The next couple of days are different.

It’s like Charlie and I finally relax around each other. We become… an “US”. I don’t know what’s behind his change in attitude, but my own reasons are clear enough. I can’t keep thinking the worst of him – not after I watched the goodness.

I went straight back home, ignoring Robbie’s increasingly irritated texts: her demands to meet up: immediately. I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to whip my addled brain into some sort of shape.

I feigned sleep when Charlie returned, as the dawn light tickled the sky. I pretended not to notice when he kissed me on the forehead, showered, then lay down next to me.

Still, I can’t help but feel that this is the calm before the storm. No matter what happens, everything is going to change. Everything is going to change because Tilly is just hours away from returning from England. I don’t know if the change will be for good or bad, but I know it’s coming.

“Hey, angel,” Charlie says on the second day.

He puts his paper down and rests it on the mottled black marble top of the kitchen island. He’s wearing a perfectly-tailored, slim fitting gray suit that looks like it was sprayed onto his rippling muscles. The kitchen top is stacked high with newspapers and breakfast items: blueberries, strawberries, blackberries – hell, every type of berry you can imagine.

“Don’t call me that,” I pout, sticking out my tongue. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough,” Charlie grins. “OJ?”

“I just brushed my teeth,” I groan.

I mean it, too.

I don’t know where Charlie’s getting these oranges flown in from, but I’ve never tasted any orange juice like it. One of the little perks of being a multi-billionaire, I guess. Like silk sheets that are almost enough in their own right to send me into orgasmic delight when they brush across my body. Like chefs who rustle up Michelin star cooking at every meal and maids who keep the penthouse shining, but who are never seen.

I walk toward Charlie, sashaying my hips and placing one foot in front of the other like I’m living a perfume commercial.

He licks his lips, watching me approach. “Did I ever tell you how hot you are?” he groans.

I walk right up next to Charlie, slowing my pace as I finally reach him. I lean in and nuzzle my face against his. “Once or twice,” I whisper. I nibble his earlobe. “But it doesn’t get old.”

Charlie pushes his stool out a few inches, and I hop up onto his lap. His thigh is tight and firm underneath me.

I giggle. “Just pleased to see me, or is that…”

“It can be, if you want it to,” Charlie growls. I close my eyes, just as a heat starts to bloom on my cheeks.

“I’m not –” I whisper, tipping my head back as Charlie kisses at my open neck.

“– ready, I know,” he growls. “I saw the way you waddled over…”

My eyes spring open, and I turn to face him with outrage burning in them. “What did you just say?”

A broad grin pushes across Charlie’s face. “I told you; you wouldn’t walk straight for a week,” he winks.

Charlie Thorne’s humor kills me.

In truth, I like it. He’s got a happy-go-lucky, lackadaisical attitude to the world. Even when he’s stressed, he doesn’t change. He doesn’t withdraw from the world like so many other men; he confronts his problems straight on.

I wiggle in my seat: his lap. I press my ass right up against Charlie’s cock. It’s thick and firm, but not erect.

Not yet, anyway.

I bite my lip and flutter my eyelashes, sucking Charlie into my blue doe eyes. He’s a sucker for them, and a sucker for that look.

“You like that?” I croon.

Charlie tries to keep his poker face on, but the muscles in his cheeks flinch, betraying the pleasure I’m inflicting on him.

I say inflicting because that’s exactly what I’m doing. Charlie Thorne is about to find out that his wife’s no pushover.

I hold the marble island for support and hike my ass up, so it’s pressed more against Charlie’s thick, flat stomach than anywhere else. He groans with disappointment.

“Don’t worry, baby,” I say. “I’m not done.”

I see myself in a plate glass window reflection. It’s like looking through someone else’s eyes. I want to stop and ask what happened to the naïve, innocent Penny I was only a couple of days ago. I wonder if that’s all changed, or whether this Penny was in there the whole time, just waiting for an opportunity to escape.

I reach down.

I place my hand on Charlie’s right thigh and extend my fingernails. I feel his hot, heavy breath on my neck. I feel how it catches when I shift the position of my ass, read his excitement through the stiffness of his body like a long-lost alphabet.

“How’s work, baby?” I ask. I artificially make my voice higher-pitched, younger, somehow: like a bimbo. I play into the sexy secretary fantasy.

“Work’s… It’s great, honey,” Charlie groans.

I walk my fingers up his inner thigh, scraping my fingernails against the soft fabric of his woolen pants.

Now I feel Charlie’s cock thicken underneath me. I feel it pressing into my ass. I feel him shift on his stool and press it against me. A wicked smile creeps across my face.

Men.

When it comes down to it, they are all the same.

Still, I can’t help but marvel in the power I have over Charlie Thorne right now. I have no doubt, that if I ask, he’d sign away the rights to all of his businesses in return for the touch of my lips on his burning cock. Lucky for him, I’m not that kind of girl.

Not anymore.

“You sure, honey?” I ask, putting the voice on once again. “You sure you’re not stressed? You sure there’s nothing I can do to…” I turn and lick my lips. I flutter my eyelashes once again, for good measure. “… Make you feel better?”

“Oh, my God,” Charlie pants, “Penny – you’re something else.”

This time, my smile is utterly genuine. I hide it, though. I’m not giving into Charlie’s charms. Not this time. I’ve got another plan on my mind.

“I know.”

My hand walks the last few inches down his inner thigh, and I press it against his cock. I feel a shiver running through Charlie’s entire body. His thighs tense, and he loops one of his thick, muscular arms around me, clenching me tight to his body. I giggle.

“You like that?”

Charlie’s mouth goes dry. I know it does because I hear him swallow before he speaks. “God, yes,” he says in a voice that’s hoarse with desire.

I massage his cock. I feel it stiffening until it can’t get any harder, can’t get any thicker. His heat burns through the fabric of his pants. It burns so hard I’m almost tempted to give up on my plan and undress him right here and now.

I bite my lip to regain control over myself.

“Shame…” I whisper.

“What is?” He groans.

“Shame that I can’t,” I turn my head and flash him a wicked grin. “Walk straight…”

I shift forward, remove my hand from around Charlie’s cock and rest my elbows on the marble unit. I don’t have to look around to see the look of shock as realization dawns on Charlie’s face. I feel it. I feel it in the way his body deflates like a popped balloon.

I feel it in the way he presses his cock against me with one last, hopeful – but ultimately doomed – attempt.

“So, what’s for breakfast?”

“Forget what I said,” Charlie pants. He leans forward and bangs his head against my back with disappointment. I laugh.

I reach forward and grab the corner of the newspaper, smoothing it out, and folding it back to the front page.

“Charlie,” I say, games forgotten. “You’re –.”

“On the front page of the New York Times,” he says. “I know.”

The headline blares: Thorne in Thicket, like the Times has turned into a tabloid rag. My eyes scan the sub- headlines in the first few paragraphs of the story. I don’t have to delve deeper into it to understand exactly what’s going on.

“Landon,” I say. I slipped off Charlie’s lap and land lightly on my feet. I feel heavy, though; heavy with apprehension. “He’s behind this, isn’t he?”

Charlie nods. His dark hair is slightly curly today, as though all he did after getting out of bed was run his fingers through it. Actually, knowing him, that’s probably exactly what happened.

“He’s shorting Thorne Enterprises’ stock. Down 15% already since the markets opened this morning.”

“What’s going on?”

“The merger –” Charlie says with quiet fury. I doubt many people would even know he was angry, but I do. I see the telltale signs: the tightening of his cheeks, the fact his lips turn into thin, white lines on his face.

“Hostile takeover,” he says, correcting himself. “It’s happening.”

My eyes pass over the rest of the kitchen. Newspapers are stacked three high further down the marble. I feel like I’m in an old TV show – and Charlie’s the man of the house, leafing through the news on a Sunday afternoon.

The topmost of the newspapers is the Wall Street Journal. I can’t make out the headline, but Charlie’s portrait on the front cover is impossible to miss.

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

I feel like everything’s happening in slow motion; like I’m walking through quicksand. Somehow, though, Charlie doesn’t seem as affected as me; even though it’s his company!

He looks at me, forehead furrowing for an instant before he states what – to him, at least – seems like the most obvious plan in the world.

“Fight, of course.”

Charlie steps up from out of his stool. His woolen pants bunch around his thick muscular thighs, and he smooths them down.

I can’t help but laugh. “Your bulge is showing…”

Charlie just looks at me. He rakes my body up and down with that impossibly thrilling gaze – his ice-gray eyes simultaneously chilling me and setting me on fire: “and?”

He takes a step toward me. I shift my balance, and my right foot goes backwards, behind my left. Yet I don’t retreat from Charlie Thorne. His eyes are burning a hole through my pajamas. Or maybe those are my nipples, which are now standing straight out.

“Climb up,” Charlie says. He pitches his voice so quietly it’s almost impossible to hear him. I’m forced to lean forward and strain to catch every last word.

My forehead furrows with confusion. “What?”

Charlie pats the marble kitchen unit. He sweeps the newspapers aside with one arm. “Here.”

“Why?” I ask.

A shiver of excitement runs down my spine. I love it when Charlie orders me around. I don’t know what it is exactly – the tailored suit, perhaps, or the age difference between us – but it’s thrilling.

“Because I said so,” Charlie says as if it’s the only explanation I’ll ever need.

I wait.

Charlie sighs lightly, but the look of excitement in his eyes – and the bulge in his crotch which shows no signs of disappearing – tells me he likes it when I play mouse to his cat.

“And because we can’t have sex yet – right?” He says.

I flinch, thinking of the aching pain between my legs. I don’t understand how something as beautiful, as perfect as losing my virginity to Charlie can end up in such raw discomfort.

I shake my head. “Not yet.”

“But you want to, don’t you?”

It’s like Charlie Thorne can read my mind. Heck, maybe I should let him take me right now.

“Climb up,” he repeats.

I do as he asks this time without complaining. The marble is cool against my thighs.

“Lie down.”

Again, I obey him.

“Unbutton your top.”

“Charlie –!”

“I said,” Charlie growls in a threatening, challenging tone that sends a whisper of fire coursing through my core. “Unbutton your top!”

I obey him. How can I do anything else? I’m carried along on a tidal wave of anticipation that drowns any protest I might be able to put together.

I’m not wearing a bra. The lightest of breezes from the penthouse’s AC system dances across my chest, and my nipples harden on my chest.

“Better,” Charlie whispers with excitement.

That sound excites me more than anything. I’ve stolen this man’s – my husband’s – breath away with nothing more than the sight of my skin.

Charlie tugs the pajama bottoms down my thighs. I’m not wearing underwear, but this time, my pussy is completely hairless.

“When did you do that?” Charlie asks in that same breathless voice.

I squeeze my eyes shut to hide from the embarrassment creeping onto my cheeks. “It was a surprise,” I say. “I was going to wait for a special occasion before I showed you.”

“This seems plenty special to me,” Charlie says.

I’m naked now, except for the pajama top still hugging my shoulders.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Charlie orders. He lifts me up and frees me from the top, before gently laying me to rest on the marble. Goosebumps break out on my skin as it comes flush with the cool stone.

“Why? What are you doing?”

I want to open my eyes more than anything. I want to watch Charlie. In the darkness, every sensation seems multiplied a thousand times. I don’t know where Charlie is, but I can hear him pacing around me. I hear the rustle and clink as he moves items around; the clip of his leather soles against the floor.

“Wait and see.”

Charlie scrapes his fingernails down my naked belly. He does it slowly, so that my back arches as the anticipation builds. I feel the heat growing between my legs – and he’s barely touched me!

“Lie down and stay completely still.”

I press the small of my back against the marble and wait.

And wait.

Charlie holds completely still. He does it for so long that I begin to wonder if he is even there at all – but I know better than to open my eyes. The excitement courses through my body. My heart beat is rapid and irregular, the breath ragged in my lungs, the flash of heat burning between my legs like a volcano.

Something touches me, just above the bellybutton.

“What’s that?” I whimper as the unexpected sensation tickles me, adding to the pleasure building throughout my body.

“Lie completely still, I said.”

I do, but god I don’t want to.

Whatever it was, it’s still there. It’s tiny and circular. I feel it dancing on my skin every time I breathe.

Charlie touches me again, an inch lower. Again, he leaves something behind, and again it tickles my skin.

Again and again, he does it. He leaves a trail of – something – up and down my body, from half an inch above my hairless pussy to the very top of my cleavage.

“Open your mouth,” Charlie orders. I do as he asks, but it’s hard to concentrate. My skin is on fire, and yet at the same time, a forest of goose bumps is growing on every inch of me as the penthouse’s cool air passes across my skin.

“Wider.”

I do it. I can’t imagine what I look like, mouth wide open like a suckling pig, but I do as Charlie asks regardless. My body is definitely on fire in certain places: between my legs, and…

… my cheeks. I can’t imagine what I must look like: naked and decorated with God only knows what.

Charlie lowers something into my mouth. It freaks me out, but I don’t let the panic show. like It feels like textured bark, whatever it is.

“Now bite.”

“I can’t,” I whimper. I’m afraid.

“Do it,” Charlie says. His voice is firm and holds no prospect that I can ignore him.

I summon up every last inch of courage in my entire body. My jaw trembles, but I do as Charlie asks. I bite down – tentatively at first.

And – my incisors scythe through a strawberry. The sweet juice drips down my tongue. My head tips back against the marble and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Not what you expected?” Charlie asks; his voice laced with humor.

“Better.”

“Just you wait.”

I do, but not for long. Charlie’s lips brush mine in an upside down, Spiderman kiss. I feel his heat travel lower. I feel his breath tickle my skin.

His tongue darts out, his lips graze my upper chest. “Blueberry,” he whispers.

What the hell?

Charlie kisses me on the lips once again. And then I taste it: blueberry. That’s what he’s been leaving on my skin: berries!

Charlie goes lower, building the anticipation, eating the various flavors of berries that are balanced precariously on my skin. Every inch of me is on fire now, burning up for Charlie’s touch.

Every time his lips graze my skin, I flinch.

My nipples are as sharp as needles, as hard as diamonds. I press my legs together as the pleasure between them begins to grow. And all the while, Charlie eats his way down my body.

“Blackberry,” Charlie whispers. Then I taste it.

“Cranberry,” he says at the last. I don’t even know what a cranberry is! It’s sweet and sharp, all at once – at least, it is on Charlie’s lips.

Then, with a start, I realize where Charlie is: an inch from the slit between my legs. He blows a thin funnel of air between my legs, and my back arches.

“Please…” I whisper.

Then he does it. He spreads my legs wide and kisses me between them. I bite the inside of my lip, and push my hips toward him. Sparks crackle between my eyes, and my hands scrunch against newspaper in my desperate attempt to find something solid to hold.

“Don’t stop,” I moan.

Charlie doesn’t.