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‘What do you want to know about?’
‘Who were you when you were growing up?’
It seemed like a poignant question, given the origins of the man who posed it. If she were to pose the same question to him and if he were to be honest with her, the picture he would paint would no doubt be filled with shadows.
She tucked herself deeper into the coat. ‘Nothing exciting has ever happened to me. I grew up with just me and my mom, mostly. When I was really small we lived with my grandmother. It was her house. She smoked like a chimney, as they say, and after she died my mom tried to scrub the nicotine off the walls. Have you ever tried to get rid of fifty years of smoking from a wall? Eventually she gave up and just painted the house a combination of yellows, browns and oranges.’
She laughed, rocking on her feet, as the scene before her eyes transformed into the tiny ginger room she’d grown up in. ‘God, do I ever hate the colour orange. I won’t wear it. I won’t even wear pantyhose that are too close to orange.’
‘I prefer the nude stockings with the black garters.’ He spoke so low the traffic drowned him out, but his voice was a frequency embedded in her brain. Even if he had whispered and she hadn’t caught a word, she’d still feel his sentiment in her blood.
‘I wasn’t dirt poor or anything,’ she went on, ‘Though we probably would have been homeless if my grandmother hadn’t left us the house. My mom – man, could she burn through a line of credit. There were always bill collectors on the phone. She only got out of debt when I moved out and she sold the house. She married an American about ten years ago and they live in Florida.’
‘No siblings?’
‘Not growing up. Tony, my stepfather, has a son and a daughter.’
‘Then you’re all alone in the world.’
So many people had said the same thing to Grace, and their condescending tone was always like sandpaper on her nerves. Like their first meeting in the boardroom, there was none of that in Taureau’s observation. No, there was kinship to be found in there.
‘I can tell you’re uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘I’d bet money you’re even twitchy.’
‘I’m not,’ she lied. It wasn’t that his asking about her past made her ‘twitchy’, but answering made her uncomfortable. She’d had a good upbringing. Taureau’s eventual spiral into drug use suggested to her that he hadn’t.
Her life hadn’t been charmed, but it was warm, and she thought that perhaps her warmth was what he was looking for.
The car arrived before she could say any more, and, once she was nestled into the cushy backseat, Taureau spoke again.
‘Tell me about something else,’ he said. ‘Tell me about why you started taking your lovers at the office.’
‘Oh, that’s an easy one, but I don’t think now’s the time.’
‘Are you actually shy about talking sex in front of a stranger?’
‘Actually, yes, but I’ll give you the short answer: convenience. I can work and have my fun without giving up either of them. I have little time to myself outside work, and when I do I have all of those mundane little things that everyone needs to do. If I want sex, I don’t want to have to get to know someone first, and hooking up with people I meet in bars or online isn’t my thing. At the office, I at least have a sense of the calibre of man I’m screwing and there’s an understanding. So, for me, sex and work are a perfect combination.’
‘Efficient.’
She laughed and combed through her hair with her fingers. ‘Your turn. Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘You could write a book,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Really, you could write a book.’
‘And many have,’ she pointed out, ‘but you know that I’m not interested in tabloid sludge. I want to know about you. Tell me something. In fact, tell me something that you haven’t told anyone before.’
He paused, and Grace didn’t mistake his silence for a disconnection this time. After at least a minute, she murmured, ‘Not so easy, is it?’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, sounding irritated. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘Don’t make something up, either.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. All right, Miss Neely, you want something no one else knows about me? I’ll tell you, but brace yourself; it’s a shocker.’
She couldn’t tell if he was joking, and wondered if she would have been able to read him even if they were face to face, so she did what he said and braced herself.
‘When I was nine years old, a kid at school was giving me a hard time. I wasn’t small, but I was smaller than he was, so he started roughing me up where he could. One day he told me that he would kick my ass after Art class, and so I told him that my family hadn’t gotten its fortune from buses and airplanes. I told him that we were actually a mafia family, and if he laid another finger on me I’d have one of our hit men take him out.’
There was a shake to his voice, not quite a laugh but getting there.
Grace sat for a moment, hands folded over her knees as she stared out the window. She hadn’t been expecting an admission like this. She had steeled herself for something sordid and shocking, but this confession was just so … human.
A coughing laugh burst from the back of her throat, and then she smiled. ‘Did it work?’
‘Of course it did. I even named the hit man. Red “The Butcher” Belliveau. Red was actually a gardener, and we did call him “The Butcher” in my family because of the way he seemed to relish hacking the brush along the fence around the house. I told the kid this, too. I told him it was a front. I told him that Red’s speciality was castration by pruning shears.’
Grace laughed. ‘That is just evil. You were an evil child.’
‘I’ve always had a solid sense of preservation.’
‘And this is something no one else knows – aside from the kid who thought his dick was going to be snipped off.’
‘Not a soul,’ he said, and she heard the creak of him sitting back in his chair. ‘Are you close?’
Grace asked the driver, and reported to Taureau that they were just a few traffic lights from their destination.
‘I’m going to disconnect now,’ he told her. ‘Tell the driver to wait for you. Once you get there, identify yourself to the concierge and he’ll give you the key and tell you where to go. Put the phone in the dock to keep it charged.’
‘Am I going to be there all night?’
‘You can stay if you want, but I’m only interested in keeping you until just after dark. Keep the headset in. I’ll call you back in about fifteen minutes.’
After the click in her ear, Grace once more wondered about his surroundings. It almost seemed absurd to think that he was something more than a disembodied voice occasionally joined by a partial portrait on a screen. The idea of him doing things that normal people did, like running errands or answering the door to a pizza delivery, was laughable to her.
As the car passed through the gate of a park-like condominium community, Grace had to admit to herself that the initial lure of Jacques Taureau had been his mystery. The idea of some faceless man directing her from the shadows would have made her laugh a month ago, but once it became her reality she had been intoxicated by the mystery.
Now, things were changing. He was giving her little facets of himself that didn’t fit the image of the ubiquitous stranger. In her mind, Taureau was like the mummy from the horror movies who, piece by piece, went from dust and bone to flesh and blood.
The driver told her to have the concierge notify him when she was ready, and she watched him leave to no doubt while away the evening at one of the nearby eateries. The concierge greeted her with a practised smile and promptly produced a key to an apartment on the third floor.
She took the elevator up, and as she slid the key into the lock a sudden dread of the unknown came over her. No boundaries had been set with Taureau. None had been needed, what with the digital nature of their relationship, and she worried now that she was about to walk into something abhorrent.
As much as she enjoyed sexual experimentation, there were things that had never appealed to her. Group sex, for example. The occasional threesome was one thing, but a handful of times in her adult life she’d politely declined an invitation to take part in an orgy. The same went for sex with other women. She’d never had a lesbian experience, not because of any particular aversion to it – enough of her fantasies included women – but because she’d never met a woman she was so attracted to she could feel it in her bones.
Those were the soft scenarios of what might be behind the door. She refused to entertain the more chilling ones. Sucking in a deep breath, she turned the key and pushed the door open, and was relieved to discover an empty apartment.
Well, almost relieved. Part of her had still held out hope that she’d open the door and find herself face to face with Taureau, even though deep down she knew she had a better chance, that night, of being struck by lightning.
The apartment was what one would expect of an executive condo. The space was tastefully furnished and decorated in neutral colours and had the unlived-in smell of air freshener hanging in every room. Grace doubted that the chef’s kitchen had ever been used to its full potential. The bedrooms, perhaps, though when she peeked in both the master and the spare she saw nothing short of showroom perfection.
She was headed back to the living room when Taureau called back in.
‘What would you do if I told you I wanted to move in here like a kept woman?’
‘I’d say yes.’
‘Good to know.’ She dropped her handbag onto the sofa and walked towards the window as she unbuttoned her coat. ‘Cameras here, too?’
‘Temporarily. This condo is typically used for contract workers and their families. I give them their privacy.’
‘I guess I was wrong about the kitchen not being used much,’ she murmured, and swept out of her coat. She spun around like she had for him in the conference room, her gaze moving to every corner of the room. ‘Where’s the camera?’
‘Guess.’
Grace focused on a piece of metal art hanging over the sofa and took a step towards it. ‘This?’
‘Not even close.’
Turning away from her first deduction, Grace tucked her hands behind her and thumbed the bottom hook of the corset.
‘Don’t do that,’ he warned.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t take off the corset.’
‘Why not?’
‘Do I really need a reason? You can take your panties off, though. Slowly.’
‘After I find your little hiding spot.’ She fingered the elastic clinging to her hips as she moved around. ‘Shall we make a game of it? Hot and cold?’
‘I don’t play games. You’re a smart girl; figure it out, and quickly.’
‘Patience is a virtue.’
‘It’s been a very long time since I’ve had any virtues, but by all means keep spouting clichés if it helps you.’
She ruled out anything that wasn’t at least eye-level and named a few more harmless pieces in the room. Not the dock where she had left her phone. Not hidden on the flat screen hanging opposite the sofa. Not the wireless modem in the little business area off the kitchen.
She grew tired of what wasn’t a game and could tell by Taureau’s clipped answers that he was too. Lifting her hair off her hot neck, she sank down on the sofa with a growl.
‘Just tell me.’
‘Look, and think.’
‘Seriously, just …’ A grin crept up to her mouth and twisted it. ‘It has to be the flower urn on the balcony.’
‘Smart girl. Wave hello.’
‘I can do better than that.’
She got to her feet and turned to make a show out of wriggling her panties over the garters and stockings. She left them in a twisted rosette on the floor and knelt on the edge of the sofa.
‘No objections?’
‘I have you right where I want you.’
‘This is very odd, Jacques.’ She brushed her palm across the hump of her ass and twisted her face towards the balcony. ‘Something tells me you didn’t get me out of the office because you wanted me to be more comfortable.’
‘Just go slowly for now.’
Draping one arm over the back of the sofa to take her weight, she ran her hand from her ass to her abdomen, and kept it out of his sight as she crooked her middle finger over her clit.
‘Slowly.’
He delivered his seductive command in a whisper, eliciting a shiver from her as she thought of hearing that accented baritone urging ‘slowly’ as he did just now, as he pressed his lips to her ear’s shell, hands on her shoulders and fingers gripping harder, his body hot and demanding against her back.
She closed her eyes and lost herself in her imagination. In none of these wicked little episodes of fantasy could she conjure up his face. He was always in hiding, or behind her, sometimes slipping something over her eyes to keep her blind. It was vexing and stirring all at once, and even when frustration nipped at her she gave herself over to it.
‘Don’t you want to know what I’m thinking?’
Her breath hitched on her last word as her touch evoked an ecstatic, throbbing ribbon around her clit.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he told her. ‘It’s not so hard to read you. You tell me everything I need to know by the way you hold your pose.’
‘Tell me,’ she said, more of a chant than a plea.
‘You’re thinking of how you’d offer yourself up to me like you are now. You’ve got this silly little notion in your head that you might bring me to my knees this way, that I’d bow and follow your fingers through that wet gash, that eventually you’d be able to rest your head against the seat and let me finish you off.’
She slipped her fingers lower, not only to give him a glimpse of the tips slipping into her cunt but to gather the wetness there.
‘Tell me why I’m wrong.’
She adjusted her pose in anticipation, lowering her head and lifting her ass so that he could see her smear the shining juices through her swollen lips.
‘You tell me.’
It was uncanny how quickly this storytelling came with Taureau. Grace had always been what some would consider masculine in her arousal: dirty movies and dirty talk, kisses seeking a tongue from the start while she made her demands with her hands. It was always about the pulsing, breathless end and how she could get to it as quickly and furiously as possible.
With Taureau, she relished the wait, and relished the sanctions he imposed upon her. These scenarios flowed through her like music, and in return she sang for him.
‘Oh, if you had me like this, I’d still offer myself up to you,’ she said. ‘You’d give, too, wouldn’t you? For all your words, you’d give me just enough. You’d stand over me and watch the goose bumps rise on my hands and arms, and watch me get wetter and wetter just from having you where you are. You’d watch me play with myself, like this …’
She cranked her arm and used all four fingers to rub through her slick labia.
Slowly.
The word was unspoken, but the fact that she heard it nonetheless was a testament to how her psyche was getting used to absorbing his commands. She slowed down, forcing herself just to tease even though she still needed to go fast and hard.
