Manwhore +1

  “You know I can’t leave my job,” I tell him, turning.

  He doesn’t seem bothered. “We’ll meet your price.”

  Shaking my head with a little laugh of disbelief, I rub my temples.

  “Merrick,” is all he says.

  And Merrick instantly continues.

  Sitting tensely in his seat, a huge contrast to Saint’s lounging form, Mr. Merrick explains, “As I was saying, we’ll be offering news content to our subscribers, and Mr. Saint has been a longtime fan of your voice. He appreciates its honesty and the angles you take.”

  Red-hot color spreads up my body. “Thank you. I’m super flattered,” I say. “But there’s really only one answer,” I add breathlessly, “and I’ve already given it to you.”

  Mr. Merrick forges on with a look from Saint. “This is the proposal for the job and we need an acceptance or decline within the week.”

  He fans a set of papers over the table.

  I stare at them, unable to register, to comprehend, what this means.

  “Why would you do this?” I ask.

  “Because I can.” Saint looks at me levelly. His gaze is intense. Matter-of-fact, even. “I have more to offer you here than where you are.”

  He’s not moving, he’s utterly motionless, but he’s just set my world spinning to the thousandth degree.

  “Take the papers, Rachel,” he says.

  “I don’t . . . want to.”

  “Think about it. Read it before you say no to me.”

  We stare for a beat too long.

  He stands with the grace of a feline uncurling. Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan Saint. CEO of the most powerful corporation in the city. Obsession of the ladies. Elusive as a comet. Relentless and ruthless. “My people will contact you by the end of the week.”

  I wonder all of a sudden if there will ever be a time when this man stops surprising me. I really admire his composure. I admire many things about him. If I thought for a moment that we could fight it out, I was wrong. Saint won’t waste his time on that. He’s too busy reaching for his never-ending ambitions, conquering the world.

  And me? I’m just trying to piece mine together from all the debris on the floor.

  Inhaling, I gather the papers quietly. I take them and don’t say goodbye or thank you or anything at all, just hear my shoes as I leave.

  I open the door and can’t help but steal one last peek into his office; my last glimpse of him is leaning forward on the couch with his hands on his knees, exhaling as he drags a hand over his face.

  “Will you be needing anything else from me, Mr. Saint?” asks Merrick with a tone that is almost begging for more work.

  When Saint lifts his head, he catches me watching him. We freeze and then just stare. At each other. He looks at me warily, and I look at him with all the regret I feel. There are so many things I want to say to him, but this is how I leave, all my words morphed into silence as I shut the door behind me.

  His assistants watch me leave.

  I board the elevator quietly and stare at my reflection on the steel doors as I ride to the lobby. I suppose I look pretty, my hair down, my attire draping, soft and feminine, against my body. But as I stare into my eyes, I look so lost that I want to dive inside to find myself.

  And I realize that love is as ever-changing as a sky or as an ocean: always there, but not always sunny or clear or calm.

  Outside, I flag a cab, and as we drive off, for a second I turn and stare at M4’s beautiful mirrored façade. So regal. So impenetrable, I think, until my phone buzzes.

  WHAT HAPPENED?!

  Did u KISS AND MAKE UP?!

  TELL US! WYNN IS LEAVING IN 3 MINS AND WANTS TO KNOW

  DID HE READ YOUR ARTICLE? Did it make him MELT?

  I read Gina’s texts and can’t even summon the energy to text back as the cab pulls into traffic.

  “Where to?” the cab driver asks.

  “Just drive for a bit, please.”

  I look out at Chicago, a city I love and that frightens me because I never seem to feel quite safe in it. Everything looks the same. Chicago is still busy, and windy, electric, modern, wonderful and unsafe. It’s the very same city I’ve lived in all my life.

  The city didn’t change. The one who changed was me.

  Like a thousand women before me, I fell in love with the city’s favorite bachelor billionaire player.

  And now I will never be the same.

  After what happened, he will never be mine, just like I always feared.

  FOUR WEEKS + 1 HOUR

  “I couldn’t get a read on him. I just couldn’t. I was too overwhelmed just by seeing him and having all these things to say and knowing that he must hate me and didn’t really mean to talk to me at all.” I glance away, inhaling.

  “Rachel.”

  That seems to be all that Gina can say. She falls morgue-quiet after that.

  A few minutes ago, I finally asked the cab driver to drop me off at a Starbucks simply because I didn’t want to go home. Gina immediately caught up with me, and now we’re at a table in the back, in our own little world.

  “I am so sad, Gina.” I hide my eyes behind one hand for a minute, my elbow propped on the table. “It’s really over now.”

  “Fuck this.” Gina purses her lips. She’s scowling as usual. “Does he even care that you fell in love regardless of him being a player—a manwhore and whatnot?”

  “Gina!” I scowl.

  She scowls back.

  I shouldn’t even be talking to her about this. Gina warned me a thousand times that this would happen. She’d said Don’t get involved with him until she tired of it. Because Saint has a record and I was on assignment. But could I have stopped myself from being swept away?

  He’s a cyclone and I walked straight into the eye of it when I agreed to write that exposé.

  Falling hadn’t been in the plans. Falling for a guy had never even been in my life plan. Gina and I were supposed to be single and happy forever—workaholics, best friends for life, and tight with our families. She’d gotten her heart broken before and she’d passed on all the tidbits to me so that I didn’t have to go through that too. And like that I had protected myself. I was never as interested in men as I was in furthering my career. But Saint is not just any man. He didn’t seduce me in just any way. And what we shared wasn’t just . . . anything.

  I’m a columnist and I should have a concise word to describe him, but I have nothing other than “Sin.”

  Exhilarating, addictive, he is a player who plays it right, a billionaire who is used to being asked for things from people—and in the end, I hate that he must have felt that I was just like everyone else in his life, wanting to get something from him.

  No, Rachel, you’re not like everyone else. You’re worse.

  He sleeps with one groupie for four nights, or four groupies for one. He gives them nothing of himself. Maybe he gives them a check for the charities they ask for, as I once heard one ask him, but this doesn’t put a dent in his account. He lets them feed him grapes in his yacht, if they want to; he’s too spoiled by women to stop them. But he doesn’t give them another passing glance when they leave. But with you, Rachel? He let you in. He fed you a grape in his yacht. He came to your campout not because he likes sleeping outdoors but because he knew you would be there. He told you about four, his lucky number. The number that symbolizes him going above and beyond the norm. Oh god, I have never been so aware of how deep he’d let me in until I stood before him today, completely cast out of what had become my own personal paradise.

  “I would’ve said so many things to him if his man hadn’t been there discussing a position for me.” I pull out the papers and pass them over. “I could hardly concentrate on this with Saint in the room. Even his man was affected.”

  She reads under her breath. “An offer of employment for Rachel Livingston . . .” She lowers the paper and stares at me with those sultry dark eyes that are now as puzzled as I feel.

  “Interface is expand
ing into news,” I explain.

  She stares down at the papers. “If you don’t want this, I do.”

  I kick her under the table. “Be serious.”

  “I need more sugar.” She goes to the condiment table, returns, and settles back down with a little packet of sugar she adds to her coffee and stirs.

  “What’s a man like him, the CEO, doing in a meeting like that?” She frowns. “Saint is too smart, Rachel. He wanted to make sure you showed up. He fucking wants you there. He is offering health insurance for your next of kin. Your mom. Do you realize what this means for you on the work front?”

  My mom is my weakness.

  Yes, I do realize.

  Saint is offering me . . . the world.

  But a world without him is nothing now.

  “Rachel, though Edge has been getting good press attention since . . .” She throws me an apologetic look because she knows I don’t like remembering the article, then adds, “But how long will that attention last? Edge is still hanging by threads.” She sips her coffee. “And Interface is Interface. It’s not going anywhere but up. M4, Rachel, it’s like . . . huge. None of us have ever dreamed of working there. It hires, like, geniuses from all over the country.”

  “I know,” I whisper.

  So why does Saint want me on board? He can get anyone he wants. In any capacity.

  “I bet Wynn would say for you to take it. We need her advice; she’s the only one in a relationship.”

  “Gina, I said I love you to a guy for the first time in my life. I would never, as long as I live, choose for him to be my boss.” I add, pained, “And Saint doesn’t get involved with his employees.”

  Her eyes cloud over with worry. “And you want him more than the job.”

  I’m so ashamed of saying yes, because I don’t deserve it. Not even to want it. But I duck my head and nod.

  I have a hole in me. So huge and empty, every pleasure in my life feels like nothing without him.

  Gina rereads the letter, shakes her head, folds it, and hands it back to me. And all the while I’m still at M4. At the top floor, inside that marble, chrome, and glass office. And I can still smell him in my nose. My brain synapses won’t quit firing off, replaying the scene in his office. Every word he said. Every word I had hoped he’d say that he did not say. Every shade of green that I’ve seen in his eyes lost to me—except for this new cold shade of green that I had never seen.

  I remember his gaze on my profile as Merrick interviewed me. I remember his voice. I remember what it feels like to stand close to him.

  I remember how he exhaled when I left, as if he’d just engaged in some sort of physical battle.

  And how his eyes latched on to me after that. Roping me in.

  As Gina and I walk back home, I am so grateful I didn’t tell my mother I was seeing him today. She’d have raised her hopes on my behalf and I’d hate to dash them now. I tuck the papers back into my bag, and when we finally walk into our small but cozy two-bedroom apartment, I go to my room, shut the door, drop onto the bed and pull out the papers again.

  It’s just your regular offer. I scan every page now and it lists the benefits, a salary that I do not deserve and is usually what much more experienced, award-winning columnists make . . . but then I hit a spot that really affects me.

  Saint’s signature, on the bottom of the contract.

  I hold my breath and stroke his signature a little bit. There’s an energy on it, like a stamp, somehow making the document feel heavy.

  Crawling under my bed, I pull out my shoebox where I keep little things I treasure. A gold R necklace my mother gave me. On impulse I put on the necklace to remind myself of who I am. Daughter, woman, girl, human. I shift some of the birthday cards from Wynn and Gina aside. And find a note. The note that was once attached to the most beautiful flower arrangement that arrived in my office.

  I take the ivory-colored card and open it . . . and read.

  It was the first time I saw his handwriting. He signed the message, A friend who thinks of you, M.

  Still dressed, I curl up on my bed and stare at it.

  My friend.

  No. My assignment, the story that I thought I’d wanted, the city’s playboy who became my friend who became my lover who became my love.

  Now he wants to be my boss, and I want him more than ever.

  MY LIFE NOW

  I’m lying in bed and he’s dropping delicious, shivery kisses all along the back of my ear. I’m breathless as I absorb the feel of his tanned skin against mine, the strength of his muscles, the ripples of his abs against my tummy. Oh god. I can’t take him. I want to eat him with kisses and I want him to eat me back, every inch of me, I don’t even know where I want him to start.

  He takes my hands and pins them to his shoulders, leaning over to buzz my mouth with his. “Open, Rachel,” he murmurs, and his green eyes, his green eyes are looking at me in the dark.

  “Are you real?” I breathe, my heart in my throat, my lungs working madly in my chest.

  He’s looking down at me so familiarly, I’m not sure if this is a dream or a memory as he drags his fingers up my arms, sinuously, and I close my eyes. Oh god, Sin. He feels so good. I murmur his name and shakily trail my hands up the hard planes of his chest. God, he feels so real. So excellently real. He feels just like he used to feel, moves like he used to move, kisses like he used to, takes control of me like he used to.

  He pins me with his weight and I struggle to get closer, wiggling and arching and shivering, his long, strong body stretched out on top of mine.

  I close my fingers around his shoulders like he seems to want me to do as he circles his hands around my waist now and continues to set slow, tingly kisses on my neck, and need slams into my midsection, my skin screaming while I burn. I want. Want his hands all over me, his touch covering me, head to toe. His mouth. Oh, please.

  “Malcolm, please now, please now . . . inside . . . now,” I hear myself beg.

  He’s not in any hurry. He never is. He curls my legs around his hips, kissing his way up to my mouth. It’s been forever since I felt this, his lips at the corner of my mouth. I feel my eyes well with tears. Every inch of him is missed by every inch of me. One second I’m rocking my hips in silent plea, the next he’s driving inside me.

  It’s the sound that wakes me. A soft mewling sound that I make. A sound of absolute pleasure, such absolute pleasure it borders on pain. I’m soaked in sweat when I bolt upright in my bed. I look around, shakily wiping the wetness on one side of my face, but no. He’s not back in my bed. I’m still crying at night, my body’s still aching for his at night.

  I wrap my arms around my legs and put my cheek on my knee, exhaling as I try to push the part-dream, part-memory out of my mind. I go into the bathroom, splash my face, look into my eyes and I’m still the lost girl in the elevator. When did I become this girl? I’m not this girl, I think in frustration as I stamp out to my room.

  I go back to bed and cover myself with the sheets all the way to my neck, rolling my cheek into the pillow and punching it as I stare unseeingly in the direction of my window. A stream of streetlight filters inside. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the sounds of the city outside. I wonder where he is right now.

  You’re fucking haunting me, Sin.

  You’re fucking haunting my every second.

  I can’t sleep, can’t think of anything but the way I feel when I stand close to you. When you look at me. When we’re in the same room.

  The way you were in your office . . . I couldn’t read you. I couldn’t read you and it’s killing me.

  Turning on the light, I lose a battle I’ve been waging with myself for a whole month.

  I go get my laptop and boot it up in the darkness, then I do something I haven’t done in a while. Gina had forbidden me to. I had forbidden myself, for survival. And sanity. I haven’t checked in so long it’s not even coming up in my browser. But now I brave Saint’s social media and brace myself for what I find as I skim
through. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Or maybe I do. I’m looking for anything, anything that links me to him.

  Hey @MalcolmSaint I’m Leyla, Danis’ friend ;)

  @MalcolmSaint Hey bro meet us at Raze

  @malcolmsaint is better off without that bitch who betrayed him

  Marry me @malcolmsaint!

  @Malcolmsaint I’ll be your slut and I’ll mud wrestle your lying bitch ex to the death, if need be!

  @MalcolmSaint are you going to forgive your girlfriend? PLS forgive her, you look beautiful together!

  Speaking of bitches @MalcolmSaint should know

  @malcolmsaint please tell me you told your exgirlfriend to go fuck herself! YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER YOU DESERVE A PRINCESS

  Interface wall:

  Bro! Call us when you’re in town, there’s someone we’d like you to meet

  And then, there’s the picture of a woman blowing him a kiss.

  I scowl over her protruding nipples, clearly visible in her wet designer top.

  Then, I scroll over his tagged pictures and find one of him. Him flipping off the reporter who asks him about my betrayal, a pair of cool aviators shading his eyes, his jaw as tough as a granite slab.

  God help me. Now that I’ve started looking I can’t seem to stop. On a famous local vlog, I find this:

  “Indeed there has been speculation on whether his daredevil attitude for the past month has anything to do with the recent breakup with journalist Rachel Livingston, what is rumored to be his first relationship ever. Livingston, who had been investigating Saint when they met, had a huge fallout with the tycoon when her investigation leaked and her own version published shortly after on Edge. Rumors of whether M4 is integrating a news section into their Interface media website were abuzz when Livingston was spotted back at M4 . . .”

  “In the meantime Saint himself has been skydiving, and, according to a witness, taking over businesses at a speed that has been alarming to the members of his board . . .”

  And on Facebook:

  #TBT ThrowbackThursday: remember this picture? We had bets going on how long it’d last but nobody bet on it lasting as long as it did! I know it seems she played you but we know better than that, nobody plays as hard as you do—hope you used her good!