Chapter Seven
Iris
I’d been a blubbering mess. At least, I felt like I’d become a blubbering mess. Apparently, part of the new, assertive me included the inability to keep myself from telling the truth. It was so dumb. I had long ago accepted my full lot in life, and now Callum was making me feel things I’d never thought I could, making me want things I shouldn’t. I thought it was bad enough to give in to forbidden passion, to this whole Romeo and Juliet thing, as Ally put it. But I never talked about writing. I still scribbled poems in my spare time. I couldn’t keep my muse from doing that. But I knew it was all a lark.
It would never go anywhere.
But there I was with one honest question. It was someone actually caring about what I wanted for the first time in forever. And I’d crumbled. And yet, he was even more romantic than I’d imagined. I hadn’t realized he’d lost his wife in such a terrible way. I hadn’t Googled for that side of his life, but there was something so touching about him reciting the poem—Lord Byron at that—which had helped them bond, gotten them through such dark times.
Callum was a man of sophistication and mystery, hidden layers that made me crave him even more than I already did. Of course, even though he was kind when he dropped me off, and promised enthusiastically he couldn’t wait until we saw each other for more, ahem, “dictation” tomorrow, I couldn’t help but feel I’d blown it. I had, hadn’t I? After all, I’d revealed that I was the girl with way too much baggage, that wounded chick. He wanted someone fun, sexy, and with no strings. I’d given him a crazy amount of family in-fighting, and probably a sobering look at a close friend he didn’t even want.
Luckily, Allison was out. Her note mentioned a second ride on the Goth express. Even in my depressed mood, I had to roll my eyes. It was nice to see someone navigating her love life without too many complications.
Don’t overthink it.
Great advice, except I kept doing exactly that.
I grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge and slid into my room. The sadness was leaving me, but the hunger, that burning need that had hit me like a freight train back in the limo, was only getting stronger. Slipping off my dress and underwear, I locked my door. Then I slid beneath my comforter.
My feelings were whiplashing between such extremes. That was my fault. I’d spent three years denying my emotions, pushing everything aside, and now I’d opened up the vault. No, wrong thought. It wasn’t just a small door you could open and shut at will. My feelings were like a volcanic eruption, and now I was feeling everything—sadness, regret, embarrassment, and utter lust.
I hoped that Callum wouldn’t hold my tears and honesty against me tomorrow. Frankly, I hoped he’d hold other things against me.
After all, my freak out had already left me cold and alone tonight. I knew Callum would have taken me back to his penthouse if I’d asked. I should have, but the sadness had been too strong at the restaurant, the hopelessness too. But now?
Now, I still craved him. Needed his touch for the next hit.
Because as upset as I was, I also burned with my lust for him. My clit throbbed between my legs, had since the limo. My belly flared with heat, and my nipples pebbled underneath the satin of my comforter. I needed him.
I just couldn’t have him, at least not tonight.
I’d have to settle for the next best thing—my imagination and my own fingers.
Slim digits wrapped around the rigid peaks of my nipples. I rubbed my fingers over them, twisting delicately and encouraging them to pebble even more. With my left hand, I kept working at both my nipples, working between them. I trailed my left hand down the valley between my cleavage, over the soft—often too ample—skin of my stomach. Soon, I was caressing the soft down of the pubic hair over my mons.
I stroked through the soft curls before running my left forefinger over my labia. It was already wet, and I was far from surprised. Even thinking about him left me dripping ready for him. I had played with myself before, but I wasn’t adept at it, often fumbled before I came. Tonight, I was energized as if I’d stuck my tongue in a light socket, and I knew it wouldn’t take me long to come.
Even with Callum miles away, the very thought of him set my clit pulsating.
I slipped my fingers through my folds and placed my thumb against my most sensitive bundle of nerves even as two fingers found the depths of my core easily. Moving my hand up and down, I plunged into myself. Closing my eyes as both hands worked over my body, went through all the ministrations, I thought only of Callum.
If we were back at his place, he’d smell of scotch, cigars, and champagne. He’d taste of the alcohol too, like the sultriest drink I could ever drown myself in. His body would be heavy over mine, demanding as well.
And it wouldn’t be just his fingers inside me, not this time.
He’d have his hard shaft out, and he’d be deep inside me, driving fiercely into my G-spot with every thrust of his powerful hips. At that image, my nerves felt like they’d caught on fire, like the passion curling through my core and gut had erupted into a riot of flame over my whole body. My hand thrust harder and harder into my vagina as my thumb rubbed a frantic circle against my clit. His dick would be thick and hot, stretch me wider than I could even imagine. I’d be so full. I plunged my hand as deeply as I dared, and then I came.
Everything exploded in heat and light and passion behind my closed eyes. Pleasure covered my body in a succession of waves, and I shivered as I screamed out his name.
Thank God Ally’s not around.
After a final buck of my hips, I fell back to the mattress and was still grateful I was alone. My breathing was ragged, and my heart hammered in my chest, but I was beginning to come to my senses, beginning to feel whole and sane again.
But that wouldn’t last, not for long.
Callum was like a drug, one that had worked its way into my system and drove me nuts. A shot of adrenaline straight to the heart that left me daring and ready to do anything, even things that shocked the hell out of me. He was like a cliff I was willing and ready to take a swan dive off of. I wasn’t sure where that would lead, but I knew I was powerless to stop it.
***
“When you said that we’d be grabbing Chinese today, I thought it might be code,” I said a couple days later. We’d had two more spirited “dictation” sessions, and Callum had been kind enough not to bring up my tears on our date. He’d also been smart enough not to ask me too many personal questions again. Still, when he asked me to lunch, a casual eatery not too far from the office wasn’t what I’d had in mind. “Apparently, you have a contemporary casual side?”
He twirled his fork around in his chicken lo mein, and I had to frown. That wasn’t the image I always thought about since I’d met him at the beginning of the week. Granted, my family had rich friends and associates. Rationally, I knew people weren’t always titans of industry in every moment of their lives. Correction. Other people weren’t always on, always presenting the image of wealth and breeding. Even though my father had put himself through the Ivy League education and worked to build his company from scratch, he worked his hardest to make it appear as if he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Seth Kilshimer from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn had been into baseball, cheap beer—and still drank Pabst when he wasn’t having guests over—and had an encyclopedic knowledge of comic books that he and my brother had once bonded over. Mr. Kilshimer, head of the tenth largest real estate conglomerate in North America, attended the opera regularly, gave to the Kennedy Center, and pretended he loved sushi even though he never ate it when not out with our family friends. I think he secretly hated dead fish of all kinds.
But it was about the image, that “veneer of civilization” as Dad called it.
I guess I assumed Callum would be the same way, that any rich guy would try and lord the fancy things over the regular people at every turn.
Maybe there was a lot about the world of the wealthy—well, the other wealthy—and real estate tycoons that I only thought I’d been guessing at as a kid. It wasn’t a comforting thought. I didn’t have much time to get up to speed before I’d have to swim with the sharks and barracudas myself as a junior partner in my father’s firm. God, I’d never be ready in time.
“Seriously, do I have extra bitter broccoli in my teeth?” he asked, his lilt doing serious things to my brain and making that familiar heat and longing flare through my belly again. “You just seem lost in thought.”
Sighing, I bit into my sweet and sour shrimp. “It just seems so ordinary.”
“I can take out the private room at any five-star restaurant you want, whenever you like,” he offered as he winked at me. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”
“No. I guess I just figured you’d keep up an image.”
“With my usual flurry of underlings and dates, yeah, I tend to, but for right now, if you can just be more daring with me, then I like being more relaxed with you, luv.”
I nodded. “That’s good. I guess I keep trying to figure out, even this early in, what to expect from you.”
Callum laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that I was positive had melted the panties off more than one woman in his time. God knew it worked with me. “I try to be mysterious here, lass. I have friends that say it comes off more as brooding. I think I make a delightful enigma.”
I snorted. “Maybe I need to meet your friends. At least they keep that ego of yours in check.”
He nodded. “Maybe you will. Not now, but someday.”
“We can’t talk about futures.”
“I was being serious.”
Shaking my head, I pushed my plate away. “But we both know this is a secret tryst, something just between us. If one of your friends blabbed off to my father, we’d both be screwed. Besides, it’s complicated enough as it is. I don’t think we should drag other people into something that’s only been going on for five days.”
“But it’ll be a week soon, especially after the weekend I have planned for us.”
Quirking my head at him, I focused on his hypnotic eyes. God, he could talk me into anything with those fathomless depths. “Now, that’s more like it. Keeping it light, are we? What do you have planned for us, Cal?”
“Cal, huh?”
I frowned, less sure of myself. He called me his vixen, but I was so new to the role I was playing at. I’d worked my best to protest, to present the image that I wasn’t just an inexperienced virgin. But sometimes I was still lurching between shutting up my overactive brain—and its consummate worry center—and listening to my inner come-hither side.
Right now, I wasn’t sure if the nickname was too much.
“I…well, Cal seemed to roll off the tongue a bit easier than Callum. Besides, what is with British—”
“I’m Irish. Big difference.”
“Fine, with UK guys and crazy names: Callum, Rupert, and don’t get me started on Clive. That one sounds like a garden spice.”
He chuckled, and my core clenched deliciously at the sound. The things this man’s very voice did to me. “Well, luv, I can’t argue with you there. I always thought Clive was a tosser’s name.”
I winked at him. “And I’ll pretend to understand what a ‘tosser’ is? Anyway, Cal’s an okay nickname?”
“Fine by me, and you don’t have to second guess. If I hated something, believe me, you’d know it.”
That was true. Callum was no stranger to making his opinion known; that was clearly the dominating, alpha male side of him. The side that made me weak-kneed and had me saying yes to so many dirty things in his office. But good, at least I hadn’t made another goofball mistake.
“What do you have planned then, Cal?” I asked, my voice stretching out into a sing-song rhythm.
“This weekend: a reservation at the finest hotel in Dublin, a tour of the best sites I know you haven’t seen yet, not like this, and hot, passionate sex.”
“We have sex,” I teased, leaning back in my chair.
“I tease you, finger that sweet quim of yours, or lap from its juices. I make you scream, vixen, but I haven’t made you beg. I want to be inside you, and I want to do it up right with the best views in the city. My penthouse is great too, but I wanted to make this truly special. First time and all.”
I swallowed, trying not to focus on what he wasn’t saying, that this would be something special for him too. Callum O’Brien had probably bedded all of the A-list actresses around and half the royal family in his own place. That hurt, and I didn’t miss the allusion to a first time. I knew he was going to play it off as a first time for us as a couple, for a full union, but I was still painfully aware of myself. And my shortcomings. I was naïve, but I was eager. If just being fingered by him or only having his lips eager and bold sucking on my clit made me come in a blinding haze, then I couldn’t imagine having all of him deep inside me.
I didn’t want to.
I craved the real thing now, as soon as possible, and the thought that it could all start tomorrow night was intoxicating.
“So where are all the big things going to start?”
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out, luv.” He flashed me a smile that seemed to only highlight the indent on his chin. I wanted to lick it then and there. “Tomorrow, I’ll meet you at your apartment and then show you everything, do the town up right in a way a college student can’t. Do things to you that you can’t even imagine too.” His voice was low and commanding when he said that last part, like a promise and a threat.
I hoped it was a bit of both.
Reaching my hand out across the table, I said, “You, Mr. O’Brien, have yourself one hell of a deal.”
“Oh, Miss Kilshimer, you have no idea all the things I’m going to do to you.”
***
Callum
That night, I was in such a good mood that I was humming to myself. A habit I’d always chided Symone over, and yet I couldn’t stop it now, a few bars of an old Sex Pistols song buzzing from my lips. It lasted until I passed my doorman and was confronted by the irritating sight of Seamus McCartney grinning at me by my private elevator.
“Callum, imagine running into you here.”
“Yes, how odd seeing me at the building I own and have the best apartment in. I didn’t think we had any dinner plans this Friday.”
Seamus stroked his mustache. “I have great plans. I made a reservation with that club I was telling you about. In fact,” he said, slapping me on the chest. “I have a reservation for two waiting for both of us. I knew you were being an odd duck when you refused earlier. You’re going through a downturn, mate. It happens. That’s no reason not to get back on the horse or the whore again.”
“Are these women of the night?”
He shrugged. “Way I hear it, the club serves all kinds. It has a staff of a few ladies and gents, too, who service any customer. If that’s your sort of thing. But it also attracts adventurous sorts too. I was looking for the willing and easy to seduce. No challenge if I have to pay for it. Not my type of fun.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “Is that really why you’re here? I told you already, Seamus. I’m not interested in this. It’s all so empty lately, and the last thing I want is to add some kinkery and a fad onto it. That’s the exact opposite of what I want. Besides, I know you better than that, mate. Always have. You’re angling for something else, and it sure as shite isn’t about cheering me up.”
Seamus sunk his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Alright, caught me at it. I was just checking up on you. All week, you don’t make it round to the pub for drinks. I expect you a bit morose and still around to chew my arse out over the Donelson deal.”
The light bulb went off over my head, and I gritted my teeth in distaste. “You mean that you thought you’d get another chance to gloat over the stuff you bogarted, rub my nose in it.”
“Friendly competition, mate, nothing more than that.”
I strode closer to him. Seamus was a little over six feet, not a small man by any measure, but I still had five inches on him. Using that height to my advantage, I towered over him and glared. “I don’t give a shite about the deal, and we’ve been friends, sure, but we’re drifting, and we can both feel that. You’re past fifty and living like some crazed college kid, getting more wild and desperate.”
“Living life to the fullest,” he countered, but his posture was cowed and low.
“Not giving a shit about anyone but yourself. I shut myself off for so long after Priscilla, and I’m starting to think just another easy lay or just a new sex club…anything to fill the time won’t do. I don’t care about Donelson cause there’s always another deal. I was right about that, and thanks for reminding me. I have something bigger going on in my life now, so go get that ball gag in your mouth or play the nice gimp…whatever the hell those blokes do over there. I don’t need this, Seamus.”
He scowled at me and for a moment, his hand balled up into a fist at his side. “I know when you’re not yourself, Callum.”
“If you’re so sure of who I am, mate, then you wouldn’t be throwing your kink club bullshit in my face.” I scrubbed my face with my hand. “You know, it’s late.”
“It’s not even ten yet.”
“I have travel plans for the weekend and have to be up at arse-o’clock.”
“Scouting a new deal?” he asked.
I just barely refrained from rolling my eyes. I wasn’t one for that kiddie shite, those games and displays of pique, but he was working on my last nerve. I did, however, slide in closer to him. He blinked, only a small tell, but enough to let me know he was scared. Damn right he should be. I’d put up with a lot from Seamus over the years, but I wasn’t anyone’s to run wild over, and the first person who should know I wasn’t anybody’s wimp would be Seamus.
If he was paying fucking attention.
“If I were, I’ve learned. I let my guard down around an old family friend. I won’t make that mistake twice and lose another account as key as Donelson. Besides, not everything precious involves money.”
“Now I know you’ve been replaced by a robot or some type of pod person. You always care about money. It’s in your blood.”
“Well, for right now, it’s not. Right now? I have something better than to have some random lass’s ass to spank for an hour or two. If that’s what gets your rocks off, great.”
Seamus’s face was redder than his hair and mustache by then. I’d hit pay dirt. “I can get my rocks off just fine and anytime.”
“Good.” I stepped back, easing up finally as I straightened the lapels of my jacket. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake.”
“About being a hermit, definitely.”
“No, I mean about you, mate.” I stretched out that one syllable so long, poured every ounce of derision I had into it. “We’ve known each other since we were twelve and away at school, and for the longest time I confused the amount of time I’d known a person with how good a friend they were. Now you’re getting resentful. You’re stealing my business. Mocking the hell out of me.”
“Easy target if you’re going to be a monk, Callum. Besides, if I rib ya, you’ll get off your arse sooner and be out and enjoying life.”
“And you’ll never grow up, never realize there’s more to life than snaking out the best deals no matter who it hurts or cheap sex with a blonde whose name you’ll never remember.”
“A few months ago, you’d have been just like me, at least before your attention seemed to wander. What? You need little blue pills now, buddy?” Seamus was gathering some of his energy back, his spitfire attitude now that I wasn’t looming over him. That much figured. He was only one for direct confrontation when he realized it wouldn’t end in a physical fight. Seamus had no talent for those. “Is that why you’re so hesitant with the lasses lately?”
“Your life is empty, Seamus. You’re empty,” I finished, bypassing him for the elevator. “And I don’t think we have anything to say to each other anymore.”
“All over Donelson?”
“No,” I said as I pushed the button and waited for the doors to open. “Because you’re the man I used to be, and I need to evolve. And you just won’t.”
He shocked me by clamping a hand on my forearm. “You don’t want to do that to me.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked, my voice lowering to a dangerous bass. I wasn’t going to be bossed around by anyone. Never had been before, and I sure as shite wasn’t starting now. Grabbing his fingers, I pried them with more force than was necessary off of my arm. “Stay out of my way, Seamus, and I’ll stay out of yours.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.”