s office.

Once he was alone, Tristan looked down at the divorce papers now stained with black ink. He studied the flowing letters of his wife’s distinctive signature for several moments. Then the unexpected occurred.

“What in the hell!” Tristan exclaimed, looking down at the enormous bulge pressing insistently against the cloth of his tailored trousers. “All I have to do is look at her bloody signature and I’m as hard as a pubescent youth.”

Like many times over the past two months, Tristan found his thoughts drifting to his wife and each and every time he became hard as a rock. Knowing that no one would dare enter his office without his permission, he unzipped his pants.

With thoughts of his voluptuous wife floating through his head, Tristan carefully pulled out the heavy flesh that was now weeping for release. Gingerly, he reached out his thumb and swiped the tear off the engorged head then smeared it down the thick shaft. Satisfied that he was properly lubricated, he gripped his cock.

Wishing it was Chloe’s full, sensual lips wrapped around his cock, Tristan began to pump his hand up and down over himself slowly. To increase his pleasure, he dipped his free hand inside his trousers and palmed his balls.

He leaned his head back against the soft leather of his high-back desk chair and lazily closed his eyes. While his hand continued to pump up and down, he felt the pressure slowly build in the pit of his stomach. Although bringing himself to a climax was by far not as pleasurable as his wife’s sweet pussy, it was still a means to an end.

Tristan’s hand slid up and down his shaft in quick order and the pressure he applied on his cock increased until he felt the veins in his neck bulge and his breathing become more difficult. When his seed began to puddle in his ball sac, he stood up and began to run his hand up and down his cock with lightning speed. As his cum erupted, conveniently ruining the divorce papers still lying on his desk, he vowed that the next time it would be inside his wife’s warm pussy.

Feeling better than he had in days, Tristan reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief and cleaned himself off. After stuffing the soiled linen in his back pocket, he snatched up the divorce papers and dumped them in the trash on the way out of his office.

“Judy, I need you to call Colin and tell him to ready the plane as soon as possible. I need to take care of some business on the East Coast. I also need you to clear my schedule for the rest of the week. And, oh, call Barney and have him pack me a week’s worth of clothes and leave a message with my wayward younger brother to tell him to call me on my cell phone.”

Tristan headed toward the elevator but he paused in the middle of his private offices and then turned back to Judy, who was in the process of carrying out his orders.

“Judy, make that two weeks. Knowing my wife, I don’t think she’s going to make this easy for me. If you need me, I’ll be in my car. Wish me luck!”

Judy silently wished him luck as she watched his tall, muscular frame climb into the elevator. But she wished the poor bird who’d married him even more luck. For Tristan Smythe was a man on a mission. And when he wanted something, he would stop at nothing to get it.

* * * * *

Chloe nervously pulled on the hem of her black blazer. She’d chosen the conservative suit with its matching pencil skirt as a nod to her prospective clients, who were gentlemen from the U.K. looking for broker representation in acquiring several parcels of land in downtown Atlanta.

Normally, she wasn’t nervous at buyer presentations because she’d performed them hundreds of times over the years. However, she’d focused most of her firm’s energy on the residential market and had never brokered a commercial transaction, despite her earnest efforts at courting potential clients.

Not only was this a commercial transaction but it was a multimillion-dollar purchase involving the most important economic development in Atlanta. Therefore, if she scored this client, the sky was the limit for Walker Realty.

Chloe stepped off the elevator and walked the short distance to her office. When she entered, Monique and Dina greeted her in the lobby. She’d asked both of them to stay on late to greet their guests, who were due to arrive at seven.

“Hello, ladies.” Chloe took the buyer folder that Dina held out to her.

“Monique, is the laptop and projector already set up and ready to go?” At Monique’s affirmative nod, she smiled and headed toward the conference room. Her staff, although small, ran like a well-oiled machine. “When the clients get here, seat them first in the lobby then I’ll come out and greet them.”

“They’re already here,” Dina stated, falling in step beside her.

Chloe halted in mid-stride.

“They arrived about five minutes ahead of you. Since you hadn’t arrived yet, we decided to go ahead and seat them in the conference room. We told them you were en route from a meeting in the Alpharetta office.”

“I know the British are the originators of etiquette but an hour early is rather extreme,” Chloe muttered. “Oh well, if we get through this we can call it an early night.”

Chloe looked down at the folder and quickly scanned the buyers’ profiles. Her clients were the CEO and Vice President of Warwick House, LTD, located out of London. They were heavily involved in the commercial development market. Although this was not their first project in the U.S., this was their first venture in the southeast.

Chloe paused outside the double doors to her conference room. Although her downtown office was rather small with only a reception area, two private offices and a cubicle area for her sales associates, she’d chosen the location primarily for its conference room, which had a spectacular view of Atlanta’s skyline.

Drying her hands on her skirt, Chloe squared her shoulders then winked at Dina. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

She shouldered her way into the conference room. One man, a blond, was seated at the cherry-wood conference table, while his partner stood by the windows with his back turned toward the room. The man seated at the table jumped up upon her entering the room.

“Good evening, gentlemen. I see you both are anxious to commence your business in our beautiful area.” Chloe offered her hand to the man at the conference table who shook it firmly. As he returned her handshake, Chloe got a good look at him. And she had to prevent her jaw from dropping to the floor.

And here she was thinking her husband was the handsomest man in the world! This guy could definitely give Tristan a run for his money with his crystal blue eyes and closely cropped blond hair. “My name is Chloe Walker and this is my assistant Dina Robinson.”