Ineffable (7 page)

His father would always be in his life. They had a business relationship for one thing. But if he had to make that choice, he would not miss Aro. Lunch every three months and appearances at events and so called family gatherings around the holidays did not a father son relationship make.

He grew up in the company of nannies after his mother died when he was five. When he turned seven he was shipped off to boarding school, and there he remained unless it was a school holiday.

When he graduated from Harvard he got a few slaps on the back. It was the first time his father had touched him in nearly a decade, and he flinched.

When his father offered him a position in the family company he wasn’t grateful. He knew he’d be mistreated, and he was. He was given a lower than necessary position that he took because he understood the value of learning the business from the ground up, the way Aro insisted.

He thought he could prove his worth eventually. He didn’t realize it was a trap, a test he could never pass. He worked for Ineffable for three years before he finally wised up. He watched as Aro took credit for his ideas and promoted others over him in payment for executing them. Complaining gained him nothing. Threats gained him nothing. So he left. He moved to New York and got a job that had nothing to do with retail. He quickly rose higher and higher until he was the man people came to for ideas. Until he was the man who was promoted as payment for executing them.

Years passed, and he went out on his own, made his former employer his client, and never looked back. Not until Aro’s health began to suffer did they meet again, and if his father hadn’t been forced to step down else risk his life, who knows if he’d have come to Chicago at all.

But with Gallic charm and a cultured voice, the man who had belittled his accomplishments every single day until fame and fortune made them public, admitted in a small and stilted voice that he needed him. That there was no one better suited to run the Ineffable empire than Nori. Only then had a prideful gleam appeared in his pale blue eyes, eyes they shared.

It hadn’t been easy. His father, used to being in charge, to having everyone jumping at attention every time he said boo had not taken well to forced retirement. He undercut Nori many times, going around him to change things, make arrangements, challenge decisions, until Nori gave him an ultimatum: Step back or I walk.

Aro stepped back. And as a concession, Nori agreed to him staying on as chairman, and gave him the odd project so he could keep his hand in. Now they spoke to each other as equals. He could see the respect in his father face, the pride in his voice when he introduced his son to business acquaintances and friends. Earlier tonight, he’d put his arm around Nori’s waist and leaned in to whisper something risqué about one of their guests. It was the first time they’d touched in over a year.

And it didn’t matter. He wasn’t a child, craving his father’s approval. He’d never been sentimental, never secretly longed for a reunion, for an expression of love to prove his worth. That’s why he’d never shared his successes with Aro. When he landed million dollar accounts, strangers crowed over his business savvy and negotiating prowess. Acquaintances and friends praised his keen eye for new opportunity, his ability to see around corners when it came to stopping problems before they could start – they gave his father details, not him.

When bottles of celebratory scotch arrived at his home, fabulous cufflinks from Ineffable stock, gift certificates to the best resorts and spas and stores he didn’t puff up with pride. Most of the time he passed the gifts along to his direct reports. Not because he was angry, but because he needed nothing, and the idea of using anything his father provided left him with a faint feeling of distaste. The feelings that should exist between father and son, even if they were bad, were quite simply, missing.

And he would not give up Margot. Not for anyone, not for any reason. He didn’t know what was going on, why she made him feel this way. Half crazed one minute, so content he could purr the next. He did not believe love was the answer, though admittedly he knew nothing about it, having never experienced the phenomenon before. But he’d heard about it, seen it play out with friends and coworkers, in plays, in books.

This was something else, something primal. Something inescapable, intense and fully interior. This was something that rattled his heart inside his chest and made him behave completely unlike himself. This scared him, the intensity of his feelings, not to mention the fear that she would leave him. But this, whatever it was, freed him to because she made everything okay.

Margot was in his blood, on his mind. She nurtured his spirit, fed his soul. Having laid claim to all of that real estate, his heart was almost incidental, and that beat for her as well. In her he found all of the fine feelings he’d thought were missing. Feelings he’d thought so rare as to be manufactured to make money or created as props to entertain. Feelings that were there all along, lying dormant, waiting for her.

Margot was life to him. She was his, and what he had he kept.

“I want you.”

She looked up. Of course she was working, semi-precious jewels were spread around her in a colorful arc. When she got up from the couch he saw they made an incomplete smiley face. That’s how he would be without her. Pieces missing.

“You asked me what I want. I want you,” he repeated.

He held tight to her waist when she walked into his arms and fused her mouth to his. She sighed as their tongues met, stroked, and the kiss turned hot and desperate. He picked her up and made his way to her bed, and though she did not answer, he felt some of his worry dissipate when she laid her head on his shoulder and let him carry her.

He tried not to be but he was rough with her. He’d had a scare, and the only thing that would ease his worry was her body under his, his body inside hers, her breath in his mouth, her sweat on his body. He needed her.

He sat up with her in his lap, practically hissing when she eased down and slowly pulled him in. He rubbed his face against her chest, wanting to bite her, to flip her to her back and pound away this frightened feeling. Instead he shuddered, mouth open on her breast and fretfully sucking as she began to move on him.

He heard gasping, and felt no shame when he realized it was he. He could barely keep his eyes open or his mouth closed, even with her succulent flesh on his tongue. He no longer had any cares, no agenda or worries, nothing to do or feel except her, hard and fast, as deep as he possibly could.

She felt warm and soft, yet energy crackled beneath her skin. There were never half measures with Margot. She made love to him with everything she had. Every time they touched, it felt like overload.

Nori cried out her name when he came, aware in some distant part of his brain that she was gasping out her own release. But it was very distant. That night had been rough, and before he knew it, he was asleep in her arms.

His father came to the gym the next morning. He’d been half expecting him to pop up somewhere. It was his MO after they fought.

“Bonjour.”

Nori said nothing, continued drying himself, tossing the towel into a nearby bin.

“You will not speak to your father?” Aro continued in censorious French.

Nori continued dressing.

“Well, this is mature.”

“About as mature as the show you put on last night at that make believe dinner party,” Nori answered in French.

Aro sucked in a breath at the fiercely banked anger in those quiet words.

“Things got out of hand,” he began, flicking a dismissive hand.

“Bull shit,” Nori spat. “You deliberately made Margot feel uncomfortable, pulling out every elitist half-truth, innuendo and barb you could find to make her feel unwanted. You’ve pulled the same shit with every woman I’ve ever dated for more than five minutes. Done everything you could to sow seeds of mistrust, or cast dispersions on their character. But this time it won’t work, father.”

“You know nothing about this woman,” Aro spat.

“No, I just don’t know everything,” Nori corrected. “But I will find out in time. And what I do know is enough for me to make a choice. I know she has a temper, a reputation. But I don’t care because I know her heart. I will have Margot, and you will not stop me.”

“This woman has a past,” Aro insisted. “You just said so yourself. She is not who you think she is, my son. You’re charmed by her beauty and her talent and –” he flicked a dismissive hand in the air. “But, she is not the right sort of woman for you, Nori. She will hurt you personally and professionally. She’s not –”

“She’s not what?” Nori waited, but beyond an exasperated sigh, Aro said nothing. “Why so reticent? You’ve never hesitated to spill whatever little secrets and dirt you’d dug up before. Or, is it just that this time, my woman is exactly who she purports herself to be? Maybe there is no mud for you to sling on her name, no concrete way for you to blacken her character. Everything is already out, no? Laid bare thanks to the paparazzi and social media. Perhaps that is why you fell back on simple, but effective rudeness last night.”

Nori slammed his locker shut with a decisive bang and spun its lock. “Father, at the end of the day, there is no perfect woman. Perfection does not exist. If you are lucky enough to find someone to love, who loves you, makes you feel good, and doesn’t hurt you? You keep her. I think you know this since you are alone yourself. Instead of trying to keep me single, maybe you should open that door in your own life and seek out permanent companionship of your own.”

“Permanent,” Aro sputtered. “You are thinking of marrying this creature?”

Nori stared cold eyed at his sire. “You’d better think about whether you want me to remain as CEO of Ineffable. Think long and hard, father. Our relationship is balanced on a very precarious line right now because there is no fucking way I will allow you to dictate with whom I keep company. And I sure as hell will not allow you to insult my lover again. So, should you decide that I and my lady are not suitable, I’m happy to step down,” he said, pleasantly, buttoning a crisply pressed white shirt his assistant had left ready in his locker. He shrugged on his jacket, straightened his cuffs and lasered his father with fierce blue eyes.

“You have never said such a thing to me,” Aro said softly, his shock visible. “Never threatened to walk away from your birth right. This woman –”

“I’ve been kicking around the idea of expanding Margot’s website,” Nori cut him off neatly, fastening the gold and wood cuff links Margot had made for him. He’d already collected several compliments on them that day and even passed out one of her cards. “You see, she mentioned the idea of an online storefront featuring other designers that she would choose and mentor. She even suggested holding a competition to find talent and then launching them into the global marketplace. We could probably have it televised; reality shows are so popular these days.

“She’s the most wonderful entrepreneur,” he continued, deep voice warming as he spoke of her. “And she has a fabulous support network of talented friends and well known collaborators who are easily accessible and who believe in her. And you know how I love a new challenge. With her talent and mine, well. I suppose it’s up to you.” Nori slid his watch on his wrist.

“Choose,” he told father, deliberately drawling the word in English before he walked away.

Chapter seven

After the confrontation with his father at the gym, Nori’s feelings for Margot intensified. No matter how many times he took her, no matter how many times he came in her arms, buried as deep inside her as was possible for a man to go, it was never enough. He wanted to hear her, smell her, even watch her ignore him as she went about her business.

He began to work at her house because he could not bear long hours apart from her. And when they weren’t together he worked like a Trojan to shorten the time until they could be reunited. He started having things delivered to her home, and was unreasonably satisfied when she collected them neatly and laid them on the coffee table where he liked to sit his laptop.

He’d never thought of himself as traditional, but he couldn’t deny he got a special thrill out of hearing her say, “dinner’s ready,” and sitting there while she fixed his plate. She treated him like a king, but she did it absently. There was no checking to make sure he was noticing everything she was doing. It was just in her nature to behave this way.

He commented once night that she’d fixed his plate but forgotten to fix her own. She looked down at the necklace she was working on sitting across from him at the table and laughed.

“My mom used to do that all the time when my dad was alive. Only she wasn’t making jewelry. She’d be talking on the phone.”

He listened greedily as she told him a funny little story about her mother. It was the first time she’d offered anything substantial about her family since that night with Aro, and he lapped up the carelessly offered details from her history.

He knew they should make more of an effort to socialize, but he liked that she often turned Tommy down when she called to invite them – they were a ‘them’ now since Tommy knew he was always around – somewhere. She preferred to stay at home, she told him.

A few times he came home to find the house full of women. He did not mind this since they absorbed him into their lives without incident. Spoiled creature that he was, he ended up being looked after by three or four women instead of just one.

Like when he introduced his friend – a sculptor, to her friend Starla, a painter. That night Margot, Starla, Reiko and Steele had gathered to watch the TV show Sons of Anarchy. He knew of it, but was surprised to learn how into it they were. The show was about a bad ass biker gang, thugs with hearts of gold – not unlike the small bouquet of beauties he found himself surrounded by – and this was special, the series finale. They all piled into Margot’s bed.

He was grateful they allowed him in. It had not been a certain thing by any means. He was ordered to remove his blue jeans, get in, and when the show starts don’t even think about talking.

“Silencio, por favor,” Steele stressed.

“Bitch, he’s French. Not Spanish,” said Tommy.

“I don’t care what he is, long as he don’t talk when my show come on.”

Nori just grinned, whispering thank you when Starla handed him a margarita.

“No salt,” she told him. “We kick it, but we try to kick it healthy.”

“Understood,” he said. “Cheers,” and felt good when they all clinked glasses with him.

Then his friend called.

“Where are you staying again? What’s the address number?”

“257, why? You in the neighborhood?”

“I’m outside. Lemme in.”

“Well, hurry up before the show starts,” said Reiko when he told them.

Todd loved Margot and the girls, especially Starla. She was uninterested until she found out he was a sculptor. Then her large, cat like eyes narrowed.

“Todd Sharpe?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “Do you know my work?”

“Yeah. I been tryna get something of yours, but they get snapped up so quick.”

“I’m sorry about that. There’s not much to go around. I’m afraid I don’t work quickly.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You produce a good five pieces a year, and your prices aren’t getting cheaper.”

He lowered his head and touched the back of his neck. Then he stepped forward, took up her hand. “Come to my studio. You can pick something out.”

She took it back. “After the show.”

“Okay.”

When Margot gave him the eye like, are you seeing this, Nori just grinned and mouthed, “what?”

One night he saw her looking at movie listings.

“What do you want to see?”

She pointed, and they had their first movie date. He fed her popcorn and afterwards took her for a light dinner, and they strolled downtown hand in hand until he yawned mid-sentence.

“Bed for you,” she smiled.

He pouted. “No. I’m having fun.”

“Home,” she insisted. “Bed.”

“Only if you come with me, naked,” he whispered, nuzzling her and enjoying her answering laugh.

But he fell asleep before they made love that night. She said later she found him snoring with his mouth open when she came from the shower. Luckily for him he only needed a nap before he woke in the middle of the night to pick up where they left off.

He didn’t bother to wake her, just pulled her close and played gently with her sleepy curves until she melted. He was able to slip inside her liquid warmth before she ever opened her eyes. But she was wide awake when he stroked them both to orgasm, and she was laughing when she called out his name in her moonlit room.

The next day he spent most of the afternoon and evening working from her home.

“You should do something like this on your web site.” He turned his laptop around to show her what he was looking at. He knew she was working hard on her new site in preparation for its relaunch. She’d complained that her current site was so antiquated it was embarrassing. He agreed, but didn’t say so. “Has the old site hurt your sales?”

“No, but then, I have no analytics. So, how would I know? Why, do you think this feature would help me?”

He explained the brand value of what he was suggesting, and she nodded, immediately shooting her web development guy an email asking that the change be made.

He tried not to preen. He knew there would be many situations where she would not acquiesce so easily. Margot had no problem telling him what she thought he was full of shit. She said it just like that, “You fulla shit.”

She did not treat him the way he was used to. He’d grown used to women bending over backwards to please him, being docile, unchallenging. That was probably one reason he was so attracted to her.

Margot laughed at him often, and she had a habit of walking out of the room while he was talking – to fetch some tool, for instance – or she’d look at him like he was stupid when he said something arrogant. It kept him on his toes because if he displeased her, she shut him out, and he hated being ignored.

On the other hand, he found he liked having to work to hold her attention. He sourced obscure books on jewelry and design, beautiful coffee table books that he gave her wrapped in brown paper with a bottle of wine. He soaked in her gasps of pleasure and radiant, appreciative smiles, and he grew to crave her pleasure; it warmed him like the burn of his favorite whiskey.

In private moments away from her he queried the intense satisfaction he got when she showed him something she’d made based on inspiration from one of his gifts. Once he might have run from such feelings, now he reveled in them. Once or twice he even worried that his need for her was excessive, even potentially destructive. Look at how he’d already changed his work style. But he didn’t dwell on those thoughts. For one thing, work was great. Nothing was suffering despite him spending less time in the office. Two, he couldn’t. It felt too horrible to think of being without her, and he couldn’t fathom being with anyone else.

Angst was minimal. More often than not – when they weren’t tearing up her bed – he learned from her. For instance, one night they were on the couch watching the news. There was a story on about people abusing the welfare system, and it was chock full of brown and black faces.

Nori shook his head and said, “I just don’t understand people like that. There’s nothing wrong with them. They could go out and get a job. But they won’t. They just constantly have their hands out.”

Knowing her work ethic, he expected her to agree wholeheartedly. She shocked the shit out of him when she said, “There speaks white privilege.”

His brows shot into his hair. “What?”

“White privilege,” she repeated. “You think it’s as easy as going out and applying for a position, or in your case, making a few phone calls to your coterie of rich, connected cronies and finding a gig. All of whom are more than happy to recommend you. But for the average person, especially people like those who dominate welfare lines, it’s not that simple.

“They’re not as well educated, and they certainly aren’t as well connected. And, even if they do have the right schooling, it’s just not as easy for a black man or a Hispanic woman to get a job.”

“How is this about race?”

“It’s not, not totally, but there are invisible barriers to gainful employment or success in the workforce that you likely haven’t considered. Assumptions people make that will have them pass you over for someone else in a heartbeat. That’s why unemployment rates are higher for minorities. And if minorities do gain employment, there are higher incidents of mistreatment on the job, stalling when it comes to advancing to the higher rungs of the career ladder, microaggressions, all kinds of shit.”

“So, because it’s hard they shouldn’t look for work?”

“Absolutely not. There are a lot of lazy, trifling ass people on welfare. People who abuse the shit out of the system and give those who really need help a bad name. I’m just saying, it’s not as cut and dried and as easy for everyone to succeed as you make it sound.”

She continued to stare at him, a calm brown Madonna, shrouded in sex and mystery instead of a veil.

“What’s a microagression?”

“An unintended slight often directed toward a minority or a woman.”

“Example.”

“A white man coming up to me and my girls on vacation saying, “you all sound educated.” Why the fuck wouldn’t we? We all own and run our own businesses, etc. But the assumption is, you’re black, you’re stupid; you should sound like you just fell offa deep south cotton gin.

“Or, when a white woman passes up a bunch of people wearing nametags and black clothes to interrupt me talking and tell me she needs help finding something in a store. Bitch, I don’t work here. But because I’m black you assume I’m at your service, that it’s okay to interrupt what I’m doing because your needs supercede mine.

“Or, dumb niggas sayin’, ‘you talk white.’ Like black people aren’t supposed to know the dictionary or use correct, grammatical English.

“Or, I’m standing in line to buy a monthly train ticket, and the bitch behind the counter says, ‘are you putting this all on one card?’”

“What?” he asked incredulously. “Why the fuck would she ask you that?”

“Because I’m black, and the presumption is, I don’t have that $100 odd to pay for the ticket without drama. Get it?”

“Jesus Christ. Yes. But how do you know its race or gender related and not just plain old rudeness?”

“That’s the kicker. Half the time, you don’t. You just know somethin’ ain’t right. Sometimes the people who say that stupid shit don’t even realize what they’re doing. The assumptions are that ingrained, like racism. People always want to deny these little slights exist, but they make you feel like shit, and cumulatively they add up and grind down your spirit, make you doubt yourself, etc. Regularly bullshit doesn’t have the power to make you keep thinking about it, and it’s not specific to you as a black person or as a woman. Has anybody ever said anything or done anything like what I just told you to you?”

“No.”

She shrugged.

“I had no idea.”

“Now you do.”

He followed her when she walked into the kitchen. “Let’s go out for dinner.”

She poured them each a glass of the limeade she’d made earlier. “Okay.”

He watched as she showered, or tried to. She kicked him out of the bathroom. By the time he caught up to her again she was already in her panties. Very lacey black panties, and an extremely clever, shiny black bra. He watched as she stood in front of her closet. She pushed aside a few hangers then pulled out a hot pink dress. It had a thin band of black lace around its middle, no sleeves, and most of the back was covered by a sheer black lace panel. Its clever sideways straps were also black. It was eye catching and extremely sexy.

He stretched out on the bed, head on his hand. That’s interesting, he thought. The front hem is shorter than the back. You could see her mid-calf to foot. He frowned. She looked too good. Men would stare at her. And that color. So vibrant. He wondered if she owned anything totally black.

He relaxed somewhat when she put her long hair up into a conservative knot atop her head. But then he caught himself looking at the smooth line of her neck. Now provocatively bare, it was begging to be touched. And if he was thinking that other men would too. Shit.

He watched her choose jewelry, a door knocker ring, dangling earrings and a thin gold necklace with a black charm like metallic lava. He knew she’d made it all. She was fucking gorgeous.