Marriage Games (The Games Duet #1) Read online

email inboxes and outboxes. All

  your correspondence. No lawyers.

  You haven’t moved any money

  and you haven’t changed any of

  your passwords. So either you’re

  a very good sneak or you’re still

  the same honest, forthright woman I know.

  Now is the time to stop playing

  games. Enough—

  I thought about not hitting Send. I’d just admitted to spending half the afternoon spying on her. I decided that was just tough shit. I’d seen what I needed to see and left her life as it was. She could change her passwords if she didn’t like it.

  The elevator stopped as I hit Send, and the doors opened when DELIVERED appeared below the message.

  That was it. I’d texted everything I was going to text today.

  I looked through the elevator doors. Everything in front of me was painted as red as rage.

  Chapter 10

  PAST PERFECT

  I lost my virginity on a park bench at the age of fifteen. Blaire was fourteen and in her last year at St. Mary of the Fields. I was in my first year at Our Lady of Precious Blood High School. We’d been at Fields together, and when I aged out, we felt the brokenhearted sense of urgency common in teens.

  I impaled her on that bench. Right under her little plaid skirt and leg warmers, tucked into a corner of the park, just after the sun set. I controlled the motion of her hips. When she moved without my direction, I had a disconcerting feeling I could only describe as not-rightness.

  We did it a few more times then broke up. My best friend’s mother, Irene, seduced me a few months later, seeing something in me Blaire wasn’t qualified to see. Irene had said, “Do what you want to me. We are animals. Treat me like one.”

  So I did. I never looked back. Not until Diana.

  After the dinner where we made our first deal, I took her to my place in Murray Hill. In the back of the cab, she crossed her legs and put on lipstick. Her hands were shaking. Did she know what I was? I’d tracked down her past; had she done the same to me? Had she heard I was a sadist? A Dominant? A punishing fuck?

  I hoped she had and still decided to do it.

  She snapped her bag closed, and I whispered in her ear, using my Dominant voice, “Open your legs and touch yourself.”

  She glanced not at me, but the rearview mirror at the center of the windshield.

  “The cabbie’s right there.” She was not amused or coy. She simply didn’t want to do what I told her.

  I asked myself how badly I wanted her, and I decided badly enough to risk the deal. The risk was greater for her than it was for me.

  My condo was on the top floor, with a rooftop garden. I’d bought it to renovate and flip, but the lease on my apartment on Lexington was up and I decided to keep it.

  I closed the door and turned on the lights. The place was spotless, but I checked anyway, following her gaze around the windows, the furniture, the curved stairwell to the top floor.

  “Very nice,” she said.

  “Thank you.” I only had eyes for her, with her feet perpendicular to one another, legs long below the curve of her hips. “The view’s pretty good from here too.”

  She put her bag on the side table.

  Take your clothes off quietly, get on the coffee table, on your back, and spread your legs so I can see your cunt.

  I bit that back. “Can I get you something?”

  “Water, please.”

  I went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses. Her dress was laid over a chair. She stood in the middle of my living room wrapped in a blanket.

  “There aren’t any curtains,” she said meekly in front of the bare windows.

  Drop the blanket and show New York your body.

  “The bedroom has blinds.”

  “Is it upstairs?”

  Crawl up the stairs. Second door to the left. Wait for me on the bed with your ass up and spread. I’ll be taking that first. You are permitted to prep it with your fingers if you need to. And trust me, you need to.

  I gave her the water. Her hand poked out of the blanket and took it. She drank, clutching the wrap at her chest. She gave the glass back to me, and I put it on the table with my glass. Then quickly, before she could change her mind or I could think better of it, I picked her up, blanket and all, and carried her up the stairs.

  She put her hands on my cheeks and put her nose to mine. Her perfume smelled of oranges and orchids. When we got to my bedroom, she wiggled to her feet, still with the blanket around her. I drew the blinds and turned on the bedside lamp.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  When I stood in front of her, she put her chin up and shook the hair out of her face. I took the blanket off, revealing wine-colored lace and a body that made my cock push against my pants. She’d gone all out. Her bra had a little crystal heart between the tits and pushed them up and together. Matching panties shaped like the letter T with an identical crystal heart at the center.

  She reached for my jacket to pull it off, and I took her by the wrists.

  “Give me a second,” I said.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I want to just look at you for now.”

  That was true, but I also needed to create a few scenarios before we started. I needed to feel as if whatever simple thing happened, I’d planned and controlled for it.

  I undid my tie without taking my eyes off her. Jacket. Shirt. I was working on my belt when she reached for me again, and I reacted by grabbing her wrist again. She stiffened. She wasn’t supposed to reach without asking, but then again, she was supposed to do whatever she wanted and I’d reacted too fiercely.

  I kissed the inside of her arm, and she relaxed.

  “I brought condoms,” she said.

  Get on your knees. Take out my cock. Put your hands behind your back and open your mouth so I can fuck your throat. You’ll breathe when I want you to say my name.

  “Okay,” I said, working my lips to her shoulder, up her neck, her ear, and finally, I kissed her on the mouth for the first time.

  She was soft and just yielding enough. I tasted her wine, her water, her ambition, and her loyalty in that kiss.

  I was a goner.

  Chapter 11

  PRESENT TENSE

  Whenever I thought of leaving you, I felt two things. I felt relieved. But then I felt worried about McNeill-Barnes, and I couldn’t do it. That’s not a reason to stay with someone. I know you can understand that. We can figure out the business, but I can’t figure out you. I don’t feel close to you. When we’re in a room together, I’m as lonely as I’ve ever been.

  I didn’t love the club scene, even when I had been a part of it. I didn’t like chaos and noise. I understood how much control the free-for-alls took, but I liked intimacy.

  The Cellar was a necessary evil though. The club acted as an organization with rules surrounding what would be assault outside its walls.

  Every combination on the spectrum was available, depending on which part of the club you were in. Downstairs, in the actual cellar, nothing was off-limits. The sixth floor, where the dominant men and submissive women played, had its share of showmanship and chaos, but it was a more controlled, sedate scene. A bar. A bank of leather couches. A few back rooms.

  “Adam?” the bartender said in shock. Norton was an actor and a Dominant. I shook his hand over the bar. “What’s happening?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  He put a short glass and napkin on the bar. A young man with grey eyes and conservative haircut sat next to me, talking to an older man I recognized. At the older man’s feet curled a woman with a collar. He held her leash taut.

  “We missed you.” Norton poured me a shot. “How’s married life?”

  I took the glass. Did I have to answer that? I did, and I had to lie. I didn’t want him to know about the note that morning. I still had hope that it was all a big error in judgment, and I only realized it when I couldn’t tell the bartender m
y wife had left me. “Fine.”

  The room looked over the backside of the district. The windows had been treated so we could see out, but no one could see in. Which was for the best, since a state senator was on her hands and knees, deep in subspace, where dopamine levels were high and pain and pleasure merged. She was in heaven. I envied her Dom. Getting a sub there was the ultimate drug.

  “How’s the lady?” I asked Norton.

  “Naughty.” He waggled his brows. He and his wife worked the bar together. She wore his collar and called him Master, scrubbing the floors and wiping the counter when he told her to.

  “Where is she?”

  “Got a job as a graphic designer. She makes more than I do now.”

  “Well done.” I looked at the couches. Rows and rows of them, with tables. I didn’t want to talk about Norton’s perfectly kinky marriage where his submissive wife could have it all. It was too close to what I wanted. “Have you seen Charlie?”

  “Yeah. He’s in aftercare four.”

  “Thanks.”

  I took my drink and walked toward the aftercare rooms. On the way, I was greeted with hugs and jovial backslaps. Henry offered me a turn with his sub. I declined.

  Aftercare four had a black leather cross on the door with a brass 4 in the center. I knocked gently, expecting he wouldn’t answer if it was intense.

  “Come in.”

  I smiled when I heard the accent, and I opened the door.

  “Crikey,” he said.

  A naked woman was draped over his lap, ass bruised and red, slick with soothing cream. Her eyes were closed and a smile stretched across her face.

  “I haven’t stepped foot in here in years and that’s all you have to say?” I closed the door behind me.

  “You look like someone wrung you out, mate. Carrie, look who’s here.”

  Carrie opened her eyes, and I recognized her. We’d done a week-long years ago.

  She held out her hand. “Sir. Nice to see you again.” I took her hand, and we shook as well as she could under the circumstances. She rolled over onto her back. “Do you want a drink, Master?”

  “Club soda. And bring Adam a whiskey. Then you need to rest.” He dotted the tip of her nose.

  Charlie was a Dom like no other. Without the ability to fuck, he had to be more cruel and more tender than any of us.

  “What happened?” he asked when Carrie went out.

  For the first time since that morning, I wanted to talk about it.

  Chapter 12

  PAST PERFECT

  There came a point when the bloody, wrapped up bundles of paper and napkins stopped appearing in the bathroom garbage pail and Diana was walking around the office like a normal person. Once I even saw her laugh through the conference room glass. I watched her talk to Zack as I passed. She was standing, arms crossed, legs apart at the width of her shoulders. Her eyes sparkled as she listened to whatever he was saying, and the sun caught the flyaway hair and bounced off as if flirting with it. Her clothes were more fitted than the sacks she wore after we lost the baby. It was impossible to look away from her.

  That was my Diana.

  I opened the door. “Are you ready for Easton?”

  “Yes!” She gathered a stack of papers.

  “Go get ‘em, killer,” Zack said.

  She hopped, literally bouncing out into the hall.

  “You seem… what’s the word?” I looked up, scratching my head as if second grade vocabulary words had left me.

  “Gorgeous?”

  We walked down the hall.

  “Of course, but also…” I put my hand on the frosted glass door of conference four. “Maybe after the meeting.”

  I pushed the door open and let her in. We were meeting with an upstate labor relations board over the expansion of a paper mill. Four of them. The mayor of Easton. Two second-rate public relations people. One very litigious and sharp lawyer in a fitted jacket and low heels. The conversation went downhill after the first minute of small talk.

  “Our concern,” said the balding mayor in the brown suit, “and our bailiwick, if you will, is to render guarantees from you that any new jobs are filled by the residents of Easton.”

  “We can’t give guarantees,” I said. “Not for every position you want.”

  “Why not?” chirped the PR woman with thin lips and straight brown hair. “We have a twelve percent unemployment rate. If we’re going to sell the prop to expand the mill, our town needs assurances McNeill-Barnes can deliver jobs and we can deliver tax incentives.”

  “You can’t just come in and build with no benefit to the community,” the politician chimed in.

  Next to him, a younger woman with a ponytail stared at me as if she wanted to burn holes in me. As I listened to the brown suit talk about his constituency, I dug around for her name.

  Becca. Assistant. New hire right out of college.

  “Sell them the new income tax base,” I said. “Sell them the fact that we’re turning an abandoned dump into a functioning structure. We cannot promise all four hundred jobs will go to locals, and the executive positions need to be filled out of Manhattan.”

  Our plan was to bring in experienced people as temps and train the locals, but we needed that to look like a concession later in the negotiations. We didn’t want to tip our hand so far in advance.

  “We’ll do what we can,” Diana said, right on cue. She was the good cop, as always. “We can fill positions from qualified locals first.”

  “We need it in writing,” the lawyer said. “Numbers. As part of the incentive.”

  “No.” I closed my folder.

  “Here.” Diana handed her a page. “A list of community initiatives. We can build a park and have low cost day-care on site.”

  She didn’t even look at it.

  “There’s more,” Diana said, tapping the page. “Consider it. We have a lot to offer, and so do you.”

  “We. Have. People.” The lawyer poked the paper with every point.

  “What you have is an existing structure close to our current site.” I sat back and crossed my ankle over my knee. I could do this all day. “What you don’t have is talent. We need to hit the ground running. We need people who know the machinery and the software. We need logistics people who know how to transport this particular product. This isn’t about putting bodies in chairs. It’s about the right people. Believe me. I’ve done this before.”

  “You’re a corporate raider,” Becca sneered. “You don’t create jobs. You’re like a little boy who buys things just to blow them up.”

  Becca had obviously gotten caught up in the heat of the discussion. I didn’t take her comment seriously, and I was ready to move on when Diana leaned forward as if she wanted to launch herself over the table. I hadn’t seen energy pour off her like that since the baby was diagnosed.

  “This corporate raider happens to be the best man I’ve ever had the honor of sharing an office with. He’s fair, and he’s honest. He looks past the obvious. He finds value where other people see red ink. He’s thoughtful and kind, and you need to show him a little respect.”

  Becca’s face went from white to burgundy.

  My wife picked up her files and stood. “Anything you need from us is in the folders. I’d like to thank you all for coming. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  She left. The door clacked behind her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said to Becca. “We can reconvene later.”

  I nodded to everyone, shook a few hands, and went to Diana’s office. She was already there, moving things around her desk as if she were a general moving troops over the field. I closed the door.

  No word in the English language could describe how happy I was to see my Diana back again.

  “You don’t have to defend me from petty insults,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but fuck them. They—”

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her. I hadn’t touched her since the baby. Hadn’t kissed her anywhere but her ch
eek. And now with the full scent of her perfume and the feel of her skin, my desire rushed back.

  She backed up, panting, lips blush pink. “Jesus, Adam.”

  I lifted her knee and put it around my waist, pushing my erection against her cunt. She sucked in air and groaned. I knew and loved that groan.

  “Shouldn’t. Bad professionalism,” she said as if she couldn’t make a full sentence. I could cure her of that.

  “I love it when you’re mad.” I pushed harder, running the shape of my cock along the line of her cleft.

  Your pleasure is mine. You come when I permit you, and you hold it until I do.

  “I can make you come in seventeen minutes. Open your legs.” I’d used my Dominant voice. I hadn’t meant to.

  “Wait. No.”

  The word no does not mean no in a scene. Use your safe word or answer the trigger question incorrectly. Then everything stops.

  “What?” The impatience in my voice must have been thick, because her reaction was sharp.

  “I just… I just had this horrible thing happen with my body. I still don’t feel whole and I just don’t feel… I don’t feel intimate, and you have no right to be mad about it.”

  I let her leg go and took my arms away. “I’m not mad.”

  “Your voice…”

  “I was surprised. That’s all. It seemed like you wanted—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I think next week. Let’s do next week.” She put her hand on my chest, ran her fingers along the edge of my tie and straightened it. “Thank you. I know I’m being difficult.”

  “You’re fine. Now come on. You can be the bad cop.”

  To her credit, we did have sex the next week. On Wednesday night. She wore garter and lace, came twice, sucked my dick like a champ, and fell asleep in my arms. It was almost like normal for two more years.

  Chapter 13

  PRESENT TENSE

  I’m miserable. I need to end this before I start to hate you.