The Alexandra Series (79 page)

It was an exhausted but welcome slumber for them both; and their husbands, the manipulators of their most recent hours, would wait to have them back again. Reggie and Will would let them sleep, waiting until morning to bring them home.

Jocelyn’s Rebellion

Chapter One

Ms. Killian,” Emma Reed’s voice came over the speaker, “Mr. Trueblood calling. You know the Englishman.”

“I’m not here,” Jocelyn answered.

“He’s called three times since yesterday afternoon. I don’t think he believes me,” Emma replied.

“I don’t care what he believes, perhaps you should be more convincing.” Jocelyn slammed down the phone only to have it ring again.

Sighing deeply there was a worried, weary look in her green eyes. A hand combed through her unruly red hair—she’d left her clip on her dressing table at home letting her hair dry in the spring breeze. Now it sexily framed her pert Irish features indicating the savagery of a spirit frayed at the edges.

“Yes, Emma,” she answered the ringing line.

“Your attorneys are here,” the secretary informed her.

“I don’t want them here,” was her exasperated reply.

“But . . .”

“I’ll see them,” Jocelyn relented, though she wasn’t successful in changing her irritated tone of voice.

***

“It’s a bad season, Jocelyn,” Harry Wise acknowledged the obvious.

“Sued twice in one month. I’ve never been so popular,” she replied.

“We should settle out of court.”

“I don’t have the money. The suits are spurious. And I’ll come off looking like a weak-kneed buffoon who’s way out of my league.”

“Maybe you are,” Ed Davis suggested.

“Thank you for such faith,” she replied. Sarcasm had become dear to her in the past six weeks. Rumors, false accusations, her faith in humanity a dozen times destroyed by finger pointing, pompous bastards that had taken her business and stomped it beneath their feet as if it was so much dust. All this because of Ibercon Corporation’s latest disaster. After spending six months consulting time, to have them turn tail on her proposals and tube their company with several moves she’d advised them vigorously not to pursue, she was paying as dearly as the rest. She’d been swept into a black hole where anyone associated with their defunct Boston Project was being castigated by the press, the board of directors and everyone in the business world that watched Ibercon’s demise. Her reputation had taken such a fall she was certain recovery was impossible—though she was still trying.

The discussion with her attorneys didn’t end well. Their exit only brought her face to face with the nuisance, Arnold Trueblood, the private investigator she’d been dodging for days.

“Ms. Killian, or is it Mrs. Harold?” He was in her face with his fat jowls and beady eyes peering out of thick black rimmed glasses.

“It’s Ms. Killian in business.”

“Let me introduce myself …” he started.

“I know who you are, Mr. Trueblood. Please be brief. Certainly you must know by now that I’m not answering any questions without consulting my lawyers and they just left.” The stubby man grated on her nerves.

“It’s a matter of some urgency.”

“Isn’t everything?”

Standing in the outer office where Emma’s trained ears would hear any conversation no matter how muted, the man looked about, then took Jocelyn’s arm by the elbow. She immediately shook him off. “I think in private would be more suitable for this,” he said.

“If it will make you leave,” she said, consenting to being led into her private office by the oily man who made her skin crawl just looking at him.

“You remember Ian Suffolk?” Trueblood asked.

At least he was to the point. “I’m sorry I don’t know the name,” she answered.

“Ian Bradbury. Ian Pennywhistle. Ian Devors? Perhaps?”

“Perhaps I knew Ian Pennywhistle fifteen years ago. The others…”

“All the same.”

“Then he’s probably the same scoundrel he was when I made his acquaintance.”

“You know he’s returned to the States?”

“I wouldn’t know where he is, Mr. Trueblood.”

“He’s not looked you up?”

“Why would he? He’s been out of my life for years.”

“Years?” Trueblood did not believe that. “Didn’t he post a letter to you about six months ago.”

“None that I received.”

“And you’ve not received letters from him every few months in the last several years.”

“One or two at the most,” Jocelyn offered, knowing that it was unwise to have even admitted to that. Who could say what trouble Ian was in. “How did you know I was ever associated with him in the first place?”

“There are people interested in finding him, I’ve been investigating Suffolk for nearly three years. In that time I’ve learned just about everything there is to know about the man. Including your affair.”

“I was young. I’m married now, happily so. I wouldn’t have any reason to entertain a renewed relationship with Ian whatever you want to call him. And if I had replied to any letter he’s written, I’m sure I would have told him as much. Now you have to leave.”

“Does Mr. Harold know about Ian?”

“Mr. Trueblood you’re treading into personal territory where you have no right to be.”

“You say you have a sacred marriage.”

“I said it was happy one,” she replied, though as she vowed that, she wondered just how true that was. It had been two weeks since she’d seen Reggie, and their last few days together were filled with barbs that stuck—all because of the sticky business of lawsuits and a fractured reputation. Her perpetually arrogant husband, under the guise of love, suggested it was time to give up Killian Management. “Banging your head against bricks is a tough and useless waste,” was the first foul thought from his lips. “It’s over, Jocelyn,” was the second.

All that she’d built for nine years and he was so quick to cast it off as if it meant nothing to her. To suggest it was over made her heart ache, and her stomach burn with fear, even though he was likely right. (In such assessments Reggie was rarely wrong.)

There was still fight in her however, and she gave up going to Japan with him to stay home and work her way out of the predicament. But the way things had developed, she’d have been better to have spent the last few weeks in Japan wearing silk and serving tea with the Japanese matrons, watching them fawn all over her blonde Adonis, with his sculptured body and aristocratic face and uncommonly aloof resonance of darkness that was an accompaniment to his sapphire eyes.

The war between them was not unusual. They’d warred a hundred times in their five year marriage, but never to this impasse, and never without some degree of certainty that the darkness of their sexual attraction would eventually rule and begin to heal what had been broken.

“You have a fascinating way of being happily married,” Trueblood stated.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

Though he was a slimy creature, unctuous and sly, his speech disarmed her. Speaking with that snooty officious English accent, she thought she’d have to answer him when none was called for.

“Ian Suffolk, er ... a Pennywhistle, was noted for sexually deviant activities. I made it my business to check on those of his acquaintances.”

“You what?” This was going too far.

“Just something cursory, of course. I’m hardly in your bedroom. But then, your husband’s proclivity toward bondage, discipline and the art of training women to be submissives is no real secret.”

Jocelyn was fuming, but dozens of chilling rejoinders were left unsaid.

“I have no more time for you, you’ll have to find Ian without me.” She imbued her words with as much venom as possible and pushed the man to the door and out. Having handed her his card as he was leaving, another ingratiating smile on his lips, she was moved to tear the card into pieces and drop them in the wastebasket.

“Emma, I’m leaving for the afternoon,” she announced moments later as she threw her coat over her shoulders and swept past her on the way out.

“You’ll be back at two?” her secretary asked.

“No, cancel my appointments.”

“But Mr. Donnally from the Ibercon board?”

“I’m not here,” she snapped at the freckled innocent face, and she was gone.

Like spring, the sun shone hot, but when the breeze blew the air was crisp. One gust raced right up Jocelyn’s skirt reminding her that in addition to being a bruised and battered business consultant she was a sexual being. The delicious tickle made her stomach grab, and reminded her of her unspent sexual energy. She walked three blocks away from the office in heels that should have made her legs and feet ache after the first block. However, Jocelyn was used to dressing in high-fashion statements of power that not only looked authoritative but also added sensuous to her list of personality traits. Jocelyn Killian Harold’s allure couldn’t be anything less than sexual; especially since Reggie had refined the seductive charm that had always been natural to her.

The aroma of fresh baked bread, Italian spices and cheese poured from a café she passed on her way to nowhere. Slowing her furious retreat from her office, she lingered in that fragrant space of sidewalk letting her nostrils feast on the smells. The jolt the breeze had fostered between her legs was only augmented. She remembered then the silk she was wearing on her breasts. Now sliding against her nipples it caused those sensuous rounds to draw into buds that any man would tongue with glee. A desire swept through her mind, one that would have taken her into an alley, where with a hand at her crotch she’d need little time to get off. Even in this marginal part of town she considered slipping into a private corner where she could take a moment to climax. But then she spotted the intriguing shop across the street.

Darting into the empty avenue, Jocelyn spent several minutes standing in front of the plate glass window looking inside a leather store. It must have cropped up overnight. Dozens of times down this street she’d never noticed the place. Since Reg, her mind was instantly tuned to spy such sights. Being so close to her office, she should have found this place before. Still, the storefront business looked ancient and well used. There was even dust on a few leather tooled bustiers displayed in the window, and the smell of incense was so strong it poured out onto the street even with the shop door closed.

Naked underneath her lime colored suit skirt, Jocelyn’s labia were easily tickled by the fabric brushing against them as she moved. Even standing still, she couldn’t stop the gentle sway of her hips that eroticized them even more. A banister, a railing, the arm of a chair would have sufficed to generate an orgasm. But having none of those, she took her arousal as an invitation to enter the sleazy establishment, nearly choking as she did from the plumes of patchouli and sage-scented smoke.

Behind a counter, a woman with a nose ring, purple spiked hair and silver rings on every finger perked up with the entrance of the redheaded business woman in the lime green suit. There was a sparkle back in Jocelyn’s green eyes, the mood of decadence overpowering her gloom. She could almost feel Reggie’s warm palm on her ass, massaging a rear cheek. She would push back against his fingers encouraging more. He’d slip his hand under the hem of the short skirt and probe her anally.

Peering inside a case displaying a good two dozen dildos, her eyes rested on an enormous anal plug that would be much too big for her to handle—despite her cravings that desired otherwise. Reggie had spent some energy and time making her ass as usable as her vagina for sex, and she could open that anterior orifice wide to accept a generous erection. Still, this plug was one of the largest she’d ever seen, which only reminded her of how long it had been since she’d indulged in an anal assault. There’d be pain the next time Reggie entered her ass, though she’d probably want that too.

“You want something?” the clerk asked. She looked like a girl on second glance, too young to be the proprietor of such a place. Young as she was, however, she looked like she knew what she was doing—at least as much as Jocelyn knew what she was doing in her late teens when Ian Pennywhistle absconded with her the summer she bummed around Europe. There was the thought of him again. When she hadn’t brought the man to mind in two years, here he was appearing twice in one hour. The girl with the spiked hair was a sister in rebellion, obviously planted by the gods to remind her of her other life. A life much less reputable, but much more fun than the one she was escaping now. Reggie was fun sometimes, but he wasn’t around.

“I don’t know what I want,” Jocelyn said sighing. The girl squirmed on the stool behind the counter—Jocelyn only then noting that this nymph was sitting squarely on her pussy, her skirt pulled up so her thighs and ass cheeks showed. With Jocelyn staring at the obvious exposure, the girl did nothing to change her pose when she realized she was being watched.

“I’m horny,” she explained.

“So am I,” Jocelyn replied, her voice dipping into a huskier tone much more mellow than her speech just a half hour before.

“You look like you could use a good screw.”

Jocelyn acknowledged the comment with a smile.

“Got a favorite fetish?” the girl asked.