Chapter 2
SULLIVAN
I toss the new dildo to the woman in the black lingerie who’s reclined on the bed inside the suite I have at The Lanceford Hotel. Her sleek, dark hair fans out against the silk sheets beneath her.
“Get warmed up. I don’t have long tonight,” I instruct as I shrug out of my jacket and tug my tie loose.
The other woman in the white lingerie who could pass as her twin pouts at me, batting her eyelashes. “Why can’t we sleep over tonight?”
A muscle ticks in my jaw at her demanding tone.
“Because I have somewhere else to be,” I snap, unable to keep the harshness out of my voice.
She isn’t perturbed. Instead she holds my eyes suggestively and unhooks her bra, freeing her pert tits.
My eyes drop to her puckered nipples, and I take a step toward the bed.
Then my phone rings.
I reach for my jacket and pull it out of the pocket.
“Fuck’s sake,” I grumble at the name on the screen. I lift my eyes to the two girls on the bed who are looking at me in anticipation. “Get started without me. I need to take this.”
Their disappointed whines get cut off as I step into the bathroom and close the door behind me.
“Why are you calling?” I snap the second my phone is to my ear.
“What? No hello?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, forcing myself to take a slow breath. Her speech is slurred. She’s fucking wasted again.
“Natasha!” I snap, “I’ve told you. You talk to me through my lawyer.”
“I just want to know how Peaches is,” she drawls.
I clench my jaw so hard it hurts.
“Her name is Molly,” I spit.
“Did she get any more teeth?” she continues, ignoring me.
“Like you fucking care. Cut the shit and tell me why you’re really calling.”
The sound of her stumbling around and knocking something over blares down the phone. With any luck, it’ll be something large and heavy that lands on her skull.
“A pipe leaked in the kitchen and—”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say!” she protests.
“That a pipe leaked, and you need to borrow some money until you get paid? Or you lost your job and need something to tide you over until the new one starts? Or your car broke down and you need a loan?” I say with an impatient huff. “Those have all been used. Time to think up some new material.”
“Sullivan…”
I lean against the marble counter, curling my free hand around its cool edge, my knuckles turning white as I grip it hard enough to rip it off the wall.
“You’re not getting another cent from me,” I say slowly, even though I know she won’t listen. We’ll continue this fucking charade in another couple of months. Next time her latest deadbeat boyfriend has got bored of her and she needs someone to fund her habit.
“You’re a goddamn billionaire, and you can’t spare a few bucks for me? I’m Peaches’ mom!”
“Listen to me,” I spit. “Her name is Molly. And you’re a fucking disgrace. You left your daughter in a box, for God’s sake.”
“I was thinking I could come to the city, I could—”
My blood runs cold.
“No.”
“But—”
“When you get yourself clean, Natasha. That’s when I’ll consider discussing visitation rights with you.” I screw my eyes shut, a dull throbbing at the base of my skull indicating an impending headache.
“She’s mine, not yours!” she snaps, losing her soft tone, and letting the real toxic Natasha shine through.
“The DNA test says she’s very much mine,” I state coldly.
“And if you want to fight me on that, then be my guest. I’ll look forward to wiping the floor with whatever backstreet lawyer you manage to manipulate into believing you’re actually capable of being a decent human being, let alone the mother that Molly deserves.
The courts will never side with an addict like you. ”
“You bastard,” she slurs.
“Don’t call me again!” I spit as I hang up.
I put my phone on the counter and turn and stare at myself in the giant mirror above the twin basins.
Light blue eyes hardened by two years of her shit stare back at me.
The multi-billion-dollar decisions I make every day in my position as CEO of our family business I can handle.
I’ve even found a way to exist alongside the grief that gnaws at me every day since we lost my brother and Mom.
I work.
I make obscene amounts of money.
And one or two nights a week, I fuck women—or multiple women—in a hotel suite I have permanently booked. One my sister charmingly refers to as my disgusting sex pad.
But when it comes to Molly, my daughter, I’m a man on the edge of losing it the second anyone does or says anything that could threaten her happiness and wellbeing.
Most of the time, that person is the woman who dares to call herself her mother—Natasha.
And the night Molly came into my life, it was my fiancée, Claudia.
“I’m not sure I can do this, Sullivan. Look after another person’s daughter, I mean… I need to think about this.”
I didn’t need to think about it.
I packed her bags for her and called her a cab. She was gone before sunrise.
I splash some cold water on my face and walk out into the bedroom. The girls look up expectantly from where they’re both naked on the bed. One is lying with her legs spread wide, teasing herself with the giant rubber dildo.
“I want you inside me first,” she pants, working it inside her, showcasing exactly where she’s inviting me to stick my dick.
“Not fair. In that case, I get to be the first to suck him off,” the other woman mewls.
Their bickering is doing nothing to ease my oncoming headache.
I swipe up my jacket and tie.
“Get out.”
They stare at me in shock. “What?”
I allow myself a cursory sweep over their naked bodies. They’re both stunning. It’s a shame to waste the opportunity. But Natasha’s call has put me in a foul mood.
My eyes snag on the dildo before I look away.
“Changed my mind,” I clip. “You can let yourselves out.”
I walk out, slamming the door behind me to the outraged cries of asshole and jerk.