Hung (7 page)

S
tanding
outside Clay's gated mansion on the outskirts of town, there were only two thoughts running through my mind:
this is a bad idea
and
this is a very bad idea
.

The place was astonishing, and if I were moving if any other reason, I'd be jumping for joy, but I still wasn't sure what the hell had been going on in my brain when I'd decided to pretend I was engaged to be married to Clay Hunt. I mean, what kind of self-respecting girl pretended to be in love with a man who slept around so much his nickname was
Hung
?

I raised my hand to knock on the heavy, dark-stained oak front door, but there was no need. By the time my knuckle made its descent to the wood, Clay was already throwing the doors wide open with a broad smile on his face.

"How…?” I asked, standing openmouthed and with my closed fist still raised and ready to knock.

"Cameras, everywhere," Clay said looking pleased with himself. I wasn’t sure he realized quite how the image of him sitting behind a bank of video screens waiting for me to turn up made him look. He indicated the large, enclosed gravel courtyard, pointing out the cameras one by one.

"Do you really need that many?" I asked, a little befuddled.

"If it were up to me, I wouldn't bother," he admitted. "If anyone wants to come and burgle this place, then I'd happily fight them off…"

I bet you would.

"…but the insurance company makes me have them."

"So you can sit here and wait for me to turn up?" I asked, mocking him lightly.

"Exactly," he agreed, taking my joke on the chin. "And it's not often I get a woman as beautiful as you turning up at my front door," he said, with what I'm sure he thought was a winning smile plastered on his face.

"Don't forget," I warned him, "that I'm only here because of your stupid plan. The moment you try any funny business, I'm walking straight out this door."

"Sure, sure," he agreed with an easy smile. "Can I take those bags?"

The scene was ridiculous. We were pretending to be like some old married couple, when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Still, I reasoned, there was no sense in carrying my own suitcases if I didn't have to. Especially since this whole ridiculous charade was all Clay's fault…

I smiled sweetly up at him. "Why not?"

He hauled them in, barely even seeming to notice their enormous weight, and watching him, I couldn't help but think how much I'd like to have his bulging muscles tossing
me
around.

Pull yourself together, Alicia – you're not here for a summer fling!

"Can I show you around?" Clay asked, one of my heavy suitcases in either hand. His thick biceps were bulging, rope-like, under a plain white T-shirt, and I liked that he wasn't wearing anything too fancy. Not that I was supposed to be paying attention to what he was wearing, of course.

"I guess this is my home now, too," I agreed, almost choking over the words as I considered their ridiculous nature, "so it's probably a good idea for me to know my way around."

"We'll do the first floor, well, first," he said a little stupidly, flushing with embarrassment. I pretended not to notice, though it felt nice that someone was acting so nervously around me. Usually it was the other way around.

Clay sat the suitcases down at the foot of a huge marble ballroom staircase, the type that starts wide and gets wider the lower it falls. The whole place was floored with marble, and I couldn’t help but take a sharp breath as I considered how much it must have cost. Clay barely seemed to notice, probably inured to it after years of living in such luxury.

For me, coming from a tatty, stained old apartment on the cheap side of town – this was like living in a palace.

"The big kitchen's through here," he said, striding towards a corridor, and I hastened to follow him, my little legs pumping away at twice the speed of his long striding steps.

There's more than
one kitchen?

It was amazing, truly. The counters were topped with a sparkling black granite, and there was a gorgeous range in the center of a kitchen island. It looked brand-new.

"Do you ever cook?" I asked, curious, because it didn't look like it. The place barely looked touched.

"Sure, sure I do," he said. "A grilled cheese sandwich counts as cooking, right?" he said with a cheeky grin on his face.

I picked my hand up and lightly, almost lovingly, clipped him around the ear before dropping it like a scalding pan as I realized what I'd done. It wasn't so much the action itself, more what it represented – me getting too comfortable around a man as enthralling as Clay. Still, it was as though I couldn't help myself – he had something about him that made it too easy.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"Don't apologize." He grinned. "You can touch me whenever you want…" He had a lascivious look on his face, as though he was eyeing me up like a piece of meat. It was flattering, but I couldn't let this go any further.

"Let's just get on with the tour, okay?" I said sharply, maybe too sharply, and looked away. Before my eyes left his face, I saw him looking a little hurt.

Better him than you, Alicia
, I reminded myself. Clay Hunt broke women's hearts like it was going out of fashion, and I had no intention of becoming just another statistic.

He ran through the rest of the tour at a much faster clip – and before long, my brain was utterly fried. On the first floor alone there was an indoor squash court, a steam room and sauna – with a massage room next door, naturally, a small swimming pool – though Clay assured me there was a much larger one outside, a sixteen seater movie theatre with a huge screen, a small kitchen and several living rooms. Everything was furnished like it was an imperial palace.

"Shall I show you upstairs?" he asked as we hooked back around to the ballroom stairs. My stomach clenched. This was the part I'd been dreading the whole way to Clay's mansion. Was he about to try and get me to sleep in the same bed as him? And if he did – would I be able to resist?

"Okay," I croaked, my throat suddenly dry as the Sahara.

His face instantly switched to an expression of concern. "I'm sorry," he almost stammered, "I should have offered you a drink!"

The look of concern on his face was kind of touching. "Don't worry about it," I reassured him. "I'm fine now."

He grabbed hold of the two suitcase handles and hefted them up with a slight grunt, turning his head and beckoning me to follow him.
With an ass like that
, I thought,
I'd follow you anywhere
…

He carried the heavy suitcases up the stairs without complaining and set them down at the top of the stairs. The upper floor of his mansion was set around a circular rotunda, with two doors directly in front of us, and others set around the wall.

"They’re all guestrooms," he said. "Here – let me show you one."

I couldn't help but wonder why he was
showing
me one of the guestrooms – after all, shouldn't I be staying in one of them? Nevertheless, I kept my mouth shut. After all, I reasoned – with increasingly shaky logic – there was no point in rocking the boat until I knew for sure that Clay was trying to get me to sleep in the same bed as him.

He pushed open one of the heavy mahogany doors and showed me the guest room. I had to take a huge gulp of air – the place was bigger than my whole damn apartment! It was, I had to admit, beautifully appointed.

"Did you design this place?" I asked wonderingly as I walked around the guest room, rubbing my hands across the impossibly soft silk bedsheets and popping my head into the ensuite bathroom to marvel at the gold plated taps that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

"No, me – you serious?" Clay laughed. "I know what I like, but there are people you can hire to do things like this, and I definitely like that more… Nah, I bought this place off this old banker. Think he was running out of money or something. I got a pretty good deal on the place. I kept some of the original furnishings, but honestly, it was a bit gaudy for my tastes."

I looked around – it looked pretty luxurious to me. If this was fine by Clay's reckoning, then God knows what it must have been like before.

"Here," he said, "let me show you where you're sleeping." He pulled the guest room door closed behind us and walked me to the left-hand side of the two larger, more prominent doors directly in front of the staircase. "This is my bedroom," he said. "You know I mentioned the guy I bought this place off?"

"Uh huh." I nodded.

He opened the door. His bedroom was far starker than I'd expected – very modern, with dark greys accented with a deep, rich, almost burnt orange. His bed was huge – I didn't even know what to call it. King size? Queen size? No, this was something more – it looked custom-made. Clay-size, even…

"Well, I don't think he and his wife had a lot of alone time, if you know what I mean." He grinned.

I knew exactly what he meant, because all this looking at beds while standing only inches away from Clay's taut, muscular back had my mind on only one thing. "Yeah…" I said noncommittally.

"They didn't sleep in the same bed," he grinned, "so this place has two master bedrooms." He opened another door, which opened up onto an opulently decorated master bathroom with two sinks – a bathroom which had another entrance on the other side.

"It's a Jack and Jill bathroom," I said, surprised. I'd rarely been in a house before that even had enough space for two bedrooms, let alone two masters, so this was the kind of thing I'd only even seen in interior design magazines before.

"You got it," Clay agreed, looking me up and down lasciviously, "so I can't have you sneaking into my bedroom at night for a piece of my ass, okay? I need my beauty sleep…"

I raised my eyebrow and adopted a pissed off expression – I knew exactly what Clay was doing. Dropping in a little piece of sexual innuendo and making out like
I
was the one with a dirty mind for picking up on it was precisely Clay Hunt's modus operandi.

"
That
," I replied firmly, putting plenty of emphasis on the word, "goes doubly for you. Trust me, if I find you creeping in my bedroom, you'll find I pack a punch…"

"I bet you would." Clay smiled, still looking me up and down like I was a piece of meat. "Shall I leave you to unpack?"

"Please," I replied curtly, "that would be nice."

M
y bedroom was huge
, and decorated in a similar fashion to Clay's. Best of all, it had closet space, so much so that I was doing cartwheels of joy. I'd brought most of my possessions with me, but I soon found that most of them were consumed by just one of the empty closets.

I went into the bathroom and dumped out the contents of my wash bag onto the marble counter. There was a mirrored closet in front of each sink, and I checked the right one – it was empty. Perfect.

I sang to myself as I worked, neatly putting away the different elements of my beauty regimen – foundation, mascara, eyeliner, the vast array of lipsticks that I seemed to accumulate like collectables, then the more mundane items: my pads, cotton buds, and then my medicine.

As I put the last couple of boxes away, I couldn't help but obsessively read the label, as I did every time I saw the boxes that marked me out for what I was – infertile. And as happened every time I read those words, my heart sank and I felt like less of a woman. After all, why did I even exist if I couldn't bring life into the world?

Clomid - Clomiphene Citrate
, the label read.
Take twice daily on an empty stomach
. I looked at the time on my phone, realizing it was time for my daily dose. I put the box back into the cupboard, leaned forward and took a drink of water direct from the tap, and gulped down the tiny white tablet.

An oppressive silence surrounded me as I stopped singing, and I hurriedly pushed the mirrored closet door closed, perhaps slightly too hard in my desperation to leave the bathroom and the ever-present reminder of my incompleteness behind me.

In my rush, I didn't notice that the closet door bounced back open behind me.

"
H
ow about I
take you out for dinner?" I offered.

Alicia had been stalking around like a caged lion all day, and it was beginning to drive me up the wall. The girl needed one thing – a good hard fucking, and more than anything, so did I, but she wasn't going to let me give her one, so I decided to show her the next best thing: a night out on the town with Clay Hunt. Of course, if things went well, then I wasn't ruling out a bit of escalation in the bedroom later on…

She glared at me. "I'm not going to sleep with you, Clay. I don't care if you buy me an expensive dinner, it's not going to happen."

The thing is, I saw the way her eyelashes fluttered when she said the words
sleep with you
, and I knew exactly what she was thinking about. We both knew how horny she was, and we both knew it was a matter of time. I didn't need to push her buttons because before long, Alicia Hudson would be begging me to fuck her.

That was the plan, anyway.

I raised my hands in submission. "I wouldn't dream of it!" I said, adopting a mock innocent expression on my face. This was a charade, and we both knew it – but if we were going to act it out, then I was sure as hell going to play my part. "But if you won't let me go out and party, then you've got to give me something… I'll go mad in here, do you want that?"

"I don't care if you go crazy, what's it to me?" she said haughtily. Damn, for a girl who was begging for my cock only a few days before, this girl was a hard nut to crack. But it all added to the thrill, just made me want her more.

"Think about it, Alicia, if I go off the rails because you won't let me have fun, or even have the decency to fuck me," I said, throwing in the last bit just to test her, "then I'm going to blow. And when I do, it'll be bad for the both of us."

"How so?" she asked. "I don't see how it'll affect me…"

"If I go out there and punch someone, Alicia, then all of this has been a waste of time, hasn't it?"

She considered my point for a few seconds and had to admit it had some merit. I knew what was really going on, though. I knew that she was really just jumping through whatever mental hoops she needed to jump through to justify going out with me tonight. And if she justified it to herself now, then whatever happened later would be okay, too…

"I guess," she said. "I guess you're right. Hell, a night on the town might do me some good, too."

You don't know how right you are
…

"Great." I smiled, trying to hide how excited I was. "Shall we leave in a couple of hours?"

"Where are we going?" she asked curiously.

"It's a surprise," I smiled, "but you'll like it, trust me. Oh, and Alicia?"

"Yeah?"

"I had some clothes delivered; they’re in your closet. I think you're going to like them…"

"
A
licia
, you look incredible…" I croaked.

When she walked down the ballroom stairs I had installed in my mansion, Alicia took my breath away. She was dressed in a floor-length, shimmering red silk Valentino dress, and she looked like could have been on the way to accept a Best Actress award at the Oscars.

In short, she looked stunning. I couldn't help but notice that she wasn't wearing a bra, and it seemed like every twenty minutes around Alicia, my cock stiffened noticeably. Of course, it wasn't exactly an accident that she wasn't wearing a bra… I knew a whole lot about women's fashion a day ago, but when I'd had the idea to take Alicia out, I knew I wanted her looking incredible. I wanted every other man in whatever room we were in to see her and to know that she was mine. Even if we hadn't quite worked that bit out yet…

I'd spent literally hours poring through high-end fashion catalogues, and countless more scrolling through pages and pages of online web stores until I'd made a list of all the top fashion designers from London, Milan and New York. And then I started shopping.

I didn't really know where Alicia's tastes laid – I'd only ever seen her in fairly plain attire: black jeans, a variety of blouses and jackets, but I was willing to bet that that, as much as anything, was a budget thing. Alicia had struck me as the kind of girl who prioritized her future over simply looking good. She was the kind of girl who made plans and had her life all laid out in front of her like a board game. But that didn't mean she didn't want to look good as well. She did her best with what little she had, and she still looked better than any other woman I'd ever laid my eyes upon. But I wanted more.

I wasn't in her plan, nor a piece in her board game, so I didn't have to play by the rules. If I wanted her dressed in all the hottest, sexiest, latest fashions, then I could – I just had to click my fingers. Or, more realistically, stay up late searching the Internet for an entire wardrobe that catered to every imaginable taste, and organize to have it all couriered over.

It went better than I could have ever expected. She looked stunning.

"Thanks." She blushed, her gorgeous leg poking out of the thigh-high slit in the long silk dress. I wanted to tear her clothes off right then and there, but knew I couldn't. I had to play a slow game. "I can't believe you bought all this for me," she said, still blushing. "How did you choose it all? Did you have someone pick it all out?"

I had to tear my mind away from trying to guess which of the
many
different pieces of lingerie I'd picked out that Alicia was wearing. God, I hoped it was the white bodysuit. I wanted to tear off that red dress and see it contrasting against her caramel skin.

"No," I said, still shaking my head to dispel the filthy images coursing through my mind, "it was all me. You like it?"

"I love it," Alicia replied, looking stunned. "You shouldn't have…"

"Trust me, Alicia," I said earnestly, "when it comes to you, nothing is too much."

What's this girl doing to me?

She flushed, and judging by the awkward expression on her face, I knew she wasn't used to receiving that kind of praise. Hell, I wasn't used to giving it. "Shall we go?" she asked, clearly trying to deflect the attention.

"Definitely," I agreed.

Alicia gasped when we stepped into my garage, and I realized I hadn't shown it to her when I'd given her the tour around my mansion. "Oh, feel free to take any of these out for a spin whenever you want," I said. "The keys are all in that wall safe there." I indicated a section of the smooth concrete wall. "Same code as the entrance."

"Are you crazy?" she protested. "I'd kill myself in one of these. And I don't drive stick."

"That might make things a little more difficult," I agreed, looking out at the half-dozen supercars parked diagonally against the exposed concrete walls of my underground bunker. "I'll get an SUV delivered," I said offhandedly, my mind mainly occupied with choosing which of my many sports cars I wanted to take out tonight. "BMW or Mercedes?"

"What?" she replied, sounding confused.

"Do you want a BMW or Mercedes?" I asked, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Hell, for me – it was.

"Clay, you can't buy me a car! We're only living together because we have to," she protested. "This isn't for real."

"Whoah!" I smiled. "Who said I was buying you a car? I'm a brand ambassador for both BMW and Mercedes – don't ask how they were okay with me promoting both of them. Mike's a damn genius when it comes to the commercial stuff. I just have to give one of them a ring, and they'll drop one off the next day."

"Seriously?"

"Uh huh," I agreed – enjoying the note of surprise in Alicia's voice. Sometimes I forgot just how privileged I was. "But think about it, people see me driving one of their cars, their sales rocket up like the freaking space shuttle."

"God, Clay," Alicia said, unable to hide an impressed smile, "you couldn't be more full of yourself if you tried, could you?"

"Probably not." I grinned, the mild putdown bouncing off my Teflon confidence like a bullet off body armor. "Which car?"

She looked the two rows of supercars up and down before deciding. "The black one."