“No, Vivian. You have no idea what I’m about.”
A few moments passed in silence when he said, “You’re not eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat.”
The look he gave her brooked no argument. She cast her eyes down at the bowl and slid the soup spoon between her lips.
“The sandwich, too.”
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed off her face to land on the napkin in her lap. “Why are you doing this?”
“Feeding you?”
She tossed the napkin on the table and stood, her tolerance for the charade finally reached. “Fuck you. Show my husband the video. I don’t care. He’ll believe me.”
He glanced up mildly at her and took a sip of his tea. “And if he doesn’t?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t be foolish. Sit and finish your sandwich.”
She assessed him as he turned his attention to his soup. Was he bluffing?
“Let’s say you show Michael the video,” she said, testing the waters. “What will you get out of it? He’ll probably kill you. You stand to gain nothing.”
He laughed out loud. A couple of elderly women at a table a few feet away turned sharply at the sound, disdain on their faces over the audacity of the help dining in the spa restaurant.
“You think I’d just walk up to him?” Anton asked.
“You can’t mail it. I’m home all day.”
“I got his work address from Lindsay.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. Sit and finish.”
Deflated, she sat back in the chair.
“Speaking of Lindsay, he said he saw you a few nights ago.”
Her face turned so hot she knew it must be a deep crimson.
“He said he couldn’t resist.” Anton’s gaze swept over her body, searing her. “I can understand.” He finished his sandwich and drank the rest of his tea, then stood, extending his hand.
She put her palm in his, and he pulled her to him as if to embrace her. Instead, when she was close enough, he leaned toward her ear. “Do you see the man sitting across the restaurant beside that fern?”
Vivian looked and nodded, not liking the sinking sensation.
“He’s a private investigator. I called him, pretending to be your husband. I said I suspected you were having an affair with a massage therapist here. He just snapped several photographs of us having lunch together. He’ll put them in the mail to me later this afternoon. Your defense is looking weaker and weaker, my flower.”
Vivian pulled away, shaken. She wanted to talk to the P.I., wanted to fight him for the camera. But how exactly would that go? She’d make a scene, and the spa staff would drag her off him and toss her out on her ass.
“You’ve got it all figured out don’t you, Anton?”
“Indeed.”
“How many women have you pulled this shit with?”
He just smiled and led her through the crowded lobby and into the massage room with the eastern music and the table fountain burbling away. Today the spa video was off.
“Undress,” he said, after he’d locked the door.
She moved behind the screen, and he chuckled.
“Such modesty.”
Vivian held her breath, wondering if he’d make her strip bare in front of him. But he turned and went to wash his hands in the sink, then selected an oil from the cart.
“I prefer the lavender oil on you,” he said, conversationally as she disrobed and folded her clothing behind the screen.
And there it was. The arousal between her thighs, the dampness of her sex. It only took a few words for her body to respond to him like a lover instead of a victim.
She stood in front of him now, the towel wrapped tightly around her. A dream-like state enveloped her as she waited. For direction. To wake up. For something she couldn’t put words to yet.
“I want you on your stomach today.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and positioned herself on the table.
Anton moved behind her and made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Vivian, Vivian. No towel today. We are beyond that pretense. Are we not?”
She just whimpered as he pulled the towel away, baring her flesh to his gaze. His oiled hands came down on her, and she melted into him, biting back a moan the instant his fingers moved across her skin.
“I want to hear you moan for me. Don’t hold back those lovely sounds.”
Her eyes flew to his. “There are people out there.” The lobby was far too close to the door for her comfort.
“And I’ve told you this room is completely soundproofed.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed him. “I can’t.”
“Can’t is no longer a part of your vocabulary.” His fingers moved over her ass and started to slide between her legs. “Let go.”
She shook her head.
“Vivian . . . This is the last time I’ll ask nicely.” Two thick fingers pushed inside, stretching her, sliding against her moist arousal.
She shuddered and let out a low, erotic moan.
“Good girl.”
As fingers pumped, rubbing, massaging her from the inside, his other hand pressed firmly against her ass, pressing her against the table.
Today the pretense of a normal massage was gone. Though he spent a few moments on other parts of her body, loosening her up, they both knew everything centered on her sexual organs and how he’d manipulate them for her pleasure and his own twisted satisfaction.
When she started whimpering, he pulled away and retreated to the sink to wash his hands. She wondered if he was going for the lubricant again, and if he would use her ass this time. The possibility sent another tremor of fear through her.
He returned with a tube of something new. Not a massage oil or lubricant.
“What’s that?”
He arched a brow at her. “Does my flower think she’s in a position to be asking questions?”
Vivian dropped her head back to the table. “No.”
He answered anyway. “It’s an arousal cream. It will enhance the experience.”
She listened as he squirted a dollop of the cream onto his fingers and massaged it into her clit. Almost immediately she felt engorged and wet, so aroused she wanted to beg him to fuck her with anything. His fingers, a dildo, his cock. She needed something inside her and didn’t care what.
The moans she could barely bring herself to make only moments before, started to leave her in desperate, guttural sounds she didn’t recognize.
His hands moved once again to her sex, but instead of penetrating her, or stroking her clit, he chose a less sensitive area. He massaged with expert precision the folds of her flesh, her inner and outer lips. Squeezing and pulling. Rubbing.
The feelings were so intense she couldn’t be sure if it was the arousal cream, or the fact that he was touching her everywhere except the one hot-button place she needed to have petted. In her mind, her clit became a giant, throbbing sphere, engorged, huge, heavy. Within his grasp, but intentionally ignored.
He moved everywhere around it but never on it, causing nerves to fire up that she had no idea even existed. Before, she’d thought of sexual pleasure in terms of her clit, and on the rare occasions when Michael hit it just right, her g-spot. Now she felt herself awakened to nerve endings that seemed to stretch on and on, licking her flesh with a fire she’d never felt. Not with Michael. Not by her own hand even with the aid of a vibrator.