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She walked along the Left Bank of the river, lost in thought, turning over the information she had about him now in her head. The accent she couldn’t place likely came from a childhood he’d spent between his native South Africa and swanky European boarding schools. Not to mention his time at Oxford, la di dah. He had taken over the management of the family fortune after his father had died, and was therefore very, very wealthy. He was the kind of wealthy that impressed her father, who liked to call himself “comfortable” when he was clearly rich.
Rory had never heard of him, but she had heard of his sister, Erika, who she was pretty sure she’d been following on social media for years and years. Especially during Erika’s scandalous phase. When she thought about Erika Vanderburg, she pictured images in the white dust of Burning Man. She’d thought that was wildly romantic and devil-may-care, and the outfits were always so delicious, but Rory did not camp. In a desert. With or without costumes.
She’d read a lot a distressingly boring corporate online magazines that talked about Conrad in glowing terms. He was apparently not only good at what he did—growing the family fortune from astounding to stratospheric—but he was considered something of a prophet, too, if one gushing blog was to be believed.The way Vanderburg sees markets is nothing short of extraordinary,said one otherwise deeply staid British article.
At the same time, he was also renowned for his discipline. His quiet ruthlessness and implacability. Better to be on his team than against him, numerous financial papers had declared.
Even when his high profile engagement to Lady Something or Other had ended some two years back, he had seemed...unmoved. Icy straight through. Fierce and immovable, which had made the paparazzi less interested in following him around.Might as well try to snap a glacier,one had complained.
You should really consider those warning signs,Rory told herself. Not for the first time.
But her pussy had a different take on the whole thing.
And the next breath she took was a shuddery one, as ever, because she was hot and damp and needy. All the time now.
Rory crossed the river and made her way into the Golden Triangle, a collection of lovely old buildings packed full of famous stores not far from the Champs-élysées. She had found herself here almost every night since she’d met Conrad, no matter how she vowed that she would stop. Sooner or later, no matter where she was in the city, she found herself walking down these same grand old avenues until she found the little side street, hardly more than an alley, that sneaked around to what had once been a churchyard and was now his domain in the center of Paris.
Sooner or later she was simply drawn there, a moth to the flame, whether she liked it or not.
She told herself it was enough to simply walk to the place where the street snaked away in between two upscale shops that catered to the wealthy, then leave. She told herself that tonight would be the night that she broke the spell. That she absolutely would not make her way to the front gates surrounding his converted church, where there were trees to lurk behind, cobblestones to slip over, and looming buildings all around.
But she didn’t keep walking when she reached his turn.
She didn’t double back when she reached the end of the building that opened into the small plaza where the church stood.
And she didn’t pretend she was anything but sad when she found herself at her favorite tree. The only surprising thing, she’d thought repeatedly throughout these two weeks, was that there weren’t besotted idiots like her behindeverytree.
Because once again, the hold he still had on her—even though she was pretty sure he’d already forgotten she existed—won the day. She stood there outside that old, Gothic church, her head spinning.
Paris was electric and alive on the other side of the stately buildings that surrounded the church, but down on the old plaza stones, it was quiet. Dark. That meant there was nothing to distract her as image after image of the things he’d done and could do to her plagued her. With sensations to match, storming around inside her body, making her feel deliciously weak.
Her clit felt swollen. Again.
Always.
Rory had barely slept these two weeks. When she did fall asleep, her head was filled with all the images of the deliciously dark sex acts she’d spent entirely too much time researching online. Because she wanted to know what all that furniture in Conrad’s locked room was used for.
And now she did.
If anything, that made the chaos and greed inside her burn all the brighter.
She was opposed to all of it, of course. Actively appalled, and so on. As a feminist.
Rory told herself variations of that all day long, while she cleaned for her various clients with a fervor she had never before applied to her work.
She would get home to her flat in the evenings, filled with righteous indignation.Certainly notthinking about the kind of thingsthat mangot up to. Not that she begrudged consenting adults their fun, butshewas certainly not going to do those things.
“I’m an influencer,” she would remind herself out loud. “Not a pony. Or alittle one.”
And then the next thing she knew she would be hunched over her laptop, one hand between her legs, looking at things that shouldn’t have turned her on at all.
But they did.
The things that most horrified her by day made her wettest, and hottest, when she stopped pretending she washorrifiedat all.
Suddenly, there in the hushed darkness behind her tree of choice, she remembered when she—with all of her self-righteous zeal—had decided that Christmas dinner, the year after she graduated from college, was an excellent time to demand that her father accept her as pansexual.
Because she had decided, after much careful consideration and deep conversations with her friends, that she was. Therefore, she thought everyone should know.
