Wicked Steps (10 page)

Kieran

She was mine. If I had any concerns prior, regarding whether or not she would cooperate, they vanished the moment she thrust her body against mine. Her lips tasted like peppermint, and her skin smelled of talc. I could have taken her right then. She wouldn’t have put up much resistance. I was wearing her down. Maybe she wouldn’t take as much effort as I thought, because she was needy. Or possibly this was just a smokescreen and she was playing hard to get in order to hide the fact that she really was a greedy whore.

Part of me preferred the latter. If she was a slut, I could treat her as one. I hated these feelings of misgivings. I banged my fist against the shower stall as I let the water pour over my discontentment. I could stand here and decipher all my emotions. But the fact was I’d never given much thought about anything in my life except revenge and my next art project. It wasn’t always like that. When my mother had been alive, we shared a happy and content existence. Free of my father. But when she passed, I stopped caring about anything having to do with emotions; all that warm and fuzzy sentiment went with her.

Ellery had been right about one thing. My mother would be heartbroken to see what I’d become. I inherited quite a few of my father’s traits. I never cheated, though. I preferred to remove women from my life. I never saw the need for a long-term companion, only a body to fulfill my needs for a single night. Now this woman, my deceased father’s wife, my stepmother, was making me question some of my choices. Somewhere deep inside me, I felt a need to know her. It devalued my entire plan. It wasn’t normal for women to challenge me. They always desired me. I never had to chase them. I knew it the first time I fucked at fifteen. European girls were not repressed.

But she wouldn’t come to me voluntarily. No matter how much she wanted to, even though I knew that arousal and lust were the only elements propelling her in my direction. Her conscience might be saying no, but her body would not be denied. Maybe I should give her Salacity. I had no need for some trivial Soho gallery when I intended to return to Paris. The bitch was already softening my resolve, and I despised how impotent I was feeling. I had planned vengeance for years, and in less than nine days, the target of my wrath had unarmed me mentally.

I should be thinking only with my cock. Since when did my brain disagree with my dick? Fucking her was of the highest priority. That had been paramount to my plan. I didn’t need to know Ellery or find out the details of her marriage to my father. When did that become of any importance?

I shook my head furiously as I exited the shower and grabbed a towel. I needed to quit contemplating my feelings. The only way I could keep my eye on the prize was to continue thinking with my dick, minus brain matter. When did this become about her as a person? I already knew everything I needed to. It was blatantly obvious who she was. Ellery wasn’t a Mother Teresa who took care of my father because he was dying, but a woman who sold her self-respect for a fucking business.

I quickly dressed and made a few phone calls. I needed to get my head back into the game. And this
was
a game.

I planned to leave for a few days. I required time away from her to develop a new strategy. I had to get back on track. I would take Landy with me. I always came up with my best ideas while a beautiful woman was sucking my cock.

Ellery

A sense of relief embraced me when I read the note on the table by the front door. This meant I had two or three worry-free days.

I planned to tell Coco everything. I felt a nervous flutter in the pit of my stomach, wondering how she would respond to my torrid tale. While driving to the gallery, I tried to think of all the ways I could spin this. Who was I kidding? There was no way to sugarcoat the last five years and Kieran, who was actually the infamous artist Wicked. What a clusterfuck.

Fifty minutes later, I arrived at Salacity. My hands were shaking as I nervously clasped my purse and scarf. The day was brisk, and the chill settled throughout my body.

“How are you feeling?” Coco asked as I walked in.

Nervous and wanting to vomit.
“Much better,” I replied, not looking her in the eyes. “We need to talk.”

“Ooookay,” Coco said, drawing out the word. She eyed me suspiciously. “We could go have a late lunch or early dinner.”

I shook my head. “Let’s go in my office. Have Bo watch the front for a few hours.”

“A few hours? What the hell, Elle? That isn’t a chat. It’s a summit meeting,” she mumbled as she followed me to my office. “What’s going on?” she asked as she gently grabbed my elbow.

“Sit. You need to be sitting,” I said as I closed the door and went to my desk.

I dropped down into the other chair and rubbed my hands together in reflection. How did I start? What did I say?

“I have no idea where to start… Everything I did was for our gallery. Please don’t hate me or worse… look at me different. I never told you everything because I knew you wouldn’t allow me to sacrifice my morality for this place. But it was the only way to secure our future, and now I’m in trouble. Big-ass trouble. The kind that could affect us both.”

My best friend’s expression dropped. The smile she normally wore faded as a pained worried look clouded her face. “You are scaring the hell out of me, Elle. What is it? Whatever it is, we can conquer it together. We always have. I’m your family no matter what.”

I wiped away tears as they fell on my cheeks. “You were right about Hartman. I could never tell you the truth because I was afraid you’d hate me.”

Coco stood up and kneeled by my chair, handing me tissue. “You and I have been besties for almost twenty years. Nothing you could ever do would be so bad I’d walk away. I’ll always have your back. Now tell me everything.”

She wandered back to her chair as I began to spin the entire story. Well, most of it. I carefully edited certain details. I couldn’t bear to admit everything he’d done to me sexually, so I kept it R-rated. She never said a word, but I witnessed flashes of shock and disbelief in her expression.

“I fucking knew it. I always knew he was an evil son of a bitch. Now do you understand my hatred of the man? It was my woman’s intuition. If that bastard wasn’t dead, he would be. Fuck, Elle, I can’t believe you kept all this from me and for all these years. It kills me to know you suffered in silence and I wasn’t there to help you. As much as I love this gallery and our life, what you went through wasn’t worth it. Did you ever think he might kill you?” she asked, her voice shivering with the possibility.

“He never took it that far. I couldn’t tell you. I was ashamed. I also feared what you might do. I couldn’t take the chance you’d interfere. I started it and I had to see it through.” I stopped and choked back a sob. “I tried to rationalize his behavior by blaming his illness and believing he didn’t realize what he was doing.”

Coco bent her head as I watched her swallow a sob. “He’s dead and buried, and I pray he’s roasting in hell. He can’t hurt you anymore, Elle. You have everything that belonged to him. I say burn it all to the ground. We’ll keep the gallery, but you need to out that man for the sadist asshole he was.”

I got up and walked to the front of my desk. “I can’t expose him without exposing myself. If what he did comes out, how would that make me look? I allowed everything. They’ll find out he acquired me like any other company he bought. And if someone uncovers the actual agreement. They’ll know it was a faux marriage and exactly why I agreed. Coco, we would be ruined. We could lose this place, everything. I would have gone through all of it for nothing. Besides, we already have another complication.”

“Oh my God. How could this get worse?”

I shifted my body as I looked at my shoes. I felt my face get warm as I prepared to drop yet another bombshell.

“Okay, Elle, now you have me intrigued—worried but curious. It’s been years since I’ve seen you blush this badly. So spill it. Who else are we going to have to fuck up before we get bent over?”

“Please do not freak. You know the two acquisitions you brought back from Paris—”

She interrupted me, panicked stricken. “You mean the ones we got from Wicked? Oh Jesus, don’t tell me they were fakes? Please te—”

I stopped her with a wave of my hand. “No, no. The art is authentic.” I bit my bottom lip. “It seems Hartman had a son. They’d been estranged for ten years. He came back to get his inheritance—
all
of it. His name is Kieran Wick. He’s also the artist known as Wicked.”

Coco’s lips pressed together in a grimace. I could tell she was having a hard time processing this. “Shut the fuck up. Wait. What? The pierced dick is Hartman’s kid?”

“Well, he’s twenty-four, so he isn’t technically a kid.”

“Okay, pretend you’re explaining this to a five-year-old, because I’m stumped. What am I missing? Even though you were his fake wife, you two had a binding agreement. An ironclad deal. You would get everything when he died. Ding-dong the dick is dead. So what’s the problem? Legally, you get it all.”

I shook my head. “Evidently, Preston never changed the will to reflect Hartman’s current wishes. He kept it as is from years ago.”

“He can’t do that. He’ll be disbarred.”

“There’s a long history between Preston, Kieran, and Hartman’s first wife.”

“So where does that leave you?”

“There lies the dilemma. Kieran wants to blame me for everything. He wants payback for what his father did to his mother. She passed away when he was seventeen,” I said in a hushed voice. “To make this extremely long and undignified story short, he wants
me
.”

She laughed. “Wait. What do you mean he wants you, and how are you liable for Hartman’s less-than-fatherly behavior? You weren’t even on his radar ten years ago.”

“He wants me to sleep with him. He wants to fuck his stepmother,” I said bluntly.

She snorted a giggle. “You said he’s twenty-four? Enlighten me. I’d love to know what you get in return for fucking your stepson. And I need to ask if he’s even theoretically your stepson, because this entire thing sounds like a bad
Lifetime
movie.”

“He’ll give me Salacity. Free and clear. Otherwise, I get nothing.”

I knew she was pissed when she gritted her teeth and her eyes hardened. “And Preston’s onboard with this? I actually liked him. I guess he’s going to agree to whatever makes him the most profit. Fucking scum. All lawyers.”

“I don’t think Preston wanted any of this. I was there when both of them had a confrontation. He really did attempt to negotiate some kind of a resolution between Kieran and me.”

“How did he even know who you were or what you looked like? For all he knew, you could be some fifty-year-old crone. It sounds like he did his homework.”

I shuffled my feet and began pacing the room. I stopped at the water cooler and drank a cup. “I might have encouraged this.”

“God, Elle, this just gets better and better. Define encouraged.”

“The night of our big event, he was there. Of course, I had no idea who he was… Do I really have to give you specific details? Something happened. I allowed him to…” I stopped and pleaded for a bolt of lightning to strike me dead. “Touch me.”

Coco’s eyes got huge as she snorted. “When you say touched… exactly what do you mean?”

“Oh, you are a bitch,” I hissed. “He made me come,” I whispered.

“Now, when you say come, are you speaking about cock, tongue, or fingers? Although, I have heard rumors through the grapevine that he is so lethally sexual that his looks alone could produce an orgasm.”

She had no idea how true that was. Damp panties was a definite when it came to that man.

“He… he… Oh hell, he had his hands down my underwear.”

If my bestie had been shocked before, now her expression was one of being blown away. “I remember you being loose in college, but you’ve always been straight and narrow since you turned twenty-five. I’d convinced myself you had some regal stick up your butt, especially after you married that old sack of shit. I’m not sure if I can wrap my mind around the fact that you let a complete stranger, who happens to be a world-famous artist and your stepson to boot, get you off. I’d say this is a midlife crisis, but, Elle, you’re only thirty-five.”

“Oh, please, shut up. Are you done? Because compared to your exploits, this is rated G.” I huffed.

She cracked a laugh. “Nothing I’ve ever done comes close to getting up close and personal with a man who happens to be your stepson.”

“Will you stop saying that? It’s a technicality. Hartman’s dead, so he isn’t my stepson. Not really.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that, but he is young, and since when do you covet men his age? You’ve always been the half of our team that thrives on older men. Which I find personally gross, but nevertheless, it’s always been your thing.”

I couldn’t look at her. I hung my head. “I can’t give you an honest reason. You would have to see him to understand. He’s like a fucking pussy magnet, and when I first saw him, I was compelled to let him touch me. I have no real explanation other than I was magically coerced.”

I saw her out of the corner of my eye. I watched as she sucked in a quick breath of astonishment.

“Jesus, you like him. Oh no, Elle, what are you thinking?”

I shook my head furiously in denial. “What? You’re crazy. You haven’t met him. He’s an arrogant, self-entitled pain in my ass. He’s immature and blames his father for how bad his life was. Boo-fucking-hoo. He’s a world-famous artist, rich, and has a face like Adonis, but regardless, he’s just a crybaby with daddy issues.”

Coco was annoyed. Her eyes appraised me with a cool stare as her arms crossed against her chest. She didn’t believe anything I’d just said. “You’re lying to me—yet again. You forget I know you. I can’t ever recall seeing you like this. Your poker face has told me everything. You have feelings for him.”

“There’s a difference between being intrigued and getting emotionally invested. He and I have already set goals. Mine is Salacity, and his is destroying his father’s empire and
fucking
me
.”

“Okay, so what are you going to do about the latter? And how do you know he’ll keep his end of the bargain? I’m beginning to understand why they call him Wicked.”

“I had Preston draw up an agreement. He can’t back out.”

“Let me get this straight. You had an attorney, the man who created this mess in the first place, pen a piece of paper that says what? Once pierced boy bangs you, he owes you the gallery? Shit, even that sounds sleazy to me.”

“Tell me what I should do, then, because I don’t know. Did I tell you he moved into the Scarsdale residence?”

“Whoa, what? Oh, Elle, maybe this place isn’t worth it. We could get a loan and start over. Don’t follow through on this for me. Don’t even do it for us.”

I spoke without hesitation. “I have no choice. I already went through hell for the last five years. If I walk away, all of that was for nothing. If I could endure that, I’m sure I can handle a month with Wicked. You spouted your motto for years that ‘it’s only sex.’ Well, if that’s true, I have to finish this. Once it’s a done deal, we’ll have this place free and clear, and my life will be my own. We’ll have no more worries.”

“I am worried, though. If he were any other man, I wouldn’t be. But I see a light in your eyes that I’ve never seen before when you refer to him. For Wicked, you’re just another conquest and a means to get even with his father, but for you, I’m afraid it will end up being more. If you’re determined to do this, allow him your body, but please, Elle, don’t give him your heart.”