A Million Dirty Secrets (7 page)

Her narrowed eyes were back again—obviously she didn’t like the change in my attitude—but she nodded her understanding anyway. I might have given her the most intimate moment of her life, but we both needed to remember that this was still just a business arrangement.

“Sure thing, boss,” she said snidely, and then saluted me.

“Hey, you know that little slice of heaven I just gave you? Well, if you’d like to be feeling any more of that instead of me simply using your body for my own pleasure, then I suggest you watch that smart little mouth of yours,” I warned, running the tip of my finger over her bottom lip. “Of course, I could always just stick something in it to keep you quiet.” I knew that pissed her off, and, wanting to piss her off even
more, I bent over the tub and said, “Where’s my kiss goodbye, woman?”

She reluctantly leaned forward, and I kissed the tip of her nose instead of her mouth.

“Be a good girl today,” I said with a smirk and then waltzed toward my bedroom, knowing she was watching my ass again. Before I reached the door, I stopped, flexed one butt cheek at a time, and then looked back over my shoulder and gave her a wink. As I suspected, her mouth was hanging open. When her eyes finally left my ass and she looked up, Delaine grabbed the loofah and threw it at me. I stepped out of the way just as it landed on the floor with a wet thwack.

“I hate you!” she called after me.

“Maybe, but you obviously love my ass!” I yelled back with a chuckle.

She was going to be too much fun to fuck with.

I couldn’t help but smile smugly the whole drive into work. Knowing that Delaine would be waiting for me at home when I returned was definitely going to make the day a bit more bearable. Or unbearable, considering I’d probably be thinking about all the naughty things I wanted to do to my million-dollar girl, and have her do to me, for the duration of the day. Even that millisecond of a thought forced me to rearrange the uncomfortable hardness that seemed to have decided to take up residence in my pants.

But I was a man of business, and business came before pleasure. So the second Samuel opened my door and I stepped onto the pavement that led to the revolving glass entrance of my second home, my smile was gone. Stone-faced Crawford had entered the building.

I was known as a hard-ass around the office. Employees who had been there since my father’s day had been shocked to see his rambunctious son morph into a cutthroat wheeler-dealer. But the business world was a cold, cruel bitch, and to
stay ahead, you had to keep your guard up or be prepared to have your balls handed to you at the first sign of weakness.

Mason, the only man I trusted around this place, greeted me as I stepped through the door.

Mason Hunt was my right-hand man, my personal assistant, and probably the closest thing I had to a friend. He and his wife, Polly, pretty much took care of every aspect of my life. Mason had my back at the office, and Polly took care of my personal life. She ran my home, overseeing all of the staff and my expenses, so I never had to be bothered with the task. The maids, gardeners, and cooks were there and gone before I got home, for which I was grateful. She was also my personal shopper and made sure I looked damn good for both business and pleasure. Multitasker extraordinaire.

She was really very good at what she did, as was Mason. They worked together like a well-oiled piece of machinery. I’d like to think I had something to do with their getting together. After all, tending to me on a daily basis meant their paths had to cross pretty often. Despite their differences, they complemented each other. Mason was a laid-back, cool motherfucker, tall, southern, and never without his favorite cowboy boots. Polly was just a hyperactive little shit who bounced all over the place. Short and highly social, she apparently never wore the same outfit twice. Not that I’d ever really noticed, but I caught that little snippet of information during one of her rants, which I usually tried to tune out. Polly was the yin to Mason’s yang, so it seemed inevitable that they would end up together.

“Hunt,” I greeted him as we walked side by side to my personal elevator. Yes, I had a personal elevator. I couldn’t
stand to be stuck in a tin box with twenty other people crowding me, each one wearing a different cologne or coughing and sneezing all over the goddamn place.

Mason stuck the key into the lock and opened the doors so that I could step through ahead of him. I put my briefcase down and sat on the red velvet couch that stretched along the interior wall. The ceiling and each wall was mirrored to make the small space look bigger. Bigger was always better.

“So, how did it go?” he asked as he pushed the button for the fortieth floor and took a seat on the opposite end of the couch.

I’d been single for quite some time, and Polly had been relentlessly trying to set me up on dates with women she considered to be a good match for me. To stave off her attempts, I finally broke down and told her that I’d been secretly seeing someone that I’d met on one of my trips to Los Angeles. She bought it and stopped trying to play matchmaker, but then she started hounding me about wanting to meet the mystery woman. Usually I could give someone “the look” and they knew to back off, but not Polly. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by me. I’d told her that I was going to ask my mystery lady to move in with me last night—you know, just in case I actually found something I liked at Foreplay and followed through on making a purchase, which I had.

“She said yes,” I answered. “I told her to leave all of her stuff behind and I flew her in last night. She’s at the house now.”

“What? That’s great!” He clapped me on the shoulder, his congratulations for the major step I’d taken.

“Yeah, I’m pretty psyched about it,” I said with a smile, because it was true. My dick hardened minutely of its own accord to further prove the point.

We spent the rest of the ride in polite conversation. Mason was never one to pry into my personal affairs unless Polly threatened to withhold sex if he didn’t at least try to get something out of me. I threw him a bone every now and then to keep him out of the doghouse, but he never pushed me. Today was no exception. He knew
she
was there, but I still hadn’t told either of them who
she
was.

Mason reminded me that Polly would be stopping by my house after lunch to tend to the shopping and check on the household staff. That freaked me out. Delaine and I hadn’t discussed the specifics of what story we were going to give to my acquaintances, or whether she even wanted to go by her actual name, for that matter. I knew the maids would keep their mouths shut and do their jobs, but not Polly.

I stepped off the elevator and nodded to a couple of other employees in polite greeting as I passed them on the way to my workplace suite in the west corner. Mason’s desk was set up just outside my office. All the exterior spaces had floor-to-ceiling windows, red carpets, and white walls with green accents in the décor—the same color scheme as the red lotus.

I swung open the heavy wooden door to my office and closed it behind me before rushing over to my desk and picking up the telephone to dial my own home. I had to talk to Delaine and make sure we hashed out some details before Hurricane Polly showed up. Polly would start her supersleuthing and would put two and two together, and the truth about
our arrangement would be out before I’d even had the chance to get my dick wet. In hindsight, I probably should’ve had all this figured out before I decided to purchase a woman, but you know what they say about hindsight.

There was no answer at the house.

Of course there was no answer. Delaine probably didn’t feel comfortable answering my phone, but I was now beginning to sweat in my suit, imagining all the ways this could blow up in my face when Polly arrived to do her job.

In a panic, I picked up my briefcase and walked back out the door, dialing Samuel on my way past Mason’s desk and telling him to swing back around to pick me up. Mason stopped me before I could make a break for it. “Daniel called and said he’s waiting for you to let him know if you’re dropping by today,” he said, confused.

Daniel Crawford, my uncle the doctor.

“Shit, I forgot all about that. I’ll call him from my cell. Not sure what time I’ll be back, but I have to take care of some things,” I said as I pushed the door open and slipped out into the hall.

You’d think Delaine had sucked out all of my fucking brain cells last night, the way I was screwing up. Maybe she had.

And there was that damn hard-on again …

“Crawford!” David’s voice boomed from the other end of the hall, where his office suite was located, before he started making his way toward me. “What the hell is this about?”

I sighed and turned toward him, my hand already balling into a fist and ready to rebreak his nose if he started trying to push my buttons. For the most part, we were able to stay out
of each other’s way, but because we were partners, it was impossible to avoid each other entirely.

“What?” I asked with my teeth clenched.

“Ten percent of what we earned last quarter was sent to charities!” He held the quarterly report out toward me as if I hadn’t already seen it.

“Yeah, so?”

“We agreed on five percent.”

“I don’t know why I bother having the same discussion about this every time I turn around, but here goes nothing,” I spat out in irritation. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with his shit right now, but then again, I never was. “With the bad economy, charities need our help more than ever right now, Stone. The huge tax write-off, not to mention the fact that a good deal of our clients sign on because of our generous charitable efforts, proves even further why donating is not only the right thing to do, but a smart thing to do. Besides, we have more than enough money to spare and you know it.”

It wasn’t until then that I noticed the employees had stopped their daily routines to watch the showdown. It wasn’t the first time, and probably wouldn’t be the last. Of course David would take full advantage of the audience.

“Then maybe you should sell some of your shares to me, and donate that money.” His ugly face smiled smugly before he turned his back on me and walked toward his end of the building.

As much as I was trying to get him to sell out to me, he was doing the same in return. Both of us were too damn stubborn to let the other one win.

His abhorrent behavior in front of our employees and the fact that I knew he didn’t really give a shit about my mother’s dream for Scarlet Lotus to pay it forward, so to speak, made me entertain the thought of knocking every one of the fucker’s teeth out of his oversized head. But I’d learned as a child that two wrongs don’t make a right, and I really was in a hurry, so I slowly counted to ten to regain my composure and forced my feet to move in the opposite direction. I’d deal with him later if need be.

I made my way to the lobby and outside and was relieved to find Samuel already waiting at the curb. Chicago rush hour traffic can be a bitch, but somehow Samuel always seemed to outmaneuver everyone else, and in a stretch limo to boot.

Oh … my … good googly-moogly!

Never, and I do mean never, had I ever felt something so insanely pleasurable in all my life.

The wicked things that man did with his fingers and the seductive way he looked at me from under those long, lush lashes, hypnotizing me and my body into obeying his every command. The dirty things his sinful mouth said that made me feel like slapping him and riding his face all at the same time, and don’t even get me started on that tongue and the malevolent way it sang to my nipples. I swear, I think he was speaking in tongues even though not a sound was made, but I sure as hell felt it.

The man was evil incarnate, Satan’s immortal son, and I
was doomed. I could feel what little religion was left in my traitorous body being sucked from my soul, turning me into a backsliding sinner. I was going to hell, and I really hoped his fingers met me at the gate.

I sat there in my postorgasmic bliss, my skin shriveling up and the water going cold. Back and forth he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom as he got ready for work. I watched him brush his teeth in his underwear, and then he disappeared back into the bedroom only to reemerge in a pair of black slacks that hung low on his hips and accentuated the delicious V of his abdomen. The belt on his pants was hanging open, he still didn’t have a shirt on, and he was standing there barefoot. I was mesmerized by the movement of his back muscles as he looked into the mirror and did absolutely nothing but put a dab of gel in his palm before he ran his fingers through his sexy hair. He looked over at me, winked, and did this half-smirk thing while he applied deodorant in a way that made it look pornographic. I seriously wanted to nuzzle his pits.

There was an air of confidence about him that made me want to lick him from head to toe, and then maybe suck on all his little piggies.

While a part of me was relieved that he was leaving, my inner miniwhore wanted to beg him to get back in the tub and show us that magic trick he’d done with those porntastic fingers again. Just like that, Double Agent Coochie was born. All it had taken was my very first orgasm to bring her to life. And she was apparently a very shameless hoochie. Great.

It wasn’t until I heard Noah shout that he was leaving and the door close behind him that I finally forced myself to get
out of the bath of sin. My bags were sitting just inside the door; I assumed Noah had brought them up. Once I was dressed and feeling a bit modest again, I decided to leave the bedroom in search of some sustenance. I hadn’t even eaten the night before because my nerves had been all over the damn place and I’d been worried that I’d end up puking right in the middle of my auction.

The house was eerily quiet, but oddly warm and cozy given how big it was. I slowly made my way down the hall and toward the staircase, checking out my surroundings in awe. It was tastefully decorated with large paintings that looked like they cost more than what my father had made in an entire year at the only factory in Hillsboro. The floors were carpeted a regal red, but the walls were kept white. Most of the doors to the other rooms were closed, but I didn’t bother to open them because I was hungry and I knew I’d eventually see them over the next two years.