Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (83 page)

“I’m going to come now,” he stated, and
then he spurted into her mouth and throat, moaning as he did it.
 
“Swallow every last drop, Nicole.”

She did her best.
 
There was a lot of it, and she had a
brief moment of panic in the beginning when she thought she might choke.
 
But eventually she was able to swallow
everything, and Red withdrew himself from her mouth.

“You did well,” he said, and she could
hear from his voice that he was spent.

There were rustling sounds as he pulled
his pants up and buckled them, and then she heard him moving closer.
 
He took off the handcuffs first, and
then removed the blindfold.
 

Nicole blinked uncertainly up at him,
still on her knees.

He stared down at her with a strange
expression on his face.
 
“You should
clean yourself up,” he said, softly.
 
“The bathroom is right through that door, and there are towels and
everything you need inside.”

“What about a change of clothes?” she
asked, rising to her feet and massaging her knees.
 
She had little indentations all over the
skin of her knees, from the carpet.

“I bought a few outfits for you
yesterday—they’re in the closet to your right.
 
And in this dresser,” he turned and
extended his hand toward a dark brown bureau, “you’ll find panties, socks, some
t-shirts and so forth.”

She smiled and thanked him, but he
wouldn’t look at her—at least, not the way he had before this latest
sexual interlude.
 

“Is everything okay?” she asked him.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, looking
away.
 
“When you’re done with your
shower, I’ll be in the study.”
 
Red
pointed through the doorway.
 
“Just
through that hall, and then to the left.”

“Okay.”
 
She nodded, suddenly wanting to
cry.
 
She bit her bottom lip.

He turned and left the room without
looking back.

What happened just now? She thought,
walking as if in a daze.
 
She found
a kind of summery dress that she liked in the closet.
 
It was strange thinking that Red had bought
these clothes for her to wear—or more likely, paid someone else to do
it—as if he’d planned everything down to the last detail.
 

Had he known a week ago that he was going
to do this to her, put her in handcuffs, spank her with that thing, and then
have her give him oral on her knees?

Nicole had a strange, sick feeling in her
stomach as she went into the master bathroom.
 
Of course it was incredible inside, as
big or bigger than the apartment she shared with Danielle.
 
Marble floors, a sauna, a soaking tub
with jets, and a large, glass enclosed shower.
 

She got in the shower and cleaned herself
off.
 
When she got out, she noticed
that there was a toothbrush encased in plastic, clearly left for her.
 
She opened it and brushed her teeth,
changed into the light summer dress, put her hair up in a ponytail.

 
Nicole made her way to the
study—more of a library, really.
 
It had bookcases stretching from one end of the room to the other,
filled with hundreds if not thousands of books.
 
There were some comfy chairs where it
seemed someone would sit with pipe in hand, smoke and read for hours on end.

Red was sitting in one such chair, near
one of the windows, a glass in hand.
 
There was a light amber liquid in the glass, about a third full.
 
His face was drawn and distant as he
looked outside into the darkness.

“Hi,” she said, breaking the silence.

He glanced at her briefly and smiled,
then returned to staring out the window.
 

She walked to the bookshelves and began
perusing them.
 
They seemed to be
alphabetized by the author’s name, rather than subject matter.
 
There were biographies side by side with
legal textbooks, next to thrillers written by John Grisham and Stephen King.

“Have you read all of these?”
 
Nicole asked, pulling down a book called
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.
 
She’d
heard of it before, but never read it.
 

Red looked over and saw the book she’d
taken down, and the ghost of a smile came to his lips.
 
“All war is deception,” he said.

She flipped through some of the
pages.
 
One block of text popped out
at her.
 
It said:

Be
extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious,
even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the
opponent's fate.

“You read this book I bet,” she said,
holding it up.

Red shrugged.
 
“It’s required reading for military
strategists and advertising executives.”

“And for lovers?”

He raised the glass to his lips and
gulped the amber liquid down, set the glass on the small table next to his
chair.
 
“I prefer my lovers to be
more concerned with matters of the heart than tactics of war.”

“So that they’re more easily defeated?”
she said.

He looked at her again, and now his eyes
were burning with new intensity.
 
“Is that what you think of me?”

She riffled the book’s pages and leaned
against the wall in front of him.
 
“I don’t know what to think of you right now.”

“I’m the same person I was an hour ago.”

“Are you?”

He laughed hollowly.
 
“Last I checked.”

“You seem different to me.”

He looked away.
 
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“You were different with me tonight,” she
said, her chest tightening with anxiety.
 
“You were rougher with me than usual.”

He grimaced, his hand toying with the
nearly empty glass by his side.
 
“I
didn’t realize it,” he sighed.
 
“Maybe I was.
 
I can be a
little unpredictable when I’m feeling stressed.”

She looked at the Art of War book once
more.
  
“You’re stressed?” she
said, flipping through the pages, thinking about war and manipulation and
deceit.
 
“I wish you’d told me.”

Red looked at her, and his eyes were
cold.
 
“Don’t play head games with
me, Nicole.”

Startled, she immediately became
defensive.
 
“How am I the one
playing games?
 
You had me
blindfolded, handcuffed, making up new rules…”

Red flinched angrily, but seemed to
regain his composure.
 
“What we did
tonight wasn’t a game.
 
And I don’t
owe you any explanations about my stress levels or anything else, for that
matter.”

Nicole could tell her cheeks were
burning, and she hated herself for being so overt with her emotions.
 
A man like Red could look at her and
know instantly what she was thinking from one look at her blotchy cheeks.
 
“I thought we were a team,” she sulked.

“We’re a team, but I’m still the
captain,” he said, his voice low, almost inaudible.
 
He picked up his glass and threw the
rest of the liquid back in one quick gulp.
 
He put the empty glass down and cleared his throat.
 
“Why don’t you go take a walk outside or
perhaps explore the rest of the house?”

“Alone?”

He nodded.
 
“A little alone time is always
nice.
 
Time to reflect on the
day.”
 
He sat back in his chair and
turned to look out the window.
 

It was clear that she’d been dismissed.

***

Outside, it was cold for just a light
dress.
 
Also, it was dark, even
though the road was still lit and there were beautiful floodlights in the
expansive yard that gave everything an ethereal look.

Nicole crossed her arms, shivering, and
walked the grounds, trying to clear her head.
 
She didn’t understand what was happening
between them.

Everything had been fine one minute, and
the next his personality had drastically changed.
 
She replayed the last hour or two in her
head, rewinding certain scenes and going over the little interactions they’d
had, to try and untangle the truth.

The first strange moment had come when
Red had taken that one phone call about Germany.
 
For some reason, whatever transpired
during that conversation had put him on edge—she’d immediately sensed it
from his body language, his tone of voice.

However, he’d snapped back to himself
when they’d come home and he’d shown her the mansion.
 
It was only when they’d started to get
intimate that something had shifted in him.
 
But why this time? She wondered, coming
to the edge of the pond and staring out at the small family of ducks swimming
nearby.
  

In the semi-darkness she heard them
paddling and quacking softly.

Why did he act so differently this time
than he had when they’d been intimate in the past?

Nicole heard Danielle’s voice in her
head, imagined her cynically laughing.
 

You
call having a few dates over the course of a month, a past?
 
Are you seriously delusional?

And then following quickly on the heels
of that, her mother’s voice.
 
Red’s personality hasn’t drastically
changed, Nicole.
 
You just didn’t
know him well enough to realize how strange and cold he really is.

Her stomach muscles clenched as she stood
by the duck pond, the tears close to the surface now.
 
She tried to fight them off.
 
Relax, she told herself.
 
So you had a weird moment.
 
Red’s a powerful man with huge
responsibility resting on his shoulders, and sometimes he gets stressed.

But when she pictured him calling her a
slut, and the way he’d given her those stinging lashes across her bare
behind.
 
It made Nicole question
whether his feelings for her had changed, especially with how distant he’d
become afterwards, as if disgusted by her mere presence.

She kept hoping to feel Red’s hands on
her shoulders, and then hear his voice, soothing her.
 
I’m
sorry
, he’d say.
 
I’m sorry I acted aloof and cool toward
you.
 
I love you so much.
 
I’ll never be that way again.

It never happened, though.
 

After the wind picked up and Nicole
started shivering, she walked slowly back inside the house.
 

The place felt empty and lonely, much as
Red had described it when telling her how it was before she came into his
life.
 
This wasn’t supposed to be
how it was.
 
Red was supposed to be
telling her how happy she made him and they should have been lying together in
bed or on the couch by the fire.

Instead, Nicole wandered the halls of the
first floor.
 
There were other grand
rooms that he hadn’t yet showed her.
 
There was an entire gym—treadmills, elliptical, stationary bikes,
free weights and Nautilus machines.
 

He
should charge me a membership to work out here.
 
She smiled at this thought, but the smile died on her lips with the
next.
 
He still might—you never know with Red.
 

After the gym, she saw a full racquetball
court and then past that, a home theatre that rivaled most large movie theaters
she’d been to recently.
 
It had
huge, comfy seats in rows—two levels of them, and a large screen with a
projector at the back of the room.

She wondered what Red watched here, all
by himself.
 

Nicole sat in one of the seats and curled
up, feeling suddenly tired and homesick.
 
Homesick for her parents’ simple home, for her college dorm room, even
her apartment with Danielle in Brooklyn.

Nicole drifted off to sleep, comfortable
enough for the time being in the soft, warm theatre chair.