Time ticks slowly for the rest of the day as I try not to think about what Damien has in store for me. I distract myself with work, of which there’s more recently. Ever since all the drama in the papers, the shop has been getting a lot of customers and is usually full even during the non-peak hours. It’s so busy that I have to help the front staff with taking orders a lot more often.
“Hopefully they’re coming for the gossip and staying for the pastries,” Sage, our barista, said during the early days. It’s been a month since she said that and the business hasn’t slowed down. We’re even getting bulk orders from nearby offices, something that didn’t happen before. To think I was close to closing just a few months ago, to being perpetually busy. I guess I have Damien to thank as well.
Time is ticking slowly all day, but when the clock strikes five, it seems to speed up and before I know it; I am getting into my office to prepare. I put on the dress and shoes and just as I am putting on the coat, Sonya bursts in.
Fuck. I should have locked the door.
“I wanted your approval on this d—Oh?” She leans back, eyebrows raised. “Is there a date you’re going to?”
“Something like that.”
She narrows her eyes. “With baby daddy?”
I nod, feeling the disappointment radiating from her. She tsk tsks, shaking her head.
“What?”
Sonya raises her hands in mock surrender. “Listen, I get it. Even an old lesbian like me can see how hot that man is.”
“It’s complicated.” I don’t know how else to explain to her my relationship with him. I don’t even know how to explain it to myself.
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
She sighs. “Just don’t go falling in love with him. He strikes me as the love ‘em and leave ‘em type.”
“You’ve never met him!”
“I can tell a personality from just looking at a person on a screen. Call it my second talent.”
I button up the coat and brush it down to make sure the knee-length dress is not showing. “And what’s your first?”
“Cooking up a mean pastry.”
I get a text on my phone. Damien’s driver is outside.
***
I wait for Damien in his office. He wasn’t there when his driver opened the door and told me to take a seat and promptly left. It’s been five minutes since I came and there’s no sign of him anywhere. Should I call him? Only his phone is on his desk. I get up to ask his assistant when a door to the right of his bookshelf opens, and he walks out. He has changed out of his suit and is wearing a tuxedo.
“You look good,” I say, feeling embarrassed for staring too long.
He gestures his head up. “Let me see.” I unbutton the coat under his intense gaze and remove it. I throw it on a chair and face him. The hunger in his eyes is unmistakable. A rush ofelectricity snakes up and down my spine. “Turn around.” His voice is hoarse with desire. I do as he says, slowly giving him the view of my back. The dress is backless, down to my lower back. A bra wouldn’t have worked with it, but it offers enough support to render one unnecessary.
He goes silent. Does he not like it? I am about to turn and ask when I feel his hands go around my waist. Slowly, he swivels me around. My heart races. Damien dips his head and captures my lips with his in a kiss that’s lazy, but quickly burns up with desire and consumes us both. His hands slide down to my buttocks and he draws me against his hot and throbbing erection. I hear a strained moan and am shocked to find that it’s coming from me.
After what feels both like an eternity and a mere second, he lets go of me. “Damn. You might be worth the price I paid.” His voice is raspy and strained.
My heart flutters and I have to remind myself that what he sees is a desirable woman and nothing more. But there’s something bitter in the way he speaks of me as though I am a commodity. “Are you saying I am a whore?”
He scoffs. “I am not aware of any whore who’s worth a billion dollars.”
He clasps my hand and leads me towards another door. This one is on the opposite side of the one he came through. “Come on. If we don’t leave soon, I might end up fucking you here. And that’s not how I want to unwrap my present.”
We enter a dark corridor that goes to a stairwell that leads to a door on top of the building. Damien opens it and ahelicopter is waiting for us.
“Where are we going?” I ask over the whirring noise of the helicopter blades. Forty-five minutes later, I find out. The mechanical bird lands on the grounds of an estate in the Hamptons. An estate I know like the back of my hand.
