“Maybe I’m done with you for the day. Ever think of that?”
He rushes forward, coming so quickly that I freeze in place. I can see the rage in his eyes. Marco has never hit me, but he’s the first person I’ve ever been with who I could see someday crossing that line. There’s anger boiling within him that I know he can’t control. Whenever I’ve tried to talk to him about his temper, he brushes it off as passion.
He doesn’t touch me, but he stands right in front of my face. With the snarl of an animal he says, “Take your fucking robe off and get over there.”
I follow his command, hating myself every second of the next two hours that I stand naked before him. My only solace is fantasizing about my revenge.
Not two minutes after Marco vacates the apartment, I’m sending a text to the burner phone that Matthew uses only with me.
Want you. Now!!
The response is immediate and expresses equal urgency.
Four Seasons. ASAP
Less than half an hour later, Matthew opens the door to his hotel room wearing nothing but a robe. From our first kiss, I can feel him hard against my leg. His body is the way a man’s should be. Neither too muscular nor so slight you can feel his bones. And he has the exact right amount of chest hair. He reminds me in both respects of a young Sean Connery—maybe of Goldfinger vintage.
I trace my tongue around his nipples and then along the soft hairline that dissects his chest. I always stop just below his hip, running my hands across the scar in the shape of an M.
When I first happened upon it, I asked him how he received it. He told me a cock-and-bull story about a fight he had in college with a guy who pulled a knife. A month or so later, when I told him that the scar’s smooth edges didn’t look to be the result of a stabbing, he confided that he’d actually fallen on the sharp-cornered edge of a metal box.
Finally my mouth arrives at where he’s been aching for it to go. Like everything else about Matthew, I find this part of him to also be pure perfection. To change any of it—length, girth, texture, smell even—would be to lessen it.
He often tells me that I possess extraordinary oral skills. It’s a compliment I’ve heard before, and I’ve always just assumed that men are so thankful to receive it that they’ll say anything to keep it going. Still, Matthew usually has a frenetic energy about him, but when he’s in my mouth I can feel that he’s completely in another world, oblivious to everything. Much the way I am when the roles are reversed.
He pulls himself away and brings his mouth to mine. His hands on my breasts, his tongue everywhere—my earlobe, running down my neck, caressing my nipples. When he traces his mouth down the center of my body, I begin to tremble with the anticipation of what’s to come. I have no doubt that he knows how close I am by the way he holds back just as I’m about to hit the point of no return, only to resume again and bring me right to the edge without allowing me to cross over.
When he finally enters me, I’m more than ready to explode. He goes faster in response to my demand, trying to keep up with my pace. It doesn’t take more than a few strokes before I’ve reached the summit.
I have to confess that I’m never happier than I am with Matthew. And not just in bed, although that’s truly magical, but simply in his company. It’s the only time I feel like I’m really me, as corny as that sounds. Even with my sister, who is the closest I’ve ever come to this sense of true actualization, I sometimes feel like I’m playing a part. The little sister. The artist. The free spirit. With Matthew I’m allowed to be more complex, permitted to show the contradictions that define me on a daily basis, to express my insecurities without concern that I’m whining for no purpose, to dream about a future with him in which I’m happy.
In a word, I’m in love with him. Truly.
13.
I return to the office a few minutes before my 3:00 p.m. appointment with Paul Michelson. Stopping at the reception desk, I ask Ashleigh if my father is in.
“He’s in court,” she says.
“No, really, Ashleigh. Where is he? I’m not a client.”
She laughs. “No, he really is in court. Garkov.”
Right . . . the adjournment.
“Any news about your sister?”
“No.”
“Your father is . . . he’s taking this hard, I think.”
Ashleigh is a few years younger than me, closer to Charlotte’s age, I’d guess, but the four-decade age gap between her and my father doesn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t be romantically involved. That would certainly explain why she considers it appropriate to opine about the mental state of the head of the firm. I don’t want to engage her about my father, however, so I switch to business.
“Paul Michelson will be here any minute now. Please preclear him through security downstairs and put him in the conference room when he gets here.”
I’m sitting in my office for less than five minutes before Ashleigh calls to tell me that Paul has arrived. In that time, I’ve done some cyber-searching and found the press release issued this morning by the DA’s office about Jennifer Barnett.
It’s not good news for Paul. The police conducted a search of Jennifer Barnett’s apartment and found DNA and fingerprint evidence. As a banker with licenses to sell securities to the public, Paul’s fingerprints are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that means they now have proof that Paul’s been in Jennifer Barnett’s apartment. Not the most incriminating thing in the world, but when a male boss visits the home of his beautiful, twenty-two-year-old subordinate, most people reach a common conclusion as to why he was there.
When I arrive at the conference room, I see Paul sitting in the same seat as he did the last time we met. Like then, his back is to me. This time he quickly rises when I enter.
He kisses me as if we were old friends greeting each other at a party instead of a lawyer meeting with her client because he’s a person of interest in a potential murder. Being in Zach’s company has stripped me of whatever vestige of goodwill I previously had toward Paul. I now feel repulsed by the sight of him.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Paul says as I take the seat at the table’s head, the one my father occupied at our first meeting. “Given the situation with your sister, are you sure you want to do this?”
I have little doubt that his question is motivated more by his concern about our ability to represent him than for my well-being. That said, I can’t hold his self-interest against him too much. I wouldn’t want a brain surgeon to operate on me while her sister or daughter was missing either.
“My father and I discussed it, and we believe that we’re more than able to give you one hundred percent of our effort. If that changes, we’ll tell you. And, of course, if you want to move on from us, that’s understandable too.”