He flashed me a wide smile. “But I plan for things to go well and he knows it. So Eddie told me to keep him in mind, because he spent a long time building his company and he’d like to pass it on into good hands.”
His smile faded and he now simply looked grim. “Devoted must have heard about him retiring because they’re moving in on his clients, talking to other people. It looks like they’re pressuring him to sell, staking their claim.”
I waited.
Dominic smiled as he looked away. “I wasn’t sure I’d want to branch out so soon, but I like Philadelphia.”
“So you’re going to force them to sell…to you.”
“They started it,” Dominic said lazily. “If they’d left Eddie alone, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but now…?”
The smile on his face could only be described as predatory, and not in a good way.
I thought I was very, very glad I wouldn’t ever come up against him in business. I wouldn’t last very long. Then I made a few notes on my phone and put it down. He glanced down as if suddenly realizing I was still in my robe. He quickly excused himself so I could dress.
By the time I’d finished and headed downstairs, Dominic was in the kitchen. “Francisco will be in today,” I said. “Is there anything you’d like him to prepare for you this week?”
“Lasagna. For some time later this week, though. I’m in the mood for chicken tonight. I’d like it ready when I get home. I shouldn’t be working late.”
I mentally ran his schedule through my head and compared it to when Francisco normally left. “I’ll talk to him.”
He nodded and came behind me. When he pressed a quick kiss to the delicate skin behind my ear, I shivered. He left without a word.
I closed my eyes and braced my hands on the table.
Normally, I’d go into the office and get to work, but that would involve sitting down and that wasn’t something I’d want to do much of. At least not for a little while.
***
I hadn’t known what to expect from Annette Shale.
There were so many different people in Dominic’s world—so many different women. Most of them came and went, but hardly anybody came to his penthouse. Actually, other than his mother and Fawna, none of them came to the penthouse.
It felt odd to step aside for the tall, vibrant redhead.
She was what I’d call exotic.
Vivid red hair—and unless her stylist was very talented, the hair was natural, because her eyebrows were the same shade. Her eyes were shamrock green. Her skin, by contrast, was only a few shades paler than mine.
Not altogether white bread there, I decided, although I couldn’t really figure out just what I was seeing in her. Other than the fact that she was completely gorgeous.
When I smiled at her, she held out a hand and gave me an open, friendly smile and said, “Hello. You must be Aleena. Dominic’s told me about you.”
I shook her hand and stepped aside to let her in. She immediately came inside and tossed her coat and bag across one of the fat leather chairs and propped her hands on her hips.
“Please tell me he’s going to let me do something other than the Fashion Interior Flavor of the Month this time.” She glanced over at me.
“Ah…” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to say to that.
Annette laughed and waved a hand. “Ignore me, honey,” she said and I caught the hint of a southern drawl. Not a native New Yorker then, but a transplant like me. “I keep telling that man that he’s allowed to put some personality in his home, but he just wants to go with what’s current. I’ve told him a thousand times not to worry about trends. What do you like?” She shook her head in tolerant exasperation.
Damn.
I was going to like her.
Did I want to like her, though? I moved a little deeper into the room as I pondered that.
I wasn’t sure. “Have you…” I tripped just the slightest over the words. “Worked with Dominic often?”
“Yes.” She sighed. A faint smile curled her lips as she smoothed a hand down the back of the couch. “I ended up with him by accident, really.”
“How did you accidentally end up working with Dominic Snow?”
She laughed again, the sound full and rich. A smile played on her full lips. “You ask that question like you know the man, Aleena.”
“Well…” I took my time choosing my words. I didn’t want to piss her off, nor did I want to say anything out of place. “Dominic is just a man who seems to know who and how he wants things done.”
“Indeed he does,” Annette agreed. She came around and sat down on the chair, crossing her long legs. She wore a beautiful suit of peacock blue, the colors complimenting her eyes and hair beautifully. She was able to lounge in the chair in that way some women had, like a queen reclining on a throne. She was graceful and gracious and classy.
And nice, dammit. If she wasn’t so nice, I could have disliked her on principle alone.
“Dominic had hired my partner—former partner,” she amended. “At the time, my former partner was also my husband. He’d set out to the job and had already taken a sizable deposit from Dominic and then…” Annette paused, a faint laugh escaping her. It didn’t sound like she was amused though. “I came home one day and found that he’d emptied his closet. I wasn’t a fool, so I checked the bank accounts. He’d emptied those as well.”
I tried not to stare at her because I knew she’d think I was either pitying or criticizing her. I wasn’t doing either. I was actually trying to figure out how in the world any man would want to leave someone like her.
She continued with a cynical edge to her voice, “And I have to be honest. I realized I’d been a fool to trust him. I found out he’d been embezzling from the company the two of us had built from the ground up. It was almost bankrupt and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Many of the clients were threatening to sue me, press charges…” Her mouth tightened, then softened. “Dominic came by the office to check on something when I was on the phone with my lawyer. I was on the verge of tears and he heard me. Most people would have left. Not him. He brought me a bottle of water and he sat there and he listened. Then he put me on a retainer.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” The smile on her face was sad now. The smile of a woman who’d learned a hard, ugly lesson and come out wiser for it. “He told me to fire my attorney and had me talking to one of his. Within two weeks, nobody was growling at my door anymore and somehow, they’d tracked down that cockroach I’d married and the tramp he’d run off with. Dominic had me finish the job my husband had been hired to do and he was happy with it, so he hired me to head the team that did the interior design for all of Winter Corporations businesses.” She looked towards one of the windows, a distant expression on her face.
I thought of the man who’d left not that long ago.
The man who tried to tell me he didn’t handle emotion and caring well.
The man who’d tried to pay my asshole ex-manager just so I wouldn’t get fired.
“That…sounds like Dominic,” I said after a moment.
Annette simply nodded.
***
Annette left near four o’clock with a stack of ideas for everything from the living room to the guest room. She said she’d want to talk to Dominic about redoing the house in the Hamptons once she was done with the penthouse. I made a note of it and silently wondered if that meant she’d be doing my place too. I’d have to ask Dominic about that.
Francisco left not long after, leaving chicken in the oven. It would take an hour to finish baking, just in time for Dominic to get home.
Once they were gone, I found myself pacing the living room feeling out of place and stressed. As much as I hated it, I knew why.
Without realizing I’d walked down the hall, I stood in the door of what I was coming to think of as the room. My skin heated whenever I thought of it. The bed, with its four posters jutting up into the air, framed against walls of stark w
hite. The hooks, prominently displayed against the wood.
Annette had paused in the doorway when we’d done a walkthrough of the penthouse and she’d just glanced at me, given me a quiet look, but said nothing. I didn’t know if she could see anything on my face, but I knew what I’d seen on hers.
That room didn’t confuse her the way it had me the first time I’d seen it.
And that left me wondering. Did she know about Dominic? And if she did, was it because she’d guessed…or for other reasons?
The thought of her knowing made me feel kind of miserable inside.
I found my hand going to my grandmother’s necklace, wondering what she would have told me to do about the lump in my stomach. Then I flushed at the thought of my grandmother knowing about that room. I let go of my necklace and decided that it was time to get some work done. I would do my job and pretend that my insides weren’t twisting into knots.
I tried, but I didn’t do a very good job.
Chapter 3
Dominic
Considering I’d spent most of my day reliving a specific morning encounter, I left work feeling fairly accomplished.
I had a number of meetings set up in the near future, including a couple in Philadelphia. Dumb fucks shouldn’t have tried to come play in my pool without talking with me first.
I’d also cleared away a number of other matters and had a teleconference with the board addressing some upcoming issues with the line of hotels and a few other big issues. There was nothing urgent, but Amber and I had worked almost seven hours straight without a break. Lunch had consisted of sandwiches at our desk and if she’d noticed my occasional lack of focus, she was too professional to say. Or she was just used to it by now. Most people who worked closely with me knew how I worked, even if they didn’t realize why.
Some of my mind had been on work.
Everything else had been back at the penthouse and now I was planning on all the things I wanted to do to Aleena. With Aleena.
For Aleena.
I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered how I’d left her. I didn’t regret denying her release. That was part of learning how to be a Submissive. No, I regretted that I hadn’t soothed her wrists and made sure she understood that I wasn’t trying to be cruel, but rather build the trust we needed between us for this to work.
When I unlocked the door, the scent of dinner hit me and my stomach growled, grumbling in protest to let me know that the sandwich I’d given it for lunch hadn’t done much good.
I looked around for Aleena. We could eat…first. It would be wise, considering the evening I had planned. We’d both need our energy.
She wasn’t there.
My stomach made another gurgling yowl and I went into the kitchen and found a covered plate waited on the table for me. I tugged over the warming cover, smiling as I uncovered roasted potatoes, asparagus and chicken. It was still steaming and when I cut into it with a fork, it fell apart.
Taking the plate with me, I headed for my office. If she was working, then she could just stop and join me. She would often get so focused on things, she’d lose track of time. I wondered if she’d even eaten lunch today. I frowned. I hoped she had. I didn’t want her skipping meals.
That made me pause. Looking for her to join me for dinner wasn’t strange. Sometimes Fawna and I would share a meal while we watched TV or went over plans for what was ahead in the week, but the place my mind had gone had been concern over her well-being. That was something new. That was ‘taking care of’ territory.
I was thinking about Aleena in ways that I’d never thought about anyone else. Suddenly, everything I’d been thinking about all day came flooding in all at once.
The plans I had for the night weren’t the only things I was thinking of.
I was thinking about…us. Personal things. Intimate things.
I needed to slow down, but images came cropping up, all the things I wanted to do to her, with her, for her...fuck it.
I could deal with the worries and everything else later.
I shoved another bite of food into my mouth, impatience gnawing at me now.
The office was empty, so Aleena wasn’t working. She wasn’t in the small personal gym I had set up in the penthouse either.
No. She was in her apartment. And the door was shut.
I could hear the low, muted noise coming from the TV. When I knocked, the noise was silenced and, a moment later, she opened the door. I stood there with my half-eaten dinner in one hand and felt like an idiot. She waited with her head cocked and a curious look on her face, like she couldn’t imagine why I was standing there.
All day, I’d been half-imagining coming home to find her naked, or even half-naked on the couch, eagerly waiting for me to return. As desperate for me as I was for her.
Instead, she was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a too-big zipped-up sweatshirt that slipped down on one shoulder. She looked adorable, like she was settling in for a night. Alone.
That was what pissed me off. She was settling in for a night alone and all I’d been thinking about was us spending the night together.
As I stood there, the top slid further down her shoulder and the skin bared made my mouth water. My hands itched and I almost reached up to tug it back into place.
I didn’t though.
The pale, faded green looked like it had been through many washings and she caught the material, pulled it bag into place absently, the gesture one of long habit. I wondered if it had always been hers or if she’d gotten it from some guy. A guy she wanted to remember...
“Is everything okay?” She glanced at my food and then up to me. “Is there something wrong with your dinner?”
“Um…” I frowned and then shrugged. “No, it’s good. Did you get any?”
“Me? Oh. No. That was for you. I ordered Chinese in a while ago.” A smile danced across her lips. “Kung Pao chicken.”
The sweatshirt slid down again, tempting me.
I wanted to grab it and yank it off. Pull down that zipper until I could see what I suspected from her bare shoulder; that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath.
I wanted her naked.
I wanted her naked and downstairs and clearly thinking about the hours that had transpired between us and not about damn Kung Pao anything.
She looked…bored.
She didn’t look at all like she’d been thinking about anything that had happened between us. Like it hadn’t been haunting her every thought all day, making work nearly impossible.
That pissed me off, but I refused to let it show. I couldn’t let her know how much I needed her, not when it was clear I wasn’t affecting her the same way. I cut into another bite of chicken, staring at her as I slid the fork into my mouth. I took my time chewing, watching her the entire time, trying to decide what to do next.
She didn’t squirm. A few weeks ago, maybe even just a few days ago, she would have squirmed, been uncomfortable by the way I stared at her and by the drawn-out silence.
But not now.
She just stood there and waited.
“How did the meeting with Annette go?” I knew Annette would never have treated Aleena poorly, but I was curious as to how the two of them had gotten along. Next to Fawna, Annette was one of the few women I didn’t always feel the need to keep up my guard.
“Oh, fine.” Aleena shrugged, glancing back at the muted TV, as though her brain was already back on whatever program she wasn’t watching. “She seems eager to get to work. She said she wants to do the house in the Hamptons too if it’s all right with you. We’d need to go out there. If you can spare me any this week, I’ll contact her and let her know when it will work.”
I waited.
She looked back at the TV. Then back at me, her face still calm.
“Okay.”
She smiled. “Okay, then.” She looked at the plate. “I’ll be sure to let Francisco know you enjoyed the meal.”
“Ah, yeah. Please do.” I looked down, realized I’d eaten almost
seventy-five percent of it and for all I knew, it had been pure cyanide. “It was fine.”
“Great.” She smiled at me. A perfectly nice smile. “I’ll let you get back to your evening then.”
She patted me on the shoulder and without really understanding how she did it, she managed to nudge me from the doorway and back into the hall. She closed the door and I stood there for a full minute, holding my plate and staring.
I almost drove my fist into the door, almost demanded she open up and let me in. I had a key if she’d locked it. I could just go inside, insist that she come with me, tell her that it was an order...
No.
I couldn’t do that.
What I couldn’t figure out was just how in the fuck had I ended up on the outside of her door when I’d planned on having her downstairs, tied up to the bed, begging for my cock?
***
Relationships.
I lay on my bed two hours later, staring out through the window and trying to figure out what had happened. And trying to ignore the part of my body that was highly annoyed that things hadn’t gone the way I’d planned.
Something had to have happened, but I couldn’t figure it out and it was pissing me off.
The longer it eluded me, the more frustrated I became and finally, I kicked my legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed my phone. I had to search through my contacts before I found Annette’s number, but finally, I dug it up and put in a call to her.
I got her voicemail.
No, I didn’t want to leave a message.
Pissed off was turning into angry.
I called Fawna next. I knew her number by heart and she huffed out a faint breath when I told her what I wanted. “Aleena has that information, you know, Dominic,” she told me. In the background, I heard the fussy cry of a baby and I reached up, pinching the bridge of my nose, instantly feeling guilty.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t wake him up, did I?”
She gave a tired laugh. “No. That would imply he’d been sleeping and he hasn’t been doing much of that.”