Beck & Call (18 page)

To hell it with it,
she thought. “When I was eight, I fell out of an apple tree.”

Damien laughed. He covered his mouth and stopped. “Sorry. The way you said that was amusing.”

“That’s all right. I guess it does sound funny. I didn’t fall that far, but I hit my head on a rock and knocked myself unconscious. I’d been playing alone in an orchard near our house. Mike found me. We don’t know how long afterward. It turned out I had a serious brain injury. A portion of my left temporal lobe was damaged. Whatever new connections my brain made to compensate for the loss resulted in this memory thing I have now.”

“You developed a form of savant-ism,” Damien said. “Your left brain filter for suppressing superfluous detail must have been switched off.”

“That sounds like what the doctors said. Anyway, I ended up more of a weirdo than I’d been before. You’re looking at a girl who didn’t have a boyfriend or a date until I left high school. For a long time, I’d blurt out everything I knew on a subject every time I was asked a question. Mike helped me practice getting the compulsion under control.”

“Fascinating,” Damien said—but not like he thought she was a freak. “I’d be interested to hear how your brother did that. He must have been very bright himself.”

“He was,” she said around the sudden lump in her throat. She didn’t explain that Mike had channeled her impulse into drawing her memories. That skill was too tied up in her and Jake’s hidden agenda.

She dropped her eyes and Damien cocked his head to the side. “You miss him.”

His comment reminded her he’d researched her. He already knew Mike was dead. “Every damn day,” she said honestly.

He reached out to cover her hand. The spontaneous touch surprised her.

“Your brother left you strong,” he said. “You should be proud of that.”

She had the oddest impression this was the real Damien Call: this warm, steady, openhearted human being. She didn’t dislike the eccentric who’d put her and Jake at his beck and call—who was she to judge, after all? But if this was the real him, how on earth had that other Damien come to be? This Damien was the sort of man a woman could fall for.

“Thank you,” she said, a thready breathlessness in her voice.

Damien drew his hand back from her.

IT
was late, and the shining lobby of Ten WorldWide Plaza was as quiet as a mausoleum. Damien signed his companions in at the desk, thankful the night guard was new. If he hadn’t been, he might have betrayed surprise. Damien never brought guests to his residence.

Probably he shouldn’t be doing so tonight.

He shouldn’t have touched Mia in the car either. He needed to be careful. Triggering her to fall for him would mean the end of their enjoyable arrangement. He cast a sidelong glance at her. She seemed all right, not dewy-eyed or anything.

“This is
your
elevator,” she said, watching him activate the handprint control.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m the only actual resident of the building. I’ll need to code your prints into the system.”

That realization sparked discomfort. This was his private space. He shrugged internally. He could renege their access if circumstances changed. It wasn’t the end of the world that he hadn’t thought this through.

“There’s a corporate hotel across the street,” he added as more practicalities occurred to him. “I’m sure they’ll send over toothbrushes and whatnot.”

They stepped into the private elevator, the three of them close to filling it. Naturally, the ride to his floor was swift. The mechanism was his design, and he didn’t design slow things. Despite the quickness of the journey, one or two ideas of what the three of them might do in the confined space arose. His cock was noticeably restless by the time they arrived.

“This is me,” he said unnecessarily.

His front door had been salvaged from an old Buddhist temple. Constructed of solid bronze, the panel’s size and weight had necessitated it being hoisted to the skyscraper’s top by crane. At the moment, all it required to open was his handprint.

“Hold on,” Jake said. “Let me check inside before you two go in.”

“I’m sure it’s safe,” Damien said.

“Just in case,” Jake responded.

Mia let out a little snort as Jake went to look around. “He does this protector thing at my place too. I think we have to humor him.”

Being referred to as part of a
we
gave him an odd feeling.

Jake returned shortly. “Okay. Everything seems fine.”

Damien’s nerves were uncustomarily tight as they went in. His home was outside the norm. Jake probably wouldn’t care. Damien suspected the former CIA operative had slept in plenty of strange places. Mia, however, might feel uncomfortable.

She walked as far as his living area and turned in a slow circle. “Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,” was her comment.

“Is it all right?” he asked.

She laughed. “It’s better than Superman’s fortress! Talk about open plan!”

His residence took up the entire top floor of the WorldWide tower. The architect had designed it to give the impression of being a single immense room. Half walls shielded areas benefitting from seclusion, but above them was a great gulf of air. Surmounting that, an exposed steel framework supported a super-strength glass enclosure roof. The lengths of glass that comprised it rippled like frozen ribbons, the effect sleek and graceful rather than industrial. Damien loved the engineering feat his home represented, and the way it let in the sky.

The city that never slept glittered 360 degrees around them.

Mia gawked with her head tipped back then turned to grin at him. “I notice you don’t have a lot of furniture. Where are Jake and I going to sit?”

She was teasing. He had enough chairs for that. “I don’t entertain a lot.”

Her eyes met his. He felt her looking into him, trying to discern why. Was she pitying him or just curious?

“I guess I might keep this place to myself if it were mine,” she conceded. “Can Jake and I have a tour?”

Relief flooded him at her enthusiasm. “Of course. It would be my honor.”

~

From the perspective of their mission, the most interesting part of the tour was Damien’s home office. This was a cube of glass within the larger glass sculpture.

“That’s locked,” Damien said. “Some of the things I keep there are sensitive.”

Mia admired Jake’s absentminded nod of acceptance.

“Where will we sleep?” he asked.

The guest area Damien showed them didn’t seem to have gotten a lot of use. It included two queen size beds, a few chairs, and a walk-in dressing room with frosted glass for walls. It was nice but impersonal—like an upscale modern hotel.

The lack of a single painting disappointed her. At home, the best she could afford were framed prints. Given Damien’s deep pockets, her inner art history major had been hoping for a close encounter with a Chagall or a Hockney or
something.
She guessed she’d have to settle for the space itself. Admittedly, it was spectacular. The windowed roof twisted like a structure by Frank Gehry.

“You’re on the opposite side of the penthouse from me,” Damien said. “You’ll have your privacy when you need it. Here’s the bathroom you can use.”

The bath was boxed by more frosted walls. Jake stuck his head inside and whistled. “You’re going to like this, Mia.”

When she went to see, her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t know whether to gasp at the seamless acres of Carrara marble or the zillion body jets poking out of the farthest wall. It, too, was open plan. “I think that shower and I need to be alone.”

Jake laughed.

“No, really,” she said. “You men get out of here.”

“What if we don’t want to?” Damien asked silkily.

That caught her unprepared. For one thing, he was saying
we,
as in him and Jake, and that pushed a few buttons
.
For another, they’d already played out a scene tonight.

Then again, she was the only one who’d gotten an orgasm out of it. The tips of her fingers went buzzy with interest.

“You want to watch me shower?”

Damien’s eyelids were hooded, his Greek god mouth slightly pursed. “Actually, I was thinking I would help.”

~

Damien saw he’d surprised her. He hadn’t planned to initiate another erotic encounter. Not tonight, and certainly not with him in an active role. Something about having Mia in his territory was changing up his habits. Mia was unique, and obviously the connection between her and Jake was strong—stronger perhaps than either of the pair realized. They weren’t simply a couple. They were a natural team. They fell into a united strategy seemingly without effort. Their role-playing at Diogenes was evidence of that.

As long as Damien didn’t break the connection between them, wouldn’t Mia’s feelings for him stay within safe limits?

He told himself he was making a reasoned choice, taking a calculated risk and not reckless one. Yes, he wanted Mia quite a lot and, yes, it had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to lay hands on a woman. But he wasn’t giddy. His mind was too disciplined for that.

“You want to help her shower,” Jake said dubiously. “With me there too.”

Damien flashed a grin. “I said I didn’t want to be pushed to participate. I didn’t say I never would. Do you object?”

This was directed to Mia. She shut her mouth and shook her head. Her cheeks were very pink. “You only live once, I guess. Might as well live out a few fantasies.”

Damien filed this intriguing response away. “And you?” he asked Jake.

“It won’t be my first rodeo with another guy.”

Damien didn’t expect the jolt of excitement the words inspired. Though Jake’s tone was casual, the cagey glint in his eyes put Damien on notice. Jake hadn’t forgotten Damien making him submit at Diogenes. Any dominant worth his salt would be watching for opportunities to turn that table. If he weren’t careful, Damien might be signing on for more than he could handle.

But that wasn’t an immediate worry. For now the chain of command remained as he’d established it. Or he thought it did anyway.

Mia pointed sternly at him. “I’m stripping in the bedroom. You two be bare-assed by the time I get back or don’t expect to get anywhere with me.”

Jake’s mouth twitched with amusement. “She means it. I know that tone.”

Damien took his word for it. He removed his clothes without fuss, leaving them folded on the low bench beneath where the guest robes hung. When he finished, Jake was already naked. The driver-slash-bodyguard leaned casually on a marble wall, with both his arms and ankles crossed. His body was graceful and athletic, his cock casually half-mast. He wasn’t self-conscious about giving Damien a onceover.

“You sure are fit,” he said. “No boardroom flab on you.”

“Nor on you,” Damien returned dryly. “I gather your former government employer didn’t chain you to a desk.”

Jake’s lips crooked up at the corners. “My former government employer liked me to stay busy.”

His sly inflection suggested the slang meaning. Damien contemplated the extensive experience Jake must have—and not only with women. His own shaft began to rise. Jake’s smirk intensified as his gaze dropped to Damien’s groin, which sped up developments there.

“That answers that question, I guess,” Jake said. “You do have eclectic tastes.”

“I’m back,” Mia announced from the bathroom door. “You two play nice or I’m leaving.”

They turned to look at her and Damien lost his breath. He’d loved her in the corset, but just plain naked she really was something.
Old-fashioned
best described her figure. Her feminine curves dried his mouth: her just-full-enough breasts, her waist, the surprising length of her shapely legs. She looked soft and silky and fuckable. Though she blushed at their attention, she didn’t hide anything. Not her breasts. Not her neat triangle of curls. Her nipples tightened, and she appeared to be pressing her thighs together—hopefully with arousal and not fear.

Damien might not have the patience to allay that. He was having trouble not leaping on her that instant.

“If you hadn’t stolen my breath, I’d whistle,” he said, hot desire beating through his whole body. “That is a world class reveal.”

“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “What he said.”

Mia smiled and cast down her lashes, her shy pleasure enchanting. “You should probably turn on the shower. That control panel looks like it’s for a jet.”

Damien was still blinking.

“She means you,” Jake chuckled. “You’re the computer programmer.”

“Right. I’ll take care of it.”

He turned jerkily, the motion making him aware that his erection was now at vertical. The control panel was a waterproof touchscreen on the wall. For a few blank moments as his hard-on throbbed violently, he couldn’t remember how to work it.

“Do you want music?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Ooh,” she said. “Put on Clean Bandit.”

Damien was clueless. Fortunately, his house system found whoever this was online when he repeated her request. Upbeat dance music pounded into the room as the pulsating sprays turned on. To his delight and distraction, Mia began shaking her booty. Damien didn’t go clubbing. He couldn’t tell if she were dancing well or badly, only that she seemed to be having fun.

He decided then and there to code her voice into his system too. She shouldn’t ever be deprived of this pleasure.

“Well,” Jake said, taking in the show while still leaning on the wall. “This is my new favorite song.”

Mia laughed and bounced toward Damien. He couldn’t move. The animation of her body entranced him. She danced into the complicated array of jets, her bare feet slapping on the wet floor.

“Dance with me,” she urged, offering her hands to him. “That’s allowed, right? And you can’t look any stupider than I do.”

She didn’t look stupid to him. Damien slid his palms over hers, twining their fingers together so that hers were trapped. With her arms secured, he walked her butt-first into the warm marble wall. Mia gasped as her ass cheeks hit it, her brown eyes wider but not frightened. Too tempted to stop himself, Damien leaned into her. Her soft breasts flattened beneath his weight, his engorged cock branding her belly.