Chapter One

 

Tamara

“I can’t believe you’ve been working for Joshua Smith for sixty days and you haven’t seen his dick yet.” Heather, my best friend and neighbor from across the hall, says things like that all the time. And she’s dead serious.

It’s Saturday afternoon. I just got home from the battered women’s shelter where I volunteer once a week. I’m standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom-slash-living room-slash-kitchen, holding up various consignment store dresses to see which one flatters me the most. The mirror was reclaimed from an alley. Dumpster diving, that’s my jam.

“Heather!” I squawk, scandalized.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” she teases. She’s sitting on a folding chair at my tiny folding table, stroking on black nail polish. She’s come over to help me pick a dress for the party at Smith Acquisitions tonight. I’ll be working as a cocktail waitress, and I’m secretly hoping to knock Joshua’s cashmere socks off.

Although I’d settle for a glance and a friendly smile.

I put on my huffy, offended air. “I most certainly have not.”

“Yeah, you have.” She smirks at me knowingly and blows on her nails.

Yes, I have. All the time.

I mean, what straight girl with a pulse and a set of working ovaries wouldn’t swoon over him? The richest man in Manhattan… But that’s the least important thing to know about him. That classically gorgeous face, a Michelangelo carving come to life. That silky hair. All that icy sexiness wrapped in hand-tailored raw silk suits and shod in buttery-soft Italian loafers. His suits are bespoke. That means they’re not only hand-tailored, but they’re also designed, cut, and measured just for him. The fabric caresses his skin the way every woman wishes she could.

And the way he moves. He doesn’t walk—he stalks like a tiger, with lethal grace and an air of chilly aloofness that somehow makes him even more alluring.

And once, a couple of months before I started working for his company, he actually flirted with me.

Never since, though. Now I’m working at his company, apparently I’ve melted into the wallpaper and my vagina has vanished. I’m not a girl. I’m just another office drone to be ignored.

It’s not that I think I put Victoria’s Secret models to shame, but I’ve been told I’m attractive. I’m slim, I have small, round boobs, I have a nice thick head of chocolate-brown hair, thanks to my mother’s good genes, and my lips could legitimately be called “bee-stung”.

The first time I met Joshua, I’d been working as a cocktail waitress at a nightclub called Heaven, an extra gig I took on so I could afford my shoebox-sized studio apartment in Brooklyn. I was trying to make ends meet while waiting for September, when classes started. I was pre-law at NYU, on a full scholarship.

We were in the VIP room. I’d just dodged a man who tried to grab my ass while I expertly balanced a tray of glasses. As I shimmied through the crowd to get away from the ass-grabber, I almost walked right into Joshua.

I caught my tray just before it tipped over, and stared up at him. His ocean-blue eyes met my gaze and pierced the depths of my soul. My heart thudded against my ribcage, and I stood there blinking stupidly and gaping up at him as if I’d just stepped out of a convent and this was my first glimpse of a man.

I had no idea who he was at the time. I just knew he was the most gorgeous and terrifying person I’d ever seen in the flesh, bar none. He had silky blue-black hair and cruel, sensual lips. He was almost obscenely handsome, more like an airbrushed magazine ad than a person.

His dusky blue suit was accented with lavender pinstripes and a lavender tie.

“Very impressive,” he said. His eyes were as cold as an ice floe, but his voice was rich and warm. The disconnect was jarring. In the dim recesses of my mind, I knew which one was true and which one was the lie.

The eyes are the window to the soul. The warm caress of his words…it was a sweetly spun trap. A sticky spider’s web.

“Excuse me?” I said politely. “What’s impressive?”

His eyes crinkled with amusement. “The way you dodged him. You saw him out of the corner of your eye—you weren’t even looking at him straight on. Very impressive…reflexes.” His gaze drifted over my body. He left no doubt as to what reflexes he was talking about.

It was true. I had a sixth sense for danger—or at least, so I’d always thought. When you grow up in the kind of neighborhoods I did, it comes naturally after a while. I knew all about skirting the alleyways where faceless men skulked ready to lunge and grab, and the subtler peril of men gliding by in their beater cars and crooning obscene invitations. But, like most people, I’d never suspected that true terror would be wrapped up in an exquisite package like Joshua Smith. I’d thought the most I’d have to fear from a man like that was a broken heart.

“Thank you,” I murmured. “Can I get you another drink?”

“How did you know I’ve been drinking?” He wasn’t holding an empty glass. I could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“Oh, you’ve been here a while. I just assumed.” My cheeks heated.

“Liar.” He grinned at me. “But a very pretty liar.” His words were a teasing caress, stroking some secret inner part of me.

“Er…thank you, I think?” I looked up at him, intrigued. There was an air of danger about him, but the sexy kind of danger. The kind that said he’d throw me over his lap and spank me. Hold me down and thrust his knee between my thighs while I moaned “no” but meant yes. No man I’d been with had ever done that, and I suspected that was why I’d never had an orgasm yet. Plenty of frustrating neargasms, sure. But no Big O.

He cocked his head to the side. “Do you like to take orders?”

Oh God. Could he read my mind? My cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“You…you want me to take your drink order?” I mumbled.

His laugh was rich and gently mocking. “Sure, we’ll start with that. Go get me another shot of Macallan.” He waved at the bartender, who nodded at him. “He’ll put it on my tab.”

There was an idiot grin on my face as I hurried to get his drink. He’d called me pretty.

He took the drink and tipped me a hundred bucks without a second glance, then strolled away, leaving me feeling disappointed but oddly relieved.

Sure, he was blindingly handsome, but I could feel the menace rolling off him, even then.

He vanished into the crowd for the rest of the evening, until it was close to quitting time and I was cleaning up. Then he walked up to me.

“Tamara,” he said with that easy grin. Like I should be dazzled that he’d taken the time to find out my name.

And I kind of was.

“There’s an all-night speakeasy I’d like to take you to. My limo’s waiting outside.”

“Oh, I can’t. I have friends waiting for me.” My gaze dropped to the floor as I lied.

Why would I turn down an obscenely wealthy man who oozed sex and self-confidence, who might finally let me reach the heights of pleasure that I craved?

I think it was because I knew what he was asking for—one casual fuck, and then I’d be cast aside and forgotten. If he’d wanted to get to know me, he’d have gotten my phone number and asked me out on a proper date. Men like him didn’t have relationships with hood-rat girls like me. They used us like the towel that blotted the wet spot, and cast us aside just as easily.

It would be mind-blowing, no doubt, but it would leave me with an achy and empty feeling. I’d had a couple of brief encounters before, and they’d always left me feeling cruddy the next morning.

And him? If he was anywhere near as hot as I suspected, if he was exactly what I’d been looking for all along, he’d be like a drug, and I’d suffer endless withdrawal.

So I politely bowed out. There was a glint of disappointment in his eyes, but he just nodded and left without a word.

I thought that was the end of it until a week later, when I got a corporate brochure in the mail, with a picture of him tucked into it. And a blank job application. They were looking for temporary clerks over the summer.

I was giddy with excitement. Maybe he was just intrigued because I’d turned him down. But who cared why? He liked me! He really liked me! The fact that he’d taken the time to find out who I was and where I lived was beyond flattering. I went and applied for the job, and a couple of weeks later, I was working there.

But then things got weird.

From the day I set foot in that gorgeous Gilded-Age building on Fifth Avenue, Joshua never acknowledged me. He didn’t just ignore me; he completely iced me out. When I was in the same room with him, I could feel disdain rolling off him like a chilling fog. I didn’t understand it. If he wasn’t interested, why had he sought me out and invited me to work there?

As the summer dragged on, I had to accept the unflattering truth. Men like him wanted new toys and quickly grew bored with whatever they’d craved yesterday. He’d had a crush on me for a hot minute, and he’d got over it before he’d even bothered to sample the goods.

It stung, though. I kept wondering if it was something I’d done. But what? I hadn’t even had the chance to offend him.

I became mildly obsessed. I Google-stalked him, trying to find out everything I could.

What I found was all superficial. Company press releases. News reports on his company’s latest acquisitions. He was quite the mystery man. He was photographed at the most exclusive restaurants and nightclubs in New York, but the few interviews he’d given were just canned publicity features.

I only found one mildly helpful tidbit—a reporter on a forum claiming that after he’d written an unflattering piece about Joshua Smith, he’d been abruptly fired from his job.

And when I tried to look up the article that he’d written, apparently it had been erased from the internet.

I’m stubborn, though. I used the Wayback search engine, which archives old internet pages, and found the article. The reporter likened Joshua Smith’s company to a swarm of locusts, devouring everything in its path and leaving devastation and heartbreak behind.

He also talked about how Joshua had appeared from nowhere ten years ago, after graduating from a low-level Midwestern business school that was more a diploma mill than anything else. Joshua was so tight-lipped about his personal life that he didn’t even reveal his age. He looked to be late twenties to early thirties, but that was just a guess. Nobody knew anything about Joshua’s family, or where he’d grown up. There are 2.8 million people in the United States with the last name of Smith, the reporter mentioned, making it just about impossible to track down his family. The reporter seemed to be hinting that it was a made-up name, chosen deliberately to hide his origins.

Joshua wasn’t publicity-shy, though. He was frequently seen around town with various models and socialites, but never more than once with the same woman. In every picture, they were clinging to his arm and gazing up at him adoringly, and he was looking away.

I just couldn’t figure him out. And I’m insecure enough that his rejection rankled. I wanted to make him look at me one more time, acknowledge my existence, as if I were a little girl again, invisible, lonely, begging someone to make me real by noticing me.

When I heard that Smith Acquisitions was having a party for some of their bigwig clients, on a whim, I went to human resources and volunteered to waitress. I told them I’d had experience, and was delighted when they said yes.

And now Heather, who knows about my obsession, is trying to force me to make a move. “This is your chance tonight. Whenever you go to work, you’re wearing those god-awful pantsuits. But tonight you’ll be dressed up all sexy. You have to make a pass at him,” Heather informs me.

“Are you insane?” I laugh at her.

“Yes.” She smirks. “But that’s beside the point. You talk about him all the time. Carpe dickem, woman. Seize the dick.”

“Why are you so fascinated with Joshua Smith’s dick?” I select a black wraparound dress with a plunging neckline, and set the other dresses aside, draping them over the back of a chair. “Weirdo. Also, it’s supposed to be carpe diem. Seize the day. And if you’re so interested in his private parts, you go after him.”

“I’m not the one who’s in lurve,” she croons, drawing the word out.

“And neither am I. I’m merely mildly obsessed. What exactly do you suggest that I do?”

“Just at least go up and introduce yourself. Say ‘Hi, I’m Tamara.’ That’s it. See what he does.” She grins mischievously. “And that dress you’re holding right now is the one. It is the bomb. He won’t be able to stop staring at your tits.”

I glance down critically at the wraparound cocktail dress. “Well, I do have a halfway decent rack. I don’t know, though. He hasn’t shown the slightest flicker of interest in me since the minute I started working there. I think it’ll take more than my magic boobs to catch his eye. There are plenty of girls in the city with boobs.”

“Free bagels for a week,” she sings out. “With salmon and cream cheese. If you just grow a pair of lady-cojones and say hi to him.” She works in the bagel shop around the corner to pay the bills, and auditions for parts in commercials and sitcoms. And she’s always pushing me to do crazy things.

I laugh ruefully. “Damn you. You know my weakness.”

Of course, she doesn’t know all my weaknesses. Nobody does. Why tell people that I’m a little bit crazy?

I wait until she heads off to the bathroom before I start tapping the mirror with my index finger. Always the index finger.

“Five, four, three, nobody will hurt me. Seven, eight, nine, everything will be—”

“Tamara?” Heather calls out. I didn’t hear her come back out. I start and stifle a shriek, and my heart accelerates to a million beats a minute. She’d interrupted the chant! Nobody can interrupt the chant! The last time someone interrupted the chant… No. I won’t think about that.

“What were you doing?” she demands suspiciously, coming into the room.

I can’t explain it to her. I can’t tell her about the tapping rituals and the chants that keep me safe. First of all, I know her too well. She’s loud, funny, sarcastic, one of those people who feels obligated to mock everything. The reason behind the tapping and the chants…it’s too painful to share.

And secondly, if I tell anyone, the magic will vanish. I don’t know why, but I know it’s true.

I need them. They calm me, uncoiling the tension that twists me up and sends panic flooding through me at random, unpredictable moments.

And they work. They saved me when I was seven. When I did the Bad Thing. Because of the chants, nobody ever found out.

“I’m not doing anything,” I say, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

“Why were you tapping the mirror like that and talking to yourself?” There’s a ring of disgust to her voice that sends me right back to grade school, when a gang of girls trapped me in the bathroom and made fun of me for my DIY haircut until I cried and threw up. I wasn’t the one who’d cut my hair; my stepfather had sat on me on the floor and hacked hunks of my hair off with dull scissors. Why? Because I hadn’t brought him his beer fast enough. The memory of his erection bulging through his boxer shorts is still enough to curdle my stomach.

“I wasn’t,” I lie, like an idiot.

“Yes you were.” She backs away from me as if I smell bad, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “Why are you acting like such a freak?”

I’m shocked. That’s the nastiest tone she’s ever taken with me.

“Why are you being such a bitch?” The words fly from my mouth before I can stop them. Her features contort with utter hatred, sending shock waves through my body. We’ve been friends for three months now, ever since she moved in across the hall. I’m so busy with my multiple jobs, working from morning to night, that I don’t have time to meet a lot of people, but Heather reached out to me right away. She’s loud and self-confident, which I am not, and she supports everything I do. She makes me feel pretty good about myself.

What has happened to that Heather? I have never seen her like this.

She turns and stomps out.

“Heather, wait!” I call after her. She slams the door so hard that a picture falls off the wall.

I don’t understand. Is it because she saw my weird tapping ritual and was disgusted? I should have been more careful. Nobody is supposed to see.

I want to run after her and make things right, somehow, but I don’t have time. I can’t be late. It’s another of my rules for safety. Being late equals bad luck.

I repeat the chant on the mirror, finishing it this time, but since Heather interrupted me, it won’t help.

My hopeful mood fizzles and turns sour. I don’t want to go anymore.

But I’ve already committed. I can’t just fail to show up and leave the rest of the waitstaff scrambling to cover me. So I stuff down my impending anxiety attack, brush my thick brown hair back into a bun, and shimmy into the dress. I paint on liquid eyeliner and smudge blush on my lips and cheeks.

And with a sense of dull foreboding, I head out the door.