Affairs Of A Wicked Heart

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Ten floors above ground level, she walks with a swish to her rounded ass, smiling to herself as she feels the remnants of the last night’s belt-work on her flesh. Rubbing against the tight fabric of her short red skirt, the skin responds pleasurably. She’s prone to wince a little, and her p***y juice gathers, but she’s wearing panties to catch the leaking moisture—it wouldn’t do to embarrass herself with an unfortunately placed stain. She remains poised, if not a little demure, falling back on tactics that are as natural as the s*x she loves. She is deliberate, knowing her sexuality is a gift she is just learning to use to her advantage. Some women have the knack inborn, understanding female s****l prowess as a right, a basic asset, and usually a necessity. She’s kept hers contained, except under special circumstances, on midnight rendezvous—but that is her other life. It makes sense to keep her life compartmentalized, and usually that is her standard operating procedure, but it never hurts to take last night’s erotic encounter and let it fuel her powers of persuasion.

“Ah, it must be Lana Desmond?” she’s confronted even before she gets to Laslo’s office. The man is blond, hair wavy on top and trimmed short at the sides, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, an impeccable grey suit and prep-school manners—except for a disturbing twinkle in his eye, which appears only briefly, just before his polite smile. Sixty years ago, he would have made the perfect Nazi with his golden hair and haughty Aryan features. He acts as if he knows her, but she’s never laid eyes on him and is instantly suspicious for good reason. She’s been warned.

“I don’t know you, do I?” She gives him her hand limply, while staring directly into his eyes.

“Jordan Lucas.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Lucas,” she’s rehearsed her lines. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but then this is a private meeting.” She wants to shrug him off, but that will be difficult.

“I came to make an offer,” Jordan rejoins, as they walk silently down the carpeted hallway.

“Didn’t you make your offer yesterday? It’s my turn now.”

“I wanted to make my offer to you, Miss Desmond.”

She stops and c***s her head, peers up at him—he’s a good six inches taller—batting her lashes, her lips pursed tight. Her belly flutters with anxious anticipation, as though a hundred birds have roosted there and are getting ready to take off. Unfortunately, there’s something erotic about her response to the man, and she’s sure that is dangerous. It’s no time for s****l infatuations. She’s in the midst of war. “I have no reason to talk with you. The museum is not budging from its position. The Matisse, the Picasso and the three Gauguin belong to me.”

“You?”

“The museum,” she corrects herself.

He shakes his head, smiling with respect. “I was told you were ballsy.”

“I’m committed to what I do.” She trembles inside, her veins freezing as if someone has just cut her power lines. Light-headed, she keeps walking down the corridor to Laslo’s purple office. She thinks the décor is garish, particularly because of the color, all that steel and purple glaring enough to assault the eyes. She likes rooms that are warm, and understated wealth, but she’s not here to give decorating tips.

“You can go right in, Lana,” Hannah Guenther, secretary and sweet round-faced woman, tells her. “You too, Mr. Lucas.”

“What!” Lana turns around. Seeing the firm look on Hannah’s face, she pulls her anger back inside her, and steps first into Laslo’s office, giving her unexpected companion little space to enter.

“Lana, nice to see you,” the attorney smiles broadly, while enjoying the look of the lovely woman. His dark suit is a bit crumpled on his wiry frame, and while his black eyes are beady and direct, they generate an affectionate warmth in her direction. Nearly sixty, his face has begun to droop, and the once sharp features blur into the non-descript face of age. “Take a seat,” he motions to side-by-side chairs in front of his sleek black marble desk.

She doesn’t want to sit next to Lucas. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near him. His being vibrates a quality of lust she finds difficult to resist. Lana surveys the room to take her mind off her reacting body, noting that Laslo’s office is more grey than purple. Her eyes and insides relax a little, but then it’s on to business, and the news isn’t good. Nothing more than a long and basically incoherent summation of why Laslo’s client, Geoffrey Laughton, has not yet made a decision whether to sell or give away his art collection.

“Mr. Laslo,” the blood is beginning to thaw and her hands warm as she interjects, “I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating, to you and your client. These works belong in a museum where the world can appreciate them. It would be a tragedy to sell them to any private collector. WE all know that Mr. Lucas’ client will not offer them to the public. He hoards his collection like miser.”

“I understand, Lana. But my client has his quirks, too. And, he’s not ready to make a decision.”

“What if I could see him personally? Mr. Lucas has had that opportunity. And I really don’t know what he’s doing here,” she gives the man to her side a frosty look, turning her gaze back to Laslo, sensuously pleading as she offers him a coy smile and uplifted brows.

“Trust me, Lana, Mr. Laughton knows how important his collection is to the museum. I ask for your patience, patience from both of you,” he seems to single out Lucas briefly.

“Of course we’d hope to have a major showing this spring,” Lana adds impulsively, “It could be a wonderful event.”

“I’m sure it would be,” Laslo shrugs compassionately. “But until Laughton is ready, I can’t tell you more. My hands are tied. You try to deal with Laughton and his quirks. The man’s an old fag who delights in dangling everyone around him on a string.”

Lana had originally planned on this being a simple acquisition, especially knowing Antonio Laslo personally, but enter Jordan Lucas and Ellery Graham. The prize slipped from her fingers overnight and ever since, had been held out like a carrot before a horse.

“Well, that was a waste of my time. He could have told me that on the phone,” Lana sighs aloud, as she enters the elevator with Lucas on her heels. She masked her irritation until she was safely out of hearing distance. Laslo was beginning to infuriate her, regardless of being her father’s best friend. Worse yet, are her rampant and unanticipated erotic imaginings centered on Jordan Lucas.

“Did you expect anything different, Miss Desmond?” he asks.

She turns to him fuming, “In the interests of decency, and art, you could have your client back down. Ellery Graham doesn’t need these paintings.”

“This isn’t about what he needs. I’m afraid for you, he’s very determined.” His elbow brushes hers, and her body registers the feeling sexually with an insurgent tickling in her groin that travels deep between her legs. She’s sent reeling into more implausible scenes of herself in bed with Jordan Lucas. “You know, we could call a truce and maybe something mutual could be worked out.”

“I don’t want Graham having even a tiny investment in those paintings.”

“Maybe that’s why he wants them so much.”

This pisses her off. “You are exactly what I figured you to be,” she tries anger in face of the unwanted arousal.

But his eyes smile. The pull between them feels magnetic and dangerous. He feels it too. She knows by the look sweltering in his russet colored eyes.

“How about we have lunch?” he blurts out to her surprise.

“What?”

“Lunch with the enemy?” She’d rather have s*x with him she thinks. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know. It was just a spontaneous thought that leapt into my mind. I’m sure a preposterous one. I’ll leave you be.” They are on the ground floor walking side by side out the massive glass doors to the street. He is about to walk away.

“Wait!”

Turning back, “I don’t really want lunch, I’m not hungry. But…” she has his interest. Her entire body brightens warmly as she stares at him. A dozen people pass them by, walking rapidly to designations elsewhere, while they remain frozen for several seconds on the windswept sidewalk, letting the energy between them build uncomfortably. Her body is screaming. She wants to climb on him with mouth fixed to his, a leg wrapping around his thigh, her groin pressed to his so she can feel how his p***s rises to the occasion. She bats away the picture the way she’d brush aside an annoying fly, but the annoying pest returns, again and again and again.

“But what?” He’s intrigued.

She can’t say what she’s feeling.

“If I weren’t sure that you hate me, I’d say…” he can’t complete his sentence.

Desire lies between them like an unopened birthday present. Both are anxious to unravel the secret, but she has to make the first step. In his world, he’d never cross the line himself. Propriety laced with a decent dose of fear keeps him from jumping in. It’s just not done. Men like him wouldn’t stoop so low. And yet, his better judgment fails him; he wants her, just as she wants him. This is potentially disastrous for both, but they become reckless as they bathe in their desires.

“You want to f**k me, don’t you?” she finally blurts out impulsively, as a large black woman wearing an orange turban hears and stares at her while passing by. No one else acknowledges the impromptu seduction. No one matters outside their circle of longing.

“Is that what you want?” he asks.

“You avoiding your answer?”

“I don’t do casual s*x,” he answers.

“Fine. Forget this.” She shakes her head and starts off in another direction, expecting this silly intoxication to fall away like shedding skin, but his hand reaches to her shoulder and draws her back.

“There’s a hotel close by, just down the street,” he points.

She’s much too numb to object. Too numb and yet aroused. She lets the enemy lead her down the street, where they surreptitiously dart inside the doorway of a fleabag hotel, the Regency Arms, which fills her with reminders of past midnights where clients prefer sleazy quarters for rendezvous with hired slaves.

Jordan Lucas hastily signs his name in the ledger as if he’s a regular customer, then grabs the key. The stairs creak. The air smells of moth repellant and bathroom freshener. A threadbare carpet quiets their feet as they look for the second floor room. She finds it surprisingly clean, simple and sensuous in its mellow state of age and disrepair. A landscape of the French countryside hangs over the bed. Hardly the art they are vying for, but uniquely beautiful in the cheap gold frame. It feels as though she could climb inside that warm day, the sunshine beating on her back, the air settling her anxious insides that keep asking, Why, why, why, Lana?

They disrobe quickly, as if the spell might not last long enough to get them through the hour. But, with clothes off, the commitment extends itself. Jordan watches Lana quietly removing her bra, exposing magnificent breasts, which almost look too big for her five-foot-four frame. She carries them well now, after slouching through her adolescence. She’s no longer the self-conscious teenager, but a fully-fleshed out woman with curvaceous legs and smooth sensuous thighs. Her hips flare, but her tummy is flat, and the swell of beauty above her waist almost makes her admirer light-headed. She stops disrobing with just her panties left, and stares his way wondering what she’s doing. She doesn’t have long to think; she feels as virginal as a new bride.

He moves on her in a fluid pace, drawing her to the bed where he sits down, still in his slacks, and pulls her chest into his face while a hand claims each breast. The rapture between the sweet-scented mounds urges his lips, his teeth for nibbles and his hands for squeezing. She sighs, throws her head back while absently clutching his head and running her hands through his golden hair.

He feeds on her as he would feed on expensive food, savoring the taste of her skin, and the fragrance of her flowery perfume. He wonders if she smells as sweet below her waist, but he has plenty of time to discover her other assets, and remains fixated on her breasts. She is satisfied with him, glad they discovered a way to remove the mystery and the allure before the vulnerable moments of their professional battle begins in earnest.

Jointly choosing, they fall into the hammock of a bed, into the white chenille spread, grasping and clawing at each other as they begin to kiss. These kisses are tentative to start, then full-mouthed with tongues caressing. They roll from bottom to top to bottom, and back again, as if they can’t decide who belongs where. Lana opens his pants and plucks his c**k from inside, thinking for a split-second how easy this is compared to clients who demand much more of her. She loves his hands titillating her skin, causing her belly and crotch to spasm and spasm as they slowly, painstakingly travel lower. She spreads her legs so that there will be no doubt about what she desires. But he teases her, unwilling to dive in ungraciously, and makes her wait for the first electric thrill, when his fingers finally begin to crawl through her silky, sand-colored hair and descend to the valley between her legs.

“Yes, yes, yes yes,” she hisses the encouragement, but his hand moves back to her one exposed breast, the other is squashed between them. He dabbles with her n****e, watching it grow erect. It’s a tiny thing, plump and round, a pinkish brown. When his mouth covers it, he sucks hard, while his hand moves back to the molten furrow of lust and instigates an instantaneous orgasm. “Yes, yes, touch me, ssssssssssssss.” She’s adamant, but aching deeply for more.

She wants his c**k. Pulling away from his embrace, she burrows into his hairy crotch, bringing his half-erect member to its fullness, swabbing it with kisses, driving it down her throat, then pulling back licking the salty surfaces, going back for more, lapping, slurping hungrily, greedily.

He’s fallen back on the bed to enjoy the attention, though it lasts only long enough for her to have him fully hard. She’s pleased that he’s satisfactorily large. Nothing’s more disturbing than to have a beautiful man with an unimpressive d**k. Not that they can’t please, but there are certain times when she needs to be hammered hard.

“f**k me,” she breathes out on a pant, rolling to her back and spreading her legs for him.

He’s casual, smiling, looking as if at any second he might just split for spite, because he can see the b***h in her rising up, and he’d rather have a more submissive woman. But today he likes the tigress he sees. It’s part of his fantasy, what drove him to suggest the hotel for what they could classify as a nooner. When he thrusts, he does so decisively, rising above her panting, cawing, thrashing body so he can witness her response, the look on her face, her lips, her cheeks, and the way her flesh moves below her neck. Her big breasts fall back and forth from one side to the next as she rocks under him. He feels her p***y grab and grab and draw him deeper as though she’s drawing him inside her inch by inch. He f***s her brusquely, hitting her cervix; and watches her in response. The rhythm is steady, compulsive. As he senses her start to come, he drops to her chest, and circling her torso with his arms he lets the fullness of her climatic pulse expand him.

She gasps aloud, her unintelligible words all tangled in the moment of ecstasy. When she’s had her fill of coming, enough in his estimation, he withdraws—listening to her mournfully protest. Turning her over, he raises her ass and plunges into the wet furrow. She’s still coming, less urgently, but still spasming, as he builds to his own climax, and a neat grunted conclusion.

They rest in bed side by side, “I don’t normally do this,” she lies. Maybe it’s not a lie. The underworld scenes with men are hardly like this explosive tryst for passion or s****l intensity. Her behavior in the last hour is more mysterious to her than the dozens of times she’s taken money to bow in submission at the feet of strangers. Even now, her body tingles with fear and anticipation; her heart thumps madly, worried and afraid of being broken by someone she doesn’t even know. What if this is the only time, she wonders? It has to be the only time. The only reason for this was to let off steam, so s*x wouldn’t play a factor in their bid for the fortune of paintings.

“No, it’s not normal, hardly my style either,” Jordan answers back.

She believes him. “I’m in a relationship,” she says.

“So am I. Meredith would hardly approve.”

Meredith. Sounds fussy and rich. “I wouldn’t expect her to,” Lana answers with only slightly veiled contempt. “Why should she?”

“You married?” he asks.

“No. Armando is my lover.”

“Not your boyfriend.”

“He’s almost forty and he’s not a boy. It describes him best to say he’s my lover…though sometimes he’s just a good friend, maybe even a surrogate father the way he wants to take care of me.”

“Does he?”

“Does he what?”

“Take care of you. Do you let anyone take care of you?”

“Sometimes I let him. But he’s the only one.” She grows increasingly uncomfortable wondering why he’s asking these questions. Though they are reasonably inconsequential, she decides to turn the subject back on him, “What about your Meredith? Wife, lover, girlfriend?”

“Fiancée.”

“Ooo, that’s threatening,” she responds. “You’re supposed to be madly in love.”

“Some days I am.”

“Tell me about her.”

“I’d rather not.”

She feels him drawing away from her, finally rising from the bed so she can see the tight round globes of his ass and admire them at a distance. With his every move, her infatuation increases as if she’s found the perfect man, the perfect mate, the perfect lover. She even loves his haughtiness—something fit for the best of Doms. The allure, the mystery, the restraint, the physical perfection clothe this man with everything she dreams about. All her fantasy men have collided into the reality of this one male specimen. Was it luck? Fate? Or some clever, devious deity that manipulated the stars and thrust them into the same place just to taunt them with what they can never really have. He’s engaged, she’s embroiled in too many relationships to count—and the kicker is the morass responsible for their meeting, something sure to make them enemies regardless of how many times they have s*x.

“I’m sorry if I was prying. It’s a female thing.”

“I know. I live with it daily.”

“Meredith?”

“Yes.” He’s putting on his shoes and socks. He’s already covered the rest of his body with pants and shirt.

“I suppose, then, we’ve taken care of the lust and can now hate each other properly?” she speculates.

“We don’t have to hate each other, Lana. We could agree to cooperate and both get what we want.”

“No, we can’t,” she shakes her head being very sure of herself. “I have a museum to answer to. They don’t particularly care for your client. He’s burned them too many times. We want the paintings as a generous donation from a grateful patron. And I believe when it finally comes down to it, Geoffrey Laughton will do the right thing.”

His body excites her, his smile makes her insides warm. “Then I guess we’re in the same place where we started.”

His reply instantly ignites her wrath. “Oh? You did this just to make change my mind?”

“No, no, I didn’t.”

She storms up off the bed, gathering her strewn clothes and heading for the bathroom before he blinks again. The door shuts with a bang.

Inside the bath, she showers off, dresses, repairs her make-up and listens for sounds coming from the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, she peeks, expecting Jordan Lucas to have left. Instead, he’s sitting on the bed, waiting.

“Why are you still here?”

“I f****d you for sport,” he tells her as he rises to her feet. “You f****d me for the same thing. And because for some cockamamie reason we needed this. That’s all. Nothing to do with business. Get it straight and don’t remember it any different than that, because it was good, really good.”

Before she can manage a comeback, he’s gone, she’s breathless, and her heart’s beginning to crack. It’s not because she loves him; that would be impossible. It’s losing the dream, the potential, the possibility that the most perfect man really exists and she can never have him.