Good Girl (6 page)

“Nobody’s ever done that to you?” Hunter
whispered, almost smirking.

“No.” That seemed to be the only word
she had left. And she didn’t want to tell him “no.” She wanted him to kiss her
on the lips instead of her neck, and stop looking at her with those searching,
piercing eyes.

“You liked it,” he said.

She nodded.
Do it again
, she
wanted to say. But he was so much calmer than her, not flipped head-over-heels
like she was. She couldn’t say a word, only stand there looking at him all
hopeful and happy, like a devoted puppy, ready to do whatever he wanted.

***

Hunter was tempted to throw her down on
the floor and take her right then and there. The way she smelled, no perfume or
cloying strawberry shampoo, just pure woman. Luscious! The way she moved in his
arms, how she drew in her breath so softly when he touched her with his lips.
How she ground her hips into him. The honesty of her reactions, no longer
trying to hide herself.

Everything he loved in one sweet
package. Bold, confident and independent, but willing to roll over if she was
coaxed along properly.

He wouldn’t ruin that by rushing her,
not a novice. Not when she had so much potential. He had messed up once before,
actually twice, because he let his dick get ahead of his brain. But he would be
more careful now that he knew the treasure he had in his hands.

Literally in his hands, as he rested
them on her shoulders, appraising her. She waited for his next move, a natural
submissive.

It was undeniable—he was putting
everything on the line for this. It could cause problems with his SunTech
project, hell it could get him fired if anything went wrong! Everything he had
worked for could be flushed down the drain…

But it was only a fleeting annoyance in
the back of his mind. He had to have this woman.

Now.

He opened his mouth to tell her what to
do, but a knock on the door interrupted.

His fingers tightened. That knock was
very familiar. He was tempted to ignore it, but what was he going to do—seduce
Kali while Minx stood outside knocking? It was only one brief instant that he
hesitated, but his disappointment was so sharp that he had to take a second to
absorb it.

“Sorry,” he told her, giving Kali’s
shoulders a rub of assurance, realizing he was squeezing too tightly.

She nodded, turning away to gather
herself and smooth down her rumpled t-shirt. He couldn’t bear to look at her.
What a rude awakening after such a heady start!

He opened the door, and was careful to
keep his anger from his expression. He didn’t want Minx to fall into full-on
sub-mode in front of Kali. This was bad enough.

Minx stood there flying her post-Goth
look, drawn-on eyebrows and fuchsia hair, acting like she belonged there and
eagerly checking out the strange girl in his studio.

“I won’t be needing you tonight, Minx,”
he said. “I cleaned up this afternoon because the photographer was coming
over.”

He stood in the door to make sure Minx
understood she was not coming in. But Minx was still looking past him at Kali.
“Oh, did you text? I left my phone at home,” Minx drawled.

Hunter was angry that Minx had put him
in this spot—so typical of her! Obviously she had gotten his text about putting
her off until later and had taken advantage by coming so early. He couldn’t
just order her away as usual, not in front of Kali. He had to keep his kinky
life separate from this project, or they might find out more about him than he
wanted them to.

“This is Kali. I’m doing some work for
her company,” he said. “This is Minx, my

studio assistant.”

Now Minx knew she had really messed up.
She shot him a fearful look. “Sorry, I’ll come back later.”

“Tomorrow,” Hunter said.

Her expression fell, which is the last
thing he wanted. He should have just let her leave without a word.

As the door closed behind Minx, he knew
his scene with Kali was over.
Fini.

Kali’s reaction was undisguised. She
didn’t think much of Minx. He unfortunately felt like he had fallen a notch in
her eyes. He could tell she was putting two and two together, getting four as
she should, and then going even further than that.

“My studio assistant.” Then he could
have kicked himself for repeating it.

“Yeah, I heard.”

She kept looking at him, but he was saved
when his phone rang. Hunter pulled it out. “It’s the car. It’s waiting
downstairs.”

She smiled tightly. “Time to go.”

He wished he had managed that better. It
seemed like every time he was around Kali, he made stupid missteps. He should just
fuck her already and maybe he would calm down. It was because she was a newbie.
With Minx, she knew all the rules up front. She had called him master and
sucked his dick the second time he saw her at a party. It had taken no effort
at all.

He wasn’t so sure about Kali. She had
definitely gotten off on the hair pulling. But that was one tiny step away from
vanilla. She could have been imagining a house with a picket fence and two kids
the whole time. Maybe that’s what made her gasp.

What do I know what she’s thinking?

Now Kali was folded into herself like an
origami swan, giving nothing away with her slight smile as they walked
downstairs. For the first time in a long time, Hunter wasn’t sure how to move
forward with a woman. But he couldn’t let her get into that car and drive away
without having some hook in her.

He couldn’t let her get away.

“I’m sorry we were interrupted,” he
said.

“Well, now I know what kinky means,” she
said lightly.

“Hardly. That’s only the tip of the
iceberg.”

“I think the tip is all I need. I’m not
a whips and chains, black-eyeliner kind of girl, if you didn’t notice.”

He knew she was talking about Minx. “I
like that about you. Let me take you out to dinner and I’ll make it up to you.
Everything.”

He opened the front door of the building
for her, and she gave him a narrow look as she passed through. “What would your
girlfriend say about that?”

“Minx isn’t my girlfriend. Get that
right out of your head. She helps me in the studio.”

Kali glanced away. “Yes, I’m sure she
helps you.”

“She likes to be of service so she
cleans my studio when I’m too busy. But she’s more a friend than anything else.
Definitely not a girlfriend. Definitely. Not.” The car was waiting, and Kali
was walking forward, so he asked, “How about dinner on Saturday? I can pick you
up at 8.”

She didn’t answer right away. She
reached for the car door, but he got there first and opened it for her. She
stepped inside, graceful even in that.

Hunter stood there holding the door, to
make it clear he wasn’t going to close it until she answered. He was already
thinking of what he’d like to do to her on Saturday. If she let him.

***

Kali had never felt so torn. All she
could think about was Minx, who was everything she wasn’t—wild, edgy and free.
If Hunter dated girls like that, there was no way she could compete.

But she could still feel his hands on
her hair and his lips on her neck. She had never felt anything like it! More
like sex than real sex. She was heady from it, feeling like she could fly home.

She tried to get her mind under control,
to say no, like she knew she should.

Instead, her lips curled in a smile she
couldn’t stop. “Okay. Saturday.”

Hunter grinned down at her in triumph,
closing the door. He looked like he knew that he had won.

As the cab pulled away, Kali gave up
trying to think straight. She rubbed the back of her head where her nerves were
still thrumming.

Remembering it, a shiver went through
her.

Chapter 5

Over the next few days, Hunter worked in
the sheet metal fabrication shop on the first floor of his building creating
the twenty-four-foot long spear of the sundial and the round ball of its base.
He also thought about Kali far too much, about the way she sank into his arms,
letting him kiss her neck. The way her shirt was tight around her breasts, and
how her jeans hugged that really amazing ass. He loved butts, and if a girl
didn’t have a nice round one, it kind of ruined the whole thing for him. Selina
had a flat ass—the kind women got from years of gym-training and too much
dieting to stay thin. Kali, on the other hand, had a butt you could believe in.

He knew it was dangerous getting closer
to Kali. He could mess up everything with SunTech if she found out about his
kinky sculpture business. He couldn’t risk having her rat him out to her boss
and get him fired from the project. But he was sure he could hide it. He had
been very careful to set up his website, Hunting Art, with no connection to his
real life. It had been good enough to pass Selina Stern’s vetting process for
him to make it to the finalists. Now he just had to keep Kali from finding out
about Hunting Art until after the project was finished.

When he had to speak to Kali about the
permits for the demolition on the plaza, he kept it professional. He could hear
the wall in Kali’s tone as she replied, and he knew that she was at work and
probably dealing with Selina at the same time. But hearing her was enough to
get him through until Saturday.

He didn’t even want to play with Minx.
She came by the next evening. He made Minx clean his shower and scrub the
toilet and wash the sheets so everything would be pristine in case his big date
with Kali went better than he expected. Then he told her to make him a grilled
cheese sandwich. When Minx finished cleaning up, as he was taking his last
bite, she stood in the proper submissive position with her head up and eyes
down, hands clasped behind her back, eagerly expectant.

He sent her away without touching her.
Minx knew she was being punished, and he was too smart to punish her with
attention. She would learn not to come over unless he told her to. She could
have blown this entire gig for him.

He didn’t tell her when to come next. He
wanted her to know how much he disliked her little tricks to get more from him
than he wanted to give.

And he wanted to see what would happen
with Kali.

Kali…

***

Kali thought about Hunter a lot over the
next few days, wondering what would happen on their date. She had already let
him get intimate with her, if you could call hair-pulling intimate. She hadn’t
even kissed him! But it sure felt sexy. The only thing she knew about kinky sex
was from that book everyone was reading, but that was just a romance novel with
a billionaire protagonist and his virgin lover. That had nothing to do with
her
life.

She knew Hunter wasn’t the right man for
her. She could never be the kind of uninhibited girl Minx was. And he would
never be the rock-steady partner she was looking for. It was sad because there
was so much chemistry between them. She knew chemistry didn’t mean
compatibility, but it was really hard to ignore her feelings. Even when she
reminded herself over and over again how he charmed everyone. She was just one
among many to him.

So she thought about Hunter, wearing a
groove of him in her mind. Trying not to, but finding herself daydreaming about
his hand clutching her hair, and her hips grinding into him shamelessly.

He texted her on Saturday afternoon
saying:
I’m looking forward to seeing you at 8.
It was the first text
she had gotten from Hunter. She wondered how she would feel seeing his name in
her phone after the project was over. She had a very bad premonition that it
would all end in her deleting his number from her phone in tears.

She had never looked forward to any date
with so many mixed feelings. The worst thing was that she felt like she
couldn’t talk to anyone. She was curious, but afraid to go further down this
path. It was the same feeling she had when she moved to New York City—it was scary
and thrilling because she didn’t know what would happen next. Wasn’t that the
sort of life she had wanted when she moved here, something more unpredictable
and new?

She wished she could talk to someone
about it, someone other than Hunter. But she hadn’t spoken to her college
friend Brittany in years, and they never had much in common other than their
mutual set of friends. Nobody else would even begin to understand.

It also bothered Kali that nobody knew
she was going out with Hunter. Not that she thought he would do anything bad to
her. But she didn’t know him, and he was… kinky.

So once she was ready, she ran
downstairs to see Pam and Karen. Thankfully, they were home.

Karen answered the door. “Kali! Come in,
so glad you came down. We were just fixing some spaghetti, would you like
some?”

“I’m going out to eat.”

“I can tell!” Karen stood back to
examine her. “You look great. Who are you going out with?”

Kali had picked out her best jeans and a
silky shirt that draped over her breasts, exposing a tasteful amount of
cleavage. Not to mention her high heels and best lingerie—not that any guy
would see her underwear on a first date! She just liked the sexy way it made
her feel.

Kali followed Karen into the narrow kitchen,
a mirror of her own kitchen two floors above. The same mid-80’s oak cabinets
and battered Formica countertops, the same wood floor. Pam was stirring a big
pot on the stove, an apron wrapped around her curvy figure. Pam was
reserved—she was a researcher who worked at the VA Hospital in Brooklyn. Karen
was lean and spare, always moving and talking, always upbeat. She worked in a
big midtown hotel in the AV department, setting up the equipment for
conferences.

Suddenly facing them both, Kali felt embarrassed
to mention her fears. “I’m going out with Hunter Munro, the artist who won the
competition to redesign the plaza at SunTech. He’s making a giant sundial for
us.”

“Nice!” Karen said. “Is it a date-date
or a work-date?”

“It’s a date-date. Our first. So I
wanted to let someone know.”

Pam nodded over at the stove. “It’s
always a good idea. You never can tell who you’ll meet in the city.”

“Anywhere!” Karen agreed.

Kali hesitated, not quite sure how to
bring it up. “He says he’s kinky.” She looked between them. “Do you know
anything about that?”

“What? Like ropes and whips?” Karen
asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I guess.”

Karen shrugged in wonder. Pam was turned
away toward the stove, but she said, “Why do people always assume gays know
everything about freaky sex?”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Kali exclaimed. “I
didn’t mean it like that. You two are just the only people I’ve gotten to be
friends with since I came here. I don’t know anyone else to ask.”

Pam took one look at her and abandoned
the spaghetti to come to Kali, touching her arm. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just
a reflex. I know you’re not prejudiced.”

Kali nodded, wishing she hadn’t asked
them.

But Pam wouldn’t let it go. “Have you
talked to him about it?”

“A little bit. He’s done a few things
with me, and I’m just not sure about it.”

“Has he pushed you into doing something
you don’t want to do?”

“Yes. But he apologized. He said he
shouldn’t have tried anything with me while I was at work. And before I
agreed.”

“That’s not good,” Pam said flatly.
“It’s your choice what you do. You have the right to stop anything at any
time.”

“One thing I liked and the other I
didn’t.” She liked the hair pulling, but she didn’t like thinking about what he
said to her, how he had wanted to call her a “
bad girl.
” It made her
squirm.

“Have you slept with him?” Karen asked.

“No. I’m not sure he wants to have sex
with me. Not in the usual way. And I’m not sure I want to do it his way.”

“Well, you better be sure,” Pam said.
“If you let someone tie you up, you damn well better know they’re going to
untie you again. If you don’t, you can get into serious trouble.”

Karen saw that Kali was worried, and she
reached out to give her a hug. “Just stay safe, okay? You have my number, don’t
you? Why don’t you tell him you’re going to call me in a few hours? That way he
knows someone is keeping track of you.”

Kali thought that sounded like a great
idea. Though she was sure that Hunter wouldn’t hurt her. He would be stupid to
try. She could nix his contract in a second if he got out of line. But it seemed
like sound advice regardless of who she was dating.

By the time Hunter texted her saying:
I’m
downstairs
, Kali had made her up mind that it wasn’t going to work out
between them. She couldn’t get serious about a man who was the kind of person
her friends had to warn her about. She would have to consider this an
adventure, and that was the end of it.

She grabbed her purse and ran down.

One look at Hunter, and all her good
resolutions flew away. He was so sexy, standing there on her stoop. His face
lit up when he saw her. It was flattering. Especially coming from such a
handsome man.

“Beautiful!” he exclaimed.

“Thanks. You look good, too.” He was
also wearing jeans, this time with a sleek button-down shirt. Kali was glad to see
she had judged the tone of their date correctly.

Kali was very aware that Pam and Karen’s
front window was right next to them. Karen peeked through the curtain, getting
a good look at Hunter. Then with a little wave, she was gone. Hunter never saw
it happen.

“I thought we’d stay in your
neighborhood. I know a great Afghan restaurant nearby. Do you eat meat?”

“Yes.”

“Good. It’s near the bridge. Do you mind
a walk?”

“I love to walk.” It was a pretty night
out, and since it was Saturday, there were plenty of people on the sidewalks.

“You sure picked the right neighborhood
to live in,” Hunter said. “It’s changed a lot since I first moved here. It used
to be much more affordable, but then everyone discovered it.”

“I’m lucky. My floors are slanted and the
kitchen needs a desperate renovation, so it doesn’t cost too much to rent.”

In that way, they talked about the city
and what it was like living there and trying to succeed in a place where
everyone came to try to succeed. Most of the people that Kali met came to New
York from someplace else, trying to make a better life for themselves.

As they moved on to their past, Kali
told him a little bit about her professor mom and dilettante dad, and what it
was like growing up as an only child. He was surprised at that, saying she
didn’t seem spoiled at all. She didn’t want to tell him that her father was the
one that she and her mom had to take care of. She loved her father because he
was interesting and fun, but he was not very reliable.

“My mom and I have a really great
relationship,” she told him. “We always have. I guess she treated me more like
a sister.”

In turn, Hunter told her about his
roving childhood in city after city as his father chased job after job, all of
them in trucking. “Sometimes he’d be gone for weeks. But he was hard to deal
with, and we never seemed to make ends meet. My mom was working, too, so I took
care of my younger brothers and made sure they got off to school and did their
homework. I’ve been working summers since I was fourteen. One place was a metal
fabricator. They let me sweep up and do odd jobs at first. That’s how I got
interested in metal casting, and when artists came I got to see how it was
done.”

“Where did you go to college?”

“High school was the most I got. I’m
self-taught. My first piece was accepted in an outsider art show that got some
press. There were paintings by prisoners and spray paint artists. People who
never had any training. There’s something raw and primal about that kind of art
that I’ve always respected.”

It was fascinating, but Kali knew her
mom would hate the fact that she was dating a man who only had a high school
degree. It proved even more that Hunter wasn’t her type. She was drawn to him,
but she didn’t understand him.

“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked as she went
silent. “The restaurant is only one more block.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

She hesitated. “I don’t want to offend
you.”

“You can ask me anything. How can we get
to know each other if we tip-toe around everything? Besides, I’m not easily
offended. Or surprised.”

“Okay, since you insist. After a chaotic
childhood like that, I’d think you’d want to pick a stable job where you know
where your next meal is coming from.”

His eyes opened wider. “I thought you
were going to ask me why I want to dominate women.” He considered her question
for a moment. “I think people tend to recreate the environment they were raised
in. I’m a child of uncertainty, so I’m comfortable with uncertainty. My
youngest brothers were mostly spared the chaos because they relied on me until
my parents settled down in Harrisburg. David just finished his college degree.
It took him six years because he had to work his way through, but he’s used to
working hard because he always had to.”