Chapter 9

 

Jax

 

It’s going to be a masterpiece.

Every one of my buildings is, but the super-rich producer who commissioned this particular one already owns several mansions, and gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted to do just happened to be create the best damn building the west coast has ever seen. A mansion so beautiful you feel happier just being inside it. A mansion so breathtaking it demands you become a better person if you want to live there. A mansion so overwhelmingly elegant you could have people take a walk through it as a therapy session. A mansion I’ve recently - and secretly - codenamed ‘Lizzie.’

Aptly, everything is falling into place nicely. I make the rounds, exchanging dirty jokes with the construction teams, and ironing out details with the decorators.

I see Luce out back by the pool, scribbling notes onto a clipboard.

“Hey,” I say, walking up to her.

“Hey yourself,” she says, writing a few more words down and then looking up at me.

“’Hey yourself’? Is that a thing now?”

Luce shrugs.

“Did you know Santos’ wife is six months pregnant? We’re going to need—”

She cuts me off. “Another foreman to come in and learn the ropes before he disappears? Yeah. Already on it, Jax.” Luce shoots me a smug smile. I return it with one that’s genuine. I haven’t been this excited about a project in a long while.

“That’s my girl.”

“Ha! Sometimes I think I’m the only one who isn’t your girl.”

“There’s still time,” I shoot back. I give her that sexy-as-fuck cock of my eyebrow, the one I should get trademarked. But she just laughs it off.

“They do say Hell lasts an eternity,” she says, with a grin. “You look tired, Jax. That rejection still weighing on your mind?”

“What rejection?” I say, with an exaggerated expression of surprise.

“You know exactly who I mean!”

“Oh, the girl who was in my pool a couple of nights ago? And in my car last night? I’d say my mind’s at ease.”

Luce groans, then points to the front of the mansion where she wants us to walk. “And here I was hoping you would have a revelation.”

“It’s a revelation, alright. She…” I lower my voice as we squeeze through a corridor full of builders. “She wants me to teach her the ‘ways of the flesh.’”

We emerge into the large lobby, where Luce has enough room to spin around in front of me so I can see her train-stoppingly amazed expression.

“Are you kidding?”

I shrug. “I don’t lie. I don’t need to.”

“That’s a bad deal, Jax.”

“For her? Probably.”

“That’s going to bite you in the ass. Big time.”

I smile. “We haven’t got to the ass-biting lesson yet. But thanks for the suggestion.”

“You’re an asshole. How many times have you been together?”

“Three, maybe four times.”

“In the last three days?”

I shrug. Technically it’s only the second official day of our one-week bargain, but I don’t mention that part to Luce. I want to keep my balls, thanks very much.

Luce shakes her head, spins around as if looking for a witness, then faces me again; all pointy fingers and preachy conviction.

“Firstly, that’s a long-term relationship by your standards. Secondly, she’s going to fall in love with you, you dick.” So much for keeping my balls.

“Come on…”

“How many times have we had that conversation? The one where you meet a woman, do—” she gestures towards my body, “whatever it is you do, and then can’t shake her off?”

“But—”

“Remember the girl who kept baking muffins and bringing them to the construction site?”

“They were good muffins.”

Luce rolls her eyes. “Remember the one who hired a private detective?”

“Ok, but that was—”

“What about the girl who scratched her name into my car because she thought I was your wife?”

I laugh. “That was funny. Come on.”

“And they were just one-night stands. You’re seeing this girl.”

“I’m not ‘seeing’ her. Lizzie’s not like that. She’s cool.”

But Luce just crosses her arms and shakes her head again. “It’s scientific, Jax. Women fall in love with men who make them come. That’s just a fact.”

I shuffle on my feet, enjoying the way Luce’s face looks so stern when she’s in full lecture mode. She should have been an inner-city school teacher.

“What me and Lizzie are doing is very clear, very up-front, very honest. It’s just sex.”

Luce steps back and squints at me like I’ve got the world’s hardest sudoku puzzle scrawled on my forehead.

“Wow,” she says, shaking her head, “how can a man so good at getting women into bed, understand so little about them.”

Shouts from the driveway interrupt us as supplies are wheeled in.

“I’ll go,” Luce says, “you just… stand in the corner or something. And think about what you’ve done.”

I nod my sarcastic appreciation and watch her march over to the supply truck. Five feet seven of hurricane. I really should hook Luce up with someone.

As I mosey out of the lobby and onto the grounds that surround the mansion, I pull out my phone. Just talking about Lizzie makes me horny. Usually, when you hear someone’s name, you remember their face, but when I hear Lizzie’s name, I think of her entire body. I remember the way she worked my cock in the car and wonder if I should break my rule of doing the same thing twice – it was that good.

Still got your lipstick on my dick, I type, then text it to her. I’m grinning as I send it, picturing her face. Hoping she’ll make that sly one, the guilty pleasure one, the one that says ‘I really shouldn’t be liking this as much as I am.’

I’m still smiling when I look up, and see two figures in front of me. The owners. Mr. and Mrs. Denton. He’s a likeable guy with good taste – as you’d expect from someone who’d hire me. He’s into the finer things, maybe a little too much, if you go by the slight paunch under his silk shirt. As for her…Well, I have no idea where she’s from, but if you told me it was a thirteen year old boy’s older woman fantasy, it would make perfect sense. She’s about thirty percent boobs, thirty percent blond hair, and thirty percent botox. Luckily, her husband makes enough money for her to get the good kind, so instead of her face looking like it was carved out of candle wax, she’s just permanently fixed into a cat-like expression of disdainful superiority.

“Jax?” Mr. Denton says, offering his hand; which I almost don’t notice, after being confronted by his wife’s extraordinary cleavage. It almost feels like it deserves its own introduction.

“Mr. Denton, nice to see you.”

“Please, call me Michael. You’ve not met my wife, have you? This is Jacqueline.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say. She offers her hand to be kissed, and I do so, even though I’m still pretty certain we’re in LA, and not seventeenth century France.

“The pleasure’s mine,” she says, in that kind of lusty purr older women have. Those older women who’ve consumed more than their fair share of cocktails and men. Those women who reached a sexual peak in their thirties, but never really came down off of it.

“It’s looking wonderful!” Michael exclaims, gesturing around him.

“It will be wonderful. Everything is well on-track.”

“I have to thank you again. I heard you were good, but this is so much better than I anticipated. Isn’t it darling?” Michael says, looking towards his wife.

Her eyes are fixed upon me, and she’s smiling like she’s imagining something delightful. “Much better than anticipated. Absolutely.”

Michael is about to start another sentence when his phone rings. “Excuse me a moment, I have to take this.”

“Of course,” I say, allowing Michael to walk off into a secluded spot, and leaving me in the presence of the woman attached to those boobs.

Jacqueline’s smile gets about ten degrees more naughty, and she eyes me slowly from head to toe. Me? I’m just trying to keep my eyes anywhere but her boobs, which is tough when they take up most of my field of vision.

“My husband’s always so busy,” she purrs slowly.

“Men as successful as him usually are,” I reply.

She puts a hand on my shoulder and takes a step on those giant heels towards me, her face inches from mine.

“You’re successful. Are you always so busy?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I’m nowhere near as successful as your husband.”

“Oh,” Jacqueline growls, almost in my ear, “I’m sure there are many, many things you can do better than my husband.”

My cellphone emits the message tone with such perfect timing I’m wondering if Miles Davis sent it.

“I should take this too, actually. It was very nice to meet you. I’ll send my assistant, Luce, over to show you around,” I say, eagerly extracting myself from the gigantic breasts she’s pressing against me.

I gesture a goodbye to everyone, leave a quick message to pass on to Luce, and make my way to my car, where I check out the phone message:

I can still taste you in my mouth. And a picture of herself, from her nose down to her navel – in a sheer lace bra, one hand clutching her breasts, her tongue licking her upper lip in a half-snarl.

Daaamn. A woman’s hotness usually disappears after the first time, but Lizzie still gets me going like I’ve only scratched the surface.

For a few seconds, Luce’s warning reverberates around my head; echoing like a basketball in an indoor court. Am I sleepwalking into some bad news? I’m supposed to be teaching Lizzie how to be sexy, how to fuck as good as I do, but here she is sending dirty pics to my phone like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her.

A second message breaks my thoughts.

Still got anything to teach me? it says, just below another photo. She’s lying down on her front this time, the camera’s view going along the curve of her naked back, showing the sweet humps of her lace panty-clad ass, and her delicate ankles crossed girlishly in the air. Her face is still out of the picture, but I can see a few curls of her wavy hair, and the tiny muscles in her neck that make me wanna turn vampire.

Just thought of a few more things, I text back, before Luce’s voice comes back and spoils my vibe.

Lizzie takes a little longer than usual to reply, and when I get the message I see why. She’s sitting this time, sideways in the picture, her knees up under her chin, her breasts inches away from her thighs. Ready when you are, is all it says.

Tonight. My place. I text back.

Her reply is quick. Just a picture of her lips, slick with gloss and pouting as if blowing a kiss. It’s the hottest one yet. I turn the keys, rev the car, and ram it down the road about as fast and as hard as I’d like to ram myself in her.