The Billionaire's Command (The Silver Cross Club) (21 page)

She opened the door, but blocked the opening with her body to prevent me from entering. “You’re early,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “What’s your point?” She was wearing a ridiculous Guns N’ Roses t-shirt and a pair of cut-offs so ancient that the denim had worn white in places. Her bare legs were slim and tanned. The baggy shirt couldn’t conceal the swell of her generous breasts. She looked good enough to eat.

“Uh, that you’re rude and a jerk,” she said, with that scowl I found so adorable. “But okay, come on in, I won’t stop you.” She stepped back to let me into the building.

I climbed the stairs to her apartment, amused by her obvious irritation, and glad my back was to her so she couldn’t see the smile tugging at my lips. It wouldn’t do to clue her in that I found her rage endearing.

My amusement drained away as I entered the apartment and saw no sign of my brother. I turned to Sasha and said, “Will isn’t here.”

“He and Yolanda went to the grocery store,” she said. “Calm down. They’ll be back soon.”

I flexed my hands, hearing my knuckles crack. I didn’t like the idea of Will out in public with a woman neither of us knew, but it was also possible I was overreacting.

“I know you’re worried about him,” Sasha said. “But he’s fine. We’re not going to sell him on the black market or anything. He just hung out and read books today. I think Yolanda has a crush on him.”

“That’s nice,” I said vaguely. I had stopped listening to her in favor of searching the apartment for signs that Will had, in fact, been there. I looked around the apartment and saw a stack of books near the sofa, and Will’s laptop on the dining table. Somewhat reassuring.

A flicker of movement caught my attention, and I turned to see a medium-sized, green-and-yellow bird perched on the kitchen counter, eating what appeared to be the remains of a mango. I felt my eyebrows crawl halfway up my forehead. “Sassy. What is
that
?”

Sasha turned to see what I was looking at, and sighed. “That,” she said, “is Teddy. I guess he got tired of waiting for me to come peel his mango. Christ, what a mess.”

“You have a bird,” I said, absorbing this new and bizarre information.

“Yeah,” she said. “Why are you making that face? They make good pets.” She frowned at the bird. “Well, for the most part. He isn’t usually this gross.”

The bird in question turned to face us and bobbed his head, almost like he could tell we were talking about him. Sasha crossed the room and said, “Step up,” and he climbed onto her bare wrist and perched there, flexing one foot and then the other. I watched as Sasha turned on the tap and rinsed the bird’s feet, and wiped the counter with a sponge. Then she brought him over to me and said, “He’s a yellow-naped Amazon parrot.”

“I have to say, I didn’t expect you to have a pet bird,” I said. If anything, Sasha seemed like the type of girl who would own a teacup poodle, dye it pink, and carry it around in her handbag. “How long have you had him?”

She shrugged. “A few years. He belonged to one of the dancers at the last place I worked, but she couldn’t deal with him. I went to her place once, and he was just sitting in his cage plucking out his own feathers. So I told her I would take him. It was pretty dumb. I didn’t know anything about birds.”

“He seems happy now,” I said.

“I learned fast,” she said. “Do you want to touch him?”

I made a face. “No.”

“He’s very soft,” she said. “What do you think, Teddy? Do you want Mr. Turner to hold you?”

Teddy bobbed his head and peered up at me. “Teddy’s a good boy,” he said.

Without intending to, I took a step back. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I didn’t know he
talked.
”

She shrugged. “He mostly just repeats the things I say to him. He knows a few words, though.” She scratched the bird’s head, and he leaned against her and gave a little chirp. “Okay, Teddy, time to go back in your cage. We can’t let you terrify Mr. Turner during dinner.”

“I’m not terrified,” I said, annoyed that she was maligning my masculinity.

She rolled her eyes at me and walked toward her bedroom.

I followed her, curious about whatever parrot-related tasks would ensue, and waited in the doorway while she settled the bird in his cage. He squawked a bit and shuffled around on his perch, but when Sasha handed him what appeared to be a toy, he calmed down and began prodding at it with his beak.

I quickly lost interest in watching her play with the bird. While she spoke softly to him, I took the opportunity to examine her bedroom more closely than I had been able to the day before. She had decorated it to be overtly feminine without being girly: crisp white sheets on the bed, gauzy curtains blowing slightly from the air conditioning, and the top of her dresser lined with makeup and perfume bottles. I picked up one of the bottles and sniffed at it. I didn’t recognize the scent, which made me think she didn’t wear it very much.

A framed photograph on top of the dresser leaned against the mirror hung on the wall. I picked it up and looked at it. Seven people sat on the front steps of a house, and one of them was recognizably Sasha—face a little rounder, hair a little shorter, but still clearly her.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Sasha turned, and I angled the picture in her direction, showing her what I was looking at. I saw her throat work as she swallowed, but she didn’t answer.

Fascinated now, I examined the picture more closely. Sasha sat beside a middle-aged woman who was probably her mother, and the woman had one arm wrapped around Sasha’s shoulders. Behind them, a man with an oxygen tank sat next to another daughter and a young man wearing a military uniform. Two younger boys crouched on the bottom step, leaning into each other. Their feet were bare. Everyone was smiling.

The house behind them was ramshackle, with paint peeling from the siding and a sagging, overstuffed sofa on the front porch. To one side, barely visible at the edge of the frame, was a rusting car body in the yard.

I glanced up at Sasha. Her face was red with embarrassment. “This is why you’re doing it,” I said, the pieces falling into place even as I spoke. “Working at the club. Stripping. You’re doing it for your family.”

She shrugged and folded her arms across her chest. I desperately wanted to know what she was thinking, but her face was shuttered and unreadable.

I carefully set the picture back on the dresser. This entire time, I had thought—what? That she had sex with men for money because she
liked
it? That she thought it was fun? I hadn’t thought. I had only assumed.

“Sasha, I owe you an apology,” I said. “I haven’t always been very kind to you.”

“You mean all the times you called me a whore?” she asked, and I nodded, glad she had said the words so I didn’t have to. Christ, I was a coward.

She scowled and look away for a moment, brow furrowed, and then looked back at me with a fierce light in her eyes. “Yeah, that’s bullshit. Why is all the stigma on
me
? Women are punished for sex, and men are rewarded. Why am I a dirty slut, and all the men who pay to spend time with me get off scot-free? It’s fucked up. What about your precious free market? It’s capitalism, baby. There’s a demand in the marketplace. I’m an
entrepreneur
.”

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t expected that.

She didn’t stop. “It’s also bullshit that you’re only apologizing now that you think I’m doing it for a noble cause or something,” she said. “Life is unfair, you know. We aren’t all born with equal opportunities, and for some of us, this is the best work we can get.”

I looked at her in silence for a few moments, considering her words. “You’re right,” I said.

She opened her mouth, shut it again, and then said, “I am?”

I nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. But you’re right.”

“Oh,” she said. I could practically
see
her deflate, her anger thwarted in the face of my concession. “Well. Yeah. So don’t call me a whore.”

“I won’t,” I said. Fuck, I hated apologizing. I wanted to hold her in my arms, to feel her soft and warm against me. “Sasha. Come here.”

She didn’t move for a moment, and I thought she would refuse, and that we would spend the meal in tense silence, her angry and me full of regret. But then she took a step toward me, and another, and I opened my arms and she fell into them, burying her face against my chest.

I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair. She was bad-tempered, argumentative, and inappropriate, but I didn’t want her to be upset. If only because I hoped to keep sleeping with her.

She turned up her face to look at me, and I kissed her sweet mouth, a slow and careful kiss. She pressed closer to me, her pinup body an excruciating tease. I slid one hand down to settle on the sinful curve of her hip, and she made a hungry noise that set my blood on fire.

Funny how that worked. My good intentions meant nothing. One sultry look from her and I was ready to rut on the floor like a dog.

The kiss turned dirty fast. I grabbed a handful of Sasha’s thick hair and used it to tilt her head backward while I ravished her mouth, sucking on her tongue and making her moan. She untucked my shirt from my trousers and slid her hands up my bare back, fingernails raking my skin. My cock was hard and throbbing, and I didn’t want to wait. It had been more than a week since the last time I fucked her. My body was keenly aware of the passage of time. Every molecule screamed at me to bury myself in her slick heat as quickly as possible.

I tore my mouth away and sucked in a lungful of air. “Take off those shorts,” I said.

She took a step back, eyelids lowered, giving me that teasing smirk I knew so well. “Just the shorts?”

“I plan to be inside you within the next three minutes,” I said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

She glanced at the open bedroom door, and I saw the thought flash behind her eyes: Yolanda and Will would be back any minute, and if we were going to fuck, we would have to be quick about it.

I thought she might refuse, and say it was too risky, but instead she unbuttoned her shorts and shoved them to the floor, and I saw that she wasn’t wearing any underpants.
Christ
.

Everything she did drove me insane. I had never understood, before, why men did idiotic things because of women—the cheating, the promises, the acrimonious divorces. But now it made sense. Sasha was sexual catnip, and I was powerless to resist her. I didn’t want to.

As I watched, she slid one hand between her thighs, her fingers dipping inside, and I realized she was checking to see if she was wet enough.

I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath, forcing myself not to lose control. Then I went for my wallet, and the condom I had tucked inside.

“Ooh, Mr. Turner,” she said, when I tossed the foil packet on the bed. “Have I been a bad girl?”

“Be quiet,” I said sharply. I wasn’t one of her idiot clients, and I hated it when she played the cooing bimbo. I took a step toward her and seized her wrist, drawing her hand from between her legs and replacing it with my own. She was swollen and slick already, and the little gasp she made when my fingers bumped over her clit made my cock throb in my trousers.

I wouldn’t wait any longer. I walked her backward, forcing her to stumble toward the bed, and when her knees hit the edge of the mattress, she went down, falling onto her back with another gasp. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and smirked at me, naked from the waist down, legs splayed to show me her pink slit, and I had never wanted a woman as much as I wanted her in that moment.

I unfastened my trousers and shoved them and my boxer-briefs down to mid-thigh. Sasha’s gaze veered downward as I took myself in hand and stroked firmly. My fingers felt good, but not as good as I knew she would feel around me.

The condom had fallen close to the edge of the bed. I seized it and tore open the foil, and rolled the latex sheath onto my dick. I hated condoms, but they were a necessary evil. Someday I would fuck Sasha bare and make a mess out of her wet little cunt.

For now, this would do.

I hooked my hands around her thighs and tugged her until her ass rested at the edge of the bed. She looked up at me, face flushed, hair sticking to her forehead, as I pressed one knee almost to her shoulder, opening her to my gaze. She was slutty and sexy and gloriously debauched, lying there blushing like a virgin, waiting for my cock.

“Hurry up,” she said, and squirmed, and I slid home in one smooth thrust.

She was so tight and hot that I had to close my eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths to avoid embarrassing myself. Then I rolled my hips against her, a slow, aching glide.

She arched her back and groaned, long and low, and reached up to pinch her nipples through the thin fabric of her t-shirt.

Christ. What a siren. I was Odysseus, bound to the mast of my ship, yearning toward her with every fiber of my being.

It was too soon to say if I would find safe passage or be dashed to pieces against the rocky shore.

I bent forward and spoke again her ear. “Sassy, I want you to touch that sweet little pussy of yours and get yourself off. I want you to come on my dick while I fuck you. You’re going to do that for me, aren’t you, sweetheart?”