Candidate Four (4 page)

For the second time since stepping into the penthouse Natalie wondered what she’d done wrong. She was being dismissed? If so
,
for what reason?

“I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head as if trying to process it all in her mind. “You bid on me so you clearly like me, but you’re telling me to go home. Why?”

The twelfth man eyed her shrewdly, the corners of his mouth tightening against his cheeks. “I do like you, Natalie. That’s why you should go. You’re not experienced enough for this.”

“Yes, we’ve established this is my first time here,” she said, her cheeks burning with the heat of blood rushing to them. “Everyone has a first time.”

“It’s not your first time
here
that makes you inexperienced, it’s your general inexperience.”

Her brow furrowed over her eyes, consternation creating a valley of lines on her face as she let disappointment invade her mind, her feelings. “I told you I’m not a virgin.”

“Neither are you experienced enough to be here. I’m doing you a favor, Natalie.”

“And what favor is that?” she challenged, stepping forward, taking courage in the height afforded to her by her expensive footwear.

“Natalie-“

“Stop saying my name like that!” she interrupted, impatience tainting each word.

“Like what?”

“Like… that,” she replied, feeling as stupid as she knew she sounded. “Like I’m some fragile little girl.” Her face burned with embarrassed frustration, but she refused to let him see her react in such a way. She turned to stalk away, not caring that her dress was still completely open at the back and exposing the very parts of her he’d just had his hands on.

By the third step away from him and his confusing declarations her frustration turned to indignant anger and she stopped suddenly, turning around to say the words that were building up in her mind as she assessed the situation she’d irrevocably found herself in.

“You know, I’m sick and tired of people just assuming that a lack of sexual experience somehow makes me less of a woman. So this is my first time here.
So what?
I came of my own free will and I accepted the consequences of my actions.” The twelfth man turned fully to face her and stuffed his hands in his pockets, eyeing her in silence. “And I can tell you this,
Gentleman Twelve
,” she said his designated moniker as if the words disgusted her, “I may not have a fraction of the experience those other eleven girls have, but you can bet a hundred times what you bid for me that I’m twice as smart as any of them. So if screwing some vapid, empty shell of a woman who has
experience
is what you want, you should have bid on another girl.”

She walked briskly to where she’d set her small purse down by the front door and exited, throwing the door open in a decidedly overdramatic fashion. But she didn’t care. She was furious, offended by the notion that her lack of experience had meant that any part of her or her being was somehow
less
. Less desirable. Less wanted. Less deserving of anything. And she didn’t have to subject herself to it just for the chance to earn an extra paycheck. No matter how big the paycheck.

Once in the foyer she stabbed the button for the elevator and waited, twisting her body to attempt to quickly zip her dress back up so she didn’t look like a crazy person stalking out of the place. Not that she had a clue where she actually was. Perhaps a Concierge could help her. Or maybe she’d be taken back to her apartment in the car she’d been picked up in? She hadn’t thought it through; how
was
she supposed to get home?

She was struggling with the bottom of the zipper, trying to align the two sides when the door to the penthouse opened and the twelfth man appeared, envelope in hand.

Shit
. Natalie ignored him and continued trying to coax the two sides of the zipper to join as one.

“Let me,” he offered, tucking the envelope under his arm to assist her re-dressing efforts. She let him without protest and stood still, eyes imploring the elevator to be present once the zipper had made its journey up her back.

“Thank you.” She fidgeted with the dress, adjusting it around her body so she didn’t look like she’d be doing a walk of shame.
Walk of rejection is more like it
.

“You forgot this,” he said kindly, holding out the envelope to her.

Natalie glanced at the thick envelope containing her payment and then at him before turning her attention back to the slow elevator.

“No, thank you.”

“I told you it was yours whether you wanted to leave or stay.”

“Thank you for the choice,” she replied with just a hint of intended sarcasm, glancing at him quickly so he could see by her face that she was serious. “But I’ll pass.”

The twelfth man’s eyes sharpened on her, and even from the corner of her eye she could see she had challenged him, his features going through a myriad of expressions from shock to confusion and somewhere in between.

“You don’t even know how much money it is.” He sounded incredulous, even offended, that she would reject his money without even the benefit of knowing the dollar amount.

Natalie shrugged. “And I don’t care. Being paid for my company, for my body even, I can live with. I can rationalize that transaction, as crazy as that sounds.” She shook her head, not even believing the words were coming out and sounding as rational as they did. “I won’t be paid to be rejected, humiliated and summarily dismissed just because I’ve made different choices in my life.” She gave him a pointed look, enjoying the obvious shock on his face at
her
rejecting
him
. “This is
my
choice.”

The elevator finally arrived, a soft
ding
announcing its arrival, and Natalie took a step forward to enter it when the twelfth man grabbed her hand and pulled her into his grasp, taking possession of her arms at her sides and crushing his mouth against hers.

She was powerless to move, caught in the tight embrace of his arms at her elbows. He kissed her breathlessly, alternately capturing her top and bottom lip and fusing them between his own. The moment his grip loosened the tiniest amount she maneuvered her hands up and put them square on his chest, pushing him back from her and their kiss.

“Stay.” He spoke the word before his eyes even opened, and when they did they were a squall of blue-green intensity, as if even he was tormented with the idea of asking her to not leave after he’d just told her to.

“No!” she asserted. She was still processing the whiplash-inducing change in his mood. Stay. Go. Stay. Go.

The twelfth man’s hands moved to her face, each grasping a side of her head, his thumbs pressed lightly into the space where her ear met her jaw. “Please,” he pressed.

Natalie scoffed and pushed his hands away from her face. “Two minutes ago I was inexperienced and unworthy of your efforts.”

“And you still are,” he said. “Inexperienced, I mean. But despite what you may think I do not want to
screw
some ‘vapid, empty shell of a woman’, as you so eloquently put it.”

“Then why are you here?” She stepped out from his grasp and turned away from him, needing physical distance after his startling change of direction.

“Why are
you
?” He leaned against the outside of the elevator — the doors of which had already closed again — and crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes locked on hers as soon as she turned to face him once more. “Everyone else who comes in here, man or woman, knows what they’re getting into. They know the rules. It is — what was the word you used? — a transaction between willing participants, between adults. And there you are, fresh from your fall through the rabbit hole.”

“Hey, I knew what I was getting myself into when I came here. Believe me. This was not a surprise!”

“Then why are you here? Really?”

Suddenly she felt stupid for the real reason behind her decision to sell herself to the highest bidder. It seemed silly and pedestrian given the adult nature of their situation. Despite that feeling, however, she wasn’t going to let anyone diminish her, not for any reason.

“I graduated with a Master’s degree into an economy that is still recovering
,
and I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans that I’ve promised to pay back. I can’t afford to live and pay for my education at the same time
,
so a friend recommended I come here.”

The twelfth man’s eyes were studious on her, his whole demeanor changed after the truthful explanation of why she would bring herself into a scenario where she would be knowingly paid for sex.

“So why not just take the money and leave?”

Natalie sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling even more vulnerable and open with her story out in the open than she did with her backside completely exposed to him.

“I can live with accepting the lesser of two evils, but I’ll be damned if I accept money out of pity and rejection.”

“I wasn’t rejecting you-“

“Oh, yes you were!” she flagrantly interrupted.

“-For the reasons you suspect,” he finished, giving her a pointed look that fully illustrated he did not like being interrupted. He stepped towards her, slowly closing the space between them once more. “Your inexperience-“

“Oh,
blah blah blah
my inexp-“ but he quickly silenced her, clamping one hand over her mouth and tightening his other arm around her waist, bringing her in close to him. Her eyes were wide as saucers, caught in a perpetual state of surprise as he held her, staring her down in a way that made her weak in the knees. She was startled, but not threatened.

“You’ve had, what? Two, maybe three sexual partners? I bet they were all nice college boys you had a nice college girl crush on and had boring college sex with. I’m not that kind of man, Natalie. A man like me would ruin a girl like you.”

She breathed heavily through her nose, her lungs attempting to catch up without the benefit of her mouth to breathe through. Her mind was racing through his words trying to subscribe a meaningful understanding of them. He would ruin her? How? Sexually? Emotionally? Physically? No- not physically. She wasn’t scared of the way he physically handled her, even if it did take her by surprise. His strength was gentle, his dominance intimidating but not the point of fear. She opened her mouth to speak and reluctantly he removed his hand from her face.

“What do you mean you would ‘ruin’ me?”

His eyes took in her eyes, her nose and cheeks, her lips… The hand that had silenced her mouth joined the hand behind her back, his fingers splaying out over the black lace overlay of her dress and moving down to her behind, kneading and bunching bits of fabric between them.

“Every ounce of attraction you have towards me I will elicit from you until I can smell your arousal,” he explained, pulling her body flush against his to the point where there was nothing between them but the fabric of their clothing. “And I will take it again, and again, and again until I am sated beyond satisfaction.”

Natalie’s mouth had gone dry, and she swallowed in a vain attempt to moisten it back into life. He’d already evoked more a physical response from her than any other guy she’d slept with had, and she could not ignore or deny the wanting between her legs that begged to challenge his warning that he would ruin her. The part of her brain frozen in his arms and drunk off the scent of him wanted nothing more than to be ruined.

“Okay,” she breathed, showing she understood what he was saying without equivocation. “Okay, you’ll ruin me. I get it.” She didn’t. Not really. But she at least had an idea of the gist of what he was saying: He was completely and totally out of her league, and she out of his. Not that she didn’t already know that.

“Here,” he handed the envelope to her, separating their bodies from the close embrace. “You’re right. You’re much smarter than the girls who tend to come through here. Don’t look at it as rejection, Natalie, but as an unexplored opportunity.” He repeated the words of her toast without the smallest hint of irony.

“I don’t want-“

“You’ll take it,” he said firmly, cutting off her protest. “And tomorrow you’ll never have a reason to come back here again.” The envelope finally in her grasp, the twelfth man stepped backward and hit the button to call the elevator. “Consider it a scholarship for bright young women who aren’t afraid to stand up for what they believe in.”

She watched as his composure returned with just the simple buttoning of his suit jacket. He seemed to have complete ownership of who he was, what he liked, his wants and needs. He could have done whatever he wanted to her and by the rules of the house they were secured in she would have followed, bound by the obligation purchased with his bid. Instead he let her go, let his money go, and gave her the choice to completely walk away. It didn’t make sense.

When the elevator doors opened for the second time she stepped through, pausing just over the threshold of the car and the top floor. Of the thoughts and questions swirling around her mind there was one that was most prominent, and if she didn’t ask it now she would never have an opportunity to again.

“Why did you even bid on me in the first place?”

The twelfth man wetted his lips with his tongue, giving himself a moment to consider her. Then, “Because the second I saw you all I could think about was how many times I could make you moan my name through those delicious lips of yours.”

The elevator dinged impatiently, a reminder that the doors were open when they should be shut, and stunned by his words to the point of speechlessness, Natalie stumbled back into the car and watched the doors close on her view of him, and her time as Candidate Number Four.

The main foyer was empty, barely illuminated except for the dim candlelight from the chandeliers above and the city beyond the walls. Natalie had expected a Concierge to appear out of thin air like they had always done previously, but she was alone.

I guess no one ever leaves this early
.

The short ride down from the penthouse to the ground level was all she needed to rationalize the anger she felt about being rejected.
No, not rejected, just passed over for lack of experience.

Never once in her life had she ever felt somehow inadequate because she’d had fewer sexual partners or conducted herself in a way that was perhaps perceived to be more conservative for someone her age. She chalked it up to not having any desire to be a pregnant teenager. She had goals, wanted to accomplish great achievements, and none of them included sowing wild oats that could lead to any loss of opportunity later.

And yet…

And yet her education was the
only
goal she’d accomplished. It was a biggie, one that she considered herself lucky to have made it through, but on the other side of it she wasn’t much better off than her contemporaries who didn’t go to school or didn’t go as far through it. People like Quinn who seemingly had no direction in life except to the latest social event were in the exact same place she was in: a decent job, okay income, and navigating an economy where they were just considered lucky to have a job at all.

What had it all been for, if it didn’t bring her any further in life than anyone else? It was all experience and not even the kind of experience people judged her for. People like the twelfth man, who sent her home with a ‘scholarship’ and a pat on the back.

‘The second I saw you all I could think about was how many times I could make you moan my name through those delicious lips of yours.’

She shuddered at the implications of his words. He’d touched her, said she was sexy, and then told her he would ruin a girl like her for good.

Why
would it ruin her? What was really so different from her and the other eleven? A few sexual partners? She’d shown up, allowed herself to be bid on, knew what would happen once she was upstairs with the man who won her. And yet that didn’t seem to count for much in the end; she was downstairs looking for an exit and everyone else was tucked away in the house doing God knows what.

Natalie turned and looked in the corners of the room, knowing somewhere there were hidden cameras with at least one set of eyes watching, waiting. A Concierge would have to come collect her soon.

She opened the black bejeweled clutch – another loan from Quinn – and grabbed for her cell phone, turning it on with the tap of a finger and wincing at the time display; just after midnight. She’d barely left her apartment three hours ago. A few notifications popped up at the top of the screen but she ignored them, going instead to her contacts and navigating with a swipe of her finger to
Q
. With only a moment of hesitation she tapped Quinn’s name and then tapped again on her number before bringing the device to her ear.

The line rang, and rang, and rang. No answer.
‘Hi you’ve reached Quinn! Leave me a message.’
Natalie tapped again to end the call and shoved the phone back into the small bag. Quinn was likely out doing something fabulous and very Quinn-like. Partying in the VIP section of a popular club and dancing up on some famous rock star, no doubt. Her life was probably as close to a perfume commercial as any one woman could get. She wasn’t standing in the empty foyer of a strange home with an even stranger club devoted to selling girls for a night of sex.

A set of French doors adjacent to the floor-to-ceiling windows caught her attention. Not knowing what else to do but explore and hope someone came to fetch her and return her home, Natalie jiggled the door handles and, upon feeling it release beneath her grasp, found herself outside in a garden.

She could hear them before she could see them. A Gentleman and a Candidate engaged in sex play somewhere in the vicinity of the garden, hidden along the shrub- and stone-lined pathways that parted into smaller gardens of various roses in a splendor of color, visible beneath twinkling lights strung from and across full-scale marble columns. She turned to leave, but stopped. Turning around with quiet footsteps she navigated through the garden along the delicate pathways in search of the couple.

The pathway parted around a marble statue reminiscent of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and rejoined on the other side, leading to a pergola crawling with vines and roses and lit with an even more dazzling display of tea lights. They were there on display: a Gentleman and his Candidate, in flagrante delicto.

Natalie crouched, remaining hidden behind the Venus as she watched. The Candidate was spectacularly naked and sprawled across the flat top of a stone table, her arms held captive and restrained above her head, thighs open wide with her legs wrapped around her bidder, equally naked, as he pounded into her. His hands gripped at her knees, using the leverage to thrust the woman’s body to him as he moved quickly inside her.

They were thoughtless with the noises that escaped them; animal grunting from the Gentleman, carnal moaning from the Candidate, their voices a discordant symphony of heightened pleasure.

Natalie watched, mesmerized as the woman gave herself to the man, her body in motion as he pounded her and sated himself. The man slapped her thigh with such force the sound of it pierced the night sky and reached Natalie’s ears even over the sound of their grunting. This seemed to signal the Candidate. She unlocked her legs from his waist and was compliant as he flipped her over to a squatting position on the table, her backside end exposed and open to him. He entered her from behind and continued his pursuit of her body, his thrusting increasing in pace and depth. The woman moaned loudly, her voice echoing in the night sky with abandon.

Her hands still bound, the woman dug them into the hard stone of the table and pushed back into him, her voice undulating into a crescendo that ended with an explosion of incoherent noises as her body came to a still. The man followed soon thereafter, thrusting and then pulling out to ejaculate onto her exposed backside, his own voice a cacophony of release. He rubbed his palms into her skin, pushing his fluid into her as if to absorb it into her body.

When he turned Natalie saw his still semi-erect penis and averted her eyes, ducking even further behind the statue. She closed her eyes hoping that it would somehow make her invisible to their sight, and she remained there for what seemed like countless moments before she heard the unmistakable sounds of their lovemaking resuming. She peeked out from behind the statue and saw the man thrusting into the Candidate again, this time her hands tied behind her back, her front leaning over the ledge of the table.

“Why are you hiding?”

Natalie jumped, nearly screamed at the voice in her ear, and when she turned she saw the twelfth man standing over her. He was no longer in the suit but dressed in a simple tee shirt and jeans, his hair wet as though he’d just stepped out of the shower.

“Shhh!” she admonished him quickly, her own hand going over her mouth as she looked back to make sure the other couple hadn’t been disturbed.

“He doesn’t care if you hear him, Natalie. Why do you think he’s outside?”

“That doesn’t mean I want them to know I’m watching!” she whispered loudly, turning from the show the couple was putting on and briskly walking back to the French doors. The twelfth man followed, shutting the doors behind him as they re-entered the foyer, which was still as empty as it had been when she came downstairs.

She turned and tried to look at him without making eye contact, knowing her face was flush with embarrassment for having been caught watching the couple having sex. “I was just…”
watching a couple having totally uninhibited and semi-public sex
. The twelfth man watched her, waiting for her to finish a sentence that was never going to be complete. He looked much different in normal clothes than he did the suit, though no less intimidating. He still deployed the piercing glare she’d seen from the moment she first laid eyes on him. “Why are
you
down here?”

His lips curved into a small smile. “There’s a view of the garden from the bathroom in the penthouse. I saw you watching that couple. You were clutching that poor Venus’ hips rather tightly.”

Was he joking? “I-“ she began, but quickly decided there was no use in saying anything other than the truth. “I came downstairs expecting someone to escort me home but no one was around. I saw the door to the garden, got curious, and went outside.”

“I should have known there would be no Concierge available at this time.” He sighed and ran a hand through his wet hair. Absent of the gel that slicked it back his hair fell in a wave just above his forehead, the honey colored locks in perfect agreement with his tanned skin and handsome face. “Usually no one leaves
this
early.”

“Yeah, well…” Natalie trailed off, her eyes looking at him.
Really
looking at him, now that she was obligation-free to do so. He was decidedly younger without the suit, much closer to her age than she would have originally guessed. He looked both relaxed and tense, his eyes giving away what his body could hide in his cool, relaxed stand. She, on the other hand, was burning, her skin and senses on fire after witnessing another couple’s passionate lovemaking so up close and personal. That and the memory of his hands on her skin beneath her breasts gave her a pluck of courage she was unfamiliar with. “I’m guessing not too many of the other Gentlemen are as actually gentlemanly as you.”

The twelfth man chuckled, the sound of it sounding much more devious than he may have intended. “You may not be wrong about that. Though I would disagree with you anyway.”

“Would you?”

“Yes,” he confirmed, the chuckle settling into another small smile that lit her senses to a simmer. “There’s nothing remotely gentlemanly about what I’m thinking right now, Natalie.”

Maybe it was that she’d just witnessed two people engaged in a most intimate act, or the memory of the twelfth man’s hands that had slid beneath her dress to caress her skin. It could have been the champagne, or the fact that he’d given her the option to leave and now she was obligation-free and a bit richer than when she left her apartment. Whatever it was that was making her pulse echo in the delicate space at the junction of her thighs and hips, it was hypnotic.
He
was hypnotic. And suddenly she no longer cared for the rationalities that had once filled her mind on why she was there, what she was doing and how it would benefit her. All that was left was wanting.

Natalie swept her mane of red hair over her shoulder, letting it fall across her front side as she turned her back to the twelfth man. She reached up and over to grasp the zipper of her dress and pulled it down. Her other arm snaked around her back and reached for the zipper, pulling it down until the dress was loose enough to fall at her feet, settling into a pool of fine black lace at her black patent Louboutined feet. She stepped forward out of the fabric, bag and envelope in hand, and started for the elevator, dressed in nothing but a dark satin bra and panties.

“What are you doing?” he asked from his place across the room mere feet from her discarded dress.

She pushed the up button for the elevator and turned to look at him, glancing over her naked shoulder as nonchalantly as she could muster.

“Picking up where we left off.”

“I told you,” he started, the elevator doors opening interrupting him only for a second. “A man like me will ruin a girl like you.”

“I know,” she said simply before turning her head and stepping into the elevator. She turned, leaned against the railing of the elevator car, and waited. “So ruin me.”