The Billionaire's Command (The Silver Cross Club) (5 page)

Growing up, whenever I couldn’t make a decision, my dad told me to flip a coin, and in the instant before it landed, I would know what I really wanted. The man in the suit bent his head toward me, eyes closing, and I knew, then, that by not speaking, I had already made my choice.

I wanted him to own me.

He very lightly pressed his mouth against mine, the barest of pressures, and then lifted his head again. He looked satisfied, like we had just signed a contract. Maybe we had.

I forced myself out of my stupor. “Ground rules,” I said.

He laughed without humor. “Of course. How unsurprising. What am I allowed to touch: each leg below the knee?”

Was the reference to yesterday’s encounter meant to humiliate me? I couldn’t decipher the undercurrents of everything he said, and so I decided to ignore his subtle maybe-jabs. “You can touch whatever you want,” I said. “But I don’t touch you. That’s my main rule. Your pants stay zipped, and your clothes stay on.”

“Whore and Madonna in one,” he said. “Very well. What else?”

“If I say no, you stop.” I met his eyes, doing my best to convey exactly how much I wasn’t kidding around.

“And what else?” he asked.

“That’s all,” I said. “I’m not too high-maintenance.”

“Women always think that, and they’re always wrong,” he said. He removed his hand from my arm, and reached up to touch my wig, tugging gently at one of the curls. “Take this off.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to. The costume helped to keep Sassy separate from the real me. Without the wig on, I was just myself, ordinary Sasha, and I didn’t let the clients touch Sasha. Not a single one of them had ever seen me without the wig.

But the man in the suit had already seen me without it. It was too late to protect Sasha from him.

And maybe I didn’t want to.

I reached up and carefully removed the wig, sliding out the pins I used to hold it in place, and tossed it on a nearby chair. It would crumple like that, fall out of shape, and maybe be ruined.

Whatever. I had a spare.

I untied my real hair from the tight knot I had wrapped it into, letting it settle around my shoulders in thick brown waves.

“Much better,” he said. He tucked one strand behind my ear. “You don’t make a particularly convincing blond.”

Nobody had ever complained, but I wasn’t about to say that. Rule 6: don’t talk to your clients about your other clients. Everyone should think he’s the only man in your life.

I didn’t want to talk to him about my clients, or about my hair. Time to change the subject. “I don’t know your name,” I said.

“Do you need to?” he asked. He moved his hands to my waist and began working apart the knot in the belt of my robe.

I pulled away from him then. Things were moving too quickly. I needed a moment to get my bearings. I crossed the room to the bed and perched on the mattress, feeling it sink comfortingly beneath my weight. “I have to call you
something
,” I said.

“Sir,” he said, turning to face me.

I thought about it, calling him
sir
as he touched me, and felt an expected heat between my legs. I shifted awkwardly, unsettled by my response to him. I wasn’t in control of my body anymore, and I didn’t like it. With clients, I was always, absolutely, perfectly in control. Nothing they did affected me.

Everything this man did affected me.

“If you won’t tell me your name, I’ll have to come up with one for you,” I said. Screw rule 6. “One of my clients, I call him Sasquatch, because he’s very hairy. Another one is Lance Armstrong, because he cycles. And you—”

“Spare me the indignity,” he said. “You can call me Mr. Turner.”

“That can’t be your real name,” I said, echoing his words from earlier, “but I won’t press the matter.”

He laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. “It isn’t. You don’t need to know my real name.”

“That’s fine,” I said, and leaned back on one hand, lowering my eyelids seductively and arching my chest toward him. “We won’t be doing too much talking, anyway.”

He crossed his arms and gave me a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised. “Do you think you’re going to be in charge here, little girl?”

“I always am,” I said, sliding my free hand down to tug open the neck of my robe, just a little bit, just enough to give him a peek at my cleavage.

He moved so quickly that I didn’t have time to react. He crossed the room in two long strides and slung himself on top of me, his weight bearing me down into the mattress, and he captured my wrists in both hands and drew my arms above my head. He leaned down so that our faces were only inches apart, and said, “Sweetheart, you aren’t in charge anymore.”

I drew in a deep breath, fighting my first instinct, which was to panic. He was huge and heavy on top of me, and even if I fought, I wouldn’t be able to get away.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted to, anyway.

Men touched me. They did it all the time, and I was used to it. None of it meant anything to me. They sucked on my nipples, and I moaned theatrically and pretended that I couldn’t get enough, that I was desperate for more. It was all acting. It was like brushing my teeth, or painting my toenails: not unpleasant, but routine, mechanical.

But now, with “Mr. Turner” on top of me, I suddenly felt alive again.

Snap out of it
, I told myself sternly. He was still a client. I still had a job to do. I stretched beneath him as much as I could, arching my back slightly, pressing myself against the length of his body. “What are you going to do with me, sir?” I purred.

“Everything,” he said, and it was both a promise and a threat.

The heat between my legs intensified.

He pushed himself onto his elbows. One hand stayed clamped around my wrists, and the other untied the knot at my waist and opened my robe, spreading the silky panels onto the mattress and exposing my bare body to the air. He gave me a long, slow once-over, appraising my body like I was a race-horse he was thinking about buying. He slid his free hand from my shoulder to my hip, and my skin prickled in its wake.

I closed my eyes.

“You sweet thing,” he said. “Are you embarrassed? You don’t have any reason to be. Your tits are gorgeous, and I imagine your cunt has similar charms.”

His crude words should have annoyed me, but instead they increased my arousal. I was an object, a warm body that he would use for his pleasure, and it should have made me angry. I was a
person
. This was my
job
, not my purpose in life. I didn’t exist to satisfy any man’s sexual appetites.

But I wanted to satisfy his.

I was learning so many new and delightful things about myself.

Heavy sarcasm on the
delightful
.

“You could take a look at it and find out,” I heard myself say, lush and melting, the perfect whore, the perfect bedmate. Only this time I meant it.

“Mm, warm and willing,” he said. “How much of that is simply for show? I’ll have you dripping wet and begging for me.” His hand moved from my hip to my breasts, sliding across them like he was taking stock of his territory, and then he pinched one of my nipples so hard that I yelped and jolted beneath him.

“That
hurt
,” I said.

“I’m sure it did,” he said. “I think you liked it.” He bent his head and put his mouth to the same nipple he had just pinched, and flicked his tongue across it, teasing it into full hardness. He switched to my other breast and gave that nipple the same treatment, moving back and forth until I was shivering and cradling his head in my hands, wanting more, wanting everything, and unwilling to ask for it.

None of this, after all, was about
my
pleasure.

He pulled away at last and rolled to one side, freeing me. “Stand up,” he said. “I want to see you walk.”

I obeyed without thinking, and then teetered in my shoes as gravity sucked all the blood out of my head. “You want me to—walk?”

“That’s right,” he said. “I want you to walk to one end of the room and back, so that I can watch your ass.” He spoke slowly, like he thought I was kind of dumb.

Well, compared to him, I probably was. But I had something that he wanted, and I had years of practice at making myself appealing to men. Smarts weren’t everything. What was between my ears had never paid the bills. It was the stuff between my legs that mattered.

I spun and strolled across the room, very slowly, deliberately planting one foot directly in front of the other so that my hips swayed back and forth. I had a slim waist and a round ass, and I knew I looked good. When I reached the far wall, I stopped and looked back over my shoulder.

He was definitely staring at my ass.

The heat in his gaze sent a slow pulse of desire through my body. I had never wanted anyone to touch me so badly.

I turned again and walked back toward him with the same slow, deliberate steps. I watched his gaze flicker between my breasts and my hips, and I felt the same sense of power that I did when I was on stage. He was lying on the bed, propped up on one elbow, watching me, and as I came closer he sat up and moved to the edge of the mattress. I kept walking until I stood between his splayed thighs, close enough to touch, my bare body his to conquer.

I wanted things that I couldn’t even name.

“Very nice,” he said, and slid one hand over the crest of my hip and down to cup my ass, leaving trails of fire in its wake. He gave a firm squeeze and pulled me closer. “Your ass could make angels weep. Now tell me, Sassy Belle, what is it that you enjoy?”

What sort of a question was that? Did he mean in general, or during sex? I wasn’t even sure what I liked during sex. It had been years since I’d had sex that I wanted, and that was just adolescent fumbling with a boy I dated in high school. Not exactly sophisticated seduction. But I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, and so I dodged the question. “I enjoy
you
, Mr. Turner.” I looked up at him through my eyelashes, feigning shyness.

His grip tightened. “Spare me the flattery. I’m sure that works with most of your clients, but it won’t work with me. I asked you a question.”

I sighed. Fine: if he didn’t want the “oh you’re so handsome and the only man for me” act, I wasn’t going to bother playing nice. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me,” I said.

“Sexually,” he said. “I can’t imagine this is a difficult concept for you. You don’t let your clients fuck you, so what is it that you do with them?”

It was interesting that he thought my enjoyment had anything to do with how I interacted with my clients. “One of them likes me to read to him,” I said. “Naked.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You… read to him.”

I nodded. “I think he’s too old to, you know. So I read him erotica.”

“You fascinate me, Sassy Belle,” he said. “A whore who uses euphemisms for the act of coitus. Well, go on, then. Surely not all of your clients are too decrepit to take full advantage of what’s on offer.”

He was making fun of me. I crossed my arms, feeling oddly defenseless and exposed. None of my clients wanted to talk this much. Most of them just got straight to business: me naked, and their fingers in my pussy. I wasn’t sure what Turner expected me to do or say, and it made me nervous. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing. I shifted my weight onto one foot and said, “Some of them like lap dances.”

“Ah, a time-honored tradition,” he said. “And a clever way to get around your so-called ground rule. Must be hell on their cleaning bills, though. What else?”

God, was he going to make me list everything? We would be there all night. “One of them likes bubble baths.”

“Kinky,” he said. “What else?”

I sighed again. “You’re like that thing in Spain. When they tortured people.”

“The Spanish Inquisition,” he said, and when I nodded, he smirked and said, “You know, they say that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

His expression told me that he was making some kind of joke, but I didn’t get it. “Look, do you want to screw around or do you just want to listen to me talk about screwing around with other men?”

“You make a good point,” he said. “Let’s go with the former.” He curled his left arm around my waist, holding me there, and slid his right hand down between my legs to cup my overheated flesh. “Answer a question for me.”

“What?” I asked, a little breathless just from the pressure of his hand.

“Is your pussy wet for me already?” he asked, and without warning slid one finger inside me.

I gasped aloud, without meaning to, and my hands flew to his shoulders for balance. I
was
wet, and he easily sank into me until the base of his wrist was pressed firmly against my clit. He rolled the heel of his hand in a slow arc, grinding against me, and I gasped again and closed my eyes at the sensations that flooded through my body.

“Wet and ready,” he said, his voice interrupting the delirious state I had sunk into so quickly. I opened my eyes and met his gaze. He rotated his wrist again and said, “I think I can deduce what it is that you want.”