The Billionaire's Command (The Silver Cross Club) (13 page)

“Yes,” he said.

“But you’ve never used it,” I said.

“I didn’t think you would want me to,” he said.

I could not figure this man out. He had no qualms about paying me for a month of sex, but using my real name crossed the line? “You know, you’re kind of weird,” I said.

He only raised an eyebrow.

“So, if we’re talking about names,” I said. “I thought Turner was a fake name.”

“It’s not,” he said. “You caught me off guard when you asked. I couldn’t think of anything plausible on the spot. I knew you would assume it was an alias.”

I cocked my head, considering him. He took the subway, and didn’t mind telling me that he had a hard time thinking on his feet—and yet he was the most commanding person I had ever met. Maybe being willing to admit vulnerability was part of that. He was so confident, so assured of his own power, that confessing to the occasional weakness didn’t matter. He would still be able to control any room he walked into, just by existing inside of it. “What’s your first name?” I asked.

“Alex,” he said. “Alexander.”

“Alex Turner,” I said. Oddly plain. “I thought you’d have some name like Maximilian Reginald the Eighth.”

He laughed again, like it had been startled out of him. “If my parents had burdened me with a name like that, I would have changed it as soon as I turned eighteen.”

“So I can call you Alex, right?” I asked.

He sighed. “I suppose so. I don’t imagine I would have any luck stopping you.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’m pretty stubborn.”

“Christ, I’m going to regret this,” he said, and went back to his phone.

I turned back to the window, feeling smug. I had scored a point against him. An imaginary point, that didn’t count toward anything, but still. An empty victory was better than no victory at all, right?

The cab glided up 5th Avenue, Central Park on the left and fancy apartment buildings on the right. I gawked up at the elaborate facades like a tourist. I didn’t get up to the Upper East Side much, so it was still kind of a thrill to see the old mansions and imagine the glamorous people who lived inside. In a way, it was hard to imagine Turner living among them. Alex. He seemed too—well. I wasn’t really sure. Too
something
. Too blunt? Too unconcerned with what other people thought about him? He knew who he was, and what he was worth, and I couldn’t picture him going through the motions of upper-class society. Or, okay, what I imagined upper-class society to be like. It wasn’t like I really had any idea what rich people did. Bought tiny dogs. Rode horses.

“We’re here,” Alex said, and the cab pulled over to the side of the road and came to a stop.

The sort of giddy disbelief I’d felt since we left Germaine’s office evaporated abruptly. It was like waking from a dream, and then cold reality set in. I was sitting in a cab with a man I barely knew, about to go up to his fancy apartment and have sex with him. We weren’t friends. We were barely acquaintances. And I had sold myself to him for the next month.

Well. It probably wouldn’t be boring, at least.

* * *

The doorman let us in with such a bland expression on his face that I was sure he was judging me for my flip-flops and raggedy cut-off shorts. I shot him a bright smile as I followed Turner into the building. I didn’t give a shit what he thought about me. That was one of the advantages of occupying a spot at the bottom of the social totem pole: no reputation to worry about. I was trash, and I didn’t care who knew it.

The inside of the building was pretty nice, but not any fancier than the club. I’d been hoping for a tiger-skin rug or something. Turner walked directly toward the bank of elevators at the back of the lobby, so I didn’t have much time to gawk. I had to scurry to keep up with Turner’s long strides.

As soon as we were in the elevator, he turned to me and slid his hand beneath the strap of my bag. “What’s in here?”

I frowned up at him. “That’s your seduction technique?”

“I don’t need to seduce you, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve already got you.” He tugged the bag from my shoulder and opened it. “Very nice. Are you planning to wear all of these for me?”

“You told me to clear out my locker,” I said. “So I did. I don’t know what you’re going to ask me to do. Maybe you’ll want me to wear some lingerie. It’s not like you gave me any guidelines.”

“Touchy,” he said. He passed my bag back to me, and I hiked it back onto my shoulder. “Surely you know that I’ll provide any… necessary accoutrements.”

I didn’t even know what that word meant. “I like to be prepared,” I said. “Time is money.”

He huffed out a breath, and then the elevator doors slid open.

The elevator opened into a small entryway, kind of like the front room of the club. He went out into the marble-floored foyer, and I followed him, curious, glancing around at the mirrors and vases and elaborately arranged flowers. A large wooden door was set in one wall, with a doorbell beside it. Turner unlocked the door and immediately headed inside, without looking to see if I was following, and there was nothing I could do but trail after him like a little lost sheep.

The door opened onto a short hallway, which quickly opened into a large room. I paused in the doorway and took my bearings. We had come out into the living room—or at least, I thought it was the living room. There was a couch in it, and a coat rack, and a floor lamp. And that was it: no other furniture, no decorations. Not even a rug on the bare parquet floor.

Turner sat on the sofa, and I waited for him to say something, to give me some cue, but he just sat there and watched me. Okay, fine. I wasn’t interested in playing guessing games with him. If he wasn’t going to give me any orders, I would take the chance to snoop around.

He didn’t stop me. I dropped my bag on the floor and then walked through the whole apartment, opening closets, peeking in cabinets. The building was old, and the apartment had the high ceilings and big windows to go with it. And the place was
huge
, especially by New York standards: three bedrooms, plus a large terrace overlooking Central Park, and an empty room with nothing in it but a small trash can. One of the bedrooms showed some signs of a life—some clothes folded in a dresser, a single toothbrush in the attached bathroom—but nothing that made it seem like someone
lived
there. Even the fridge was empty except for a pitcher of water.

It was really weird. My tour finished, I went back into the living room and said, “This place is like a creepy hotel.”

“Thank you,” Turner said. “What a delightful compliment.”

“Oh, are you offended?” I asked. “Did I upset you? Your apartment is weird. Nobody lives like this. You don’t even have any food!”

“It’s New York,” he said. “I can have Ethiopian food delivered to my door in thirty minutes.”

“It’s not healthy to eat takeout all the time,” I said, and then realized I sounded like a nagging mother, and shut my mouth.

He just sat there and looked at me. I shifted my weight onto one foot and shoved my hands into my pockets, then took them out again. I was
nervous
. It was stupid, but there it was. We were supposed to be having sex, but I didn’t know how to get there from where we were now: bickering like teenagers, and him sitting on the couch like a statue.

And I was nervous about the sex. It had a been a while for me. Not since my first months in New York, before I started working at the Silver Cross, before I decided that going all the way with clients wasn’t worth it.

Turner wasn’t helping. I wanted him to take control of the situation, to tell me to come sit on his lap or whatever. That would make it easy: I could just do as I was told. But the longer he stared at me, the more nervous I got, until finally I couldn’t deal with it anymore.

Time to take action.

I kicked off my flip-flops. They made quiet smacking noises as they hit the floor. Turner raised his eyebrows, like he didn’t approve of going barefoot indoors.

Too bad.

I took a deep breath, and then I unzipped my shorts and shoved them down my thighs.

Oh, I had his attention now. The shorts fell to the floor, and I stepped out of them. I was wearing a lacy, hot pink thong, and I turned slowly, letting him get a good look at my hips and ass. By the time I’d done a full rotation and come back around to face him, his eyes had that dark sex look I was getting to be so familiar with.

“There seems to be something that you want, Sassy Belle,” he said.

“I thought it was what
you
wanted,” I said. “You didn’t bring me over here to admire your lack of interior decorating, did you?”

“No,” he said. “Turn and show me your ass again.”

I did it, heart pounding. I wanted him to be pleased with me. Which was stupid, because he was obviously pleased already if he was willing to pay me a quarter of a million dollars to hang out with him for a month. But I wanted him to be
so
pleased with me that he didn’t have any reason not to give me the other half of my money when the month was up.

“Very nice,” he said. “Now take off that awful t-shirt. I can’t believe you walk around like that in public.”

“You have a problem with Iron Maiden?” I asked. “I bet you listen to, like, classical music and that easy listening shit they play in elevators.” I stripped the shirt over my head and tossed it onto the floor with my shorts.

I wasn’t wearing a bra, and my nipples tightened from a combination of air conditioning and arousal. Having an audience, it turned out, was just as effective when it was an audience of one. I swayed my hips, raised my arms above my head, and slowly gyrated back around to face him.

He ignored my jab about his musical tastes. “I can’t imagine that’s legal,” he said. He had crossed his legs, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, and I took it as a sign that he was turned on and trying to hide it. Good. I wanted him to want me so much that he couldn’t think. We would be on equal footing, then.

“What, not wearing a bra?” I asked. “Actually, women can go topless in public in the city. Weird law.”

“It doesn’t surprise me in the least that you know that,” he said. “But I don’t want you going topless for anyone but me.”

The note of hungry possession in his voice made me flush hot. “I won’t,” I said. “Not until the month is over.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Now come here.”

I padded across the room to the sofa, my bare feet sticking ever-so-slightly to the waxed floor. Turner watched me as I approached him: motionless, unreadable as the Sphinx. Or the Mona Lisa, really, with that little half-smirk of his, like he was amused by everything but not enough to bother with the effort of laughing.

I stopped a foot in front of him, just out of arm’s reach, and he said, “Sassy, you know that isn’t close enough.”

Okay, fine. I took another step.

He uncrossed his legs and spread his thighs so that I could see the bulge of his hard-on in his trousers. “Closer.”

My tongue felt too big to fit inside my mouth. I took another step, and felt the fabric of his trousers brush against my legs. The heat of his body radiated through the thin wool and made me think of how much hotter he would be when we were pressed together, skin to skin.

It wouldn’t be long, now.

There was nothing to be scared of, I told myself sternly. It wasn’t like this was my first time. He was just a man. I understood men. I knew what made them tick. They were uncomplicated creatures: all they wanted was a good fuck and someone who knew what was in their secret hearts. The first part of that was easy to provide, and the second part was easy to fake.

But as I stood there and looked down into his dark eyes, I knew I was a fool to pretend he was anything like my other clients.

What was the saying? I was playing with fire. Turner burned hot, and he would scorch me right down to my bones.

He broke eye contact, finally, and raised one hand to stroke my hip, sliding from the curve of my waist over the lacy band of my thong and then down to squeeze at my ass.

“You’re an ass man, aren’t you?” I asked.

“I’m an everything man,” he said. He looked up at me again and said, “You know, I had planned to draw this out until you begged me to take you, but it seems I don’t have the patience for that. Wait here.” I was forced to stumble back a few steps as he abruptly rose from the couch and then headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

Alone, I smoothed my palms over my hot cheeks. I liked the idea of begging—probably more than I should have. What kinds of things would a man like Turner do when he was too impatient to wait for me to beg?

I would find out soon enough.

He returned too quickly for me to freak out and do something stupid. He held a length of silky black fabric in his hands, like a scarf, but it was too long to be a scarf, and not the sort of thing I could imagine him ever wearing.

I knew where this was going.

“Do you want to tie me up, baby?” I purred. “I’m game.”

He twisted the fabric around his hands and frowned at me. “Spare me the theatrics. We both know you’re acting. I don’t want you to do that ridiculous posturing when you’re with me.”