Just in Time (13 page)

“
Shh
,” she hissed, casting a wary glance at Calvin, but he was mucking about with his camera setup with Faith at the other end of the extensive room.

“We don’t have to do this,” Will told her, keeping his voice low. “If you’re ill. We can reschedule for tomorrow, maybe.”

“It won’t be better tomorrow. I’m fine. Forget it, OK?”

The idea was dawning in Will’s brain in all its horror, because he had sisters, and he had cousins. “You’re pregnant,” he realized.

“Shh,” she hissed frantically. “Not even a couple months,” she whispered.

“What, they don’t know?” Will jerked his head at Calvin and Faith. “They should know. Make sure we’re careful enough not to hurt you.”

She sighed in obvious exasperation. “You’re not going to hurt me. Calvin doesn’t know, because he wouldn’t have picked me, and who knows what he’d do now? I need this job, and men are so weird about women being…” She looked around again. “That. And I need to save up for me and Quentin, and the…you know. Anyway, Faith knows. And don’t worry,” she added. “I brushed my teeth.”

Will seized on the one thing he could grab hold of. “Faith knows? She
knows
?”

“She heard me being…sick.” Gretchen was whispering again. “Like I guess you did. But she won’t tell. Faith isn’t like that.”

“I need you over here, Gretchen,” Charlotte called. “Right away, please.”

Will had heard enough anyway. He left her there and stalked across the studio, grateful after all that he was wearing the suit. He was meant to be intimidating? It could start right now.

“I need to talk to you,” he told Faith. “Outside.” He jerked his head towards the carpark.

She started to say something, but he didn’t wait around to hear what it was. She’d better be following him, or…Well, he didn’t know what “or” was, but she’d better be following him.

He hit the glass door hard, then turned and held it for her, because, yes, she’d followed him. Wearing jeans and a blue Henley today, most of the tiny buttons undone, and wrapping her arms around herself against the brisk January wind. Even as he fumed, he noticed the way it pushed up her breasts. She was showing a fair bit of cleavage now.
Focus
, he told himself sternly.

“What?” she asked. “It’s freezing out here.”

He slipped impatiently out of the jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and she hugged it around herself, though it didn’t hide the cleavage, and he needed to stop looking.

“Why the hell,” he said, his voice rising, not that he was trying too hard to keep it under control, “didn’t you tell me Gretchen was bloody
pregnant
?”

“Shh,” she said, exactly as Gretchen had. “Because Calvin would have pitched a fit, just like you are, because men are ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” he demanded. “
Ridiculous
? I’ve had my hands all over a pregnant woman. I’ve had her tied to the
bed
.”

“Well, you didn’t actually do anything to her,” Faith pointed out. “She’s just fine. And she signed up for this. It isn’t
real
, Will. You’ve got nothing to be upset about. Nobody will know she was pregnant, and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Do. Not,” Will said, gritting out the words, “give me that bloody soothing thing. I know she’s pregnant. I know what I did. And I cannot—I can
not
—spank a pregnant woman.”

“You don’t have to spank her.” Faith was still so maddeningly calm he could—he could hit something. “You just have to pretend that you’re
going
to spank her. You don’t like soothing? I won’t be soothing. I’ll point out that you’re being patriarchal and patronizing. Gretchen’s perfectly willing to do it. She doesn’t need your protection. She’s waiting in there for you to fulfill your contract. We all are. And don’t tell me you can’t even pretend to think about spanking a woman, because I won’t believe it.”

“How d’you know what I do or don’t think about?”

She snorted. “I was born in the dark, but it wasn’t last night. I saw how you looked when we were in that store, and that was just
me
. Besides, that’s one of the most common male fantasies. I did the research.”

“Of course you did,” he muttered. What did she mean, “that was just me?” She didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she did. “Google must have a pretty interesting profile on you. I’ve thought about heaps of things I haven’t done. When you’re big and…”

“Strong,” she guessed. “Powerful.” Which would have been nice to hear, under other circumstances.

“Well, when you are, you take care that you don’t scare a woman, and you bloody well take care that you don’t hurt her. I don’t have to hurt women. I hurt men. That’s my job. If I’ve got any excess testosterone, I’ve got an outlet for it, haven’t I.”

“All very reasonable,” she said. “All very noble, but it doesn’t matter, because you won’t be hurting Gretchen. You’ll be doing a little fantasy fulfillment of your own. Here’s your big chance to do something exciting without actually having to worry about scaring a woman, or hurting her. Everybody’s happy, and we’re done.”

“Let’s make this dead clear,” he told her. “There’s not one bit of fantasy fulfillment in my spanking Gretchen, because there’s nothing I want to do less. I can think of one woman I wouldn’t mind spanking, but that’s not on offer, is it?”

Her eyes widened, then she seemed to catch herself and laughed, hugging his jacket a little closer. “Well, then, take yourself to your Happy Place. Whatever floats your boat. We done talking?”

“I’ve got an even better idea,” he said. “If it’s such an insignificant wee thing, how about if
you
do it? Hemi’s got a threesome going, maybe. That seems like the kind of bloke he is. And I’d be rapt about having
you
over my knee. I could look dark and dangerous as you like.”

She wasn’t looking one bit comfortable now. He should care about that, but he didn’t.

“Trust me,” she said, “nobody’s going to pay to look at naked pictures of me, especially not of my butt. And that isn’t the kind of threesome that sells stories to women.”

“No?” He took a step towards her, and she backed up, then seemed to catch herself. “I’d pay for that. And I’d do that shoot for free.”

“You hold that thought.” She was the one struggling for composure now, and he was enjoying watching it. “You’re looking just exactly right.”

“Dark and dangerous?” he asked softly, closing the distance, putting his hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him, and he took the jacket from around her shoulders and put it on again. “Then let’s go.” He saw her looking off-balance, and smiled. “You just keep looking at me while I’m doing it. You can know what I’m really thinking about. That way, we both get at least a taste of what we want.”

For all his protesting, Will looked as cool and remote as an iceberg during the shoot that followed. He certainly didn’t seem to mind having Gretchen stretched across his lap.

“All right there?” he asked her when they first got into position in the black leather chair. “You get the blood rushing to your head, you need a break, you just say the word, and I’ll help you up.”

“Not your job,” Calvin growled. “I say when she gets a break.”

“No,” Will said, his expression hard for once. “You don’t. She does. And if you’ll get on with it, she won’t have to be down there so long. Let’s go.”

Calvin looked like he wanted to explode, but the pictures were gold, and he knew it, and for once, he held himself back. “I’m not the one sitting around here yapping. All right. Arm in the air. Other hand on her back.”

Will raised his arm, elbow high, and looked straight at Faith as Charlotte got in there, pinning his jacket back so it fell perfectly, then tweaking his tie.

“How am I doing?” he asked Faith softly. “This what you want?”

She stared back at him in shock. At what he’d said, at the fact that he’d said it here, in front of everyone. And he didn’t smile.

“Hold that expression,” Calvin said. “But look at Gretchen. You’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and she’s just about to find that out. More shadow on that arm,” he snapped at Faith. “Quick.”

Faith adjusted the light, calming her racing heart, until Calvin said, “Good. There.”

She watched the shoot, moved, followed orders, but her mind wasn’t on it. Nowhere close to on it.

He looked down at me, his expression impossible to read. “You’re a pretty demanding girl. That’s not what our arrangement is, is it? Didn’t I tell you that the spider decides?”

“Not if you’re never going to
do
it,” I muttered. “And I told you. I don’t do arrangements.”

He tried to hide it, but I saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Something else you said as well,” he mused. “What was that? Hmm. I thought there was something wrong with it at the time. Can’t think what now, though.”

“What?” I asked. Something
wrong?

We’d made it back to the hotel at last, and he didn’t answer until we were in the elevator again, and he’d pushed the button for the fourth floor. I reached over to punch 3, but he shot a hand out and grabbed my wrist.

“Oh, yeh,” he said. “I remember now. You wanted a lesson, thought you might go get it from somebody else. And that’s not part of our arrange— er, relationship. Think I may have to remind you of that. And to give you that lesson, too.”

My legs wanted to get a little wobbly at that, but the doors had opened, and he stood back and let me walk out first, then walked by my side to the end of the corridor, pulled out his keycard, and held the door for me.

Another suite, in rich blues this time, but I wasn’t looking at the décor.

Hemi set the bag containing my lingerie down on the table near the door, took my purse off my shoulder, and added it as well.

“Take off your coat,” he told me, and when I did, he took it from me and hung it in the closet together with his own suit coat while I tried not to shift from foot to foot.

He looked at me and sighed, unbuttoned his shirt cuffs, and began to roll up his sleeves a few turns. “Rough, eh.”

“Rough?” I asked, startled. He’d seemed to understand that I didn’t want pain. Now he was talking about it being rough? No.

“Deciding which to do first,” he said, and I relaxed a tiny bit. “So many lessons you need today. But you’re still sore, I know, which makes it a bit fraught. I think I’m getting an idea, though.” He walked to the couch that sat against one wall, pulled the coffee table out a couple of feet, then sat down while I stood and watched him. “I think you’d better come over here.”

I swallowed hard, the nerves and the arousal fluttering low in my belly, and moved toward him, but when I got there, he didn’t let me sit. Instead, he said, “Saucy girls who tease and don’t do what they’re told? Girls who go out without their undies? What do you think happens to them?”

Surely there wasn’t enough air in here. “Um…” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you lie down across my lap,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

She’d been writing more of the story down every night, just for herself, just for fun. And just because she couldn’t help it. This last week, though, as she’d been working with the designer on the website, had been going through the images with Calvin, choosing the best ones, she’d been toying with the idea of submitting her own story to the site. The same way the images were going up, one episode at a time, starting with Hope and Hemi’s meeting.

If none of the viewers knew it was her, it might be all right. And having an example chapter up there could set the tone for the entire site, couldn’t it? That and the title, because she’d already convinced Calvin that
His Every Desire
had the erotic romance ring to it that would bring women to the site, that and the marketing campaign she’d already kicked off. Women would come to look at Will, and they’d come back for more of him. Gretchen was good. She was pretty, and she looked sweet. She worked, but Will
killed
.