Dirty Filthy Rich Men by Laurelin Paige
“Not since the last time you told me, which was, I think, oh, twenty minutes ago.”
“There’s the happy couple!” exclaimed an older gentleman from a few feet away.
“Ah, shit,” Elizabeth swore as she put on a grin. “Mr. Jennings!”
Weston grabbed Donovan’s shoulder and whispered, “Pray for me. I beg of you.”
“I’m not religious, man. You’re on your own.” Donovan clapped him on the back and sent the “couple” on their way. “Maybe we should feel sorry for them,” he said, looking after the two. Then, after a moment, “Nah.”
No. Definitely no.
So Weston had gotten a handful with his engagement to Elizabeth Dyson. Too bad. I had my own problems, or problem, namely Donovan Kincaid.
Alone again, I turned to confront him and found his attention across the room. I followed his gaze to an elegant Asian woman sitting near the bar chatting with a few other people. When Donovan looked at her, she waved.
I glanced back at him. His features had hardened, but he nodded at her.
My gut tightened, and all the definitive things I’d meant to say disappeared from my thoughts once again. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Sun? No, she’s just a girl I like to fuck.”
He said the word fuck, and suddenly I was there, back in that office all those years ago, pushed against the bookcase with his body pressed into mine. It was one of those images that had stayed hidden during my waking hours for so long, and now it snuck up, crippling me with its potency.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, and I felt like I wanted to cry because my want was so powerful. Because, in that moment, I wanted to be beautiful like her. Wanted to be the beautiful girl he liked to fuck.
“You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” Donovan was a foot away, but I could imagine the feel of his breath along my skin as I craned my neck up for him.
“What?” I was still staring in Sun’s direction.
“Me fucking her.”
I snapped out of my trance. “No!”
“Your body gives you away.”
I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I knew exactly which part of my body gave me away. Thank god he couldn’t see the way my heart was thumping in my chest or the liquid pooling between my legs.
But what was I going to say? No, I’m not imagining you fucking her; I’m remembering you fucking me. It was just as terrible. It was worse, even.
“I’m not offended,” he said. “I usually spend events like this thinking about it too. Planning what I’ll do to her later on. Wondering what color panties she’s wearing.” He closed the distance between us, and now I really could feel his breath against my collarbone as he whispered, “Tonight, I’ll admit, I find I’m a bit distracted.”
I inhaled him, breathed in that familiar smell of cologne and musk and his mouth was so close that all I had to do was turn and lift my chin. Would he kiss me? Did I want him to?
I stepped back, jolted aware by the question. Even asking it made me feel weak, let alone if I tried to answer.
My knees felt soft, like I couldn’t remember how to put weight on them, and I wobbled, but I didn’t fall. “I’m not sure what you want me to say to you right now.”
Donovan studied me carefully. “I’m not entirely sure either,” he admitted.
“Are you ready to go?” Sun asked. I hadn’t even noticed her approach. She was more alluring up close. Her lips were full, her posture sure. She looked familiar, but it might have been because she had the kind of confidence that made her appear important.
I stared at Donovan, certain desperation was apparent in my expression. He couldn’t leave now.
He looked right at me when he answered her. “I am.”
Sun linked her arm through his, and he escorted her out. Without an introduction. Without even a goodbye.
Twelve
I lingered a few minutes after Donovan and his date had gone before leaving the party myself, but apparently not long enough. They were still at the curb waiting for his car when I walked outside into the cool September night.
I hung back so I could watch them without being noticed. She’d dropped his arm, and the two of them didn’t even touch. It was as if they barely knew each other, let alone liked each other. Honestly, Elizabeth and Weston seemed friendlier than Donovan and Sun did. Maybe fake dates were a thing around here.
I chuckled to myself at the joke.
Then I stopped laughing.
Had he hired her?
He’d only been at the party for, what? Twenty minutes? Why did he even show up? To make sure I was there? To make sure I saw he had someone when I had no one?
I was reaching, making everything about me. It was pathetic and I knew it. Donovan had come to show support for his business partner’s engagement extravaganza. If Donovan wasn’t friendly with Sun, it was because he didn’t have to be nice to her to fuck her. And he would fuck her. I was sure of it. Who wouldn’t fuck her?
Someone walked up to Sun and seemed to ask her something, then handed her a pen and paper. Asking for her autograph, it seemed.
That’s where I’d recognized her. She was a model. I was pretty sure she’d even done some ads with Reach clients. It was probably how Donovan knew her. Of course that was the type of woman he’d date, even casually. A gorgeous, sophisticated model. The kind of woman I could never compare to.
Not that I was trying.
“Need a cab, miss?” The doorman at The Sky Launch asked.
“Oh, yes. Sorry.” I still didn’t want to be seen, but I figured it was safe now that Donovan’s car had pulled up. As the doorman whistled for a taxi, I dallied by the club entrance, watching as Sun slid in the backseat of the Jaguar first, then as Donovan climbed in after. When the car eased into traffic, I stared after them as long as I could and saw Sun close the distance between her and Donovan, practically crawling into his lap.
I didn’t care, and I did all at the same time. He could do what he wanted. It made no difference to me. I didn’t care who he dated or liked or fucked. But in a different time, in a different place, I did care because back then, Donovan had stained all my thoughts, not just the ones I hid away at night.
And now he was pulling me back to that time and place, making my mind face the past, forcing memories and fantasies to merge together in a nonstop reel of filth.
And he was going to fuck her.
And I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt lonelier.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long for a taxi. I gave the cabbie my address. As an afterthought, I asked, “Could you take me to a liquor store on the way?”
While New York City was lined with liquor stores on the way from Columbus Circle to my apartment, finding one where a cab could wait outside was nearly impossible. So when we passed one a few blocks away, I paid the driver, and he said he’d drive around and come back for me.
I suspected that was the last I’d see of him, but fine. I’d just catch another.
Inside the store, I passed the vodka and gin. I wasn’t a big drinker, but if I were to indulge, it would usually be a martini or a vodka tonic. That wasn’t what I had a hankering for tonight.
It took a minute for me to find what I was looking for since I’d never purchased whiskey, but I found it in the back, high up. There was an entire shelf dedicated to scotch—single malts, blended varieties. Each had a price tag to suggest that someone considered it to be quite superior, but hell if I knew which was a good brand.
I ended up choosing a Macallan because it had a name I could pronounce. A pricier bottle because that was more likely what Donovan kept at the office.
Outside, I flagged a taxi and was surprised to find it was the same one I’d been in before.
“Scotch?” the driver asked when he saw the box in my hand. “Figures you were a lady with refined taste.”
More like I was a girl with dirty taste—a dirty taste in thoughts and a dirty taste in my mouth. Hopefully getting loaded on scotch would cle
In my apartment, I kicked off my heels and stripped out of my dress so I was just in my panties and then found a tumbler in the kitchen for my scotch.
“Just this once,” I said to the empty room, lifting my glass up as if giving a toast. “Just tonight.”
I drank the first glass quickly, letting the burn of the alcohol scald away any lingering reservations. By the time I poured the second glass, I was fully on board with my plan. What would it hurt? It was only one night, in the shelter of my own apartment.
Donovan’s apartment, I reminded myself, and the thought made my nipples bead, as though he were secretly watching me. As though—because his name was on the building’s deed—he might own my privacy as well. It changed the way I moved.
The way I reached up to put away the scotch bottle was for him. The way I bent over to pick up my dress was for him. For his eyes.
Then, when I undressed completely and stepped into the bath, that was for him too.
That was what I imagined, anyway. That was what I was allowing just once, just tonight—this game, this fantasy. While I often used Donovan to calm myself from nightmares and panic attacks brought on from memories of my sexual assault back in college, it had been years since I’d let myself think of him just because.
For a while it had become too common. Those obscene thoughts had been my friends in the months after my attack. But then it had gone too far. I’d let Donovan go too far. After that, I’d banished those sick fantasies to the darkness where they belonged.
But tonight, alone and a little bit drunk, I soaked in the hot water and I imagined that he was with me, watching as I pinched my nipples, pulling them until they hurt and made the space between my legs throb.
Fantasy Donovan liked that. Liked how I gasped. Liked how my back arched.
“Touch me,” I begged him, my voice echoing against the bathroom tile.
“No,” Fantasy Donovan said in my head. “I won’t.” Because even though I could ease the ache with my own hand, I knew that there was no way to pretend it was Donovan’s—not even in my own mind. “You do it.”
“But—”
My fantasy protest was interrupted by the buzz of my phone on the ledge of the tub.
It was after ten. People didn’t call after ten unless it was an emergency or a wrong number or my sister.
I picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but it was local. Curiosity and alcohol got the best of me. “Hello?”
“They were blue,” Donovan said, his voice so low and husky in my ear I had to press my legs together.
He had my number. Why did he have my number?
“What were blue?” I asked.
“Her panties.”
It took me a beat before I realized he meant Sun’s panties. I groaned inwardly. I didn’t want to know.
Except, I kind of did want to know. So even though I was too drunk for this, for conversation, I picked up my glass and settled back into the tub. “And you’ve already left her house?”
“I’m not a guy who stays the night.”
“Of course you’re not.”
I heard a puffing sound. Was he lighting a cigar? I imagined that he was, that he was reclining in a leather chair in his study, maybe, overlooking the city, his tux rumpled but still on.
“Actually, I didn’t even get out of the car,” he said.
“Then how did you…?” I trailed off.
“We had the car ride.”
“But how did you manage—” I cut myself off sharply. He’d fucked her in his car. With his driver in the front seat. “I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do.” His smile was apparent in his tone.
“I really don’t.” I really did. I wanted to know every sick, twisted detail, even as it pained me to hear. Even as it made me hurt with desire.
“I’ll tell you because you do.” Another pause. Another puff? “She was all over me the minute we got in the backseat. Rubbing against my thigh while sucking on my ear. Which is fine, but not really what I like.”
I’d seen her all over him as they drove away. If I thought he might be lying, that one image was enough to back him up. Besides, why would he lie?
I brought my tumbler to my lips but didn’t take a swallow yet. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what you do like.”
He made a sound that indicated he thought it was a funny remark for me to make. “Oh, Sabrina, I think you know.”
Teeth, I thought. Nails. “I think I don’t care.”
“Biting. Nipping. Nothing too soft. Something with a bit of pressure.”
Vividly I could remember the way he’d reacted to my fingers digging into his back. “I’m not paying attention.”
“You will.” Another pause, this time with movement, and now I pictured him cradling the phone while he pulled off his shoes and socks. “Anyway. You saw the dress Sun was wearing. I could easily flip it up. It wasn’t tight like yours.” He hesitated, letting it settle in that he’d thought about that—that my dress would have been more complicated.
I tipped my glass back and let amber whisky silence the guh that formed at the back of my throat.
“I rubbed her there,” he continued, “with two fingers, along the crotch of her panties while I bit into the flesh of her shoulder. She wanted more. She kept pushing her cunt against my hand, trying to get me to give her more.”
“Did you?” I wanted him to say no. Was that terrible? That I cared?
“Not yet. She was too impatient, and she needed to be teased. So I pushed her into the corner of the car. Hard. She yelped. She bumped her head on the window. I suppose it hurt.”
Jesus. “Didn’t your driver notice?”
“Possibly.”
“He wasn’t concerned about her welfare?” I sounded angry, and I was, but not at his driver so much as with myself. How could I listen to this? Why did it make me ache with envy? Why did it turn me on so goddamn much?
“I pay my driver to keep his eyes forward. Okay, he probably sneaks a peek in the rearview mirror and goes home and beats off later, but that’s a perk of the job. Satisfied?”
No. I was far from.
“So. Where was I? She was in the corner. I pulled off her panties, discovered they were blue, and then pushed up her knees so that her feet were on the seat.”
Involuntarily, I raised my legs so my knees were bent and my soles were planted on the bottom of the tub.
“Then I leaned down, put my face between her thighs and licked along her slit,” Donovan said leisurely. “Slowly, Sabrina. She loved it.”
I closed my eyes and imagined it. Not her, not Sun. But imagined Donovan licking, slowly. Imagined loving it.
“How could you tell?” I asked, hoarse from desire and alcohol.
“She shivered. So I did it again. Then I found her clit. I touched it lightly with my tongue, like a feather, until it was plump and swollen like a tiny little peach. And then I sucked it into my mouth and made her writhe. She came so hard her knees vise-gripped my head.”
The envious ache inside had turned into a throb that I couldn’t silence, spreading wide and long through my limbs, making every cell cry out in yearning. Did he know that he could do this to me? He had to.
Why did I let him?
Scotch. I blamed it on the scotch.
“All of that in the twelve minutes it took to get to her apartment. Fortunately Sun’s not a squirter, so it was easy cleanup.”
My eyes shot open. “She didn’t return the favor before she left?”
“No.”
“What a cunt.” I’ll admit I said it with a smile.
“Don’t be like that, Sabrina. It’s sexy to hear you lash out at her, but it’s not fair. She did offer.” He was patronizing and condescending and it was strangely erotic, but there was something else in his words that caught my attention.
“You weren’t interested?” I took another sip of my drink, prepared for his answer
“I wasn’t hard for her,” he said flatly.
My heart skipped a beat. “But you were hard?”
“Yes, Sabrina. I was hard.”
Oh, god.
I put my drink down and splashed my hand in the water before running it over my face. “Why did you call me, Donovan?”
“Why did you come here, Sabrina?” He sounded as angry and as desperate as I felt.
“You were in Tokyo.”
“And then I had to be in New York.”
“Why did you have to be here?”
He hesitated before answering, a full beat, the time it would take to puff on a cigar. I pictured him exhaling, a fog gathering around him as he perched on his windowsill looking out over the city.
“You know why I have to be here,” he said finally. “Goodnight, Sabrina.”
The phone clicked off before I had a chance to make him clarify. Because I didn’t know why. Not really. Was it because he had to help out the team? Because Reach had gotten too busy to run with just two presidents? That was the story that had been told around the office.
But there was another story. One I told myself once the phone was safely on the ledge of the bathtub and my eyes were closed and my hand was under the water stroking my clit, turning it into a ripe little peach like Donovan had described into my ear. In this story, the reason he’d come home was the same reason he’d come to the party late, which was the same reason he’d left the party early. It was the same reason he’d made Weston marry Elizabeth Dyson instead of volunteering himself.
And it was the reason he’d called.
Because of me.
Thirteen
Monday was a chaotic stream of activity. Between team meetings, project deadlines, and staff introductions, I barely had a moment to breathe, let alone think about anything that didn’t have to do with A/B testing and calls to action. This job was going to be a test of my abilities, but I was ready for the challenge.
But although I was committed to my new career—or maybe because I was committed—I had walked in the building that morning wearing what I considered was my power suit, with the specific intention of speaking to Donovan Kincaid.