NATHAN
“You beckoned?” Nathan asked from the arched doorway of his mother’s breakfast parlor as morning light poured in through the large, partially curtained windows to the east. He wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with Guinevere’s nonsense but, like duct tape being ripped from a hostage’s mouth, it would give him a chance to speak his mind, whatever that entailed. He would know when he understood precisely how damning her years-prior military investment had become, legally speaking.
Guinevere lifted her eyes from her poached eggs and biscuits, set down her utensils, and drank espresso from a tiny, porcelain cup as if in no rush to respect her son’s tight timetable. He was due at the Cromwell Corp. in the city in less than an hour for a conference meeting that he now regretted having scheduled for the day after the Winter Ball—the day after he’d set his lustful eyes on the lines and dangerous curves of Portia’s nude physique…
The image of her came to mind so easily and he imagined that if he were ever tortured in a warehouse it would be that woman’s flawless shape that he would mentally escape into.
Speaking of torture, his mother had adjusted her canary-yellow hat and with a gloved hand invited him to sit adjacent to her at the breakfast table, as she said, “This won’t be a quick or easy conversation, Nathan dear, so do make yourself comfortable.”
He chose the far side of the elegant table so that the brilliant morning sunlight wouldn’t blind him and immediately held tight to that delicious image of his woman that he’d burned into the forefront of his mind.
His woman…
He liked the sound of that. He liked his restraint last night, as well. Nathan might be an exceptionally wealthy man, having been born into a global empire his parents had built, but he’d never had a damn thing handed to him. When he’d been of-age to inherit Cromwell Corp, his father had long since driven the company into the ground and passed away, leaving the two surviving members of his family penniless. Nathan had exerted willfulness, determination, business savvy that even his mother hadn’t recognized—where did that come from? she’d often asked behind closed doors once Nathan had successfully muscled another real estate or oil tycoon into parting with a precious million or two to invest with Cromwell—and most importantly… patience. With those attributes he’d rebuilt the empire, making it stronger and more prosperous than ever before. It had taken the greater part of his adulthood and it had been worth every tumultuous minute of his efforts. He had restrained himself last night with Portia—from touching her, from moving so much as a muscle to near her, from giving her any indication of her effect on him, of which she had many—because savoring the journey held all the glory.
He had every intention of savoring every step in the ground he planned to conquer with her. She wouldn’t merely be a nights-long conquest. She was the wild terrain of his newly acquired native land and he planned to venture into her alone and fearlessly, like a pioneer discovering and charting each luscious acre. A yearlong expedition. By the time he was done with her, their bond would be such that he would be able to bring her to sweetly-stinging climax by the mere brush of his finger across her chin…
But that statement she had made…
It intrigued him—greatly—and refused to stop bouncing around his brain.
‘If you knew what I really wanted, you’d kill me.’
Even more than studying her nude form, the statement she’d made had caused him to stiffen, hard, in his slacks. Talk about not moving a muscle… he’d been disarmed in that moment and, without permission, his favorite muscle had moved of its own accord.
Pondering its meaning was making him hot and hard all over again, admittedly not a state he wished to be in while his mother blathered on about keeping Cromwell—both the family name and business reputation—out of the proverbial ‘mud’. But he couldn’t help it. He was that intrigued by the statement Portia hadn’t elaborated on, he truly was…
Had it been an indication of her own desire to be dominated—so completely and thoroughly overpowered, and in a spell of trusting him—that she was willing to be thrust into the ultimate form of sexual surrender… to give herself over to him so completely, taking the pain with the pleasure, that she wanted her climax to peak with the swell of her own death?
It was a radical notion.
One that made her absolutely perfect for him, not that he was interested in murder or killing women, quite the opposite, in fact. But the willingness that type of mentality implied—that type of need implied—encompassed everything he’d been looking for in a woman all these years and had failed to find.
“Nathan, are you listening to me?” his mother snapped, her frail, gloved hand smacking the marble tabletop, which caused the glassware to rattle.
He wasn’t fond of pop quizzes, but managed, “In the late 80s, Father agreed to let you venture into an investment with a private military contract company called, Maxum. The aim was to fund legitimate government contracts—that is, fund Maxum for any operation the government hired them to do when those government funds were too little, too late, i.e. ‘due on delivery’. Have I got it right so far, Mother?”
“Humph,” she grumbled, perhaps annoyed that she hadn’t caught him with a wandering mind after all. She had, but Nathan was expert at dividing his attention. “At first the government contracts centered on missions that Maxum believed were sanctioned by Congress. Bear in mind that we only supplied funds. We rarely questioned the missions and soon we weren’t even provided with that information. We didn’t care, truth be told, because within a year our profits with Maxum were thirty-fold. We were no longer ‘investing’. We sat back and watched the profits show up in an offshore account every quarter like miraculous clockwork—”
“When did it all go south?” he asked with masterful control over the patience he was quickly losing. He always had had a short fuse when it came to Guinevere, unlike any and every other individual on earth. He checked his Rolex for the time and considered the likelihood that he wouldn’t be able to drive with Portia into the city. He’d have to take the jet, such a production. He groaned to himself. “So far, it sounds like yours weren’t the hands that got dirty.”
“Oh, they’re filthy, my son, and I’m afraid yours are too by association.”
“Wonderful,” he said dryly.
“I’m still unclear as to whether Maxum got… let’s just say, ‘creative’ on their own or if someone high ranking in perhaps Congress or the government office that hired Maxum for their services did—the CIA maybe—”
“Sounds like you had a real handle on where your money was going,” he said with an air of dry sarcasm, not that Guinevere took much notice.
“But the next thing I knew, after your father had passed away, mind you, was that Maxum had been executing covert operations… of an illegal nature.”
“Mother, you have to stop dancing around this,” he warned.
“Dead bodies, dead American soldiers,” she clarified as if the detail left a bitter taste in her mouth, “the fallen of these missions, were being shipped back with drugs in their abdomens.”
“What?” he breathed, horrified.
“Heroine,” she confided as tears welled up in her expressive, lagoon-green eyes. Her aged mouth twisted into a grim frown, lower lip quivering, and Nathan placed a warm hand on her frail shoulder. After a few trembling breaths that did little to steady her nerves, she pleaded, “I would never fund such an operation.”
“That goes without saying,” he assured her, as empathy poured out of him and terror built in his chest. His mother was right. Both of their hands were filthy if it had been Cromwell money behind these operations. Claiming that Maxum had been acting alone and without the Cromwell Corp’s knowledge would hardly be a convincing defense.
“Drug smuggling out of Afghanistan? Desecrating corpses? Nathan, I’ve been sick.”
“Shh, shh, shh,” he cooed, taking both of her gloved hands in his. When it seemed the latest swell of emotion had subsided in his mother, he asked, “How long have you known?”
“Since yesterday morning,” she said as if the short timeline of her having been in-the-know would save her from her son’s scathing. But turning a massive problem over to Nathan required complete honesty, so she was compelled to add, “I got a whiff of the stink off Maxum years ago, if I’m being honest. But I chose to ask less questions, stay out of it, and watch the huge deposits come in like clockwork.”
“Therein lies our culpability,” he surmised. After another long, tense moment of holding his mother’s hands, he asked, “How did you find out about the truth? Who told you? If we’re being investigated, I need to know everything you know about that. I need names.”
“Of course.”
To have said this wouldn’t be a ‘quick or easy conversation’ was the understatement of the century… and as Nathan settled in to learning the grim details of what was shaping up to be one of the largest and most corrupt conspiracies in US, wartime history, he felt—distinctly and without question—that he’d never needed a woman like Portia more in his life than he did right now.
By the time he left his mother in the breakfast parlor of her wing, he was thoroughly drained. It was barely 10am and he needed a stiff drink. He’d more than missed his conference meeting in Manhattan, but until he hired a private security detail to check every inch of the Cromwell building for more ‘bugs’, it would be best not to conduct any business there whatsoever.
When he reached his study in the north wing just shy of his private chambers where he’d left Portia alone last night to curl up in his bed while he retired in the vacant guests’ quarters—the idea of her exploring his bedroom and sleeping nude between his silken sheets, a pleasant one—he made the necessary phone calls to reschedule the meeting and rearrange his day, all without apology, of course. Nathan Cromwell didn’t apologize. He informed and often without affect. All the while, he sipped the quenching scotch he’d poured himself.
As he returned the desk phone to its cradle, having wrapped up the last telephone call, he loosened his necktie and unbuttoned the top of his dress shirt, leaving both cockeyed and unkempt. He topped off his tumbler of scotch and swiveled his chair to stare out the bay windows behind his desk and watch the hardy Atlantic slam against the rocky shore with each crashing wave.
There was a light dusting of snow across the near side of the shore, the sleet from last night having turned to snow with the dropping temperature. The stark sunlight was now clouded over and the world beyond his windows looked gray and dreary.
His mother had royally fucked up this time.
If there was any getting around it, it wouldn’t be by legal means, that was for damn sure.
Was that what the Cromwell’s had become, elite criminals of the most despicable variety?
Maybe he should’ve seen it coming. The beast within the beauty that was his mother had always been painfully apparent to him. He’d been raised with the cold back of his mother’s cruel hand stinging across his cheek, hadn’t he? His formative years scarred with her lashing sense of love. And she’d done worse to him in his teenaged years, hadn’t she… delivering the kind of twisted affection that no mother should force upon her own flesh and blood.
As rage ripped through his chest, he forced the dark thought—those crippling memories—out of his racing mind, thrust himself out of his desk chair, and bolted from his study as though if he walked fast enough, he could leave that sudden flash of his upbringing behind him.
He found Portia in his private chambers, seated at the breakfast nook that encompassed the glass roundel overlooking the stormy bluff outside. She was watching the rough weather, her blonde hair mussed, her big blue eyes intense-looking with what appeared to be deep, untouchable loneliness. She was wearing a thin sweatshirt and a little pair of shorts, her bare knee under her chin, the length of her other leg tucked femininely underneath her. Perched, she was, on the chair like some kind of regal bird, made all the more beautiful by the ruffled state she’d woken in.
It gave him pause, but not much, and as he advanced on her, she cut her pained blue eyes at him.
“Good morning,” she offered.
“Don’t speak.”
Her eyes widened as he urged her off the chair and, gently as he could considering the rage of emotions that had overcome him, he pulled her across the grand bedroom and into his private playroom.
She only began resisting when he flipped on the lowest light setting, having closed the cavernous door behind them, to illuminate the roomful of whips, chains, and black-leather benches that spanned the chilled, windowless space.
Now more than ever he needed her.
‘If you knew what I really wanted, you’d kill me.’
Her willingness to die by his erotic hand was the only hope keeping his racing mind from splitting in two.
“Wait,” she breathed, so quietly he almost hadn’t caught it. He was too busy roughly bringing her to the set of leather-wrapped handcuffs that were dangling from sterling silver chains fixed to the vaulted ceiling. “What’s this?”
“Don’t talk,” he warned as he took the flimsy material of her sweatshirt by the hem and yanked it up and over her head, leaving her to stand, bare-breasted and in black, sleeping shorts that left little to the imagination. He stripped those off as well and didn’t bother helping her to step out of them.
“But—” she protested.
He grabbed her pretty face with one large hand and she gasped.
“I said—”
“Don’t talk,” she supplied, though to his ears, the obedience of her words came with a hard edge of defiance. He searched her eyes as tears welled up. He didn’t loosen his grip of her face. He took the defiance of her tone as a challenge. How quickly could he break her?
But little did Nathan know, she was already broken.