The Fifth Favor (26 page)

He didn’t argue.

For a thick, silent moment, she continued to rub his penis in firm strokes, reveling in the steeliness beneath her palm, the harsh, uneven breaths that heaved from his chest. Some feminine instinct told her if she kept on, goading him with provocative words, massaging him in this semi-public place with their defenses lying shattered at their feet, she would bring him to orgasm.

And then what?

She would have stopped, but then he came to life, his features steely as he shoved aside her hand.

“Here,” he said roughly, jerking open his pants to free his erection. “If you’re going to jack me off in public, do it right.”

“How’s this?” she snapped, and wrapping her fingers around him, pumped his erection, hating him, hating herself. “Better?”

He didn’t answer, only closed his eyes, the muscles working in his jaw.

Driven by rage, Billie quickened the rhythm of her caress, watching his face, her heart pounding, dirge-like, one beat to every stutter of the frantic pulse beneath her hand.

More pedestrians passed by the shadowed doorway. Billie didn’t know if anyone saw the lurid display, and Adrian didn’t seem to care. He widened his stance and let his 142

The Fifth Favor

head drop back against the wall, the shadows slashing across his features like strips of a mask.

When he came, he bit back a cry and clenched his fists against his eyes, hiding his vulnerability, shutting her out, even as he spilled himself in her fingers.

The scent of semen filled the air between them, and instead of feeling triumphant, Billie was ashamed. There was no tenderness in what they’d done. They’d humiliated each other.

The anger trickled away, replaced with broken defeat. Releasing him, she straightened and stepped back, leaned against the wall behind her, forcing her raging pulse to calm.

Adrian didn’t move for a long, long time. Then he cleared his throat, withdrew a handkerchief from inside his jacket and handed it to her. “I deserved all that and more,”

he said quietly, fastening his pants. “I’m every bit the bastard you think I am—although it’s not just me you’re angry with. You’re mad at yourself for being foolish enough to invest feelings in some glorified female pimp’s idea of the perfect man…aren’t you?”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head.

“I share the blame. This is what you truly wanted to hear from me, and I admit it.

I’m nothing. I have nothing of value to give you. No heart, not an ounce of love in me.

It’s all been fucked away.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, leaning her head back against the hard brick rather than look at him. “Shut up, Adrian. You’re a liar.”

“I’m that, too. Everything low and base and aberrant is right here.” To her utter astonishment, he reached out and caught her hand, pressed it to his thundering heart. “I feel nothing for you. I don’t love you. I don’t want you. That’s what you really want me to say. I can do that for you.”

In the place where her anger had burned came a spiraling, potent sadness. “Let me go, Adrian.”

He didn’t.

When she lifted her head to meet his gaze, his eyes were closed, lashes like inky brushstrokes on his cheeks. His palms came up to cup the sides of her neck, and with a shaky sigh, he rested his forehead against hers.

“I’ll let you go, Billie.” His words poured against her lips, husky, raw. “I always keep my end of a deal. In exchange, you’ll come to Avalon as a client. Tomorrow. This week. Walk through those doors and send for me. I’ll be whatever you want. I’ll take you up to my room and turn you inside out. I’ll taste and touch and fuck you until you scream. And if you want control, it’s yours. A favor for a favor.”

She clung to him to keep from collapsing, torn between tears and wild, wayward laughter. The scenario was unreal. And the only argument she could think of was a frail one, easily shot down. “Azure would never allow—”

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“It’s as good as done. I’ll put you in the book myself. Maria will call you with the date, and I’ll keep my distance from you until then.” His lips brushed her ear. “Please, Billie. Let’s end this before it kills us both. Say yes.”

The truth wrapped itself around her.
You’re hopelessly in love with this man, aren’t
you, Billie Cort
?

“Yes,” Billie said, squeezing her eyes closed. “God, yes.”

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Adrian walked Billie back to the club and waited with her while the valet hailed her a cab. Neither of them spoke; she clutched her shawl, gaze fixed on the sidewalk, but he could read the misery etched in her profile.

He was responsible for it. For so much of the unhappiness around him. He’d hurt Lucien. And his family—
Jesus
. Without their knowledge, he’d sullied their faith in him, their honor, disrupted the track record of generations of honorable, upstanding Antolis.

If his parents knew, it would destroy them.

Who else would he wound before all was said and done? Himself, most assuredly.

It had already happened. He felt betrayed by the smooth mannequin he’d become. It hadn’t been a strong enough fortress, and now it crumbled around him, leaving him raw, a stranger to himself.

And now
this
…this deep, encompassing unhappiness he experienced, standing in somber silence next to Billie, was born of the knowledge that one night with her wouldn’t be enough. Yet it was all he’d take, and no more, because he didn’t deserve her. She sure as hell didn’t deserve the futility he could offer—empty promises, paths leading to dead ends…everything he had to give, all of it, incomplete.
He
was incomplete. Eight years at Avalon had whirled away, passed in some sort of suspended bubble, where life hadn’t touched him and he hadn’t touched anyone, not truly, until Lucien died. Until Billie.

The grinding sound of wet pavement under tires brought him back to the humid, rain-soaked night, and he automatically took Billie’s elbow as the valet opened the cab’s rear door for her.

Her gaze darted to his for a split second, and he read the reticence in her face.

“Adrian…”

She wanted to back out, to run.

He would let her. Soon.

“Maria will call you with the time,” he said in a low, firm voice. “Keep your appointment, Billie. I’ll be waiting.”

* * * * *

“My God, Adrian. I’m simply speechless.” Azure paced behind her desk, fingertips steepled and pressed to her forehead as if deeply in prayer, while Adrian sat on the opposite side and watched her with distant fascination.

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“What would possess you to act so carelessly? Finola Casselberry has spent a fortune within these walls—and you flagrantly abandoned her in the middle of the most important function of the summer. And why?” Her voice rose in pitch, shrill with outrage. “To chase after some ridiculous girl who means nothing? She’s nothing, Adrian!”

He lifted his head and stared at the woman with the silken fall of sable hair, the satin-ivory skin, the soulless cerulean eyes that stripped him and left him with nothing as a weapon but truth. “You’re wrong, Azure. She’s everything.
Everything
. But how would you know? You wouldn’t know love if it threw itself in your path and screamed your name.”

Her blue eyes flashed fire. “So it’s love now, is it? You actually think you’re in love with this woman?”

“I don’t think,” he said wearily. “I know.”

Azure laughed and sagged against her desk, hand clasped against her chest as though her amusement stole her breath. “Oh, God, Adrian, that’s rich. Do go on. You’re in love with this silly little hometown reporter, and—let me guess. She’s going to save you from yourself with her wholesomeness and innocence. You’ll leave Avalon, get married, buy a Cape Cod with a picket fence and have two-point-five children. Leave all this debauchery and iniquity behind you, no worse for the wear after years of fucking for cash.”

Adrian forced his fingers to unclench and folded them in his lap, maintaining a placid exterior. “I hadn’t thought that far, but you do have a way of making the unlikely seem sort of appealing.”

Her mirth fell away like a mask peeled from her features. “Do consider, Adrian.

You’re not the person you were when you first walked through these doors eight years ago, and a man like you doesn’t ever go backward. I know. I’ve seen it over and over in this business. You make a living fulfilling fantasies, and in the process you’ve seen the truth in a woman’s soul. Trust me, if you don’t shatter her heart, she’ll surely crush yours. Because if she’s as pure and guileless as you believe, she’ll never be able to live with the fact that you whored yourself night after night with countless, faceless women.”

Battered by a sudden surge of virulent hatred, Adrian clenched his jaw and looked away from her pale, hard features. Beneath that flawless cosmetic shell dwelled a monster—one who spoke a truth he couldn’t abide.

He drew a breath, exhaled, willed his violent pulse to even out and his emotions to settle. When he could speak again, he stood and straightened the shirtsleeves inside his jacket cuffs to occupy his trembling fingers. “You say nothing I haven’t already considered, Azure, but thank you for your insight. Believe it or not, I realize the futility of the relationship between Ms. Cort and me, and I know what needs to be done to end it.”

Azure hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “What?”

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“I’ve made arrangements to entertain her as a client here.”

Stunned disbelief flickered across her features. “You want to make her a client—

and she
agreed
?”

He merely looked at her in placid silence.

A slow smile crept across her crimson lips. “Ah, Ad. You haven’t yet taken your precious Ms. Cort to heaven and back, have you?
Have
you? And you think…you think—”

She shook her head and burst into laughter again, a cruel, rapier sound, meant to debase and wound. “Adrian—my God, I hadn’t thought a single naïve bone was left in your beautiful body, but I was utterly mistaken! You really think if you spend one night with this woman, at Avalon, where you feel safe, where you can fuck all the confusion and passion out of your system—that you’ll get your life back and be rid of her?”

“I mean to spend one night with this woman to decide if my desire to leave Avalon is as genuine as it now appears to be,” he said with slow precision.

She paused to regroup, her features shifting from darkness to light and back, as though undecided on which mask to don.

The duel continued.

“Client or no, if she walks through those doors again, your employment will be utterly compromised.”

“If you’re going to fire me, Azure, do it now, because she’s already in Maria’s appointment book for Tuesday night.”

“Cancel her,” she snapped.

“No.”

“I hope she’s worth it. You may find yourself a jobless whore.”

Adrian sighed and turned toward the door. “God, you’re hateful. A worthy opponent. Some sick part of me will miss you, I do have to admit.”

“Adrian!”

The piercing cry paused him at the threshold. “What,” he said without turning around.

Desperation wavered in the air behind him. “You’re placing me in a terrible position, my darling.”

“Her money spends as easily as Finola Casselberry’s, Azure.”

“Then she will pay double.”

He waited, his gaze fixed on the Manet original showcased in a heavy gilded frame on the opposite wall. “Anything else?”

“If you entertain Billie Cort as a client on Tuesday night, it will be for the last time.”

“Yes,” he said, hearing the double meaning behind her words. “I know.” And left the office, closing the door gently behind him.

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* * * * *

It’s pure sex
, Billie told herself four days later as she paused outside Avalon and stared at the red door.
You’ve already been intimate with him. It won’t be a dramatically
different experience
. She scowled at the rationalization, unable to fool herself even for the sake of pride. Of course it would be dramatically different. She was in love with him, had admitted it to herself, and even if she’d wanted to turn away, she couldn’t.

Taking a deep breath, Billie reached for the brass doorbell, then changed her mind for the third time and glanced nervously toward the street. An elderly woman, on a rainy evening stroll with a miniature terrier trotting beside her, gave her a solid visual scouring as she quickened her steps and hurried by.

For an instant Billie froze. Then she remembered. Avalon looked like any other upscale D.C. townhouse. Nothing about it advertised that it was a business, though the neighbors more than likely whispered. Adrian was right. Nothing in the world was truly sacred.

Resisting the urge to offer an offensive gesture to the old woman’s back, Billie rang the doorbell.

The butler, a different man from the one at the party a few nights ago, greeted her with a warm smile. “Yes?”

“I’m Billie Cort,” she told him, spine straight, shoulders level. “I have an appointment.”

“Come in.” He stepped back and let her into the cool confines of the women’s club.

“May I take your coat?”

“That won’t be necessary.” She clung to it, needing the protection. Silence hung like a mantle over the deserted lobby. Outside, a distant rumble of thunder promised more rainfall after a steady seventy-two hours of late summer drizzle.

“So you decided to keep your appointment after all.” Azure’s disembodied purr floated over the room. Billie couldn’t see her right away, then she focused on the sweeping staircase and found the club owner gliding down the steps, her trademark white duster billowing out behind her like fingers of smoke.

“Adrian will be so pleased.” Azure approached Billie with a Cheshire cat smile. “He was quite insistent about squeezing you into the schedule.”

“He told you?” Billie said uncertainly.

“He told me. And what he didn’t say, I already knew.”