15
It is four in the morning. How long have Will and I been here, in my room, in this bed? It was the middle of the day when he showed up at my office, and we’ve spent every moment since arriving at my penthouse in this bed—so, more than twelve hours, at least. We fuck, sleep, fuck, sleep. I peed a few times here and there, and brought us water to rehydrate ourselves, but that’s about it.
Will is asleep, finally, his arm tossed across his handsome face, the silk sheet slung low over his hips, only just barely covering the glorious organ which has pleasured me so thoroughly over the last several hours.
God, the things the man can do with that thing…simply sinful. Delightfully wicked. I’d like to say I’m sated, that I’ve had all the sex I can handle, but that would be a dirty lie. I’m nowhere near done with him.
I never will be. I can admit that much, now.
I still have no idea how a relationship with him will work, even just logistically. He lives in Colorado and cannot leave often—he can’t just abandon his duties at the ranch, and I’d never ask him to. No more than I can up and move to Colorado and leave my business here—I’m just getting started on the road to CEO of Bellanger Industries. Which means being in New York…alot.
Point is, there’s a lot to figure out. Right now we’re both sorting through the raging hormones of a wild, monstrous physical, sexual connection of entirely epic proportions, but there’s more to this. Far, far more, and we both know it. I need sex with Will like I need my next breath—desperately, intrinsically. But I’m connected to him on a deeper level, heart to heart, soul to soul, in a way I can’t even begin to fathom. I don’t understand it and I don’t know what to do with it.
I can’t sleep for thinking about it, though I’m exhausted and need rest so I’ll be ready for the next round that Will is going to demand. But I can’t sleep, can’t shut off my brain, and can’t quiet the whirling maelstrom of thoughts and feelings inside me.
How am I supposed to go about loving a man? What do I do? Make him sandwiches and play little wifey? That’s not me and never will be, and I don’t think that’s what he’d want from me anyway—at least not now. I know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a woman enjoying the role of wife and mother, but that’s not where I am in life at this point.
So what is love, what is a committed relationship, what is marriage? In my own life all I saw was Dad working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. He missed birthdays, dance recitals, softball games, graduations…thinking he could make up for it with diamond earrings and the newest gadgets and cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. As I grew older, he began to realize that what I needed from a father washim, but it was too little too late in many ways, especially after Mom left—which means all those recitals and games and graduations there was no one to cheer me on and support me and hug me but my driver/bodyguard, Al, who retired when I started college.
I will not enter a relationship only to watch it crumble like Dad and Mom’s. Will not, cannot. But I don’t have any other point of reference.
I lay quietly in bed, trying to still my mind and just shut down. I succeed for a few minutes until I sit bolt upright.
Shit, I have to do something about the elevator footage—I can’t risk that getting out.
I go into the kitchen and use the house phone and call Bernie, the head of Bellanger personal security. He’s a night owl, and he likes to work the third shift, so I know he’s up and in his office.
It rings twice, and he picks up in his deceptively kind and eerily quiet voice. “It’s Bernie. Go.”
“Hi, Bern, it’s Brooklyn.”
“Hey. What’s up? Everything OK?”
“Yeah, um…sort of. There’s some footage from the elevator camera which I’d like to have disappear.” I hesitate. “Yesterday afternoon, my office’s private elevator—”
“Three nineteen p.m. through three twenty-three p.m.” He’s not just head of personal, physical security, but he’s also the head of technological security, meaning, he’s a techie and hacker by trade, with all the personal skills to go with that. “Already done. Encrypted and then deleted, so even if someone were to go to the trouble of trying to rebuild the files, they couldn’t.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
“You got it, Miss B. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
“All right. Talk to you later.”
“Wait!” I say. “I need a top-level clearance ID card made.”
“I can get him second tier, but Mr. B will have to clear him for top tier.”
“The only real difference is top tier includes entry into Dad’s office and private rooms, right?”
“Correct.”
“Fine, do the second tier for now. I just need him to get in and out of the building and my offices, as well as my personal penthouse.”
“William Henry Auden, got it. Will, or William?”
“Will,” I say, amazed once again by Bernie’s professionalism and thoroughness.
