Struck By Lightning: Slow Satisfaction Part 16

In the changing room Annika asked me where I was staying in New York.

"Oh, that's the funny thing," I said, as I pulled on my jeans. "I was only in London for the summer. I live here."

"That is funny," she said with a smile. "Isn't that the way of things? One of the other girls in the troupe, Hayley Williams? You'll meet her. She and I were in a production of The Nutcracker when we were thirteen years old. But she went to a different high school from me, I totally lost track of her, and then one day, boom, there she is, right next to me in warm-up exercises. At first I wasn't even sure it was her! We kept looking at each other like, 'don't I know you?' So funny. So you really haven't known Jasper long?"

"No."

"Well, I know he's weird and there are all kinds of non-disclosures you'll have to sign, but he's fair, pays well, and the gig is good. Which is better than I can say for some of the jobs out there. Also, he'll really help your career if you want. And best of all, he'll never hit on you."

I almost laughed at that. I managed to keep a straight face. "He won't?"

"No. I know it's weird. Every dance company I've been in has been totally incestuous, which is perfectly fine, but you know, there are always people in the business who think that it's okay to lech all over the dancers, like because we're in skintight spandex we're there to be hit on. Jasper not only doesn't do it; he doesn't let anyone else do it. Not what I expected from a rock star."

"Huh. Maybe it's because he knows what it's like to be hit on all the time."

"Probably. That's the other thing I should warn you about, though I'm guessing if he brought you here you know it already. Lots and lots of dancers have crushes on him. Heck, I think everyone who works for him has at least a tiny crush. But make a move and you're gone. He's not open to it at all. Honestly, at first I thought maybe he was gay. And yet, the male dancers who have tried got treated the same way. Don't. I know it's hard, especially with some of the s.e.xy dances we do. Just don't get the wrong idea from it. That's my advice. Don't go there."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, trying to look as wide-eyed and innocent as possible.

A knock came on the door, then Roland's m.u.f.fled voice. "Annika? Still in there?"

"Coming!" She shouldered her bag. "Want to get something to eat with us?"

"Um, let me check my messages." I picked up my own bag and dug out my phone.

Out in the studio a gaggle of preteen dancers, their hair in buns, was arriving. There was no sign of James. I checked my texts and wasn't surprised to see one from him.

6pm. Hotel where you met RM.

That was it. A time and a place. I wondered where he had gone in such a hurry.

Then I saw who was waiting by the door, talking to Annika and Roland. Ferrara Huntington. She turned and left before I caught up to them.

"You coming? There's a diner around the corner," Annika said.

"Sure. I have some time before I have to be anywhere."

Shortly before six I walked into the lobby of the hotel, wondering if James was expecting me to go up to the room or what. Would he be in the same room as before? It had been 624, hadn't it? Or was I getting it mixed up with the address of the gallery?

It struck me then that if I wasn't getting things mixed up, the number probably meant something to him. Before I could flail too long trying to figure out what to do, Stefan waved to me as he stood up from an upholstered chair and crossed the polished marble floor to greet me, European style, with a kiss on each cheek. "This way."

He led me back out to the street and down a bit, to a two-seater sports car that flashed its lights at us as he pressed a b.u.t.ton on the key fob. I opened my own door as he took my bag and put it in the trunk. The bucket seat felt like a giant leather-gloved hand cupping my a.s.s. The fact that I was wearing bike shorts might have had something to do with it.

"Is it supposed to feel like that?"

"Pardon me?" He started the engine.

"Never mind. Is the town car in the shop?"

"No. I'm just giving it a rest. This one has to be driven every so often or it's not good for it. And besides, it's fun." He zipped out of the parking s.p.a.ce. "Too bad we're only going a short way."

He turned onto Park Avenue and headed uptown, but we hadn't gone very far before he turned toward Central Park. We went a block south and turned again, spiraling toward our destination the way the one-way streets sometimes forced a car to do.

I was expecting to pull up to a high-rise building, or into a big parking garage, but no, the garage door that faced the curb was built into a brownstone. Maybe five or six stories tall, brick, with a wrought iron doorway, not all that different from a lot of the small apartment buildings in the city.

The door went up and we pulled into a single-car garage. As I got out of the car it dawned on me how rare a private garage was in this city. Almost unheard of.

The entire building was a single mansion. Stefan led me from the garage through a pantry and into a grand foyer. He gestured around. "This is the place. Not really much to see in this room, though."

"Not much to see!" There were two sculptures in the room, one of which was clearly one of James's gla.s.s works. The other I thought I recognized as the work of Rodin, a nude woman cast in bronze. "Is this really a Rodin?"

I heard James chuckle. He came down the staircase, barefoot, wearing chocolate-brown pants that looked too luxurious to be called pajamas, slung low on his hips, and nothing else. "It's a bronze cast of one of his originals, yes. The model was a young woman named Camille."

"Wasn't she his apprentice?" It had been some years since I'd studied anything about Rodin.

"And companion," James said, and something about the way he said that, or maybe it was the pantherine way he was padding across the floor toward me, brought that delicious sensation flooding back into my nether regions. Without taking his eyes off me, he said, "Stefan. We won't be needing you for a few hours."

"Yes, boss." Stefan disappeared through the door we'd come through.

James reached me, took the bag from my shoulder, and set it on the floor. "The decision I'm trying to make is whether to take you right here, right now, and then play with you at my leisure once the edge of my hunger is off, or force myself to wait."

I could feel the hardness of him against my stomach as he pulled me close. "If I know you, you'll force us both to wait."

His laugh was rich and low and he bent to kiss me while still chuckling. "Too true," he breathed into my hair. "But you test my self-restraint like no one else ever has. So tell me, which would you choose, if you were given a choice?"

"Didn't you say we should embrace 'and' instead of 'or'?"

"I did. That would mean... taking you right here and forcing myself to wait?"

"Take me but let's not come," I whispered, as if Stefan might be listening. Ha. As if he hadn't heard us doing every possible thing in the seat behind him already.

"Since you ask so nicely..." James said, and thumbed the waistband of his pants over his erection. They fell to his ankles in a velvety heap, and I fell upon his c.o.c.k with my velvety tongue. I couldn't help it. Gorgeous doesn't even begin to describe it. And him standing there in that grand foyer? He was like a third work of art, each muscle over his ribs perfectly sculpted. I ran my fingers down his torso as I sucked him into my mouth, my fingertips skating down the plane of his abs to the creases of his thighs.

He sank his fingers into my hair with a groan, and held me loosely as I bobbed back and forth. Then his grip tightened and he drove deep, hard enough to bruise my lips and deep enough to make me cough once, and then pulled me abruptly free. Keeping his grip, he bent down to kiss my mouth tenderly, the contrast between his gentle lips and the brutal thrust of his c.o.c.k making me gasp.

"Strip," he whispered, and let go of me.

As I pulled my s.h.i.+rt over my head, he lay back on the parquet wood floor, watching me with his hands folded behind his head.

I wasn't wearing much, so it didn't take long before I was standing naked before him.

He beckoned me with his crooked finger, then gestured, making it clear he wanted me to straddle his face. I put one foot on either side of his head and squatted down, rewarded instantly by the wet suede of his tongue licking up and down my seam. I was already meltingly wet-had been since the moment he'd come down the stairs, really-so this was more about pleasure than preparation.

He disengaged his mouth and slid a long finger inside me, looking up my torso, between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and into my eyes. "I feel like I want you more and more every time I have you. Like the more deeply I fall for you, the more intense the craving becomes."

"I feel exactly the same way."

"Then get on my c.o.c.k, now."

I shuffled backward, onto all fours above him, and reached back with one hand to guide the tip of him into me. Being able to have him without a condom had never felt more like decadence, more like luxury, than at that moment. I sank onto him about halfway down his shaft, then had to wriggle my hips to open myself up enough to take him.

Once I was fully seated he let out a long sigh. "I have all manner of elaborate plans to torture you," he said. "Yet this-this basic, simple thing-is what I want most at this moment."

"Just because the chef is going to prepare an elaborate dessert doesn't mean he can't taste the berry right from the basket," I said.

"True. Perch on your feet. Spread your knees. Display yourself."

I did, looking down at where his c.o.c.k disappeared into my body. He spread my lips further with his hands, admiring the way our bodies joined, pumping slowly in and out of me.

He bent his knees and sat up, curling his arms under my own and around my rib cage. "Sabine questions whether I have the strength to lift you."

"I don't think this was what she meant," I teased.

"No. And she doesn't know that since she last saw me I've been working with gla.s.s nonstop. Gla.s.s is incredibly heavy. You're nothing in comparison." He took a deep breath and s.h.i.+fted one foot under us, and the next thing I knew he was lifting me up, still impaled on his c.o.c.k. "You may have noticed, by the way, that Sabine accepted you as a professional dancer in my employ."

"I guess she did."

"Let's talk about it later. Right now, it's time for this." He pressed me against a wall, pumping in and out of me until I was starting to lose myself in the ripples of pleasure flowing through me from my core.

But then he set me onto my feet and slid free with a wicked grin. "And now, it's time for a tour of the house."

"Like I'm going to see anything but your c.o.c.k wherever we go!" I said.

"Suit yourself." He took me by the hand, picked up my shoulder bag, and led me into a kitchen big enough for a staff of ten to cook in. A dining room stood beyond that, and on the floor above it, a more formal dining room. The building had its own small elevator as well as staircases, and we climbed those on foot, leaving our clothes behind on the foyer floor. I never would have guessed he would be so comfortable in the nude, given how he'd seemed to prefer staying dressed as long as possible when we'd first met.

Maybe he felt safer in his own home. And maybe now he felt safe with me. I certainly was pleased to drink in the sight of him, an embarra.s.sment of riches compared to the glimpses of him I was used to.

Parlor, library, master suite, exercise room, on and on we went until we were at the sixth floor, where the upper terrace overlooked the street. "Eight fireplaces, and more bathrooms than there are bedrooms," he said as we went from room to room. "Ten, to be exact." Then he led me back down to a room on the fourth floor he hadn't shown me when we'd pa.s.sed by it on the way up. This one was at the back of the house, and the door had an electronic lock that took his fingerprint to open, like something from a spy movie.

I was expecting this to be his dungeon, although I suppose "playroom" would be a more appropriate word for a room whose windows opened onto a terrace that looked toward Central Park. Unlike the historical-seeming decor in the rest of the house, this s.p.a.ce was sleek and clean-like James himself. Indirect lights came up softly as we entered.

If there was a cache of s.e.x toys here, they were hidden inside Scandinavian design cabinets. There was no St. Andrew's Cross or spanking bench like they had at the club in London. One or two low pieces of furniture were covered with draped cloth. A tall vase contained some minimalist stalks of gra.s.s or branches of some kind. The only things that looked out of place were two small paintbrushes on a shelf, as if they had been set there to dry, the brush end hanging over the edge.

"My gla.s.swork studio is upstate, of course," he said. "But this is where I sketch, model with clay, and sometimes paint."

I giggled a little. "When I saw the elaborate lock I thought you were showing me your dungeon."

A catlike smile bent his lips. "I am."

"Your studio is where you have your most private, your most intimate moments at home?"

"That's one way to put it." He closed the door behind us and noted, "It only locks in one direction."

"Fire safety?"

"Yes, but also..." He let go my hand and seemed to falter in his explanation. "I would never want it to seem..."

"Like you were holding me captive?"

"Yes. If you're not here of your own free will, then..." He shook his head, as if he couldn't voice the alternative.

I slid my hand into his again. "Have you brought many women here?"

He shook his head again and pulled me close. "Very few. Very, very few."

"This is your inner sanctum."

"Yes." He caressed my cheek, studying my eyes. "If you were expecting a wall full of whips and chains and implements of torture, I'm sorry to shatter your fantasy."

I smiled. "My fantasy is to be here with you."

"Excellent." He kissed me then, a long kiss that made me forget we were in the middle of talking, made me forget we were going to do anything other than sink to the floor and f.u.c.k until we couldn't move.

But he hadn't forgotten. "I saw Damon George flog your c.l.i.t in London," he murmured.

I didn't answer but my stomach turned to b.u.t.terflies instantly.

"Flog it until it was swollen and sore and then rub his c.o.c.k up and down it." His voice was low with a dark edge that had to be jealousy. "You don't know how hard it was not to push him aside and shove my c.o.c.k into you right there. Forget manners, forget rules, forget everything but the blinding need to claim you, Karina."

"But you didn't."

"I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't, because I wouldn't have forgiven myself for giving in to my anger, nor for invading you without your consent."

"I bet most people don't have the self-restraint you do. Now I see why Vanette made me wear that chast.i.ty belt."

"Ahh, you know I had forgotten it? I think in my rage I didn't even notice it." He allowed himself a small laugh. "All the better that I didn't make a fool of myself then. I've imagined a hundred ways to claim you since, though."

"On a roof?"

"For one."

"What will it be this time?"

"That's what I'm deciding right now." He kissed me on the forehead. "Remember when I said you don't really like pain, but you like being challenged?"

"Yes."

"Was I right?"

"Um, I think so." I tried not to visibly squirm. "And sometimes, you know, it's okay if things hurt a little."

"Like when someone flogs your c.l.i.t with moose hide?"

I couldn't help it. I did clench and bounce once. "For example."

He couldn't hold back his smile. "All right. I'm going to give you a task. If you succeed at the task, afterward I'll give you only pleasure. But if you fail, then a c.l.i.t-flogging is in your future."

"Hmm, why do I have a feeling that a c.l.i.t-flogging is in my future regardless?"