CHAPTER FIVE
Two Days Is Enough
Felicity
10:21 p.m.
Rolling over, eyes still closed, I patted around the bed for my cool pillow. Instead, all I felt were satin sheets.
My eyes opened, I glanced around the familiar gray-and-navy bedroom. Sitting up, I noticed I was naked and my clothes were folded on the dresser across from the bed, my shoes perfectly placed beside it. Out of the bed, I went to get my clothes, but halfway there I paused, trying to remember what had happened. All I could recall was kissing Theo and having a late lunch.
“Funny.” I smiled when I saw the red file on top of my shirt. Had I chosen, or had he? I wasn’t sure. It kind of felt like we’d both chosen together.
In the two days I had known him, I had both played and danced because of him. If he hadn’t had that piano in his house, I may never have touched ivory keys again. If he hadn’t taken me to his studio, I wouldn’t have felt the urge to dance. I was walking down a path I thought I had all but forgotten. I missed it. I missed doing all of it. But I’d stopped for a reason.
Not bothering to get dressed, grasping on to the bed sheets, I opened the door to the living room. Downstairs, he was sprawled on the couch, still dressed in the dark gray trousers and black shirt he had worn that morning. He was reading from a tablet in his hand.
“Hi,” I said, and he glanced up, focusing on the sheet around me before looking me in the eyes.
“You look well rested,” he said without moving. “But then again, you’ve been asleep for about nine hours.”
“Sorry. What happened?”
“You mean you don’t remember falling asleep while I was taking to you in the restaurant?” He chuckled like he couldn’t believe it.
Giggling, I shook my head. “I don’t even remember getting in the car.”
“Come here.” He sat up and stretched out his hand.
Each time he did that, I found myself taking it, and this time he pulled the sheets out of my hands. I didn’t fight him when he hauled me onto his lap. I shivered when his finger ran up and down my side.
“When I carried you up to my room, you crawled into my bed like you owned it and threw off all your clothes before covering yourself. It was both gratifying to watch and a little bit disappointing.”
“Why disappointing?”
“I didn’t get to look at you long enough.”
I shifted slightly on top of him, trying to ignore the pleasure I got out of hearing him talk to me. “This is a very dangerous game you’re playing, Theo,” I said as I unbuttoned his shirt one button after the other. “Me as your lover here, and your employee at the office. That was your offer, right? I thought you weren’t supposed to mix business and pleasure?”
“For some people, yes. I get pleasure out of my business. Having you there will only heighten that.”
“What if I mess up?” I asked, my hands on his chest. “You can’t yell at me or—”
“Why not?” He glanced up at me, confused. “If you mess up, I’ll let you know right then and there, and then I’ll let you know again, either in my office or here while you’re on your knees.”
I licked my lip at the thought of him taking me in his office while everyone else went about their normal day. Him thrusting….
Focus, Felicity.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Not true,” he said, placing a hand on my hip. “I know your name, your age, that you worked three different jobs, speak French, know your wine, can play the piano, and dance. You like to sleep naked, and you enjoy fucking me as much as I enjoy fucking you. For only knowing you two days, I think that’s pretty damn good.”
“And what happens if you get tired of me? I’ll be out of my jobs and stuck working for the man who fucked me all over his penthouse.”
“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to be the one to walk away from me first?”
I leaned down and kissed his lips. “Because I am.”
“Then we won’t have anything to worry about. You set the terms, and when you’re ready to walk away, fine. Until then….” He flipped me on my back on the couch and hovered over me. “You belong to me.”
I placed a finger on his lips. “I will be your lover under the following conditions. First, don’t call me or need me for anything on Sundays.”
“You can have the entire weekend off if you want.”
“Second, I don’t share.”
“Isn’t that my line?”
I nodded. “It was so good, I recycled it.”
He kissed me. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Third, I don’t work for you.”
He frowned, and his eyebrows came together in confusion. “You just want to be my lover?”
“I don’t want to be on the payroll or anything. If you need my help or input, I will do my best to assist you. I could use a break from work. I’ll just say I’m on vacation.”
“What about the rights to any music you compose?”
I shrugged. “I doubt I’ll be making any more music. As for the rights to the song I came up with before, you can have them.”
“I get more and more confused every time I see you.”
“And that’s not all.” I didn’t want to make this into a thing, but it needed to be said. “Don’t ask me about my past. It’s not something I talk about, and if you try to force me, I’ll walk out.”
“Anything else?” He stared at me like he was trying to read between the lines.
“No, what about you? Any rules for you?”
He nodded. “Whenever possible, I want you here, preferably naked. I also want you to come to the office. There, clothing is still optional. I think I’ve found a muse in you.”
I grabbed his belt, undid it, and kissed up his chin. “I’d rather have you in me.”
Reaching into his pocket, I pulled out a condom and held it between my fingers. It didn’t stay there long. Kissing my neck, he gripped my thighs tightly. Spreading them, I held the couch with one hand and his shoulder with the other as he thrust hard into me. My back lifted off the couch, and my legs wrapped around his waist, holding on to him for dear life.
He bit my bottom lip and I grinned, matching his pace. I forced him to look at me, our lips hovering over each other, allowing us to breathe each other in.
Looking into his eyes, I said, “Faster.”
His nostrils flared, and he grabbed my wrists and held them over my head as he rammed himself deeper…harder…faster, over and over again.
“Yes! Like that!” I cried as my whole body shook, as he filled me. I curled my toes on his ass.
God, I could go on like this forever.
Fortunately for me, this was only the start.
Theo
Stepping out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist, I dried my hair. I’d expected to see her in my bed, but she was gone. Her clothes were still on the dresser, though. Stepping out into the living room, I saw her from a distance, sitting outside next to my pool, dressed in nothing but my black shirt. Without realizing it, I was walking downstairs and outside toward her. There was something about her I just gravitated to. Everything about her was beautiful, from her long, honey-brown hair to the curve of her hips and breasts, which filled my hands perfectly. But I had met hundreds of women, all of them beautiful, whether it was natural or manmade. I was still stunned by her.
My cell rang. Pulled out of a trance, I grabbed it off the coffee table and sat on the same couch we’d just fucked on. The sheet she’d worn when she first came out was still on the floor. I had a perfect view of the city from this couch, yet I watched her instead.
“Theo. Theo?”
“What?” I snapped.
“What happened? We were supposed to go over set design for the gala with everyone,” Walter said on the phone. I heard a quick “hi” in the background from Tori before he went on. “This is it. We’ve gone through four designs already. If you don’t like this one, I swear—”
I took the phone off my ear and scrolled through my email to see it. “It’s fine, Walt.”
He coughed. “What?”
“I said it’s fine. Did you need anything else?”
“Yeah, can I talk to my brother, please? Whoever this easygoing guy is, he’s an alien to me.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait!” he yelled, and I flinched.
“What?”
“The chick you were with—”
“She’s a woman, not a baby chicken.”
“Yep, you’re back,” he muttered. “Fine, the woman you were with today? Who is she? Seriously. She was… she was amazing.”
“In more ways than one,” I said, more to myself than him, as I watched her lie on the ground and kick one leg over the other.
It really was the best view in the city.
“You don’t mean…. Bullshit, you aren’t dating her.”
“I doubt the verb for what we are doing is dating.” Fucking, screwing, losing ourselves in each other, yes. But dating, no. I didn’t date.
“As long as you’ve gotten over—”
“Walter.” I cut him off before he could go there. “If there isn’t anything else—”
“Just wanted to remind you Mom is hosting a dinner at the end of the week. She wants all of us there. I think she found out what Arty did.”
Just thinking about him pissed me off.
Then again... I glanced to Felicity again. If Arty hadn’t thrown that party at my house, I would’ve never met her.
“You know, he’s had a rough couple of months. You’ve got to forgive, Theo. He’s family.”
“Give me more two days.” I hung up.
I meant to go out to her, but she came inside and leaned against the glass frame of the door. I couldn’t help but stare up her smooth legs to where the hem of my shirt hung, and for the first time in my life, I wished I were shorter so it wouldn’t be so big on her.
“You still haven’t had enough?” She smiled at me when I finally looked at her face.
“Have you?”
Shaking her head, she held up a fossil masquerading as a cell phone. “Can I borrow yours? Mine died, and I didn’t bring a charger.”
I stared. “Who in this day and age still has a flip phone?” I asked, handing mine to her.
“I know, right?” She laughed. She was so close to me I smelled her perfume… lilies. “But I have a sentimental attachment to this antique.”
“From….” I stopped myself, and she glanced to me, knowing I was about to ask her something of her past.
“Cleo, it’s me,” she said into the phone as she went toward the window. “Oh no, you don’t care. I’ve been gone all day, and neither of you bothered to call, write, or even send a carrier pigeon?”
I grinned then stopped the moment I realized what I was doing, rising from the ground.
“Theo,” she called, and when I turned to her, she handed me the phone. “I just needed it for a quick second to check in. My roommates are out anyway. I’ll get going.”
She rushed past me up the stairs. I glanced at the phone and clicked the call log. Just like I figured, she’d deleted the number.
She really doesn’t want anyone to know her.
What was she so scared I would find out?
Checking to make sure she was in my room, I dialed as I stepped away from the stairs.
“Sir.” My assistant answered.
“I need you to do a background check on someone. The name is Felicity Harper. I’ll send you more in the morning.” Not waiting to hear confirmation, I hung up.
When I turned around, she was standing in the middle of the staircase, looking out at the view, but I was sure she’d heard me.
Fuck.
“You couldn’t even make it a few hours.” She closed her eyes and shook her head angrily, then put on her shoes and marched toward the door.
“Felicity, you really expected me, being the person I am, to not know who is in my bed? I’ve never met a woman who only wanted sex from someone who could possibly give her anything she wants at any moment of the day. It’s usually an act. This is Los Angeles, not some backwater town in the middle of nowhere. Everyone wants something from someone, especially someone like me.”
“You know what, Mr. Darcy?” She flipped me off on her away out, adding, “Go screw yourself.”
I was tempted to throw the phone against the wall. Instead, I dialed the one human being who’d had almost as much bad luck with women as I did.
“Arty—”
“Calling to guilt trip me again?”
“Where are you?” I was in my room, grabbing a pair of jeans, white shirt, and leather jacket.
“I’m actually on the way to your place. Mom’s been bugging me to apologize. Jesus fucking Christ, you would think I—”
“Shut up, and let’s go for a ride,” I said as I clutched my wallet and the keys to my motorcycle.
Felicity
12:14 p.m.
“What happened?” Cleo came out of the kitchen with a bowl of kettle corn and a glass of wine. She was still wearing the dark red dress she’d gone out in.
“He’s an ass.” I sighed and threw myself on the couch after kicking off my shoes. “But I knew that when I went to his place. He arranged to do a background check on me. I told him my past was my past and to not to bring it up.”
“So you ran away.” She sat beside me, and I lifted my head onto her lap and reached over to take some of the kettle corn.
“I didn’t run. I flipped him off and walked—sexily, I might add—out of his place.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?” I looked up at her. “I’m going to take the blue file. I’m going to go back to my normal life and forget all about Mr. Darcy. I mean, really, Darcy? That’s his last name? The more that I think about it, the more it’s good this didn’t work out. You know I’m a huge Jane Austen fan. I would end up daydreaming of Matthew Macfadyen playing Darcy circa 2005. Not Anna Karenina. That mustache did not do it for me… Urgh, I’m rambling. Cleo, help me.”
“What do you want me to do? It’s sort of amusing to see you all whiny about a guy. A very hot, rich—”
“I get it!” I sat up. “Let’s forget about me. My life has gone back to being boring. What happened with you? When I called it sounded like you and Mark were having a good time out. Is he back too?”
“He ran into an old partner, some words were said, then some drinks were spilled, which led to fists being thrown, so it was a good idea for us to leave.”
“Cleo!” I jumped off the couch and picked up the bowl of kettle corn and her glass. “Why didn’t you say anything? Here I am just thinking about myself while he’s alone in his room.”
“He said he wanted to be alone.” I went upstairs, and she followed me.
“When Mark says he wants to be alone, it means he wants to get drunk and forget about it. Grab the bottle; this isn’t going to be enough.” I drank from the glass on the way toward the back room.
“I’m fine. Go away,” he said when I knocked on the door.
“I have white wine and kettle corn.”
There was pause. “Damn it.” I heard him groan.
Smiling, I opened the door. I almost dropped the bowl when I saw the purple ring around his eye, which he was nursing with a bag of peas.
“Oh my God.”
“It’s not that bad.” He reached for the half-empty glass. “It’s my fault, really—”
“How can this be your fault?” I entered his all-white bedroom. Over his bed were six black-and-white photos of various attractions in New York City.
“This is what happens when you lie to your current lover about having a mother who died in a car accident to build an emotional connection, and your ex-lover asks how your mother is doing in front of your current lover because she thinks he is a friend, and you tell her she has Alzheimer’s.”
“Mark!” I smacked his arm.
“I know, it’s horrible! But they—”
“Who or what are we talking about?” Cleo came in with a bottle of wine and sat on his bed.
“The fact that Mark totally deserved getting clocked in the face,” I said as I shifted to make space for Cleo.
“Thanks,” he snapped, reaching for the bottle. He took a long swig before passing it to me.
“Well, for the record, I’m only drinking because you two had a shitty night,” Cleo said when we passed her the bottle. “This wouldn’t happen if you’d just tell the truth. It works for me all the time. Usually while we are in bed, I just slip it in. Don’t expect anything from me, my mother died when I was young, and my father was an asshole who only cared about himself. I’m damaged goods, and I don’t want to be fixed. They look at me with pity in their eyes, and that’s it.”
“That’s so sad. Keep drinking, sweetheart.” Mark tried to put her head on his shoulder, but she rolled her eyes and laughed as she drank.
“I’m fine. I have a great family right here, so I’ll drink to that.” She laughed once more as she lifted her glass to us.
She was right. All I needed was them. It had been two days of fun, and now I was back to reality.
Theo
I saw his taillight, and as he slowed down, the stoplight changed from green to yellow. Revving up, I raced right past him, through the intersection and down the curve of the street. The lights lining the street seemed like a runway, and at any moment, I felt I could lift higher if I just went faster. So I did, pushing over one twenty. I didn’t stop until I reached an area completely devoid of human life. Kicking out the stand of the bike, I took off my helmet and ran a hand through my hair.
A few seconds later, Arty pulled up next to me. Taking off the helmet, he too brushed through his dark brown hair as he looked at me. He had ivory skin and a scar on his chin, given to him by me when we were twelve.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he hollered.
Good question. Swinging my leg over the bike, I leaned against it and faced him. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to repeat it to anyone.”
“Okay—”
“I met a woman at your party.”
“What?” His mouth dropped open. “You got a sugar baby?”
I hated those words so much. In fact, I hated his whole career, if you called setting up rich people with attractive twenty-somethings a career.
“It’s not like that. She was at the party, but she claimed her friends dragged her along….”
“And you believed that?”
“Well, you tell me. Her name is Felicity Harper. Have you heard of her?”
He thought for a moment. “On a scale of one to ten, how hot is she?”
“Arty—”
“Seriously, answer.”
I sighed and looked out at the ocean. “I don’t know, a nine point five?”
“Yep, she’s new.” He laughed.
“How do you know?”
“You met a nine point five, who is really a ten, at my party, and I haven’t heard of her? Believe me, she’s new.”
At least she hadn’t lied about that.
“You never exaggerate about women, but you sure she was a ten? I didn’t have anyone request a newbie at the party.”
I glared at him and saw realization spread across his face. “You stole her number.”
I didn’t deny it.
“Wow!” He laughed. “I didn’t think you would ever get over her, and here you are, a sugar daddy—”
“Don’t call me that.” It made my skin crawl. “She didn’t want anything. She said she just wanted sex from me. That’s it. I even offered her a job, and she turned me down. The woman works as credit card call operator, waitress, and janitor.”
“You’re kidding me.”
I shook my head. “It would make sense for me to do a background check, right?”
“Would have done it the moment she said she just wanted sex. I’ve never met a long-term ‘just sex’ woman. Maybe she was hoping to win your heart and run off into the sunset with you.”
“No,” I said, though I knew he was joking. “She didn’t seem fake.”
“So, what you’re telling me is you’ve found the Holy Grail, and instead of drinking from it, you’re out here trying to kill yourself in a motorcycle accident.”
“She told me to never ask about her past, and then she heard me set up a background check on her.”
“Shit.”
I nodded. “She flipped me off and left.”
“You must have really liked her—”
“What do you mean?” I adjusted the gloves on my hands. “I don’t even know her. I just hated how she made it seem like I was the bad guy for doing something logical.”
“Sure—”
“How are you?” I asked, trying to change the subject. Arty and I fought more often than not, mostly because he was a recovering heroin addict. Each time he fell off the wagon, he often found himself at my doorstep, sometimes begging for help and asking me to not tell our parents, and other times he had issues. But he’d been clean now for seven months.
“I’m good. Better than you, seeing as how you just tried to change the subject.”
“Try to keep up,” I said as I put my helmet back on.
Two days was enough. I’d had her, and it was over. It was time to move on.
That was life.