Chapter 12
“About time we took these things out, don’t you think?”
Alicia sat on the edge of the bed, still in her emerald dress. Her feet were sore, and she had completely forgotten about the Ben Wa balls inside of her. There had been other things to distract her. Like Danica putting her on display like she had back at the ball.
Everyone wanted to talk to them afterward.
Good thing they already had dinner, because Alicia needed the energy to get through the rest of the night.
I can’t believe this is my life right now.
Sighing, she mentally asked for a two-minute reprieve from the hectic life that was being Danica Moreau’s girlfriend.
First, she wanted to make Alicia the most talked-about woman in Chicago. Now she wanted to have sex!
She crossed the room, removing her jacket and sitting beside her girlfriend. Alicia didn’t push her away or tell her no, but she was also not the most enthusiastic partner. She wanted answers first. “Why did you do that?” she asked. “What you did back there… why?”
Danica’s eyes narrowed. “Because you make me happy. I want the world to know.”
“You hijacked a fundraiser to show me off.”
“And?” She scoffed. “Better to address it now on my own terms than to wait for the media to start speculating. Besides, you saw my father tonight. The only way to get him to stop playing matchmaker is to make my own choice clear.”
If you only knew… Alicia leaned back on one arm, shoes slipping off her feet and thumping against the floor. “What did you mean by saying I was going to be showing up in your work more often?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said you were one of the most intelligent women I’ve come across in a while. Don’t get me wrong. There were several intelligent women there tonight, but I can’t see myself working with any of them the way I could work with you.”
“Work?”
“You do want to get involved with more than me, right?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.” What could Alicia possibly contribute to Danica’s career, outside of helping her create the stable home and family she craved? “I don’t know anything about what you do.”
“I do many things, but the one you would be most suited for goes back to your experience. How did we meet, Alicia?”
She cringed to remember. “We met at your sex club, ma’am.”
“Indeed, we did, and you were a hostess there, like you had been for most of your life. Wouldn’t you say that you’re good at it? You have to be, if you got hired at my club.”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re going to set me up as a hostess somewhere.”
“Not unless you begged me to.”
Could Alicia roll her eyes hard enough?
“I have further interests in hospitality. You have plenty of experience being on the front line of customer service. You may not have a big business degree, Alicia, but you have something even more important to me.”
She had nothing to lose now. “A tight pussy?”
“Experience.”
They were both quiet. Experience, huh? Funny.
Here Alicia was, convinced that was the one important thing she didn’t have when it came to her relationship with Danica.
No experience with sex, very little with real love and relationships…
but it was her shitty work experience Danica was interested in?
“Guess it’s nice you don’t only want me for a sex and house slave. ”
“You jest, yes?”
“What? That I think that’s all you could want me for?” Alicia shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder.”
“Did I do something to offend you tonight?”
“No.” Alicia sat up, but did not face her.
“It’s… you have to understand how this looks.
I’m a nobody, and we only met a little while ago.
Now you’re declaring to the world that you love me, unlike anyone you’ve ever loved before.
Your father is pissed. Do you know how many people have warned me about him? About you?”
Danica stood up. “Who has been saying that?” Her voice was like a boulder dropping on Alicia’s fragile form. “Who has been shaking your confidence and trust in me?”
Your own mother.
Alicia met her hardened gaze. Eyes of searing amber threatened to tear down her boundaries, but Alicia did not surrender. “It says a lot that the thing you’re worried the most about is my shaken trust.”
“I should hope so.” Danica got down on one knee, hand taking Alicia’s. “Nothing is more important in our relationship. If you can’t trust me, then we have nothing.”
Alicia wanted to believe that.
“Last night, you asked me about my mother.” Danica squeezed her hand.
“The truth is, I remember quite a bit. For the longest time, I thought I had made up my memories. A child’s memory isn’t the most reliable thing, right?
For instance, I was much too young to have possibly remembered my brother’s birth and death, but sometimes I swear I remember my mother crying in the hospital.
Which is absurd, because there’s no way my nanny ever took me to see her, especially while she was grieving. ”
Alicia remained silent. Where is this going?
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about my mother and my memories of her.
I haven’t seen her since I was seven or eight years old, but I remember a woman who was doting and involved with my life.
Honestly, I don’t have many memories of my father from that time.
I don’t know why. He was around, wasn’t he?
Then I remember that my only memory of my parents together was from right before their divorce.
I’ll never forget the thing coming out of my mother’s mouth the most. She was begging my father to believe her about something.
For the longest time, I assumed she was cheating.
It’s no secret that my father had other lovers, even during his marriage, but for my mother, that would have been sacrilege. ”
“Quite frankly, it sounds like your mother didn’t trust your father.”
“She didn’t. That has always stayed with me.
I must admit that there have been many times when I haven’t trusted him, either.
Not when it comes to my personal life. Why would I want a man like him giving me advice in matters of love?
His one marriage ended badly enough that I never saw my mother again, and he’s never been in a real relationship since. ”
She stood again.
“So it’s important to me, almost more than anything else, that you trust me. Not because of the type of play we might get into, but because my childhood taught me that trust is one of the most fragile things in the world. You can’t buy trust. You can buy superficial love, but not trust.”
Alicia softened to hear those words. She can’t be like her father.
She simply can’t be. Alicia didn’t want to believe she was na?ve enough to fall for a scam artist. She wanted to believe that dating someone like Russell would’ve sent up a million red flags screaming at her to run.
Not Danica. Danica was more like her mother so far. Julia would be so happy to know.
Speaking of trust… Alicia had yet to bring up Julia’s appearances.
“Please tell me that you trust me. If you don’t, tell me what I can do to make you trust me, Alicia.”
She accepted Danica’s embrace, her kiss, and her eternal promises to be the woman Alicia needed her to be.
When they made love that night, Danica asked if her new friends had helped her with her training.
Although Alicia claimed to have stopped noticing them halfway through the day, they both concluded, after she managed to hold off orgasm for as long as Danica commanded her to, that they had done a great job, indeed.
She was asleep when Alicia uncurled herself from her naked embrace and walked across the room. In the pile of clothes in her suitcase was the black box Julia had given her over twenty-four hours ago.
Alicia didn’t look in it. She figured that part was none of her business. Instead, she placed it on top of Danica’s suitcase, hoping that she had neither overstepped her bounds nor opened a can of worms to rival Pandora’s Box.
“Look who’s back!” Candice leaped off the couch the moment Alicia walked through the door, suitcase rolling behind her. “It’s the star of Page 6!”
Alicia returned the hug she soon received.
“What are you talking about?” She had traveled for over three hours.
Sure, it was with Danica cuddling her while one watched a movie and the other went over a presentation with someone on video chat, but all those changes in air pressure and altitude could do a number on a girl. Not to mention the time difference!
“Girl, your face is all over the news again!” Candice ran to the kitchen and reappeared with a paper in her hand. “You and that hot beauty of a rich girlfriend are the talk of the town. Even people at work were talking about you guys.”
“Wow. Even the porn stars?”
“Especially the porn stars! Sally Scooter – you know, the one who won that award and posed in all those Instagram pics with me? – has the biggest crush on her and wants to know all the deets. She asked if she could come over for drinks after you got home.”
Porn stars? In my living room? Would not be the first time. Or the last, probably. “She did make a big deal about me at that ball.” Alicia left her suitcase in the middle of the room. Dee appeared in the open doorway behind her.
“Whoa. Who’s that?”
“My bodyguard,” Alicia said with a sigh. “Don’t worry. She’s harmless. Unless you’re attacking me. I think she said she bench presses three hundred pounds.”
Candice couldn’t take her eyes off the large woman closing the door behind her. “Hey,” Dee said, nodding to Candice. “I’m with her.”
“You need a bodyguard?”
If only you knew. “Apparently.”
“She’s not like… gonna live here, is she? This was not covered in our agreement.”
“I only came in to introduce myself. I’ll mostly be checking in every day.”
“Oh, well, in that case…”
As soon as Dee left, Alicia was free to haul her shit into her bedroom and start unpacking. Candice whistled as she saw the number of designer dresses that spilled out of the otherwise small bag. “Someone’s being taken care of.”
“Is it obvious?”
“Next, you’ll be telling me she proposed to you.”
Alicia lay out three dresses while she debated where the hell to put them in her tiny closet. “No. Not yet. I got a feeling that may be happening, though.”
“You don’t sound too enthused about it.”
Alicia snapped her suitcase shut. “It’s awfully fast, isn’t it?”
“Maybe a tad.” Candice shrugged. “I guess billionaires get to roll however they want. If she wants to marry some poor hottie, is it like you’re going to say no?”
That didn’t get an immediate response.
Apparently, there was no time to respond, even if she wanted to. For her phone exploded with life, the ringtone so recognizable that Alicia dove halfway across her bed to get to it.
“Hey,” she said, hair twirling around her finger. Candice made a gagging motion before vacating her roommate’s space. “What’s up?”
Danica’s voice was as cool and sensual as ever. I can picture her at her desk right now. The woman had said she was going straight to the office. “I take it you arrived home safely?”
“The safest and the soundest.” Alicia flopped down on her bed. “Don’t tell me. You already miss me and want to see me now.”
“If I could spare the moments, I would. As it is, I have a lot of work to catch up on.” She chuckled. “Which includes responding to some PR attention. We are apparently making waves in the social world, not that I usually care about that.”
“Of course you don’t. Not until you met me, anyway.”
“You’re catching on.” Danica’s languid attitude was infectious. “You catch on so quickly, Alicia. Soon, there won’t be anything left for me to teach you.”
“Oh, no.”
“Don’t worry. There are still a few things to train you in. In fact…” Something tapped in the background. A pencil against her desk? “If you’re not busy this Friday night, I have my schedule cleared. I can’t think of a better time to really introduce you to my world.”
“Your world?”
“Alicia, Alicia… my love.” The chair creaked on the phone. “We are not the only people like us. I want to introduce you to the people I truly consider my peers, even if they think I’m from another planet.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’re going to take it back to the beginning. Where we first met.”
Alicia gasped.
“I’m going to debut you as my girlfriend at Midnight.”