As Mr. Stone moved inside me, the storm raged in time to his thrusts. He coiled his arm around my neck and the window clattered as hailstones hit. He gripped my hair and bit softly at my throat and the wind howled. I pulled him against me, into me and heard his breath quickening and my body respond in kind. The storm screamed and hit a crescendo and inside that room, I screamed and bit Mr. Stone's shoulder as he grunted and poured himself into me.
*
After, in that floating warm place, I found myself talking.
"Stone Pharma illegally dumped a load of bad stuff and then denied it. Even after they got taken to court they kept on doing it and people just got sicker and sicker. At the same time there was a quarry on the other side of town owned by Stone-Black and they were dumping things they shouldn't either. By the time anyone realized, it was too late. The crops stopped growing and the people were too sick to do anything anyway."
Mr. Stone watched me as I told my story. It wasn't he standard Mr. Stone face, the one with no emotion and nothing there. I felt he was absorbing everything I said.
"They were sneaky in court. Witnesses suddenly quit or changed their story. People moved away after getting paid off. They dragged it all out until people started protesting in person. I was part of that protest. My whole family was. They had all come from a farming background and now the fields were barren.
We went to the protests, night after night, but we hadn't realized who we'd let into our group. There were a few people, new to town but on our side but they were radical. Wanted direct action. One night a few of us were around the back of Stone Pharma and one of them handed me a Molotov cocktail and took my photo. I was screaming and yelling and full of bravado. Then he took it off me and ran off. Soon I heard glass breaking and not long after the building was on fire."
"It burned to the ground and they found out three day later there was a janitor in the basement who'd suffocated to death. Then after that we got a letter in the mail with that article and that photo as well as a very specific warning to stop. So my parents stopped. We stopped. After that the whole thing just fell apart. The court case folded and Bedford died a quiet little death. There was no way anyone who saw that photo would believe I didn't start that fire. Everyone knew I was a protestor."
As I spoke, I felt the years fold away and the weight of it all lift off me. I'd been carrying this secret with me since I was sixteen years old. A secret that had pulled down on me and compressed all that anger I'd felt into something cold and hard.
Mr. Stone stroked his finger down the side of my face and gazed into my eyes. I'd seen flashes of him like this - the mask gone - but they had been so fleeting. Now he was here in front of me, his whole self revealed.
"And then they sent me the photograph, the article and the archive log to harm us," he said. I saw that behind the calm warmth he had right now, there was a fury building.
"First they tried to blackmail me. They left that stuff in my apartment. Then they gave me a list of documents to destroy. I ... I just went down to look at them. I haven't destroyed anything, I promise."
Mr. Stone frowned and I saw his expression harden. Then he relaxed and kissed me quickly on the lips before slipping out of bed. He leaned over, close to me and kissed me once more.
"I believe you," he said. I took his hand and he lifted me out of bed, pulling me close to him. Even now, after just making love with him, I wanted him. He stroked his fingers down my arms and then took hold of my hands.
"I swear to you that I had nothing to do with what happened to your town. I will help you uncover the truth and if it has anything to do with this company then we will fix it."
I followed him out into the bathroom in a daze. I'd confessed all and he just ... accepted it?
"This is going to sound strange," he said, stopping in the middle of the bathroom, a naked Greek god in front of me. "Tonight there is a bachelor auction. My mother is holding it. I was avoiding it but now I think we'll go. Will you be my date? I want to introduce you to her."
This was too much. I'd barely held on to sanity the last time he brought me to a ball. Now he wanted me to meet his mother?
"I will. I'd love to." Where had that come from?
"Good." He grinned at me as he scooped out clothes up off the floor. "Because you need to buy me."
We dressed and then I followed him out into his office. I gave him the paper listing the documents the blackmailers had wanted destroyed. Mr. Stone looked over it, his eyes flickering over the page. Finally he handed it back to me.
"Go to the archives and retrieve all of these contracts. Bring them up here and then with you when Mi-oh comes to collect you. I have business to attend to but I will meet you at my mother's house."
My head was spinning and I felt strangely unbalanced. It all seemed too easy. He really didn't care I came here to destroy his business? He just ... trusted that I didn't burn down Stone Pharma?
"Yes, sir. But..."
"What is it?" Mr. Stone asked, taking my hands in his.
I felt the prickle of tears in my eyes and took a deep breath to stop them. I couldn't end up sobbing again in front of him.
"You ... you trust me?" I kept my face down, unable to look at him.
He stepped closer to me and brushed his fingers across my cheek and briefly across my collar.
"Look at me," he whispered.
I forced myself to look up into his intense gaze.
"I trust you completely," he said and then kissed me softly on the lips.
Before I could answer, he turned me around and swatted me on the rear. "Now get down to those archives!" he said with a grin. I smiled back at him and then poked my tongue out.
"Yes sir, Mr. Boss man," I said, bolting out of the room as he took a step towards me.
In the peace and quiet of the archives I finally had a chance to think. Mr. Stone hadn't seemed ruffled at my confession that I'd joined just so I could harm his company. What did that mean? Was this a normal occurrence in the life of a billionaire?
But he trusted me. I told him I'd joined his business just to hurt it and he told me he trusted me in return. I touched the collar around my neck and remembered what he'd said to me when he had offered it to me. He needed to trust me. I told him he could but it had been a lie.
I moved methodically through the list, collecting the contracts in a box without reading them. As the paperwork piled up I tried to piece together what I knew. It wasn't much really. Someone wanted a bunch of contracts destroyed and they wanted me to do it. I'm sure I'd heard Mr. Stone and Mr. Black mention Stone Pharma. Did Mr. Black have anything to do with all this? It just seemed unbelievable that the man who sent me a bacon breakfast with a truly horrible poem and then who asked me out like an embarrassed teenager would be the same man behind blackmail.