by Kitty Thomas
Anton. She put the spoon back in the bowl and stood, her heart going like a jackhammer in her chest.
“Sit,” he said, his accent curling around her like a blanket.
Vivian hesitantly eased back into the chair as he slid into the seat across from her. The waiter returned with soup, sandwich, and tea for him.
After the man retreated to the kitchen, Anton said, “I ordered something for myself after I called Janette.”
“Why?”
“I worked through lunch.”
Vivian looked back at her bowl, unable to meet his gaze, knowing what would happen between them after they ate.
“Have I told you how lovely your hair is? It looks like a light brown until you get into sunlight. Then you’ve got those strands that glitter like gold,” he said, his words turning gentle with the accent.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t eat? That’s very rude, Vivian. I’ve worked all day. A man has to eat.”
She made a choking sound. “Work. I’m sure it’s been grueling.”
He smiled pleasantly and bit into his sandwich.
She spoke low between clenched teeth, worried about drawing too much attention. “You know what I mean. You come out here to eat with me and compliment my hair like we’re on some kind of date, when we both know what you’re about.”
“No, Vivian. You have no idea what I’m about.”
A few moments passed in silence when he said, “You’re not eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat.”
The look he gave her brooked no argument. She cast her eyes down at the bowl and slid the soup spoon between her lips.
“The sandwich, too.”
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed off her face to land on the napkin in her lap. “Why are you doing this?”
“Feeding you?”
She tossed the napkin on the table and stood, her tolerance for the charade finally reached. “Fuck you. Show my husband the video. I don’t care. He’ll believe me.”
He glanced up mildly at her and took a sip of his tea. “And if he doesn’t?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t be foolish. Sit and finish your sandwich.”
She assessed him as he turned his attention to his soup. Was he bluffing?
“Let’s say you show Michael the video,” she said, testing the waters. “What will you get out of it? He’ll probably kill you. You stand to gain nothing.”
He laughed out loud. A couple of elderly women at a table a few feet away turned sharply at the sound, disdain on their faces over the audacity of the help dining in the spa restaurant.
“You think I’d just walk up to him?” Anton asked.
“You can’t mail it. I’m home all day.”
“I got his work address from Lindsay.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. Sit and finish.”
Deflated, she sat back in the chair.
“Speaking of Lindsay, he said he saw you a few nights ago.”
Her face turned so hot she knew it must be a deep crimson.
“He said he couldn’t resist.” Anton’s gaze swept over her body, searing her. “I can understand.” He finished his sandwich and drank the rest of his tea, then stood, extending his hand.
She put her palm in his, and he pulled her to him as if to embrace her. Instead, when she was close enough, he leaned toward her ear. “Do you see the man sitting across the restaurant beside that fern?”
Vivian looked and nodded, not liking the sinking sensation.
“He’s a private investigator. I called him, pretending to be your husband. I said I suspected you were having an affair with a massage therapist here. He just snapped several photographs of us having lunch together. He’ll put them in the mail to me later this afternoon. Your defense is looking weaker and weaker, my flower.”
Vivian pulled away, shaken. She wanted to talk to the P.I., wanted to fight him for the camera. But how exactly would that go? She’d make a scene, and the spa staff would drag her off him and toss her out on her ass.
“You’ve got it all figured out don’t you, Anton?”
“Indeed.”
“How many women have you pulled this shit with?”
He just smiled and led her through the crowded lobby and into the massage room with the eastern music and the table fountain burbling away. Today the spa video was off.
“Undress,” he said, after he’d locked the door.
She moved behind the screen, and he chuckled.
“Such modesty.”
Vivian held her breath, wondering if he’d make her strip bare in front of him. But he turned and went to wash his hands in the sink, then selected an oil from the cart.
“I prefer the lavender oil on you,” he said, conversationally as she disrobed and folded her clothing behind the screen.
And there it was. The arousal between her thighs, the dampness of her sex. It only took a few words for her body to respond to him like a lover instead of a victim.
She stood in front of him now, the towel wrapped tightly around her. A dream-like state enveloped her as she waited. For direction. To wake up. For something she couldn’t put words to yet.
“I want you on your stomach today.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and positioned herself on the table.
Anton moved behind her and made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Vivian, Vivian. No towel today. We are beyond that pretense. Are we not?”
She just whimpered as he pulled the towel away, baring her flesh to his gaze. His oiled hands came down on her, and she melted into him, biting back a moan the instant his fingers moved across her skin.
“I want to hear you moan for me. Don’t hold back those lovely sounds.”
Her eyes flew to his. “There are people out there.” The lobby was far too close to the door for her comfort.
“And I’ve told you this room is completely soundproofed.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed him. “I can’t.”
“Can’t is no longer a part of your vocabulary.” His fingers moved over her ass and started to slide between her legs. “Let go.”
She shook her head.
“Vivian . . . This is the last time I’ll ask nicely.” Two thick fingers pushed inside, stretching her, sliding against her moist arousal.
She shuddered and let out a low, erotic moan.
“Good girl.”
As fingers pumped, rubbing, massaging her from the inside, his other hand pressed firmly against her ass, pressing her against the table.
Today the pretense of a normal massage was gone. Though he spent a few moments on other parts of her body, loosening her up, they both knew everything centered on her sexual organs and how he’d manipulate them for her pleasure and his own twisted satisfaction.
When she started whimpering, he pulled away and retreated to the sink to wash his hands. She wondered if he was going for the lubricant again, and if he would use her ass this time. The possibility sent another tremor of fear through her.
He returned with a tube of something new. Not a massage oil or lubricant.
“What’s that?”
He arched a brow at her. “Does my flower think she’s in a position to be asking questions?”
Vivian dropped her head back to the table. “No.”
He answered anyway. “It’s an arousal cream. It will enhance the experience.”
She listened as he squirted a dollop of the cream onto his fingers and massaged it into her clit. Almost immediately she felt engorged and wet, so aroused she wanted to beg him to fuck her with anything. His fingers, a dildo, his cock. She needed something inside her and didn’t care what.
The moans she could barely bring herself to make only moments before, started to leave her in desperate, guttural sounds she didn’t recognize.
His hands moved once again to her sex, but instead of penetrating her, or stroking her c
lit, he chose a less sensitive area. He massaged with expert precision the folds of her flesh, her inner and outer lips. Squeezing and pulling. Rubbing.
The feelings were so intense she couldn’t be sure if it was the arousal cream, or the fact that he was touching her everywhere except the one hot-button place she needed to have petted. In her mind, her clit became a giant, throbbing sphere, engorged, huge, heavy. Within his grasp, but intentionally ignored.
He moved everywhere around it but never on it, causing nerves to fire up that she had no idea even existed. Before, she’d thought of sexual pleasure in terms of her clit, and on the rare occasions when Michael hit it just right, her g-spot. Now she felt herself awakened to nerve endings that seemed to stretch on and on, licking her flesh with a fire she’d never felt. Not with Michael. Not by her own hand even with the aid of a vibrator.
The desire Anton called from her was so strong that tears started to slide down her cheeks. But they weren’t tears of the fear or shame from before. She felt her body arching off the table, her ass thrusting obscenely toward him. She pressed her mound harder into his hand, trying to get his fingers to make even the most momentary brush with that sensitive flesh that would send her over the edge into completion.
“Be a good girl, Vivian. You may only have what I allow you to have. You can’t just take. Beg if you want it. Beg like a little slut, and I’ll show you just how kind I can be.”
Her face flamed at his words, but perhaps more at her willingness to obey them. And because the order turned her on. “Anton, please.”
His free hand stroked her back as if he were petting a kitten. “Oh, you can do much better than that. Beg like a slut that wants it or I’ll have to end our session here. I’ve got a busy roster today, and I’m already behind.”
Desperation and fear drove her. “Oh, God, no. Don’t stop. More. Please Anton, please let me come.”
“Will you be a good slut for me if I let you have a release?”
She whimpered and nodded.
“I want to hear it.”
“Yes, I’ll be a good slut. Please. I’ll do anything.”
He chuckled. “You have no idea yet how true those words are.”
She felt a cold, ribbed piece of glass sliding frantically inside her pussy, and then his fingers were finally stroking the center of her pleasure.
The orgasm went on for ages, coming fast and hard. Even when she thought she was finished and wanted to beg him to stop, one hand continued to thrust the dildo inside her while the other kept rubbing her clit in feverish circles, until she had a second orgasm riding on the back of the first.
She screamed out her release, the tears still flowing down her cheeks until finally he stopped and let her collapse on the massage table, her pussy dripping onto the soft vinyl.
5
Two and a half weeks of sessions with Anton passed before Michael noticed the deductions from their account. Vivian had made Chicken Kiev with buttered baby carrots and asparagus. She tried to play the role of the dutiful wife because her visits to Dome were feeling more and more like an affair, and less like the coerced sexual abuse it was.
Because she now looked forward to the visits.
Anton hadn’t started doing anything too weird to her. He never got off. It was all about her pleasure. What he got out of it, she couldn’t ascertain, but she didn’t get the frightened butterflies in her stomach on Tuesday or Thursday mornings anymore. Massage days were a day she looked forward to, a day her body was held in an erotic limbo until Anton’s elegant and precise hands could be on her again.
She’d almost started to see him as a lover. Almost. But he’d told her not to get attached. She wasn’t the only woman he did this with, and some day she would move on. Did that mean he would get bored and release her from the blackmail? She should be happy at that prospect, but she felt nothing.
Michael had been civil with her, kind even, but he hadn’t tried to touch her again. Her mind screamed with
the possibilities. Did he suspect? Did he think she was cheating? Had Anton sent the pictures or the video? Surely if it had happened, her husband would have confronted her, and she’d be out on the street by now.
It was Wednesday and Michael wasn’t even pretending to have a nice meal with her. Instead, he stared at the laptop screen, the click-clack of the keys piercing through the silence every few seconds as he shoveled forkfuls of food into his mouth without bothering to look at what he was eating.
“Vivian, what’s this?”
She had no idea what he’d found, but the tone of his voice made her feel as if she were in a free fall. She put a bite of carrots in her mouth and chewed, trying to maintain her composure.
“What’s what?”
He spun the laptop around so she could see the screen. He’d been looking at their joint bank account. He rarely paid attention to that account since most of his money went through a separate, much larger account she didn’t have access to.
Her expression was perfectly blank as she looked at the screen, as if by pretending ignorance, he would go back to his Chicken Kiev and forget all about the matter.
“Twice a week withdrawals. What on earth are you spending that kind of money on? Jesus, Vivi, that’s four hundred and fifty a week.”
A drop in the bucket.
“We’ve got the money.”
“That’s not the point. What are you spending it on?”
There was no answer to give but the truth. The amount was too exact. Why hadn’t she been smarter about it? Had she thought he’d never notice?
Had she wanted to get caught so this madness would end? She could have used the check card at the ATM and taken out more varied amounts. Then she could have said she’d been shopping. Though that probably would have annoyed him, too.
She looked at her plate. “I’ve been seeing a massage therapist.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. Or rephrase them. It sounded like she was admitting to an affair. She chanced a glance up.
His eyes were cold, narrowed on her. He seemed ready to go off on his standard diatribe about money. You’d think they were starving, or even upper middle class.
“Why didn’t you clear it with me, first?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Dr. Smith sent me there. He thought massages might loosen me up.” She didn’t think her face could get any redder.
“You stopped seeing that therapist. You said he made you uncomfortable.”
“I know.” Her gaze was on her plate again, unable to bear the intensity in his eyes. Eyes that might see far too much of her.
“I’m freezing your access,” he said, slamming the laptop shut.
All she could think was, This is it. I’m out on the street. Anton will tell him everything. All at once, her attempt at self-sabotage seemed suicidal. She wanted to drop to her knees and beg him not to, but instead she fell into the pattern that felt like normalcy between them.
Anger.
She leaped up from the table. “Fuck you, Michael. You stingy son of a bitch. Have I displeased you once in the past several weeks? Has your breakfast or dinner been late? Has your house been dirty? Have your shirts been wrinkled? You can’t even accuse me of being frigid because you haven’t made a move toward me.”
Why am I bringing that up? Shut up, Vivian. Shut the FUCK up. If he fucks me, he’ll know something’s different.
She took her plate from the table and slammed it against the dining room wall, narrowly missing the curio cabinet. As the plate shattered, she looked at Michael in time to see his eyes turn to slits. He unfolded himself from the chair.
Vivian backed away and then bolted down the hallway, Michael on her heels in that slow, predatory walk like the villain in a horror film. So sure he’ll reach his prey. The hall ended with a door that led to a half-basement. She’d get out that way and disappear for a few hours to let him cool off.
The door was locked. She twisted the knob frantically as if she could make it open
with added exertion.
She turned then, her back pressed flat against the door, Michael only a few feet from her. He caged her with his hands and large body. She felt her hips arch toward his, as if this were foreplay instead of potential danger.
Fuck. What’s wrong with me? He could have thrown her down on the ground right then and taken her from behind like an animal, and she would have orgasmed, maybe even before his pants hit the floor.
Her breath came out in shallow pants, her cheeks flushed from running. “Why is the door locked?”
He arched a brow. “I keep important business files down there.”
“Since when?”
“Awhile.” The word ground out between his teeth. His jaw clenched. He couldn’t know she was trying to distract herself from the aching throb that had settled between her legs, making her overwhelmingly conscious of his maleness.
Anton had ignited something in her, awakened a beast that had been in slumber. Her libido had never been like this. She’d never been this desperate for release. She’d never wanted Michael more.
“What the hell has gotten into you lately, Vivi? You’re not yourself.”
She looked away, unable to take that penetrating stare any longer. He knew her far too well to maintain a secret of this magnitude for long.
She shrugged.
“It stops now.”
A part of her snapped free, and she ached for something she couldn’t put a name to, something she had no context to understand. She felt her body flushing, her breath coming in huge, heaving gasps as she tried to get control of herself. One hand still gripped the door handle, while the other clenched and unclenched at her side. It took every ounce of willpower not to launch herself at him and provoke him further.
Provoke him to what? God, what the fuck is wrong with me? she asked herself again. Yet the answer didn’t come.
Michael stepped back, scrubbed a hand through his hair, and took a deep breath. “I’m leaving in the morning on a business trip. I’ll be gone two weeks.”