07BarteredPainThe BillionairesWifeARE (2 page)

There was no time for coming
down. Without preamble, Anton slipped out of me and tucked his cock back into
his pants while I tugged my skirt back down over my ass. Long strings of his
thick, hot milk dripped down the inside of my thigh, unimpeded by anything so
convenient as underwear, and I rubbed my legs together, smearing Anton's seed
over my skin. The smell of cum hit my nose. I would reek of it until I had a
chance to clean up.

Which wasn't now, because no
sooner had I smoothed my skirt down than my mother popped into the ladies
lounge, elbows flying, clearly concerned that Anton couldn't handle a headache.
I hoped she couldn't smell the cum on my legs. It just kept dripping...

"Are you feeling
better?" she asked me. I ran a hand through my hair. My legs shook. The
aftershocks of our fuck sent tremors through my limbs and I swayed on my feet.
I licked my lips and tried to sound wan and consumptive. "I... I don't
know," I told her. "Maybe I should go home."

She pressed her lips together,
and I felt the tiniest pangs of guilt, but then Anton's warm, strong arm snaked
around my shoulders. "I'll take you home in the car," he said.

I leaned against him and breathed
him in.

*

I was soaking the effects of our
fucking away in the bathtub when my phone rang. The theme song from
Requiem
for a Dream,
since it was the most dramatic
piece of music I could think of. What else would I give Sadie, my most dramatic
friend?

Drunk on fine bubble bath and
great sex, I crawled over the lip of the tub toward my phone. It stopped
ringing before I reached it, so I waited for the
ding
of a voicemail.

Instead, it rang again.

I frowned. Usually Sadie was
content to leave me a voicemail or text me. She'd been dispatched this
afternoon to interview bands for the reception, since that's the sort of thing
Sadie does best. Maybe she got mugged? Worried, I picked the phone up.

“Hello?”

“I'm coming over,” Sadie blurted
on the other end of the line. “Don't go anywhere. I'm coming over.”

There was a nervous tremor in her
voice. I could hear it even over our crappy connection.

“What?” I said. “Why? What's
wrong?”

“Just... don't do anything. Don't
turn on the TV. Don't look at the internet. Lis, I am so fucking serious,
wait
for me to get there.”

Dread curdled in my stomach.
“Why?” I demanded. “What's going on?”

“Just wait for me!” she pleaded,
and hung up.

I stared at the dead phone in my
hands. My hands were like lead weights at the end of my arms, but I was already
starting to shake. What had happened?

Don't turn on the TV? Don't check the internet?
I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me quickly.
What the hell could Sadie have meant by that?

Another terrorist attack on the city? Another giant hurricane headed
our way?

Then a thought occurred to me.
What if it had something to do with Anton? He'd left the house at noon,
promising to be home to take me out to dinner. Was he in an accident?

Was he dead?

Fear like I'd never known shot
through me and I fairly ran out of the bathroom, not even
bothering to pull the plug on the bathtub. The colder air
of the bedroom sliced over my still-damp skin like a razor and I started to
shiver as my skin broke out in goosebumps. Running over to the small,
distressed-white armoire, I opened the doors to reveal the ultra-thin
flat-screen TV that Anton never watched. The remote sat next to it and I
snatched it up, mashing the power button.

Nothing happened.

Of course. He probably didn't
even have it hooked up. Like Anton Waters had time to watch
Dancing with
the Stars
or whatever. He was too busy fucking
his wife.

Running back to the closet, I
grabbed one of Anton's perfectly fitted cashmere sweaters from where it sat
folded neatly on a shelf before reclaiming a pair of jeans I'd left strewn on
the floor two nights ago. Dressed semi-decently, I ran back out to the bedroom
and skipped down the stairs to the fourth floor where Anton kept his office, a
cozy room full of mahogany furniture and even more books than he stored in his
bedroom. The dark green and cream walls made the place look like a gilded-age
smoking room where the gentlemen would retire after dinner to discuss things
while the women complained about how bad their husbands were in bed over
cocktails.

Anton's desktop computer—a sleek,
overpowered thing that intimidated me with its sci-fi aesthetic—sat placidly on
his desk. Wiggling the mouse, I put the password in, though the shaking of my
hands meant I had to retype it three times, and opened a browser window.

Google stared back at me and I
put my fingers on the keyboard. Then
I
paused. Perhaps I should wait for Sadie like she told me? Certainly she would
have said something about Anton being dead... right?

So this is something else.
Something really bad that needs a friend to intervene. A buffer.

Hoo boy.

For once in my life, I decided to
listen to Sadie. She was usually right about things, and I wanted to trust her.
Restlessly, I wandered out of the office and downstairs to make myself some
coffee, a nervous, aimless task, but at least it gave me something to do with
my hands. Just as I switched the coffee maker on, the doorbell rang.

I jogged to the front door and
peered out, then heaved a sigh of relief. Sadie stood there. I opened the door.

"Hey Sa—" I began.

"Okay!" she shouted,
pushing past me and into the house. Under her arm was a stack of
garishly-colored tabloids. "Don't freak out!"

This was not good.

The shaking in my hands returned,
and my breathing picked up. Sadie grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a
firm rattle, the tabloids spilling to the fine marble floor of the entryway.
"No!" she commanded. "I said
don't
freak out!"

"How can I not freak out
when you're yelling at me!" I cried. My eyes fell to the technicolor mess
on the creamy marble. It looked like a pile of vomit. Trashy vomit.
"What's with the tabloids?"

In answer, Sadie enveloped me in
a fierce hug. "It's going to be okay," she said.

Okay,
I thought,
now I
know
this is really bad.
On trembling legs I lowered myself to the floor, and
Sadie took a step back to allow me to do so, almost as though she were giving
me a respectful space to mourn my dead. With numb fingers I reached out and
grabbed a
National Enquirer.

WATERS AND WIFE'S DIRTY LITTLE
SECRETS screamed the headline. And there, beneath it, was a blurry night-vision
picture of me sprawled over Anton's lap, my bare ass in the air, as he spanked
me in the back garden.

I knew it,
I thought.
I
knew we couldn't get away with it.
Another
picture of us as we got in a car, my face clear as day, hovered in the lower
corner of the front page, just in case no one knew exactly who I was.

The blood drained from my head
and I sat heavily on the floor, swaying. Numbly I picked up a copy of the
Star.
That one was even worse. A shot of Anton and I
on the balcony, a collar around my neck, the leash in Anton's hand as he plowed
me from behind. That had only been a few days ago.

"Oh my god," I
breathed.

Sadie stood next to me, clearly
feeling awkward. "Well," she said at last, "at least your tits
look good."

I gave a weak laugh.
"They're blurred out."

"Yeah. But firm as hell. I
mean... damn girl."

I shook my head. "This is...
this is not good."

Sadie sat down next to me.
"I don't know," she said. "Look how a sex tape launched Paris
Hilton's career."

"What career?"

"Oh, you know. Stuff. And
you actually have talent! Everyone's going to want a piece of sculpture from
the billionaire mogul's sex slave."

"Sadie!" I covered my
face with my hands. Fucking Anton. Fucking Anton and his stupid need to get off
in public. This was the worst.

She reached out and
patted my shoulder awkwardly. "It'll be okay. It's not the end of the
world," she said. "And look at it this way: you guys are married. Who
cares what married people do? It's the twenty-first century. Maybe if you guys
were swingers or something that would be bad, but this is just... just..."

I sneaked a glance at
her. She was staring at the
Star
cover, biting her lip. She was definitely
not sure what to think about the leash and collar, but she rallied well.
"This is just like something out of a Rihanna video. Yeah, it'll get
banned in some places, but everyone's going to be sinfully envious of you.
Waters is hot. You got to marry him. And you guys have a sex life like some
crazy
Eyes Wide Shut
shit."

Despite myself, I
started to feel a little better. "Maybe I should go talk to Anton," I
said.

Sadie nodded wisely,
clearly relieved to be wrapping up the topic. "I think that's a good idea.
Oh! But I found a great caterer. How do you feel about Ethiopian food?"

I smiled.
"Sadie..." I began.

She grinned at me.
"More importantly, how do you think
your
mother
will feel about
Ethiopian food?"

That
made me grin back. “I don't know what I'd do without you,”
I said.

*

Two hours later I was
walking into Empire Capital's headquarters. I was a familiar enough face that I
didn't have to check in any more, simply go to the elevator and head up to the
top floor.

I glanced at Katy, manning the
front desk, and gave her a smile.

She looked away immediately.

Oh,
I thought.

The sick feeling in my stomach
returned. What was my mother going to say when she found out? What was my
father going to do? He'd never shown any sort of fatherly inclinations to keep
me pure and untouched, but when his little girl was splashed across the
tabloids in compromising positions he might have a different reaction.

Nerves singing, I mashed the
elevator button and waited for it to descend.

People passed me. No one looked
me in the eye. I felt my cheeks begin to burn.

The elevator dinged and I leaped
inside it, pushing the button for the top floor. Outside the door, a small
gaggle of businesspeople waited, each and every one looking anywhere but at me.

There's room,
I wanted to say,
but I didn't. The doors closed with a hiss and I ascended.

I forced myself to breath slowly
and deeply. Anton would know what to do. Anton knew everything there was to
know about being a rich and famous schmuck
targeted
by paparazzi.

So why didn't he think twice about
fucking me where we could be photographed?
Come to think of it, why didn't
I
think
twice about it?

But I already knew
the answer. I
had
thought about it. I'd thought about it
each time it happened, but in the heat of the moment, tangled and twisted up
with arousal, I hadn't been able to voice my concerns. I'd only had one thing
on my mind: Anton.

The elevator slowed
to a stop and I exited. Arthur, Anton's personal assistant, sat at his desk. He
met my eyes and smiled. Was it my imagination, or was that smile a little
false, a little plastic?

"He's in his
office, Mrs. Waters," Arthur told me. "Go on in."

Licking my lips, I
nodded and skirted around him, entering one of the doors leading to the small,
spare foyer. My hands shook as I opened the door to Anton's office.

Anton sat at his desk , serenely
typing away at his computer.
He glanced
up as I edged my way in.

"Hey," I said.

He gave me his signature faint
smile. "Is there something I can do for you?" he asked me. "I
missed out on a lot of work this morning."

I winced. I knew my mother's
insistence on his attendance at the wedding planning was definitely eating into
his time, but he acquiesced to her demands out of... I guess out of concern for
me. Funny, I'd been writing it off as through the goodness of his heart, but I
realized, as he stared at me from the tranquility of his office—full of zen
fountains and running water—that he was much happier here, working. He probably
wouldn't endure my mother out of some misplaced sense of kindness. I frowned as
I stared at him.

"Felicia?" he said.

I started. "Um."
Opening my purse, I dug the tabloids out of the depths. "I have something
you should probably look at."

He raised a brow, but beckoned me
closer. I walked the length of the room—an endless length, it seemed like—and
presented the tabloids to him with trembling hands.