Eden
I sit with folded legs in a battlefield of wedding paraphernalia: invites and magazines and brochures and fabric samples. They spread around me like I’m a detective trying to solve a particularly difficult crime: a mad detective you see a lot on TV nowadays. And maybe this is a particularly difficult case, if not a crime. Planning a wedding is no easy thing. I’ve discovered that over the past few weeks.
Nat emerges from the kitchen with two cups of steaming coffee. She comes over often in the mornings. Her shift pattern has changed at work. I’m sure it’s because Markus often comes by in the mornings, and she wants to be there to see him.
She places my coffee next to me. “Did you take him grocery shopping?” Nat laughs as she sits on the floor opposite me, on the other side of the battlefield.
“Oh.” I grin ruefully when I remember the state the kitchen had been in when I first moved into Maddox’s apartment. The cupboards and drawers had been bare. There had even been cobwebs in some of them. Cobwebs! Like this is some kind of Victorian mansion! I guess Maddox never ate at home much before we were engaged.
“How could you guess?”
“The green Thai tea was a slight giveaway. I can’t imagine a man like Maddox drinking that. I remember when Markus and I went to a restaurant last weekend and I tried to explain what all the forks and knives were for. He couldn’t understand it. Really, it was a whole thing. He looked down at them after I’d explained, and then he’d shrugged, gathered all of them up apart from one knife, one fork, and one spoon, and dropped them in the middle of the table.”
“I bet you loved that,” I say.
“I did, actually,” she grins. “I don’t know what half those knives and forks are for, either.”
We laugh and then Nat says, “Right, Miss Chase, have you decided where the thing is going to be held yet? The way you’re umming and ahhing, you’d think you didn’t want to be married!”
“Shut your mouth!” I cry, as Nat winks at me, a little devil. “You know I want to be Maddox’s wife more than anything.”
“Then . . .” She waves her hand over the field.
“I know,” I sigh. “But I want it to mean something. The place . . . I want it to have some kind of value to Maddox and me. My first thought was at the club, but of course we can’t do it there now. He’s dead-set on retiring, and to be honest, I don’t really want to stop him. By the way, I haven’t asked. How do you feel being with the leader of The Miseryed?”
“The same as you felt, I imagine,” Nat says.
“Like it doesn’t matter, and the man is more important than the title?”
“Exactly.”
“The other place I was thinking is . . . Oh, you’ll laugh.”
“No, go on.”
I’ve rolled this idea over in my head a few times, and each time it has seemed both silly and appealing at the same time. The problem is, sooner or later the brainstorming stage of this wedding will have to end, and I’ll have to make a certain decision.
“The coffee shop, where we first met,” I say. “That’s my idea. I know!” I bark it quickly before Nat can even react. “I know, it’s silly. Who gets married in a coffee shop? But let me explain. When Maddox came in, I thought he was a jerk. A real jerk. The jerkiest jerk who ever jerked. Right? But for some reason, I waited outside for him. Looking back, I have no clue why. Except that he was hot, I suppose. But it was completely out of character. But now I am the woman who waited for him, you know?”
Nat nods along, but I can tell I’m not making much sense. My scatterbrain quick-fire often has that effect on her.
I sigh, ordering my thoughts. “Okay,” I say. “It’s like this. The moment I decided I’d wait outside the coffee shop for Maddox, I became a different person. At first, it scared me; it doesn’t now. I think getting married there will be like a big declaration: I’m comfortable with who I’ve become!”
I watch Nat’s face. I know, no matter what, she’ll say it’s a good idea. But I have to wait for her reaction to know what she really thinks. I have no problem with Maddox. Maddox would get married in the back alley of a restaurant if I asked him to. Maddox just wants to be with me. Like many people, he fails to see the symbolism of marriage. Hell, I failed to see the symbolism of marriage before I was doing it.
Nat thinks it over, and then she begins to nod slowly. A light switches on in her eyes. “It could work,” she says. She speaks somberly, not at all in her usual squeak, which is how I know she’s telling the truth. “Yes, I think it could work. And the coffee shop . . . it’s not a big chain one, is it?”
“No, it’s a hipster one. Family-owned, maybe.”
“A hipster-family-owned coffee shop glad for a one-time cash injection? That type of coffee shop?”
“Exactly!”
“So do we have it decided?” Nat says. She’s getting giddy, her legs itching to leap up and squeal.
“We have it decided,” I say.
Nat leaps to her feet and jumps across the papers to me, reaches down, and pulls me to my feet.
We’re dancing like this when Maddox comes into the apartment.
“Has something happened?” he asks.
I tell him, and he just smiles softly.
“I’d get married anywhere,” he says. “But I have to admit, I like that.”
***
“Where are we going?” I ask as we ride the elevator down the apartment building.
“I told you. It’s a surprise.”
“Don’t you think I’ve had enough surprises?” I say. I kiss him on the neck just below the ear, the place that drives him wild. He shivers, as he always does, but then he steps away from me.
“Don’t try your magic on me,” he says. “You won’t break me. I promise you that.”
“Oh, but you’re not the big boss man anymore,” I tease. “I’m not scared of you.”
It’s meant as a joke, but he looks at me seriously. “Good,” he says. “If you were scared of me, I think I’d die.”
“Wow,” I laugh. “Way to bring the tone down.”
He smirks, and then shrugs.
We ride into the middle of the city and then turn left so that we are near the hills. And then we stop outside of a large office construct. “We’re here,” he says.
My first thought is that he wants us to get married here. I don’t know why he would; he’s just said yes to the coffee shop idea. But when I try to come up with another reason, I hit a blank. Why else would he bring me to a—An idea hits me. But I dismiss it. He wouldn’t be able to afford it. He’s well off—hence the carte blanche with the wedding plans—but this is prime real estate, the sort of place huge companies buy.
“If you wanted to secretly murder me, Maddox, there are better places to do it.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” he grunts. “You know, Red, I never guessed how funny you’d turn out to be.”
We hold hands as we walk into the marble-floored reception. He leads me to the elevator; walking with the same swagger he walked with when I first saw him. That I-own-this-place swagger. Once upon a time, I found that awfully arrogant. Maybe I still do, but I like the arrogance now. Make no mistake. Maddox has changed me. For better or for worse, and ’til death . . .
In the elevator, I kiss him in the same place, and he shivers again. “You’re a wildcat, you know that?” he says.
“I know,” I breathe, knowing how the warm air will caress his skin. I love the power I can have over him with my sexuality alone. And I love the power he can have over me with the same weapon. It’s a beautiful give-and-take of lust and passion.
The elevator doors slide open onto a wide office space. The sort of office that could easily hold fifty or more people. At the far end is a closed-off room. The main office, I’m assuming, for the boss. Is this a new safe house for The Miseryed? I think. A new business opportunity? But then why bring me here?
He walks into the room and waves a hand over all of it, and then turns and grins at me.
“What?” I say. “I don’t get it.”
He rolls his eyes. “It is yours,” he says. “All of it. This is your new office for your video game company.”
“What—how—what—”
I gaze around the office again. “How?” I say, settling on the question. “How on earth did you afford it?”
He dances over to me, wraps his arms around my waist, and looks down at my face. “I’ve been a naughty boy,” he says. “I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He explains it all to me, starting with the backdoor into Mason’s finances, Socrates his contact, and ending with the bare fact that he now has over fifteen million dollars in the bank. “And no one will ever come looking for it,” he says. “Not with us, anyway. As far as Mason’s accountants will be concerned, it just disappeared into the massive ether of the Internet. Socrates is an expert. Not even the FBI could find him.”
“Fifteen million . . .” I draw in a deep breath. My head is rushing. My heartbeat is pounding to the end of my fingers. “Maddox!” I scream. “Maddox!”
He leans back. “My ears, Eden. Give me a break.”
I disentangle myself from him and skip to the main room at the end of the office. It’s large and empty, but already I can imagine myself sitting behind a large desk tapping away at code. I see a wedding photograph on the desk, my degree on the wall, and maybe, over time, framed photographs of video game awards. I walk into the office and turn in a circle, painting it into life with my mind.
Maddox stands at the door, watching me with bright love in his face. “Are you happy?” he says.
“Happy?” I laugh. “Happy? I don’t know if that covers it, to be honest.”
“I hope you realize that I’ll be riding your coattails now,” he says. “I’ll be a kept man. Oh—and there’s one other thing. The Miseryed might sometimes use this place as a sort of tax loop.”
“Will that affect how it functions?” I ask.
“Not a bit.” He smiles as though my reaction is a great relief.
“Then there’s not a problem,” I say.
I skip to where he stands, reach down, and press my palm firmly against the front of his jeans. His cock presses against my hand. And then, in one quick movement, he reaches down and yanks my shorts and underwear down.
“Ah!” I squeal, jumping back into the office.
He walks toward me, kicking the door closed.
“Maybe I’ll let you control me for a while, if you’re lucky,” I say, stepping out of the jeans. His eyes are locked on my bare pussy, his nostrils flaring. “If you can keep up with me, that is.”
“I’ll give it my all, Red,” Maddox groans, and then reaches down and presses his finger against my clit. “I can promise you that.”