Falling for Sir (12 page)

Marianne stared. It looked like the ribbon with
which her wrists had been bound at The Club. Surely he hadn't brought it home
with him. Why would he?

To assure herself that it was some other random
ribbon coincidently lying in his bedside drawer, she took it out and let it
dangle from her fingers. It was about the right length. Pulse racing, she
lifted the ribbon to her nose and breathed in. Yep, there was her perfume.

She dropped it back in the drawer as if it
scalded her fingers.

He'd kept a souvenir of their evening.

Sitting heavily on the edge of his bed, she
spent several minutes studying the chess pieces on the board, calming her
thoughts by immersing them in the game of strategy that she loved. Finally
Marianne moved the white queen. She hadn't played chess for several years—since
her father died in fact—but old habits die hard.

Suddenly she was restless. Getting off the bed,
she walked to the windows and looked out at the view. She could turn down the
job of redecorating the apartment rather than put herself in his way again, or
she could shut her mouth and take the fee. Maybe she'd been too hasty, turning
her nose up at his money. Why shouldn't she have some, if he was throwing it
around? Better he gave it to her than to someone like sweaty Bob Rawlings, who
would take the money and the credit but make someone else do the work.
Certainly she needed the money to bolster her sagging bank account. Could use
some new clothes too—a more fashionable wardrobe now she was in the city.

She searched in her bag for a stick of gum.
Suddenly her phone chirped with a text message.

"Claudia," it said.

It took her a moment, because her mind was on
other things.

Another text quickly followed, flashing up on
the small screen. "Tonight."

Marianne froze, staring at the phone. He must
have gotten her number from personnel.

"Claudia"

The name stood out boldly, shouting at her.

She thought of him spanking her ass, licking her
pussy, groaning hard as he came. The heat of his balls thrusting against her
smoothly waxed vulva. His excitement had brought hers to another level.

Ouch! She'd chewed too hard and bitten her
tongue.

With a stiff finger she pressed the
"delete" button, casting him and those two little words into the
ether. A booty call from her boss was just too weird.

But her pulse fluttered recklessly and she was
suddenly very, very warm inside. She lifted his whiskey glass, looking for
finger smudges. Yep. There they were. His big, firm, clever, limber fingers.
Next she grabbed his bed pillow and sniffed it, feeling like a pervert.

Yep, his cologne.

She dropped it back to the bed. Behave yourself,
Claudia.

Claudia?

Oh, no. Too late. Claudia, her alter ego, had
just woken up.

Chapter
Nine

The
Brat

When he went home for a change of clothes, there
was a handwritten estimate waiting for him in an envelope on the billiard
table. He tore it open impatiently and scanned to the figures.

The brat had some gall. He wouldn't pay that
sort of money for the best interior designer in New York, and she was only just
starting out. He was supposed to be giving her a chance. Who the hell did she
think she was? Possibly this was her way of getting out of it, he thought.
She'd expected him to change his mind about hiring her to decorate his
apartment if she charged this much.

He fell back into his recliner and realized,
morosely, that he'd let her invade his life already. All weekend he'd thought
about Marianne Miller. He'd lost three games of squash on Saturday because of
her. And Jack didn't like to lose.

Who was she? A twenty-three year-old girl,
that's what. Mrs. B was probably right and she was too young for him. Shit, he
was sixteen when she was born. Was he making the classic mistake and trying to
relive his youth through the lovely and difficult Ms. Miller? She did, in fact,
make him feel like a boy again, all tense and excitable.

She hadn't answered his text message, damn her.

If she thought she was in control of this game,
she was about to be surprised. Really, she shouldn't bother playing hard to get
because nothing was hard for Jack Marchetti to "get". Didn't she know
that? Everything had its price.

He took out his phone and checked it again. Aha!
A message. But it wasn't from his new,
about-to-be-hired-despite-her-extortionate-estimate decorator. It was from the
member services director at The Club.

"Claudia" had just rewarded her
"Sir" his tokens from last Thursday night. Fifty.

Fifty? He stared.
Fifty
? That was all she gave him for his performance. He growled
out loud, "Are you fucking kidding me, brat?"

Yeah, she made him feel sixteen again, insecure,
stupid and horny.

He took the spiral stairs up to his second floor
and flung his suit jacket across the bed. Almost immediately he noticed she'd
straightened the area rug by his bed. Properly straightened it. He usually just
moved it with his foot because it kept sliding about on the hardwood. He'd
never got around to buying a rug grip. Then he saw the chessboard. Shirt
half-unbuttoned, he sank to the bed and stared at the game pieces. She'd moved
the white queen, trying to box him in. Very clever.

But not quite clever enough. With a smirk, he
moved the black bishop in a diagonal across the board and claimed her queen.

His phone buzzed again. This time it was Alana
reminding him to pick her up at seven. He'd forgotten about dinner.

"I'm so sorry, Alana. I can't
tonight," he replied. "Something came up. Unexpected."

"You're cancelling?"

 
"I
have to." Again he apologized. "It's work. I can't get out of it. I
wish I could." Eventually he agreed to meet her on another night, just to
cut the conversation short.

"All work and no play...,” she warned, sing
song.

She needn't worry, he mused. He had every intention
of playing tonight. Playing hard.

* * * *

With Sean Paul's "Touch the Sky"
booming in her iPod earbuds, she knocked back a glass of wine and perused the
new items laid out on her bed. All these things were brave new territory for
Marianne the tomboy - slinky, black cocktail dress with asymmetrical neckline
from Tadashi Shoji and red suede, peep toe pumps from Gucci. Damn shoes alone
set her back almost seven hundred dollars and they were outlet. Whaaat, girrrl?
She tried not to keep looking at the receipt. She'd begun to remind herself too
much of Veronica Shelton, the unmotherly mother and unfaithful wife, who relied
heavily on retail therapy and random sexcapades to get her through a
dissatisfying life.

Another glass of wine, she decided, would help
tremendously. She'd actually spilled most of the first glass down her bathrobe
while bouncing about to the music.

She had no idea what had gotten into her today.
Blame it on the text to "Claudia". Somehow, the appearance of that
name brought out her hidden demon and let it play. Claudia was Marianne's
wicked twin it seemed. All these years she'd been hiding and now, suddenly, she
was out of her cage.

Chuckling, she imagined his face when he found
out that she'd only awarded him fifty tokens. That would, no doubt, be a first
for Mr. Woody. He was so full of himself he might implode. She set the wine
bottle back in the refrigerator, closed the door and leaned her back against it
for a moment. Jack Marchetti was a very strange man, she concluded. And that,
coming from her, was quite an accolade. She'd like to study him really, like
any other subject that caught her fancy. Get to the bottom of it, know what
made it tick. Maybe that was why she was going back to The Club. It couldn't
possibly be because he'd asked her to —or told her to. Could it? Nah.

Trouble was, people weren't like textbooks.
People answered back and sometimes did unexpected things that you couldn't read
ahead to see coming. If she wanted to get inside someone, they might want to
get inside her at the same time.
 

Taking her wine glass back to the bed, she sat
among her tissue paper, bags and boxes, and surveyed once again the wreckage of
a shopping trip she couldn't afford. Her usually tidy room looked as if a
department store had exploded in it. Make that three fancy department stores.

He'd better hire her as his decorator or else
she'd just dug herself into credit card debt. Remarkably careless of her.
Claudia's fault, obviously. All this giddiness could be blamed on her wild
alter ego.

She patted the Tadashi dress. "You have to
wait for the Holiday party, my darling."

Tonight, Claudia had other business. She opened
one of the boxes and took out a beautiful leather and vintage lace corset from
La Petite Coquette. And a panty harness.

* * * *

 
Jack
walked in to the room and felt that reawakened spark of anticipation again as
he waited for the young woman who'd tried to turn his head inside out.

When the line of auction lots entered he knew
her immediately and the angry flame of doubt was snuffed. She came. And she
came to play.

It had better be with him.

Since she was no longer a novice she wore her
hair up tonight and black lingerie. Her incredible legs, encased in black
thigh-highs, seemed even longer than he remembered and sent a quicksilver pulse
to the organ between his own legs. A leather corset drew her waist in and
accentuated the fullness of her hips and her breasts where they popped out
above the ruffle of lace, two rosy nipples proudly displayed.
 
Around her neck she wore a wide band of lace,
from which a slender line of pearls led down into her cleavage, then
disappeared under her corset, to pop put again holding the black silk strap
that passed for panties, barely covering her pussy lips. Dressed to kill came
to mind.

Two other men quickly closed in on her and Jack
calmed his anxiety with a pep talk. No one would outbid him. He wanted her;
he'd have her.

"Claudia's" wrists were not bound
behind her back tonight. They were tied with pink ribbon that wrapped around
each thigh, keeping her hands at her sides. Her fingers, he noted, were still
clenched, as they had been on her first night. But she was daring enough for
another spin of the roulette wheel.

Strolling up behind her, he cupped her right ass
cheek.

"Gentlemen, this prize is mine."

She turned her head slightly but did not look at
him.

He whispered in her ear below the bindings of
her silk mask. "Isn't that right, Claudia? You belong to Sir." He
knew, of course that she was not permitted to speak and this time she obeyed
The Club rules.

"We'll see about that," one of the
other men laughed jovially, rubbing a hand over the slender silk strap that
covered her sex.

Before the other man could slide his finger
under the silk, Jack tugged on the pearl harness, pulling it tighter against
her pussy. "Yes," he said, low, "we'll see."

Another bidder settled his hands on her cinched
waist while he studied her lips and then he fondled her breasts, squeezing her
nipples. "I'd like to give this one a good ride."

Jack felt his anger mounting again and kept hold
of her panty harness.
 
Maybe he was
getting too old for this. As he looked over her shoulder and saw her nipples
peaking for another man's fingers, he began to sweat. He moved his free hand to
her hip and then her arm and finally her breast, pushing the other bidder away.

His hardened cock throbbed against the front of
his pants and her ass. "Feel that, Claudia? That's what you're doing to
me. That's what you've been doing to me since last Thursday."

Again she was silent.As other men gathered
around her, Jack slid his hand down her stomach and laid his fingers over the
front of her panties. No one but him would have access to that tonight.

* * * *

He was acting like a spoiled teenager, she
mused. Thank god. She didn't go there to fuck anyone else, so it was a good
thing Claudia and Sir had the same plans.

Marianne didn't really understand what had
happened to her, but she knew this man was the only soul who'd ever given her a
climax and he'd done it tirelessly on their first night together, completely
devoted her body to his care as no one ever had. Naturally, she wanted more of
the same. Could anyone seriously blame her? "Claudia" was her way of
getting it from this man without any other complications—without messy emotions
getting in the way. Evidently he felt the same about sex or he wouldn't go to
The Club to get his rocks off.