Taking Control (3 page)

As quickly as possible, I finish my shower, sticking my head face-forward into the stream and cleaning off. When I turn off the sprayers, a towel is shoved in my face. “Thanks.”

“Does jerking off feel as good as coming inside me?” she asks, having dressed in the embroidered silk robe my personal shopper insisted I had to own. Tiny’s the only one who’s ever worn it, and it’s so big on her that the front lapels always gape, showing the rounded inner curves of her breasts.

I gape at her. “Are you kidding? Nothing feels as good on my cock as your hot pussy.”

She colors at my coarse words, which I find immeasurably charming how one minute she can be an animal and the next a few sex words has her ducking her head like a school girl. I step out of the shower and lean close to kiss her flushed cheek.

“I just wondered. I mean, I love watching you do it.”

“Really?” I raise an eyebrow. I knew it turned her on, but hearing her admit it stirs me.

“Yes.” She bites the left side of her lip and then rushes her words out. “Your body is so expressive. The muscles in your arms flex as you, um,
pump
, and your stomach clenches as you get close to your big moment.”

“Big moment?” I can’t fully suppress a smile and the corner of my mouth twitches upward.

She gives me a baby punch in the arm, and I pull her against me, heedless of my still-damp body. Dipping my face into her warm neck, I take a deep breath of her special scent—a blend of lemon body wash and her own personal aroma. I’d like to bottle it so I could have it with me everywhere. Or just have her with me everywhere.

“What’s on your agenda today?” I ask.

“Work. And Sarah called the other day, so we’re trying to meet up for lunch. Maybe today.”

Exerting some self-control so she doesn’t see a frown of disappointment that I won’t be seeing her until the end of the day, I squeeze her once more before releasing her. “If I’d known that, I would have allowed you to take advantage of me this morning.” I’ve gotten addicted to our lunchtime quickies.

“I guess you’ll think twice about turning me down tomorrow morning.”

“No doubt.”

Tiny is currently working for Jake Tanner, a friend of mine who runs a security firm that provides everything from in home alarm systems to personal protection services to investigative work. He does a lot of insurance company jobs, which he describes as dull but lucrative.

After Tiny was fired from her bike messenger job for missing work, she took over as his receptionist and dispatcher. He’d recently been given a medical discharge from the Marines and decided to start a security firm instead of rolling around in his family money.

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll have Steve drive you.”

She fidgets slightly with the lapels of the robe. Tiny isn’t really that small, but she’s nearly a foot shorter than me and the robe makes her look young—too young to be out in the big, bad city without me. I’d like for her to stay here, in my converted warehouse, where it’s completely safe. Everything she could ever want can be delivered right to our doorstep. As a former bike courier, she should know that, but I know that if I suggested this plan she’d turn on her heels and walk out.

“What am I doing here, Ian?” she asks finally. Her exhale is so heavy that her entire chest heaves.

“Making sure I don’t have to jerk off every day?” I say lightly.

“No, really.” She tightens her belt and shoves a hand through her hair. Because of the tangles, her hand gets caught and she jerks it away from her head with a small curse. “I feel like a complete freeloader. I’m working a job that you arranged. I live in your house. I’m driven to work by your driver-slash-bodyguard. You won’t let me spend money on anything. If you really had your way, I’d be lying on the roof working on a tan.” She throws out her arms in exasperation.

I’d known she’d been feeling discontent, but I hadn’t realized how deep it went. Worry creeps in and I have the urge to take her back to bed. Imprint myself on her. That’s healthy, I mock myself silently.

I tip her head up so she’s looking me in the eyes. “Your mom just died. You were grieving. Still are. You aren’t freeloading. You’re allowing me to take care of you, which is a gift.” I press a kiss against her forehead but am deeply concerned by the tension that is vibrating through her frame.

“What about Richard Howe?” she asks.

I jerk back in surprise. “What about him?”

“Maybe if you’d let me help you take him down, I’d feel better. Like I did something for you for a change.”

Little furrows appear between her brows. I try to smooth them away with my finger. “Let me worry about Howe.”

“But, Ian,” she protests. “He’s a boil on the ass of humanity. He needs to be gone.”

She isn’t saying anything I disagree with. I was thirteen when my father died and fifteen when my mother committed suicide. Both events I related directly to Richard Howe. He needs to be finished, but the last thing I want is for her to get more deeply involved in my revenge scheme—a scheme that I had to revise because I couldn’t bait the hook with another woman because that would hurt Tiny.

I was wrong to allow that shit to even touch her, and now I’m paying for it. Wrapping her in my embrace, I try to rub out the anxiety I feel with long sweeps of my hands down her strained back.

“It’s just not something you need to be concerned about.”

I feel her open and then shut her mouth. She tries again, her throat a little hoarse with emotion. “I just feel like one of us deserves to have their mother. Cancer stole mine, but he took yours from you. I want him to suffer. I want him to feel pain. I want him to be afraid to close his eyes at night because of the nightmare we inflict upon him. I hate him. I hate him for you. I hate him for me. I hate him for us.”

Though her fierceness makes me love her more, I don’t want her even breathing the same air as him. I try to explain this to her.

“I want you to be safe,” I say quietly. “To that end, your role in this fiasco is done.”

“You can’t give up on taking him down,” she protests breaking away.

“I have no intention of giving up.” I just don’t want her involved anymore. “But I can’t have you flirting with him, touching him. I don’t want you to look at him. I don’t want him to even think about you in any manner. It ruins me.”

“Ian, if you’re baiting the hook with a woman, that means you have to spend time with her. And that would ruin me.” She stabs a thumb into her chest.

“Which is why we should drop it.” Letting go of the past is a bitter and hard pill, but as I told my friend, Kaga, Tiny is far more important to me. At the very least, I need to re-analyze my options.

Her eyes are grief filled. “I didn’t realize what a monster he was. I just can’t stand that he’s breathing and she’s not.”

On the last word her voice catches and the tears she’s so valiantly tried to hold back spill over. She’s not crying just about Howe. It’s about loss in general. The loss of her mother. The feeling of being out of control and helpless. I understand all of it.

“I hate that I’m crying. I’m blaming that on Howe, too,” she says, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“Crying isn’t a sign of weakness.” Tiny hates being viewed as fragile.

“Oh, right. I see you bawling all over.”

“Not crying doesn’t make me the better person. Just an emotionally deficient one.”

When I got to jail and was told my mother had hung herself with the scarf that I’d brought her the day before—at her request—I wanted to howl in grief, but I didn’t have anyone to hold me or to stand with me.

“You are not deficient,” she says fiercely.

“And you are not weak.”

I try to pick her up and carry her back to the bedroom, but she pushes away, wiping the wetness with the back of her hands, the overlong sleeves of the robe dragging across her face. While she struggles for control, I grapple with my own desire to fix everything for her.

“Stay home today,” I suggest, but when she glares at me I realize it’s the wrong thing to say. By suggesting she stay home, I’ve inadvertently stamped her as too frail to survive a full day. I revise. “Let’s both stay home today.”

“I’m tired of sitting here moping,” she says and stomps to the dressing room. At least I’ve distracted her momentarily from the Howe thing by making her angry.

In the closet there I’ve cleared space for her amongst the mahogany shelves that house my myriad suits, jeans, T-shirts, and other clothing, all purchased for me by my personal shopper. I dumped out the contents of one whole set of drawers for her a couple of weeks ago.

Frank, my shopper, had apparently set aside one drawer for each accessory—sunglasses, watches, belts, and ties all resided in their own separate cases. I threw all the shit in the belt drawer. Anything that didn’t fit got tossed out.

He’d probably have a coronary, but making sure Tiny felt at home was more important than the careful arrangement of a few Patek Phillipe timepieces. And who needed more than one pair of sunglasses? I kept one pair of Aviators and sent the rest to be donated.

But many of the drawers remained empty, and the hanging space I cleared looked bare. Tiny
still
hadn’t let go of her fifth-story walkup. “My rent is paid,” she’d said mulishly when I brought up the topic. She also had belongings at Central Towers, a place where she and her mom had lived temporarily before her mom passed away four weeks ago. Tiny went back once, took a look at the bedroom where her mother had slept, and walked back out. I grabbed a few of her things, and we left. She hadn’t yet returned—at least as far as I knew.

“You should go to work. Didn’t you say that your guy isn’t happy with you? What’s his name? Louis?” She trails a hand down the rack of perfectly tailored suits.

“Louis can suck an egg. I pay him a fortune. He should be happy I’m not in the office cracking the whip.” I hired Louis Durand out of B school. I had street smarts and good instincts but needed the expertise of someone who’d had an MBA. Louis was a good fit because he lacked the capital and the instincts. But I was able to glean the necessary information to make sure we didn’t run afoul of the regulatory officials. We’d made a good team, constantly searching for the next acquisition to add to my holding company.

My thirst for widening my monetary reach has been waning since I found Tiny. In some ways, I had been completely impoverished before I met her. These days, I wanted to spend my time with her rather than in an office going over endless analyst reports with Louis.

“He’s acting like a scorned lover, yes, but I don’t really give a damn.”

“I’m going to work, so you might as well,” she declares. “What are you going to wear today?”

“Dress me,” I suggest. She likes looking at my clothes. Anything that makes her happy pleases me.

“Hmmm.” Her fine fingers smooth down a light blue suit coat in a linen and wool blend. “Tell me about your stylist. Will I meet him?”

“Personal shopper,” I correct her. “The word stylist makes me sound like I belong on Broadway. My suits are made by a Saville Row tailor whose family has been in business since the late 1800s. Twice a year, he brings a battered Louis Vuitton trunk to the city and all of us acolytes trek to the Plaza to be measured, try on muslin prototypes, and put in our orders for the next year. I was introduced to Bakers & Henry via Frank.”

“How’d you get to know Frank?”

It’s immensely pleasing she’s curious. I want her to know everyone in my life and vice versa. Our lives should be so intertwined that it would take forever to untangle the threads. “I met Frank while he was grifting, selling everything from stolen wallets to, ah,
other
things, in an effort to feed and clothe his two younger sisters.”

Looking at Frank now, you’d never guess that he’d walked the Boardwalk in Atlantic City lifting purses and wallets and servicing bored businessmen. He’d taught me how to dress, having an innate fashion sense that he’d been born with. He knew that clothes made all the difference to the people you did business with. Wear a suit to a drug deal and you’d get shot. Wear jeans to a boardroom and they’d laugh you out. Frank taught me that a hand-stitched suit and French cuffs could get me into places that a gun could not.

In some ways Wall Street isn’t much different than the hustles under the boardwalk. The bills are larger and everyone smells better, but that’s about it.

We’d both gotten out of the rat holes, but there was still sand in the crevices of our skin. Frank surmises that the amount of sand we’ve accumulated is directly responsible for all the pearls we’re shitting out—and that I must have taken on more sand than most, since my pearls are more frequent and bigger than everyone else’s.

“Where’s Frank now?”

“He lives in an apartment on Madison Avenue.”

“And his sisters?”

“One’s at NYU and the other just graduated from Columbia. She’s in grad school now, getting her MBA.”

“That’s awesome.”

“It is.”

“This is different.” She’s moved on from the light blue suit to land on a heathered gray with a darker gray check. It’s definitely one of my bolder suits because of the strong contrasting lines.

“Frank sold me on that fabric on the basis that only a man with giant balls could wear it and not be embarrassed. I was peer pressured into buying it,” I joke.

I’m rewarded with a small chuckle. “I like it, and I think your balls are big enough to carry it off.”

“I’m glad. My balls like you, too.”

At her stare, my cock pulses and fills to a half erect state. She tries to suppress a smile, but the mischievous glint in her eyes reveals how much she enjoys turning me on. It’s a mutual pleasure, though. I enjoy the ache because I know the sweet release that follows will be worth it. Plus, I’d rather see her smiling because she thinks she’s torturing me than sad and grieving. She pulls the dove-gray suit down off the hanger. “Then this one today.”

“What else?” I ask, taking the suit from her and pulling off the pants. “Or should I go commando?”

“I like the idea of commando,” she says perversely, her hand not so inadvertently brushing against my groin.