Chapter Five
Lydia
“Is this what it will take to keep your mouth shut? Partnering with your company?” The idea pissed her off to no end. She couldn’t have her interest in the kinkier side of sex getting out. A man frequenting a sex club would be scandalous in her industry, no doubt. But it would be nothing compared to a woman, let alone the most feared and loathed woman in the beauty and business world. They would call her a whore. A slut. Her credibility would be shot. Was it hypocritical? Absolutely. Didn’t make it any less fucking true. But as much as she hated the idea of her secrets being exposed, she hated being cornered into a deal even more.
“No, if we partner our companies, I want it to be because it is a wise business move. Last night has nothing to do with our companies.” Damian seemed almost insulted at her suggestion that he would bribe her into a business deal.
“Then what is it going to take to keep last night where it belongs, in the lower levels of Club Zion? Money?” Money she could accept giving to him. She had plenty of it. Growing up poor had made an impact on Lydia, had pushed her to work until she collapsed from exhaustion. Then work a little more. Now that she had reached levels of success she never could have imagined as a child, she lived well below her means. Never again would she rely on the kindness of strangers to eat or sleep in a safe place.
“I have enough money of my own. No, I want two weeks. That is what it will take.” Damian strutted around her desk, leaning his cocky ass back onto the sleek top, not so subtly positioning the bulging crotch of his trousers right in front of her face. “For two weeks I want you to be completely at my disposal. There will be no trips to Zion. No studs from your stable. You will do everything and anything I ask. In and out of bed.”
“Despite what you might have seen last night, I am not a sub. Nor do I have any desire to be your sub in particular.”
One of his dark eyebrows quirked up in an incredulous expression. “You don’t think allowing yourself to be tied up and molested by a room full of people doing whatever they want to your body is indicative of a submissive streak?”
Lydia could only laugh. This man, he obviously liked to pretend to know what he talked about, but in reality had no idea. Tilting her head toward her shoulder, she gave him a pitying look. “My interests are varied, as are the men and women I use to accommodate those interests. Perhaps to your simple mind, last night seemed to be an exercise in submission. Yet nothing happened in that room that I didn’t first lay down the parameters for. Those people didn’t do anything they wanted to my body. They did anythingIwanted to my body. Including you. I could have just as easily said red, and everything would have stopped. I could have said only women with shaved heads and purple nipples could touch me. Had you come on another night, you might have seen me sitting on a man’s face and yelling at him to fuck me with his tongue until I told him to stop. Another night I could have been in a pile of naked people both giving and receiving pleasure. It all interests me. Though I must admit, orgasm withholding is one of my favorites.” Lydia pushed her chair back, standing to her full height atop her five-inch heels, and yes, towering over Damian just slightly in his reclined position. She leaned in, planting her hands on either side of his hips on the desk. The position allowed him to see down her blouse to the delicate lace bra she’d put on that morning. Had he been smart, the asshole would have realized he should fear her. The venom in her voice was unmistakable, despite keeping it at a barely audible whisper. Instead, he took the bait and stared down at her swaying tits. “What doesn’t interest me is being with one man who has the delusion he is some jacked-up alpha male who thinks he can control me in any way, in or out of the bedroom.”
Lydia snapped her hand out, gripping Damian’s jaw and tilting his face up until he looked into her eyes. “Now, stop wasting my time, ogling me like some teenage boy with his firstPenthouse, and tell me how much I have to give you to forget what you saw last night.”
“Two weeks. That is all you have to give me. Try to intimidate me all you like. My conditions won’t change.” Damian stood from the desk, Lydia’s hand falling away as he moved into her body, pressing his hard-on to her stomach. “And contrary to what you might think, I am not a dominant. Similar to you, I have varied interests, but since the moment I saw your photo and read your words, the only interests I have seem to center around you. So I want two weeks to convince you we need only each other. If at the end of those two weeks you still want any of the vapid pretty-boy models you use on the side, or need the group atmosphere of Zion, then I will step away and this will remain a professional relationship.”
Blood whooshed in and out of Lydia’s veins, all seeming to head in one direction, away from her head and toward the wet heat growing between her thighs. The lack of oxygen to her brain was the only explanation she had for actually considering this absurd proposal. No man could ever meet every single one of her needs. It wasn’t possible. She had tried dating, but men never seemed to be able to keep up with her, both in and out of the bedroom. She grew tired of the boring dates and even more boring sex and stopped trying a few years ago. So yeah, she relied on casual sex with men who took direction well and looked good in hotel beds, and the rush of fringe sex at Zion.
But if this guy wanted to try and win her over, what could it really hurt? “Two weeks, and you never tell anyone about my activities at Club Zion?”
Damian nodded slowly, bringing his face closer to hers. “I won’t tell.”
“Fine.” Her one word held all the warnings she refused to voice. To not get his hopes up. To not get too invested. To not fall in love. Love made you weak, clouded your judgement. It was not something Lydia wished to entertain in her life.
“Very good.” Damian nipped her bottom lip. Not a kiss, simply the sharp sting of teeth sinking into her plump flesh. Lydia held back her desperate moan, not willing to give him even that much knowledge about how he affected her physically. He stepped back, nodding to the phone resting on her desk. The one holding the improved app that she couldn’t deny would revolutionize her company. “You can keep that. I preprogrammed some calendar appointments for you. Follow the directions exactly. My phone number is also in there. The password is ‘Angel.’”
Damian turned, walking back to the door he had come through not even an hour ago. With his hand resting on the sleek metal handle, he turned his head over his shoulder. “By the way, it would be impossible for your people to reverse engineer what I did there, so I wouldn’t even bother trying.”
With that, he left in a cloud of testosterone.
For the rest of the day, Lydia did her best to ignore the phone and the encounter with Damian. But they remained in the back of her mind the entire time. She would never admit it to him, but his words flattered her, and just about everything else concerning the overly bossy man aroused her. Some of the men she kept on the side had made more romantic overtures, but when that happened, she brushed them off and found a replacement in her stable of men. However, none of those men would ever have spoken to her as Damian did. As if they didn’t fear her in the least.
At five o’clock, an alert sounded on the phone left behind by her visitor. Ignoring it had certainly crossed her mind; she didn’t really owe the man anything. But curiosity got the better of her, and she checked the alert. It was an appointment on the calendar for seven o’clock. She didn’t recognize the address and plugged it into Google Maps on her computer. It seemed to be a home in a residential neighborhood forty-five minutes away. In the notes on the appointment, it said to come dressed casually. She also noticed alerts were set to go off every half hour until the appointment. Undoubtedly, Damian would text or call as well if she didn’t show up.
Lydia placed the phone on her desk and leaned back in her chair. Looking out over the city, she debated what to do next. She could ignore Damian’s personal overtures and try to work with him professionally, but she would run the risk that he would spread her extracurricular activities around town. She could play along with his little whims for the next two weeks, maybe have sex with him a few times, and ensure he stay silent. Or she could walk into whatever he had prepared for her with an open mind.
For some inexplicable reason, Damian had Lydia intrigued, and she very much wanted to see where it would go. If there was any man who might be able to keep up with a life with her, she had a feeling he might be it. Not that she would let him know that.
Decision made, Lydia stood from her desk, packed up a few items to work on that night, and headed for home. Quite a few heads turned to watch her leave, shocked by the early hour she left the office. Lydia was known for being the first to arrive and the last to leave, sometimes sleeping on the couch in her office.
“Joslyn, I’m heading out for the day. Please forward my calls to my cell phone.” The receptionist’s shocked face was almost comical, and Lydia had to fight a laugh as she stepped onto the elevator and made her way to the lobby of the building housing the 4U offices.
After changing at the apartment she rarely spent any time in, Lydia punched the address into her GPS and drove across town to a neatly kept middle-class neighborhood. The area reminded her of where she had grown up, only not as run down. Cookie-cutter houses that most likely all looked the same on the inside sat in neat rows on exactly quarter-acre lots. Some landscaping was more well attended than others, but for the most part she could tell these people took pride in where they lived.
The everydayness of the place had lulled her into a state of comfort, so when she pulled up to her destination, shock ricocheted through her system. The house was the same as the rest in the neighborhood, only the windows were all broken out and the interior obviously hollowed by a fire. In a daze, Lydia parked her car along the curb and made her way to the porch, where Damian stood in carpenter pants and a paint-covered T-shirt. She should have been ashamed of herself for the rush of pure arousal that flooded her body, despite the depressing location of their first ... date ... or whatever it was.
“Okay, not what I was expecting.” She climbed the two cement stairs to a small porch, and Damian pulled her into his side the moment she was within reach.
“You’ll be saying that a lot with me.” The heat in his eyes told her he very much wanted to kiss her but held himself back. Which she appreciated. This whole experience was unsettling, from the location to the way her body reacted to a man who was essentially blackmailing her. “I wanted to show you from the start something that is important to me, to my very core. I am hoping it will encourage you to open up to me in return.”
“So, is this your house?”
“No, I have an apartment in the city, which I also hope to show you tonight.” Damian laced their fingers together and drew her into the house. Inside, the place was split in two: the side where the fire had done the most damage, and the side where flames hadn’t touched anything. “An old woman lived here until last week. She loved candles. And cats. One night she accidentally left a candle lit in the kitchen, and one of her eighteen cats knocked it off onto a rug. This is the end result of that accident.”
