Chapter 7

Rainier

I stare after Good Girl, grind my teeth together, and whirl on Rex, dark eyes blazing. “Tell me you have some kind of developmental disease,” I beg him. “Tell me you can’t read a single social cue to save your life, and I won’t have to drown you in the toilet.”

“You honestly didn’t—?” Rex splutters, looking at the rippling drapes and then back at me.

“Didn’t what? Didn’t expect you to barge into my villa on Thanksgiving night? Didn’t ever even hint that I might want to have a threesome with you while here? Didn’t—?”

“That was Ella! You didn’t know it was her?” Rex answers, flinging his hands in the air. His cheeks redden. “You didn’t even recognize her, you prick!”

I scoff. “Don’t be stupid,” I say. “Ella is with her family. She couldn’t possibly be here. They just look alike.”

“I’m telling you, that was Isabella Petit.”

I examine Rex more closely. His chest rises and falls. His eyes are manic and insistent. My lip kinks and I scoff at him. I know this look. This is how he always gets when he wants something new.

“You want her, too,” I realize. I excused their every interaction as friendly but should have known better. So few men are truly friendly. Then it clicks. He said he wanted to get certain women invited this year. And now, here he is, insistent that I was just with my own assistant.

Tell me about her, Good Girl begged.

“You got her an invitation, didn’t you?” I accuse him.

Rex’s eyes darken and he shrugs. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“You wouldn’t say that? What kind of omission is that, Rex? Did you give her an invitation? Say yes!”

“No!” Rex snarls at me.

“That’s right, you little bitch,” I tell him. “You wouldn’t give Ella an invitation because you’d be directly violating our company’s policies. You’d be jeopardizing your career and mine. So, I’m going to ask you again, Rex.” I take a measured step toward him, eyes flaring. “Did you give Ella an invitation?”

Rex swallows. “No,” he whispers, “but she is Good Girl. Somehow, some way, she’s here, Rex. I recognize her.”

There’s a part of me that wishes it could believe Rex. Then life would be so much simpler. Good Girl is just a brunette with hazel eyes. A virgin who was waiting for me...

I gulp. Christ.

My eyes pin to Rex. “I don’t believe you,” I confess simply.

“What?”

“I don’t believe you, Rex. I believe that you did ensure my assistant, Isabella Petit, received an invitation to Mystique, even though you knew I would be here. Even though you know what goes on here. And for reasons I still can’t quite fucking comprehend... she accepted that invitation and came.” I shake my head softly at him. “But she didn’t come here to see you. She came here to see me.”

Rex’s eyes narrow and his jaw clenches. He exhales through his nose. “You know that?” he asks. “She said that?”

“When I approached Good Girl,” I tell him, “she said she was waiting for me. One of the men at the feast said she wouldn’t let another man touch her. So, if Good Girl is Ella... She came for me, Rex. Not for you.”

Rex considers me with contempt in his eyes. Of course. I recognize the look immediately—a look I’ve seen many times but never expected to see from him. He wants to spar for the girl.

I shake my head at him, knowing that it won’t do anything but ruin our relationship here, the business with it. She wants me and me alone. I’m sure of that. I see her fevered working on my staff with new eyes now. That was why she insisted that I fuck the woman from my office when I return.

Because she doesn’t want it to end.

“Naturally, you think that,” Rex says, shaking his head. “You always assume that women want to be with you first.”

“They do,” I promise him. I’m not a fool. Anyone could sense it.

“Yeah, well, not Ella.” Rex stalks through the drapes and out onto the walkway again. “You can’t fake a smile like that. Eyes like that. We’re in masks. She was confused.”

Damn, poor Rex. He takes care of himself, but his body can’t compare to mine. I’m much broader, much more chiseled, and our jaw structures are different. Our noses are different. There’s no way Ella accidentally fucked me, if she was waiting for Rex all along.

“Sure,” I say. Whatever. “Listen, Rex... Ella has been my assistant for four months now. She’s... she really is a good girl. I don’t want anything to come between us. Nothing needs to be complicated. If that was Ella—” And, looking back, I see with increasing clarity that it must be her. “—then we will both respectfully decline her, and allow her to enjoy her visit to the island. That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

Rex barks out a laugh. “I’m not a gentleman. She came here for me, Rainier. And I came here for her.”

“Didn’t you see us on the couch when you came in?” I wonder. “I was balls deep in her. She didn’t come here for you.”

“She was confused,” Rex reiterates. “You’ll see. Trust me.”

“Let her cool off. I think you embarrassed her,” I call out, chasing him down on the walkway and circling his shoulders with my arm. “Okay? Tomorrow, we can get it all straightened out, if anything even needs to be said. We’re all adults here. I’m sure there’s an easy solution.”

“No.” Rex tries to shake my arm but doesn’t exert enough effort and stays under it. Instead, he stops and casts me a miserable, sick look. “I have to talk to her right now. I’m in love with her, Rainier. You wouldn’t get it.”

I blink. “I guess not,” I say. Love isn’t really my thing, is it? This was just sex. Accidental sex.

“She’s perfect,” Rex insists. “I am going to find her again before the weekend is over. But—I guess I could let her relax and get some sleep, for now.”

“That’s kind of you,” I assure him, clapping my hand on his shoulder twice. “I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. M.”

“In the A.M., Mr. H.”

After Rex leaves, I stretch out on my bed and stare at the ceiling, mind percolating with all kinds of things. Ella’s naked, masked body is a fine sheen laid across my every thought. I can’t shake her hourglass figure, that thick, kinky chestnut hair, or her prismatic hazel eyes from my thoughts. Her lips, swollen and succulent from blowing me. Her pussy, sweet and smoky, like salted caramel…

I came here to get away from her, yet here we are. My dick still smells like her and I pull in a deep breath and release, clenching my jaw. Like some hopeless prick addicted to cigarettes, or anything else that might kill him.

Ella.

And she wants me, too… all this time…

Those tight skirts. The fleeting looks. Bending over my desk and then glancing back at me like she wants a hard spanking. None of it was an accident. I wasn’t being the dirty one; she was. We both were. But I thought it was just me. I thought I was losing my mind with lust… and I was.

And Rex was the one who invited her here. He’s going hunting for her tomorrow. Possibly quite literally. He has no finesse. He bashes until he breaks through whatever wall is in his way.

But this time, the wall is me.

And I’m immovable.

I know that I shouldn’t, and neither should Rex. It’s against the ironclad company policies, the same policies that we both used to swear by. It jeopardizes the career of a hardworking young girl who didn’t ask for any of this…

Until tonight.

Now she’s asking for it.

And I can’t say no.