How many kisses does it take?
One, two, three, four, five.
I dreamed of Jackson Stone tying me up and making me count kisses. Then he turned me over and made me count as he spanked me.
How much will it take?
The dream Jackson whispered to me and dream Delilah must have had it together more than me because she replied:
Everything.
*
I awoke in Jackson Stone's bed, stretching out like a cat in a sunbeam and then turned over to see he was gone.
Damn that man!
I sat up, looking for the golden envelope but this time there wasn't one. I smiled anyway and flopped back down, completely relaxed. I could still feel where he had spanked me yesterday and as I traced my fingers over my rump, the skin tingled. I stayed in bed a few more minutes thinking of nothing in particular before deciding to get up. I slipped out of bed and put on the silk robe that was folded neatly on the chest at the end of the bed before walking over to the window pondering the mysterious Mr. Stone and what he had told me yesterday.
His business partner had seduced his girlfriend all those years ago ... and then they'd stayed business partners. Had that been the beginning of the icy wall he built around himself? Or just the final push he needed to cover his heart in iron?
What was I then? Some girl who no money who would take him away from his billions and bring him back to life? He wanted to leave his world and ... come build mud-brick houses?
I shook my head and reminded myself that I was working from essentially a ten minute conversation. Someone reveals a tiny bit of information about themselves and then you suddenly think you know them, inside and out. You have the reason to explain who they are and now you view everything about them through that lens. They stop being a complicated individual with a thousand motivations and become a solved puzzle.
I stood at the window and looked down into the garden. There amongst the flourish of colors was the red mud-brick house tangled in vines dripping with blue flowers.
A girl had broken his heart and he'd built a house to forget her. Or maybe to keep her memory in. Then he'd taken off his armor to reveal some of his past and my only response was to tell him I found contracts with his name on them...
I signed in frustration and how truly dimwitted I'd been and resolved that next time I would just kiss him. Or fuck him. Or make him a sandwich. Anything was better than what I had actually done.
I brushed my fingers over my ass, feeling the faint soreness from yesterday. Not that it had turned out all bad from being an idiot...
I had a quick shower and then wrapped a thick white robe around me before heading downstairs. Yes, it was a work day and yes, I was well past being late to work now but somehow I felt we weren't going to be heading into the office today. I found Mr. Stone off in the east side of the mansion. He was sitting at a large table, the contracts from the office spread around him. He tapped on the laptop in front of him before looking up as I entered.
He smiled but in it I saw worry and stress. He walked over to me and kissed me before giving me a brief hug.
"Nadine will make you breakfast. And there are clothes in the guest room upstairs for you. Mi-oh helped pick them out."
He turned and sat back down behind his laptop as though that concluded matters.
"I bought you at that auction so that means I own you for a while. It's question time." I folded my arms and gave him my most serious look.
"Yes?" He looked up at me, amused.
"Where did you get the contract with Mr. Black signature on it?"
"The one I showed you before I spanked your ass?" He raised is eyebrow at me.
"Yes, sir. That one. The one you showed me before you fucked me." I raised an eyebrow in return.
"It was at my mother's house. We stored business documents there years ago. Then my father died and it was a big mess in the transition. The place has so many storage rooms it just became one of those problems that you let go. I had almost forgotten they were there."
"So that's why we went to the bachelor auction?"
"No," he said, his eyes coolly appraising me. "We went to the bachelor auction so I could introduce you to my mother. The contract was two birds, one stone."
I filed that away in my mind somewhere between holy moly and OMG. He really had wanted me to meet his mother.
"And what are you going to do with it - call the police?"
He shook his head and looked out across the mess of paper. "It's not enough. Black is ... he's always been a risk-taker and playing on the edge of the law is his specialty. But there's one thing he's better at than that. He sets up companies that own companies that own other companies. Layers within layers and so if anything goes wrong he can shut it down and move on. It works and he transfers money between the businesses. We used to do it a lot. Split, merge, reverse merger, stock buyouts, licensing processes to other businesses.
But then about two months ago I notice some of our competitors have similar technology to ours. Or more exactly, ours was like theirs. And I start to look into it and discover all these little companies working together. Money flowing around them like an ocean. Never landing anywhere. Debt appearing and disappearing. Black has been in charge of chemical and pharmaceutical research for a long time and I run the rest. But I think he's been draining debt out of the business, covering it up and sometime soon it's all going to come toppling down on us."
He sat back in his chair and let out a frustrated sigh.
"And I think it will be big enough to destroy Stone-Black entirely. Unless I can find some way to prove it and stop it. But I have to find it, first."
Finally some answers but I needed more.
"Black was here and you were talking with him. What was that about?"
"Eavesdropping? Tsk, tsk."
I pulled out a chair opposite from Mr. Stone, sat down and picked up a contract as though I was going to read it.
"I have extraordinary hearing," I said, talking mainly to the sheets of paper in my hand.
"I found some anomalies in some of our solar power research. We hired certain people with particular skills and patents but then it looked like they soaked up money without producing much at all. I found some of those shells within shell companies. He came here to convince me to double our funding or we'd lose billions. I told him I'd think about it and he told me we didn't want another Stone Pharma on our hands."
I put down the contract. Mr. Stone was watching me closely.
"What did he mean?"
"When it burned down we didn't get much from the insurance company because most of the research hadn't been commercialized in any sense. At the time it was a massive blow to us. Nearly took us under. Later on we managed to make millions from it but it was a close call. He seems to think that if we don't double-down on the solar research then we'll lose it all."