Dom Vs: Domme: The Deluxe Trilogy: A Billionaire Romance (Dom Vs. Domme Book 0) (13 page)

My heart stops. I put my tea on the table and sit up, blankets falling away from me.
“Oh, yeah?”
What is Ian saying? Surely he’s not going around bragging about fucking me. Or is he? No. He’s not the type. I haven’t even told Eva about it. I’m not sure I will… unless I have to.

It takes way too long for her to get back to me. During that time, I start sweating. So much for my relaxing afternoon.
“Lana’s mad about you screwing up your presentation last week and is convinced it’s going to happen again. She wants Ian to be your keeper. That’s what I got out of it, anyway.”

“Fuck her. Only not really. Don’t actually fuck her, Eva.”

“Yeah, right. I ain’t going near that. She’d try to eat me alive, and then get her husband to film it. You hear they might be starting an adult line of something or other? God help us all.”

No, I hadn’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me. They’d start an escort business if they could get away with it.
“Has Ian been saying anything weird about me?”

“Huh? No. Why? You guys have a row?”

“You could say that.”

“Don’t worry about that jackass. He’s probably preoccupied looking for his next blond squeeze. Hey, maybe it could be you!”

I don’t say anything for a while. Not until I see her getting ready to type something else.
“Don’t even joke about that.”

Eva disappears for a while. Probably talking to someone. Probably drinking. Probably answering for the umpteenth time that, no, she wasn’t there to watch her brother fuck his girlfriend in public. Why do people ask her that? I was there. No way Eva would have hung around for more than five minutes after the festivities began. Speaking of, I have yet to get a wedding invitation from the Warrens. I’m slighted.

My evening is ruined. Not because something bad has happened, but because now I’m no longer able to enjoy the afterglow I’ve been simmering in since Friday night. I don’t want to have sex, but I’m thinking weird things about Ian. And my work. He’s going to ride me hard about my presentation all this week. What
will
happen when we see each other tomorrow? Will we acknowledge what happened? Or are we going to pretend it’s all in the past… like what happened a decade ago?

Against my better judgment, I text Ian.

“We need to talk. About Friday.”

I hit send before I lose my nerve.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t hear from him for a long time. He’s at his family’s party, and I’m here working to keep me distracted. I order in dinner and double up on that wine to settle my nerves. Soon enough I’m in the bath, relaxing in a plethora of bubbles and staring at my Ziploc-covered tablet trying to read a book.

My phone, which is perched safely on a shelf, buzzes.

At first I forget that I texted Ian. Which is good, because otherwise I may not have picked up my phone and looked at his message.

“What is there to talk about?”

Seriously?

I’m gonna
I don’t even know
.

“You know what. Unless it was so terrible that you’ve blocked it out of your mind.”

“Hardly.”

That’s it for a minute. He wants me to continue the conversation.

“Is it going to be weird tomorrow?”

“Only if you’re the one making it weird.”

“So we’re good?”

“We’re good.”

I watch my bubbles bob on the water, my teeth playing at a hangnail.
“See you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

For some reason, this exchange hasn’t made me feel better. If anything, I’m more anxious than ever. Because… well, you know. Ian and I had sex. Not just any sex. Really,
really
hot sex that nearly ate me alive and left him absolutely breathless afterward. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you’re the most hardened man in the universe – emotionally, that is. If you have that kind of sex with a woman, it’s going to affect you. You’re going to treat her differently.

And this is Ian Mathers we’re talking about here. A man who, even back when I first decided to sleep with him, is known for going through a lot of women quickly. That doesn’t mean he treats them with disrespect, of course. I have never heard about that, but it does mean that I’m no longer an interest to him. He’s conquered me. He knows what it’s like to fuck Kathryn. He knows what my nipples look like and what I sound like coming from his cock, and what it’s like to have my stupid horny cunt squeeze him half to death. Fuck me. I am so stupid.

Excuse me while I try to finish my bath in peace. It’s going to be a long week, and I need all the relaxing I can get right this second.

Chapter 14

IAN

Monday morning. Cloudy. Drizzly. Enough to make me carry an umbrella until I reach the building we’re still sequestered in this week.

Naturally, I run into Kathryn in the elevator.

The operator hits the button for our suite and then steps out again, the doors closing in front of us. Kathryn is fighting between looking relaxed and tensing up around me. I don’t blame her, but I wish she wouldn’t. It’s making
me
tense.

“Good morning,” I finally say, wrapping the plastic wrap around my umbrella as securely as possible. I text my assistant – who is in the building with me this week – to bring some coffee from my favorite café down the street. The coffee pot isn’t going to be enough today. “Have a nice weekend?”

She glances at me before looking at the mirror paneling. She’s very business. Heavy coat, minimal makeup, and that silky blond hair pulled into her French twist. When she wears her hair like that, it makes her neck look longer, especially when there’s no jewelry there.

I briefly remember kissing that throat three days ago. How warm she had been beneath her skin. Her heart beating furiously as I rubbed her slit and parted it for my cock.

Great.

It’s eight in the morning, I haven’t been properly caffeinated yet, and I’m already getting hard standing next to this woman. Please put me out of my misery.

“The weekend was fine,” she says. “I hear you had quite the garden party at your estate.”

The numbers tick away the floors as we pass them by. “Let me guess who told you that.”

“Not your mother. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

The idea of Kathryn and my mother conspiring about something makes me want to vomit. “The party was fine. You and your father’s absence was noticed.”

“We had a meeting earlier that day. Sorry.”

Why is she sorry? Not like I missed her this weekend.

We arrive at our floor. The doors open, and I see Valerie my assistant waiting to ride down to get that coffee I asked for. Good mornings are exchanged. Kathryn walks ahead and hails her mousy assistant who cowers at her boss’s feet. If Kathryn Alison swung that way, I would assume she was in a BDSM relationship with that poor girl. (Or would it be lucky girl?)

Reaching the office space is a mistake… because right there, mocking me, is Lana Andrews dressed in her tight red skirt and chiffon black blouse.

She’s stunning. She knows it. She smiles at me.

Fuck.

“Ian.” Her sweet voice chaffs my ear. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s someone I want you and Kathryn to meet.”

The woman of the moment is behind me, and even though we face the woman standing between us and our project, I still tense at Kathryn’s presence. Apparently, fucking her only made certain things worse. Who knew?

“And to what do we owe this pleasure, Lana?” I ask. “I thought that everything that needed to be said was exchanged yesterday?”

A woman I’ve never met turns around and stands in the office doorway. Tall. Self-assured. Older than my mother. She extends her hand with a fake smile. “Colleen Woodrow,” she introduces herself. “You must be Ian Mathers.”

The way she looks at me says she damn well knows me. Probably from tabloid trash.

We shake hands. Kathryn introduces herself next, and Colleen Woodrow is as inexplicably cool to her.

The same registers in my head. After what Lana said yesterday, I went home and did research on the council. I was going to have to do it anyway, but that was a perfect impetus.

Colleen Woodrow is the co-chair of the council. A big deal when you consider she had to be voted into the position. One of those positions you never think about because you’re too busy deciding on who you want to be mayor or governor. But no, at some point in my life I probably checked the box saying that I voted for Mrs. Woodrow. And now I’m probably going to regret it.

“Mrs. Woodrow had a few ideas about the presentation that I would like you to hear.” Lana gestures to the office, and Kathryn and I can’t help but give each other a look.

This is going to be hell.

Sure enough, our impromptu meeting at nine in the morning has everything to do with Friday’s proposal. As one of the council leaders, Mrs. Woodrow wants to make
sure
we know what to expect and what we should do to prepare. I can handle that. Kathryn’s twitching, her dominant personality at complete odds with this woman. So is mine, but I’m better at covering it up. Kathryn looks like she’s about to slap the woman.

I’m not sure I would stop her.

The rub comes about twenty minutes into this farce of a meeting. A farce because it’s keeping us from getting to our
real
work.

“As it is, Ms. Alison and Mr. Mathers…” Colleen primps as if we’re her mirror. “The double proposition is a good one, but I’m afraid both the community and the council will not be in the mood to approve
both
ventures at the same time.” When she’s met with our bemusement, she explains, “Either the museum or the functioning remodeled hotel will have to come first. I’m afraid that asking for both at the same time will put people… on edge. As it is, we think both are fantastic ideas if done tastefully, and we look forward to seeing both of your presentations.”

“But?”

“But only one will be selected, if either of them is to be at all.”

“So let me get this straight,” I interject, putting my hand in the middle of the table. “You want us to continue with our presentations… but only one of us will be ‘selected’ to continue forward as planned?”

“
If
either is selected at all.”

“Oh, well then.”

This is bullshit, and we all know it. I don’t know whose rad idea this is, but either Kathryn or I are going to be in big, big trouble with our fathers. Either my father is going to come down hard on me for not securing us the money-making hotel, or Kathryn is going to be further humiliated because her family doesn’t get their museum.

It’s not fair, and we all know it.

This business isn’t fair. We all make our peace with it, but sometimes you come up against something that is so stupid and arbitrary that even this hardened heart is amazed by it. This is one of those instances. Does she seriously expect me to believe that the community is too sensitive to having both a renovated hotel and a new museum at the same time?

“We know that neither of you want to hear something like this,” Lana says, patting Colleen’s shoulder. They look like bosom buddies, all right. “But I’m afraid it’s how it has to be.
If
the community decides to accept a renovation, it can only be one or the other for now. The other can come later once it’s been proven that the first is a success.”

Kathryn shakes her head as if she’s ridding her brain of an evil spirit. “So Ian and I are essentially competing against each other.”

“Don’t think of it that way,” Lana says with that ridiculous air of superiority. “Unless of course it makes you work harder!”

Her laugh is enough to make me curl my first and for Kathryn to sneer into the back of her hand.

Long after they leave, we’re left sitting here in the office, our spirits fucked. Not even our bubbly assistants can bring us back from the dead. There isn’t even time or energy to think about what happened Friday night. The only good to come out of this is that I no longer want to think about nothing but having sex with Kathryn.

Apparently she’s my rival now.

We’ve gone from being partners in this endeavor to vying for different things. Kathryn wants to prove herself, and I want to not fuck up my father’s investment. Before, that fueled our teamwork, or what there was of it. It probably fueled the whole sex thing too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Now we’re competing. I don’t care how they spin it. We’ve gone from either all in or all out, to only one can survive.

This is going to be great for our relationship.

Chapter 15

KATHRYN

Do you know what it’s like to be grounded? Because that’s how I feel right now. Trapped in a shitty situation where there is no real winner.

I am so fucked. My level of “fucked’ is that of a porn star’s. Minus a good dicking and getting paid for it.