The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (14 page)

Shawn waggled his plastic fork. “This and that. You know me. Hey, you want to hang out sometime? Two lonely losers recounting their woes?”

That depends. Are you going to tell Carly I’m stalking you?
I thought.

Something in my face must have showed because he said, “Not a date date. I mean a friend date. We could hang out, make each other feel better.” He looked me up and down. I wasn’t wearing my “weekend clothes” like I usually did, a man’s chambray shirt and my old cardigan and jeans and running shoes, the clothes I’d worn in college. I was wearing a strappy summer dress with big sunflowers on it and summery white slingback heels. Just because I wasn’t a courtesan anymore didn’t mean I couldn’t dress like one. I could see in his mind that he was thinking
friends…with benefits
. “We could see a movie or hang out on my couch or whatever.”

“Or I can stay the night,” I said, surprised by the boldness and throaty depths of my voice. “And I could throw you to your bed and fuck your brains out.”

Shawn looked shocked and interested. I could tell he never expected me to say such a forward thing. I was the good girl, and good girls don’t talk like that. He tried to look at my face, but his eyes kept dropping to my cleavage like metal filaments attracted to a magnet. “Well, sure. I guess, if you want. I mean, I ain’t gonna say no to
that
, babe, but…you gonna turn all Pippi Longstockings on me and tell me to stop?” Again that roguish smile.

“That depends. Are you going to bang the hell out of me and then tell everyone I won’t leave you alone?”

Shawn’s face darkened and I could tell he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Look…whatever you’ve heard…”

I held my hand up for silence. I gave him steady eyes. “I’m sorry, Shawn, but I’m not sitting on your couch while you paw at my boobs like some sex-crazed sixteen-year-old who’s never been with a girl. And I’m not letting you bang me so you can tell everyone afterward what an easy lay I am. I don’t exist to stroke your ego. I’m worth a lot more than that, don’t you think?”

Anger crowded Shawn’s face. I’d thought he was handsome once, dangerous and wild looking, but there was something desperate in his eyes that reminded me of Brian. “Shit, you’re still a tight-ass, aren’t you, Evie? Even after all this time.”

“I’m not a tight-ass, Shawn. I just deserve better than you. I won’t be your booty call until something better comes along. Enjoy the Futomaki.”

I picked up my empty tray and stalked away.

***

Once out on the street, I hailed a cab, which I almost never do. I usually took the subs, but I didn’t want any delays. I gave the cabbie the address of the Sterling Building and arrived in less than ten minutes, which was good, because my courage hadn’t slipped just yet. I breezed through the ground floor and took the elevator to the penthouse suite where I knew Mr. Sterling would be working. He worked seven days a week, rain or shine.

When I got off the elevator, I saw the perfect blonde receptionist look up as I approached the big glass desk. She put her hand over her cell and said, “Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need an appointment.”

She frowned. “I need to see an appointment card if you want to see Mr. Sterling.”

I leaned against her desk and said, “I’m Mr. Sterling’s professional courtesan. I don’t need an appointment to see him!”

That shut her up. I marched past her and down the long, familiar hallway to his office. I didn’t knock. I grabbed the door and let myself into his vast, ice-white suite. It looked the same as when I’d been here the first time, except that the art had changed. Much of it had been replaced with my shoot from a week ago, not the private stuff, but the pictures of me in the nightgown, posing demurely amidst the furs in a way that made me look like some silver screen actress no one had ever heard of before.

Ian Sterling sat at his vast glass desk, staring down morbidly at his laptop. He was dressed in a dark, pinstriped suit better suited to mourning, his hair gelled back professionally and silver wire frame glasses on his face. He worked with his fierce blue eyes pinned to the computer screen, but with one hand he played with a long string of saltwater pearls wound through his fingers. They were slightly pinkish, real pearls, and I immediately recognized them. They were my grandmother’s pearls, and I stopped to think about that. Had he really combed the entire playroom at the Dollhouse and found every last pearl that had been lost? Had he really put them all back together? Had he really kept the necklace?

I stopped with the door open behind me, the cool air swirling around my ankles and under my dress, and waited for him to look up. His face was crowded with annoyance at being disturbed, but his expression quickly changed to surprise when he realized I wasn’t his receptionist.

“You let me go,” I said. “Why did you let me go?”

He looked confused, then angry. I realized that anger was his mask, the same as my empty smile was my mask. He wouldn’t let me inside. He wouldn’t let
anyone
inside. It made him vulnerable. In that way, he was just like me. He liked his pain. He held it close, coveting it, and he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. It was his power, his talisman, his armor, maybe his sole purpose for living.

“You didn’t call,” I said in a softer voice. “I did that photo shoot for you,” I indicated the pictures, “and you didn’t even call me to tell me you liked it or hated it or thought I was ugly, or just to go to hell.”

His face was a rock, but he said, low, “I don’t hate it, Evelyn. You’re a beautiful woman...”

“But not as beautiful as the others, obviously.”

His face darkened with insult. I could feel his anger
radiating
from across the room like a shockwave. “What
others
?”

His anger was like some contagious disease. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was shouting, “The other women! The ones Brian told me about!”

Mr. Sterling smiled, nastily. “And you believe Brian?” he said softly, the contempt dripping from his lips. “You give yourself to me. You let me in your body. You tell me you trust me…how many times, my dove? Yet you’re willing to take
Brian’s
word over mine when I have told you that I’ve waited three years for you?” He glared at me with glassy-eyed rage, expecting me to back down, to run away like last time. I didn’t. “What is wrong with you?” he shouted, finally. “I thought you were a smart girl, Evelyn. I thought you knew what it meant to me to be my courtesan. Obviously, I was wrong about you.”

“Obviously.” But I had started to cry.

He immediately stood up, the pearls clutched tight in his hand, as if he meant to go to me. But he forced himself to stop, to keep his distance. I could see how difficult it was for him to do that. He tried to sound harsh, but his voice came out nearly broken. “It’s obvious to me that the word of a stranger who tried to sexually assault you is more important to you than the words of your gentleman. Your lover.”

Lover.

I was crying now. The pearls…the pictures on the walls…I was starting to feel like a fool. I
was
a fool for believing Brian, I realized. And for not trusting my gentleman. My lover. I wiped the tears away on the backs of my hands. I knew I was making a mess of my makeup. I swallowed against the bitterness in my throat. “Why did you fire me?”

He slid back down into his seat and just sat there, staring at me with narrow, pain-filled eyes, the pearls in his hand. In his dark suit, with the pearls wound through his fingers, he looked like some wounded priest that had never quite found his salvation. “How could I have kept you after what happened at the Dollhouse? I’ve mistreated you. I’ve harmed you in negligence.” He stopped as if his words embarrassed him. “Brian hurt you…he made you scream…”

“He hurt me and you stopped him!”

“Not soon enough,” he stated imperially, as if he were passing final judgment over himself. He looked at the pearls in his hands. “I should never
have
left you alone…”

“And I shouldn’t have believed Brian!” I cried, and that silenced him. “So we were
both
wrong.” I took a deep breath to steady my rampaging heartbeat. I held his eyes so he would know I spoke truth. “I love you, Ian, but you have to stop this. You have to stop building these walls and hiding behind them. You have to stop doing this to yourself, and to me. You have to let this go now.”

His face looked like ice. His fingers tightened around the pearls until they squeaked in his grip. He looked like he wanted to speak. But I stepped forward and spoke first. “Your family died. I’m sorry they died, Ian. I am so sorry all this has happened to you, but there is nothing you can do about it. There is nothing you can do except to stop trying to die with them every day. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He sat there in silence for a very long time, his face impassive, watching me. I didn’t know if I was getting through to him or not. I didn’t even know if he cared about what I had to say. He was a powerful man. I was no one of consequence. I was no one but his courtesan, his lover. But after what seemed an eternity, the life started filtering back into his cold, hard face. It struggled to animate the muscles around his eyes and mouth as if he were fighting to come back from the dead. Finally, he looked at me in that way he had. It was a hungry look. A very male look. He licked his lips and said, “Too forward, Evelyn.”

“I can be a very forward girl,” I told him.

An impulse seized me. It wasn’t an impulse that good girls have, but often enough, good girls finished last. I looked at my lover a long moment. I took in his beauty and his rage. I didn’t care if he blew fire and smoke at me, if he tried to burn me up. I wasn’t afraid of him anyone. I took a deep, shuddering breath to steady myself and stalked across the room in my heels. I swayed my hips a little as I approached him, trying to be as aware of my body as Devon was of his. I knew I was pretty from the pictures on the walls. Maybe not beautiful, maybe never that, but I was pretty, and I was what he wanted. I was what he needed.

Along the way, I stumbled over the damned glass chair again, but I caught myself on the edge of Mr. Sterling’s desk. I stood up straighter, recovering myself. I would not be deterred. Not by Brian. Not by dragons. Not by glass furniture.

Mr. Sterling watched me approach. I could see the hunger building in his eyes, the way he tracked me like some hunting animal scenting prey. As I reached him, he turned in his seat to meet me. His big hand closed over the side of my neck, frantic to touch, to hold me, to subjugate me to his hungers, but I was faster than he. I climbed into his lap, straddled him, gripped the back of his neck, and kissed him, hard. I kissed him like I meant to consume him. Like I meant to breathe into him, to give him life from my life, breath from my breath. I licked the seam of his lips, then kissed him again, driving my tongue deep into the wet velvet heaven of his mouth. I controlled the kiss, flickering my tongue in and out of his mouth and over his teeth until I could hear a low, throaty noise vibrating in his chest.

His hand went to the back of my head. He gripped huge fistfuls of my hair in his almost painfully powerful grip. He tried to drag me back so he had access to my throat, my breasts, all of me, but I refused to let him have his way this time. He needed to learn that he couldn’t always be in control of everything around him, including me.

I bit his bottom lip and he grunted, his grip loosening on my hair. I looked him in the eye, not a friendly look. Not a very submissive one, either.

“Evelyn…”

“Hush.” I attacked the side of his neck, kissing him but also biting him there, hard. Hard enough that I felt him lurch in surprise and heard the low groans of pleasure building in his voice. I kept my one hand on the back of his neck to hold him in place while the other moved down the central line of his body until I’d reached the front of him. He was huge against me, hard and hot, and so very alive. I gripped him through his trousers until I felt his sharp intake of breath and the delight of his shock. Then I went to work attacking the front of his trousers until his heat and strength poured into my hand.

I gripped his cock, both hard and soft in my hand, and stroked the familiar length of him. He trembled in my grip. He responded deliciously, leaning back in his seat so I had room to wriggle upward in his lap and slide the skirt of my dress up to my waist. He moved his hands down my body to my hips to steady me. He helped me guide myself down upon him. He was so big I knew it would hurt a little, but I was wet, and the nagging ache inside me hurt more. 

I looked him straight in the eye as I took him inside me. I slid down a couple of inches, impaling myself on his cock, before moving upward again. I repeated the action. I slid down the length of him and let him feel my inner muscles gripping him tight before sliding to the top of him again, almost but not quite letting him go. I moved with deliberate slowness, controlling his rhythm and my own. His fingers gripped me fiercely and his eyes sparked like chips of blue ice as he arched his hips upward, trying to reach deep inside me. But I only lifted myself up higher. I rested my hands on his shoulders and held him down while I made that up and down movement again. I fucked him slow and hard, over and over, until his breathing caught in his throat and he strained against me, his eyes rolling almost all the way up into his head.