Finn shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. She’s very nervous. I’ll be honest. I don’t know that she really wants to do this.”
Julian opened the door, and Michael was surprised when it didn’t open to the conference area but rather a small space with a window into the other. An observation room. Interesting.
“I would actually say the woman would be fairly submissive during sex.” Julian stepped inside and stood in front of what Michael suspected was a two-way mirror. “She’s rather hard to read, but she does tend to respond to what I would call benevolent dominance.”
“She responds to you?” Michael followed them.
“Oh, she doesn’t like to be around me at all,” Julian replied. “She tends to avoid me, but she likes to work with female tops. I doubt she would recognize them as such, but it’s what they are. Both Danielle and I employ several Dommes in our business, and I’ve found if I want to get Vanessa to talk, I send one of them.”
“She’s quite nice, though a little standoffish around me,” Finn murmured.
That was when Michael got his first real look at the target.
“Another thing that worries me since you are incredibly lovable,” Julian was saying.
Finn said something else, but it was lost because Michael couldn’t take his eyes off the woman in the room.
She bore little resemblance to the woman on the cover of tabloid magazines. Gone was the bleach-blonde hair and the overdone makeup. She wore none of the flashy clothes she’d donned before. She had on a plain green blouse and a black cardigan. The clothes were cheap. He could see that even from here. Dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and he noticed she wore no jewelry whatsoever. Not even earrings.
She was stunning. She’d gained weight, and it looked good on her. Some women could be very thin and it looked natural. For some women it was natural. Vanessa wasn’t naturally thin. She’d likely had to starve herself to get that small.
How hard had it been to go into that world at such a young age? To give up something so normal and natural as properly feeding her body. Who had told her she needed to be someone else in order to make it in her industry?
Or she’d been ruthless even with herself. She’d had a goal and done whatever it took to achieve it.
He was getting drawn in by a sweet face and forgetting that this woman was an actress at heart, and she knew how to manipulate a man.
“Michael? Are you listening?”
He turned at Julian’s question. “I’m sorry. She looks different.”
“Like I said, I believe she’s adapting to her circumstances,” Julian replied.
“Or she’s trying to find herself again.” Finn seemed to need to fill the optimist role in the play they found themselves in. “Look, Mr. Malone, I agree with my Master that we should look into Ms. Jones. She is close to Danielle, and she’s gotten close to our daughter, Chloe. Some odd things have been happening around her. But I don’t agree that she’s some kind of monster. She’s reserved and a bit distant. Given what she’s gone through, I can understand that.”
“What she’s gone through is all of her own money and a good portion of her husband’s,” Julian said flatly.
“Then where is it?” Finn argued, proving their relationship wasn’t so simple as Master and sub. Finn was willing to challenge his Master, though in this case Michael thought he was behaving more like a spouse. “I was closer to Nicki than you were, and she loved her sister.”
“She did not approve of Vanessa’s marriage. I remember that,” Julian countered.
Finn didn’t seem ready to back down. “Yes, but not for the reasons you think. She thought George Benedict took advantage of her sister.”
Michael listened in, the argument between spouses telling him a lot about the dynamics in play. “Was she close to her sister?”
“They talked on the phone quite a bit in the last years of Nicki’s life,” Finn said. “After their mother passed, Vanessa and Nicki reconnected.”
“Did the mother not approve of Vanessa’s lifestyle?” He’d read a bit about her family but liked to learn some things organically.
“Their mother was extremely religious. She approved of very little, including Nicki working for Danielle. She was an angry, bitter woman. Nicki changed to a less restrictive church, and her mother cut her off,” Finn explained. “So neither of them had much to do with their mother later in life, and the father walked out very early on.”
So she had no strong male role models and had grown up in an environment where sex was more than taboo.
“What type of men does she like?”
Julian’s brow rose. “Well, from what I can tell, eighty-year-old billionaires. Though there is a rumor that she was having several affairs with young members of her husband’s household.”
“You’re going to get in so much trouble,” Finn said with a sigh. He turned to Michael. “Here’s what I know. I do believe she’s straight and not bi. I believe she does not have a good relationship with her body. I’m not sure why she’s insistent on training in D/s because I think she’s terrified of all of it.”
“Which is precisely why I’m suspicious of her,” Julian added. “She wants access to The Club for some reason, and it’s not that she wants to fit in. I’ve already heard that argument from Danielle. We have many employees who do not play.”
So figuring out why she wanted to train would be his first order of business. “How would you suggest I approach her?”
Finn sighed. “I’m going to end up in the doghouse, too, aren’t I?” He seemed to not need a reply as he moved on. “I would pretend to not know who she is. I would focus on making her feel safe. I don’t think an over-the-top hard approach is going to work with her. I think you should ease her into the relationship, though if you have a chance to bring her any kind of sexual pleasure, that might be a way in. I’ve overheard her talking to Dani about how long it’s been for her.”
“If you disregard the rumors,” Julian added.
“Charm, then?” He could manage a bit of that. He would do what he always did when he needed a little charm. Pretend to be his brother. Not that he himself couldn’t get a woman in bed. He could, but JT was the one who was charming. Women flocked around him, happy to be in his company. Michael started to talk about his job and scared many of them off.
He needed to come across as pleasant, friendly, the kind of guy a woman could tell all her secrets to.
“I think kindness will work better with her in the beginning, and then you’ll need to figure out how to handle her in the dungeon,” Finn continued. “You’re attracted to her.”
It wasn’t a question. “Physically, yes. This version of her is quite lovely. She’s got a certain fragile air about her that calls to my dominant side. Unfortunately, I need more than that, as I’ve proven in the past.”
“You’ve had long-term partners?” Julian asked.
“I’ve had girlfriends I played with,” he allowed because he wasn’t about to go into his personal history with Julian Lodge. “I’ve never had a permanent submissive, and I don’t think I will.”