Two hours later I was walking into Empire Capital's headquarters. I was a familiar enough face that I didn't have to check in anymore, simply go to the elevator and head up to the top floor.
I glanced at Katy, manning the front desk, and smiled at her. She looked away immediately.
Oh, I thought.
The sick feeling in my stomach returned. What was my mother going to say when she found out? What was my father going to do? He'd never shown any sort of fatherly inclinations to keep me pure and untouched, but when his little girl was splashed across the tabloids in compromising positions he might have a different reaction.
Nerves singing, I mashed the elevator button and waited for it to descend. People passed me. No one looked me in the eye. I felt my cheeks begin to burn.
The elevator dinged and I leapt inside it, pushing the button for the top floor. Outside the door, a small gaggle of businesspeople waited, each and everyone looking anywhere but at me.
There's room, I wanted to say, but I didn't. The doors closed with a hiss and I ascended.
I forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply. Anton would know what to do. Anton knew everything there was to know about being a rich and famous schmuck targeted by the paparazzi.
So why didn't he think twice about fucking me where we could be photographed? Come to think of it, why didn't I think twice about it?
But I already knew the answer. I had thought about it. I'd thought about it each time it happened, but in the heat of the moment, tangled and twisted up with arousal, I hadn't been able to voice my concerns. I'd only had one thing on my mind: Anton.
The elevator slowed to a stop and I exited. Arthur, Anton's assistant, sat at his desk. He met my eyes and smiled. Was it my imagination, or was that smile a little false, a little plastic?
"He's in his office, Mrs Waters," Arthur told me. "Go on in."
Licking my lips, I nodded and skirted around him, entering one of the doors leading to the small, spare foyer. My hands shook as I opened the door to Anton's office.
Anton sat at his desk, serenely typing away at his computer. He glanced up as I edged my way in.
"Hey," I said.
He gave me his signature faint smile. "Is there something I can do for you?" he asked me. "I missed out on a lot of work this morning."
I winced. I knew my mother's insistence on his attendance at the wedding planning was eating into his time, but he acquiesced to her demands out of... I guess out of concern for me. Funny, I'd been writing it off as through the goodness of his heart, but I realized, as he stared at me from the tranquillity of his office—full of zen fountains and running water—that he was much happier here, working. He probably wouldn't endure my mother out of some misplaced sense of kindness. I frowned as I stared at him.
"Felicia?" he said.
I started. "Um." Opening my purse, I dug the tabloids out of the depths. "I have something you should probably look at."
He raised a brow but beckoned me closer. I walked the length of the room —an endless length, it seemed like—and presented the tabloids to him with trembling hands.
What was he going to think? Was he going to somehow blame me for this? Would this negatively impact his business? I worried my lip between my teeth as he laid the tabloids down on the desk and studied them. Then he looked back at me.
"Your tits look amazing," he said.
Fucking wow. "That's it?" I asked him. "That's all you have to say?"
An expression of genuine surprise crossed his face. "What do you want me to say?" he asked.
I threw my hands in the air. "I don't know!" I cried. "Something!
Anything!"
"I did say something," he told me. "I said your tits look amazing."
Never before in my life had I wanted to slap someone more. "And that's all you have to say about it?"
He squinted down at the terrible photos of us in our private moments. "I wish they'd got a shot of my ass," he said. "It's pretty great, too."
Exasperated, I stamped my foot. "Really?"
"Well, there's nothing else to do about it other than make the best of it," he said.
I was feeling less and less good about this with each thing that fell out of his mouth. "I thought you might want to sue them or... or something."
"Why would I do that?" he asked me. "This is free publicity. I'll be on the receiving end of many back-slaps the next time I attend a business function."
"Yeah?" I said. "Well Katy couldn't even look me in the eye when I came in here," I told him. "It's different for me."
That seemed to have an effect. A frown shadowed his eyes. "Katy?" he said. "Really?" He pursed his lips and thought about this. "Do you want me to fire her?"
"What? No!" I'm not that vindictive. "I just... I feel humiliated. You might not have any friends or family, but I do, and the next time I see them this is all they're going to be thinking about."
"I have a family," Anton said. His voice faltered slightly, and I realized I'd touched a nerve. I tried to wave it away.
"It doesn't matter. Didn't you think about what could happen when you chose those places to fuck?"
For a long moment, Anton stared at me. His green eyes, so startling and brilliant in his handsome face, were thoughtful. "No," he said at last. "No, I didn't. And you're right. I should have."
Slightly mollified, I crossed my arms. "Yeah... well... think about it next time."
He smiled at that. To my surprise, he pushed back from his desk and stood up. "I can't guarantee that," he told me. He rounded his desk, his smooth, predatory gait calling to something primal in me. I was such a sucker.
"Why can't you guarantee that?" I asked him. He drew close, looming over me, and I was reminded of our very first encounter here in this office when he seduced me. He hadn't made me come, only touched me, stoking a fire inside that was so violent and out of control that I had to quench it myself the moment I was alone. Even now, just thinking about it, I was turned on.
I didn't want to be. I wanted to think rationally and calmly, but it felt like the moment Anton entered my life that my reason had taken a flying leap off a cliff. And I liked it. I didn't like how much I liked it.
I was losing myself in Anton.
Glittering green eyes stared down at me. "I'm sorry, Felicia," he said. "I will do my best in the future to remember the potential consequences of acting on my, ah, more exhibitionist impulses." He extended a hand, running his fingers down my cheek. I gazed up at him, uncertain what to say, wanting only to fall into his arms. It would be easy to do so. A strong man is hard to resist.
He leaned down and kissed me, stealing my breath. His mouth was hot and soft, but undemanding. Gently he nibbled and massaged my lips with his. My body heated at the tenderness in his kiss, revelling in the feeling of his arms as they circled me. Large, warm hands travelled up and down my back, cupping my ass, tracing my spine. His body met mine, soft against hard, and I was melting against him.
He pulled away for a moment, cradling my head in his hand. His eyes, desire-drugged, explored my face, as though looking for something there. "You make me forget myself, Felicia," he whispered.
"Oh," I said. Inexplicably, tears stung my eyes, but he was already kissing me again, obscuring whatever sweet, soft revelation I was about to uncover with the magic of his touch, and I closed my eyes.
His body moved against mine and he broke away again, planting kisses against my throat, his hands smoothing over my breasts, circling my ribcage as if he could hold all of me in the palms of his hands. My fingers tangled in his rich, dark hair, and I couldn't help but sigh as he lowered himself to the floor, kneeling before me.
I was wearing a skirt again, a heavy wool thing, and again I wore no panties. I was so thoroughly his that I didn't even think about it now. I was so trained to want his touch that I rarely wore jeans anymore. The realization sent a tiny spark of apprehension through me, but then Anton ran his fingertips lightly up the backs of my thighs and I pushed it away, unwilling to examine it.
Slowly, he lifted the hem of my skirt and planted a warm, chaste kiss on my mound, letting the skirt fall over his head as he moved his hands to my ass cheeks and began to massage them in an insistent rhythm. The rhythm of sex, of thrusting. I moaned as his tongue escaped his mouth and dipped into the delta of my thighs, hot and wet against the nub of my clit. He took up a soft, relentless pattern, thrusting his tongue over my clit where it hid, mashed between my closed legs, until my knees weakened and I parted for him.
Pressure on my hips had me backing up into his desk, and he lifted me until I sat on the edge. Parting my thighs with the palms of his hands, he exposed me to the cool air, my soaking pussy quivering with the sudden temperature change.
"Lean back," he instructed. I did so, placing my palms flat on the desk behind me as he spread the lips of my pussy with one hand.
I watched as he studied my inner folds, almost clinically, but the darkening of his eyes told me all I needed to know. If I reached one foot down, I would find an erection as hard as a rock in his trousers.
"You are beautiful," he said then, breaking the tense anticipation of the moment. Placing one long, lean finger on my clit, he traced small, slow circles around it with the tip. Each stroke sent a shudder through my body, and I couldn't resist. I was putty in his hands. Throwing my head back, I let him circle, circle, circle me, commanding my pleasure with a single point of contact. I sighed and moaned, spread out on his desk like a banquet, until his tiny, sweet, merciless circles spiralled out, out along my limbs, curling in my belly, and I came in small, short bursts.
He stood, undoing his trousers with a practised motion, then reached up and helped me out of my skirt, letting it fall to the floor as he inched my shirt up over my stomach until it bunched beneath my breasts.
"Lie back," he said, and I did. Defying him didn't even cross my mind now. All I wanted was a pleasure—his and mine. His hands circled my ankles and brought my legs up, perpendicular to my torso, and pressed them together so my pussy was open and exposed to him. Languid and content, I lay on the desk as he coated his cock in my slippery juices, preparing myself for entry.
But he didn't enter me. Instead, he slid his cock between my legs, letting it glide against my sensitive clit, and began to fuck my thighs. His arms wrapped around my knees like iron, and I gripped his desk as he pleasured himself with my body. The soft head of his dick slipped against my clit over and over again, my world narrowing to the point between my legs. His belt buckle slapped against my ass with each thrust, and I writhed, aching for him to fill me. He was like a drug. I was an addict.
Then he stuttered in his stroke and grunted, thrusting harder. Warm cum spurted from his cock in quick, short bursts, spattering up my stomach, marking me as his. I wiggled, needing completion, and without comment he reached down and plunged a finger into my pussy, pumping me hard and fast as his cum cooled on my skin, his cock still rigid and hard on my clit.
I strained and arched, and within moments I was coming a second time, the world melting around me, my body melding with his.
When I was finished, he lowered my shirt down over his cum and plastered it on me. He helped me to my feet and steadied me as I worked my skirt back up over my trembling legs. I closed my leather jacket around my upper body and tied it in place so no one would see the stain on my shirt. Anton kissed me again before releasing me.
"I'm sorry, Felicia," he said. "I will be more mindful in the future. In the meantime, I'm betting you should update that blog of yours and tell all. I wouldn't be surprised if you made some sales out of this."
Why was everyone concerned about my sales? I hadn't put a hand to clay in almost two weeks and I was married to one of the richest men in the world. I didn't need to agonize over my art any longer. And I didn't have any ideas anyway. Anton had anaesthetized the turmoil inside me. There was nothing for me to say at the moment.
I nodded and smiled at him. "All right," I said. "I'll do my best."
He showed me to the door, gave me another kiss, and I left. I held my head high the whole way home.
***
Anton wasn't home yet when my mother came barging into the second-floor reading room where I was camping out with a fire, a blanket I'd liberated from my still-packed things, and a mug of Irish coffee while I scrolled through my emails and texts from all my friends. Contrary to my fears, very few people I knew seemed to have lowered their opinions of me. Most of my art friends envied the publicity, and my former coworkers at the bar were mostly surprised that I was so kinky. I didn't bother to correct them, because as far as I knew I had always been kinky, I just hadn't known it.
I looked up when my mother entered the room, her feet meeting the floorboards as though she held a personal grudge against trees. "Felicia!" she exclaimed when she saw me curled up in an armchair. "Felicia, what are you thinking?"
The whiskey in my coffee was making me feel quite good, so I smiled at her instead of shying away. "I'm thinking I should get another cup of coffee," I said.
She stared at me, dismayed. "Felicia," she said again, "you are on display all over the internet and on the newsstands. Everyone is peering into your most intimate moments with your husband. Your husband is treating you without respect. Did you know he was into this sort of... perverted sex play before you married him?"
Well, I had signed a prenup that had explicitly detailed all of Anton's favourite kinks, so technically I suppose I had known. "Yes," I told her.
She threw her hands in the air and collapsed in the armchair across from me. "Really?" she said.
I nodded.
She put a hand to her eyes and shook her head. "I can't believe this is happening."
Annoyance ran through me. "Why?" I said. "Because it makes you look bad to all your country club friends?"
She glared at me. "You know that is not true, Felicia. You know I have only wanted you to be happy. I have only ever wanted you to find love with a good man."