Thirteen
P IPPI HAD A HARD TIME sleeping and an even harder time getting rid of the giddy smile on her face. She turned to her side with care, not wanting to accidentally wake Vik, who was sleeping in the bunk below her.
Outside her window, a midnight sky of stars spread into the distance. Its beauty was beyond words, and it made foolish dreams easier to indulge in.
Before that fateful night of meeting him, Acheron Simonides had only been this vague figure of exacting authority to her. She had enough glimpses of his face on company newsletters to know what he looked like and grudgingly appreciate the sheer physical perfection of his features.
But that had been all.
He was a rich man, ergo someone she wasn't interested in.
Which was probably why , Pippi acknowledged to herself ruefully, seeing Acheron turn on the charm was as much a shock to her as it had been to her family.
Rich men were bastards . That had always been a given in the Jones' family. But somehow, Acheron had proved himself the exception, and he had been so genuinely nice that even hard-to-please Vik had been grudgingly bowled over. Within minutes, he had made everyone feel at ease, so much so they had forgotten to be self-conscious about entertaining a billionaire in their old, quaintly charming ramshackle of a house.
If Acheron had given her a house or a yacht, the pleasure of it wouldn't even been half of what Pippi had felt, seeing him help Rue with her homework and listen attentively to Aunt Agatha's concerns about her latest beau.
A low vibrating buzz from her iPhone made Pippi jerk in surprise, and she winced when below her she heard Vik mumble in protest.
"Sorry," she whispered even as she couldn't help reaching for her phone, hoping and dreading it turned out to be him.
And Lord save her, but it was.
Acheron: Are you still thinking of me?
Pippi: Probably as much as you're thinking of me.
Acheron: You're bad for my ego.
And you're bad for my heart, Pippi wanted to say but didn't quite dare to. Despite the intimacy they had shared, everything still felt new, and she knew it would take some time before she could fully let herself go around the billionaire.
Besides...
Pippi re-read Acheron's last message more carefully, knowing what the words spelled out in letters...and in something else.
Pippi: Are you okay?
Pippi: I don't think it's your style to send text messages to any girl.
Acheron: No. It's not.
And with that , Pippi thought, the ball was back on her court.
Pippi: It goes both ways, you know.
Pippi: I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong.
Pippi fell asleep waiting for Acheron to answer, and her dreams were those of the unspeakable and the forbidden. But just when it was getting to the hottest and wettest part, Pippi dreamt of hands grasping her shoulders to shake her back into reality.
"Wake up, Pi!"
"There's a clown at the front door!"
A clown? Pippi stubbornly kept her eyes closed. She was clearly dreaming something new, but she didn't want it. She wanted the old dream back, and hopefully it would pick off exactly where they last left off, and she already had her shirt unbuttoned—-
"Pippi, will you just wake up?"
Someone yanked the pillow under her head, and Pippi's head bounced against the mattress. "Owwww!" She forced her eyes to open and swallowed a yawn as she saw a trio of expectant faces grinning down at her. "What?" The grins widened, and she suppressed a groan. Were they serious? Why did they have to wake her up now, of all mornings, for a stupid prank?
Pushing herself up, she asked grouchily, "What time is it anyway?"
"Six," Rue answered.
"And there's a clown waiting for you downstairs," Mynt added.
A clown at their house at six in the morning? Pippi shot her sisters a look that told them to drop dead, but this only had the three girls exchanging mischievous looks. "Come on, guys. Don't you think it's too early for a prank?"
Vik smirked. "It's not a prank."
Pippi snorted. "Yeah right."
"It really isn't," Mynt insisted, "and if you don't want to believe us, come see for yourself."
And then the three were dragging Pippi out of her bed and down the stairs.
"What - wait - come on!"
The first thing Pippi saw in the kitchen were Astrid and Pippi's great-aunts having tea... with a clown?
Pippi rubbed her eyes, but the clown persisted in being real, and now Pennywise - no, It - oh, get a grip of yourself, Pippilotta Jones!
The clown in the kitchen had risen to his full height as he turned to look at her. He was the weirdest-looking clown, a walking, outlandish contradiction between his garishly painted face and an expensive, familiar-looking suit.
The clown started for Pippi, a deadly look in his eyes, and she vaguely heard her sisters laugh when she took an unconscious step back. What if this was a nightmare? She pinched herself hard, but nothing happened. "Will someone please tell me what I'm supposed to do?" The clown in a suit was coming closer and closer, and she was starting to feel more than a little nervous.
"You guys..."
The clown towered over her.
"Someone just please tell me—-"
The clown bent his dark head, and just as her heart jumped out of her chest, his mouth moved dangerously close to her ear for a whisper. "Kaliméra, Pippi."
Half an hour later, and a still-grumbling Pippi was being waved off by her family. Bloody traitorous family, to join forces with an outsider just to prank her.
As Acheron opened the door for Pippi, Rue rushed out to whisper impishly into her sister's ear, "Try not to lose your virginity until the third date."
Acheron's swift reflexes were the only thing that kept Pippi from losing her footing on the front steps, and when she looked up, the billionaire asked, "Everything okay?"
If it had been any other time, she would have cracked a joke about the irony of him asking such a thing. Shouldn't it be the other way around, since he was the one who had showed up on her doorstep wearing clown makeup while dressed in a four-thousand-dollar suit?
––––––––
I T WAS WHAT SHE TRULY intended to say...until she saw his face, and she remembered the last thing she had asked him the night before.
"You know..." She hesitated, worried about overstepping her bounds.
"What is it?"
Unable to muster enough courage to look at him, she instead focused her gaze on the knot of his tie as she mumbled, "You have the saddest eyes for a clown."
There was a long moment of silence, and then she heard Acheron say, "I missed a call from an old friend last night."
Pippi hadn't expected Acheron to confide anything at all, and that he had made her feel like she had been entrusted with the care of the crown jewels. She took her time answering, trying harder to read between the lines.
"And you're...bothered because you weren't able to answer it?"
"I suppose."
"Then...it's never too late to return the call."
"It's more a problem of whether I should ."
Which most likely meant his "old friend" had something to do with the darker side of his past , Pippi interpreted. "If he hasn't done you any harm in the past, then I don't see why you can't at least listen to him."
A second later, and he was cupping her chin, and she had no choice but to look into his eyes.
"You're very good at hiding it, but you're actually very softhearted."
Her first instinct was to deny this, but then she saw his clown face, and a truth suddenly struck her. This was Acheron Simonides getting his face painted on just for the sake of taking her to work - and she couldn't even admit to being softhearted where he was concerned?
Teeth gnashing, she fought against the usual wave of shyness as she forced herself to say, "I'm only softhearted for people...I care about."
Seeing her practically choke on the words had Acheron realizing in amusement that Pippi was determined to be more expressive than usual.
Well, then, if that was truly what she wanted, far be it for him to stand in her way...
Pippi nearly lost her footing again when she felt Acheron casually slip an arm around her waist, with his fingers splaying possessively on her hips as he drew her close. Every inch of her was now plastered against his side, and she was all at once on fire and on edge.
All her life, she had steered clear of men like Acheron Simonides, and yet now she was letting him stake a claim on her body, and in full public view of their town's early risers no less.
Acheron chuckled when Pippi practically dove into the backseat of the car, and the sound had her making a face as soon as he joined her and pulled the door shut on her still-gawking neighbors.
The way the billionaire had held her might not have raised a single eyebrow in Miami, but with Isla de Flores being a sleepy town of less than 2,000 permanent residents, Pippi was glumly certain that Astrid would soon find herself besieged with questions about this morning's clownish visitor.
"I thought we were supposed to keep things under the radar," she muttered.
"Which we are," Acheron answered easily, "by hiding in plain sight."
"Plain isn't exactly the word that comes to mind when—-" Pippi's body swayed slightly as the car made a right turn, and she stopped speaking as she turned her anxious gaze towards the driver's seat.
"Good morning, ma'am." Wickham's respectful gaze met Pippi's through the rearview mirror, and her shoulders sagged with relief even though Acheron's factotum looked even more menacing in daylight. However sinister Wickham appeared to be, she knew Acheron trusted him, which was enough for Pippi to trust the other man as well.
"I hope you find the vehicle sufficiently comfortable, Ms. Jones."
"It's very comfortable." And even if it wasn't, Pippi would still say otherwise. With Wickham reminding her of Voldemort on steroids and Acheron still in the process of getting rid of his clown makeup with a wet tissue, Pippi couldn't help feeling like she had tumbled into a Purge- inspired Wonderland.
And one wrong word , she thought wryly, might just get her neck snapped.
"...one of our strategies is to not use any vehicle owned by Mr. Simonides or the company when picking you up."
It took more than a second for Pippi to realize Wickham was talking to her, and another second to understand what he was saying. "So this isn't your car then?"
Wickham named a ride-sharing company and explained after, "It should help shake off anyone that might be on your trail or Mr. Simonides."
This made a lot of sense, but wasn't it just a little too much? She started to ask Acheron this herself, but hearing her phone sound out the ringtone she had assigned for the office had Pippi temporarily setting her concerns aside.
"Was that Collins?" Acheron asked when the call ended.
She nodded. "He wanted me to know beforehand that my temporary transfer had been approved."
His gaze narrowed. "I haven't heard anything about this."
"Which is only natural?" Considering the number of individuals Simonides Inc. employed, his desk would be drowning with unnecessary paperwork if he had to be informed of every single transfer request in their workplace.
"It's a project-based thing," Pippi felt obliged to add with his silence, "and I'll be under the direct supervision of the marketing VP..."
Acheron stiffened. "Do you mean Gareth Evans?"
"Umm, yes. Do you know—- Acheron!" His name came out in startled protest as he pulled her across the backseat and she suddenly found herself straddling the billionaire. "What do you think you're doing?' she hissed.
"Doing something more preferable to listening to you talk about another man."
"I wasn't—-"
"You are."
Oh God, it was that voice of his again.
"And I don't like it."
Rough, deep, and low, the sound so sexy Pippi was terrified of how easy it could have her do any of his bidding... like now.
He had taken hold of her hand, and she could only watch with helpless fascination as he slowly brought one finger to his lips.
And then it happened, his tongue circling her finger just before he started to suck, and her body melted.
"Acheron." Her voice shook. " P-Please." But he just kept doing it, and she just kept melting. "W-We're not alone—-"
"But we might as well be, and you know it."
Yes, yes, she did. Oh, she so did. Wickham was Wickham, and he would always be the soul of discretion. But even so...
"Don't you?"
Pippi's breath caught at the devilish look in his eyes.
Omigodomigodomigod.
That look was just like before, too, and her toes curled, her insides turning into mush at the way Acheron made absolutely no attempt to hide the carnal nature of his thoughts. The blasted man was thinking of all the ways he could eat her -—
And you can let him do just that, an insidious voice slithered in her ears to whisper, because this time is different.
This time, all the rules had been clearly laid out. This time, there were no risks, no reason for her conscience to balk. This time, she really could just let him... eat her.
"What is it going to be then, Ms. Jones?"
The question had Pippi unconsciously wetting her lips, not knowing that doing so would seal her fate. With her mind too busy wrestling for control, she missed the way the sight of her tongue tip tracing her lips had turned Acheron's midnight gaze into black fire.
"I..." She was torn, and with her lips feeling too cracked and dry, she unthinkingly wetted them again.
"Too late," he growled.
She looked up in confusion, unsure of what she had heard. "What did you s—-" His mouth swooped down, Acheron taking the decision away from her, and she realized in a flash that this was what he meant.
Too late.
She could almost imagine hearing a sultry laugh playing out in her mind, coming from an inner nympho that she had never known she possessed until Acheron's seductive touch had lured it to life.
As Acheron's lips parted hers open, it was as if she was surrendering common sense the moment his tongue entered her mouth. All she could do was let her secret wild child half take over...and losing control had never felt so good.
She drowned in his kiss, her arms winding around his neck, and a shameful part of her reveled in her ability to do so. Her body arched close, craving for more of his hardness, and it was bliss to feel him needing her with just as much hunger. It was in the way his mouth devoured hers, the way he seemed to want every inch of her mouth to memorize his taste.
Even though she knew it had only been mere hours since he had last kissed her, it honestly felt like an eternity had passed, and she had suffered the most awful sexual drought since then.
She wanted more, so much more, and she never wanted the kiss to end.
"P-Please..."
The sound of her innocent begging crushed what little control Acheron had left, and he found himself kissing her harder and deeper. He sucked her tongue hungrily, causing her to cry out in the most lusciously arousing way.
It was the fucking sexiest sound he had ever heard, and it had his hands moving down to curve over the cheeks of her ass even as their tongues continued to twine. Her pussy started grinding against his already rigidly throbbing cock, and it was the most exquisite form of torment.
He squeezed her ass hard, and it consequently squeezed a lovely whimper out of her. He felt her fingers on his hair tightening its grip, and it made him think of how her virginal little pussy could do the same to his cock.
Fuck control.
Who needed it when you had the sexiest little thing in your arms?
He was going to take her to the nearest hotel—-
"We've arrived, Mr. Simonides."