The Supplicant Read online

  Eventually—with not a lot of time left to get to his office—she managed to convince herself that she might actually be able to do it—to ask him for some money, that she would, of course, pay back. Yet every step she took, in her one good businesslike outfit—a pretty suit she'd found at Goodwill for a steal—towards his door made her stomach cramp with nerves until she had to divert to the ladies' room in order to calm herself down.

  After facing herself in the mirror, making sure her make-up—which she almost never wore—was right and her hair was combed neatly rather than piled onto the top of her head in a scrunchie with tendrils falling messily around her face as it usually was, she forced herself to return to the path to his office.

  The outer office was empty—his secretary having already gone home for the day—and the door was closed. She stood before it, drew a deep breath, and tapped on it lightly.

  "Come."

  When she opened the door, he rose to greet her. "Ms. Valenti."

  Suddenly coming face to face with the many reasons why she shouldn't be doing this—at least, not with this man in particular—Arden suddenly felt shy, all of her bravado deserting her at once as he bore down on her, taking her hand in his and shaking it gently.

  "Thank you for coming in to see me."

  It was an unusual thing for him to say, considering her situation and the fact that she was coming to him as a supplicant.

  "Please sit down. Make yourself comfortable." He gestured towards the chairs in front of his desk, not bothering to go back to his own seat, but rather, leaning back against the front of his desk with those long legs crossed at the ankles.

  Arden sank into a seat more out of necessity than choice.

  "Before we discuss anything else, please allow me to apologize to you for making you so uncomfortable with me, while we were talking, that night that you felt you had to flee. I have many faults, not the least of which is bluntness—or so I've been told often enough that I ought to have long since learned when to hold my tongue."

  What woman could resist such a charming smile? she thought, although she noticed that he wasn't apologizing for what he'd said to her, but for making her uncomfortable by having said it.

  "Do I have your forgiveness?" he asked, and she had nothing but a sense of absolute sincerity from him.

  "Yes, of course, Mr. Frazier."

  He inclined his head to her. "Thank you. And I think we can dispense with the formalities, don't you, Arden? Considering what you've come here to talk to me about?"

  "Yes…" Having just agreed to be on a first name basis with him, her first impulse was to call him sir, regardless. "Loch."

  It was the first time he'd ever heard his name from her lips, and his body was responding to it as if she was whispering it beseechingly while her face was buried against his suddenly, painfully erect cock.

  "I have to admit that I was somewhat surprised—considering your reaction that evening—when Sylvia came to me and told me that you might be open to making some kind of arrangement with me. I admit I had to think about it quite seriously before I decided to see you."

  "Well, I think that's wise—one shouldn't jump into any kind of financial arrangement." She leaned forward a bit. "And, Loch, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you're even considering this. I realize that I have no real connection to you other than that you're my best friend's boss."

  "But then, that just makes it better, doesn't it? Isn't that what you're finally looking for? Something simple and easy without all of the usual strings attached?"

  She thought he was putting it in an unusual manner, but she supposed he could be referring to all of the paperwork necessary to apply for a loan through normal channels—although she was so overextended she would never get one anyway, which was one of the reasons she was sitting before him.

  "Yes, I guess that's true." Arden fiddled nervously with her fingers in her lap.

  "Shall we get right to the negotiations, then?" he asked, wanting to kiss those fingers and then give them something else to wrap around besides each other.

  "Uh, okay."

  He leaned back a little. "I was thinking about a hundred thousand dollars."

  Arden's eyes opened wide, and she couldn't help but laugh. "Wow—I'm flattered that you'd want to give me that much, but uh, no, thank you."

  Loch looked confused. "No, thank you? Do you want more?"

  Still smiling, Arden answered, "No, I want considerably less."

  His confusion deepened, and he actually walked back around to sit in his desk chair, regarding her with a puzzled look on his face. "You want less?"

  "Yes. Quite a bit less."

  Feeling a bit lost, he nonetheless asked, "Well, how much were you thinking of?"

  "Twenty-eight thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four dollars and thirty-five cents."

  He blinked slowly a few times, looking dumbstruck. "How, may I ask, did you come up with that precise a figure?"

  Arden wasn't one to air her problems to someone she didn't know, but she figured that he was lending her the money, so he had the right to know the reasons why she needed it.

  "My house is heavily mortgaged and I'm behind on the payments, to the point where I'm quite sure the bank is going to take some sort of action if I don't come right soon. Some of that would bring me up to date. I have a mountain of credit card bills that are, I'm ashamed to confess, also in arrears, along with the medical bills—"

  He held up an enormous hand. "Say no more." Loch pinned her with a stare that was quite blatantly hungry. "But I think you're selling yourself very short, Arden. I'd be willing to bet that—even for just one night—you're going to prove to be worth more than the hundred grand I offered in the first place."

  He could see by the shocked look on her face that she had no idea what he was talking about. He'd already gotten his phone out to make the transfer, wanting to get this settled and more eager for her than he wanted to admit to himself, but that deer in headlights look stopped him dead in his tracks.

  Loch leaned back in his chair and asked, "Tell me, Arden. Why did you come here this evening?"

  At least now, he was saying something she understood. "To ask you for a loan. I thought that Sylvia had spoken to you about it and told you all about it. Is that not true?"

  He smiled, although he had a feeling he wasn't going to be smiling, this evening, when he crawled into his cold, lonely bed.

  "I think that Sylvia and I—or Sylvia and you—or perhaps Sylvia and the both of us—got our lines crossed. You see, Arden," he began, returning to his spot in front of his desk. "It was my impression from Sylvia—and I'm not necessarily saying that she deliberately meant to give me this impression—that the money I was going to give you wouldn't be a loan in the usual sense of the word, but rather more of a-a gift in exchange for…services rendered?"

  She might not have been most men's idea of gorgeous, overall, but she was absolutely beautiful to him when she was outraged, shooting up out of the chair with her hands clenched into fists. "Son of a…I am going to kill her with my bare hands!" She actually took a step towards the door, then stopped, forcing herself to turn around and face him. "That was certainly not why I asked her to talk to you. I am—was—going to ask for a private installment loan with monthly payments made to you. I have every intent of paying you back, but not in—"

  Loch delighted in watching her face grow redder and redder, and although he knew he shouldn't have, he was definitely becoming aroused at her embarrassment. He smiled, although it didn't make it to his eyes. "I understand that now, but you get my confusion, especially after what we were talking about that night. I thought you might have come around to my way of thinking."

  If he turned out all the lights in the office, her face would have brightened it like the sun.

  She couldn't look up at him. She just couldn't, cowardly as it was, she supposed. "I'm sorry you were misled."

  He crossed his arms over his chest. "So it's entirely out of the question, then?"


  Her head shot up. "What?"

  Loch stood, putting his hands into his pockets as he looked down at her. "I'll give you that hundred thousand for a weekend with you. No other repayment expected of any kind, except that you would submit yourself to me completely during that timeframe, which would be of my choosing, since I'm not an artiste with a flexible schedule. And I'm afraid, my dear, that would be the only kind of arrangement I would be interested in making with you. I have no interest in being your private bank. I don't want money from you. No, I want something I think is much more rarified, much more valuable to me. I want your complete and total submission, so that I can show you that you needn't spend the rest of your life as a nun because your beloved husband has died. I want to force you to recognize the fact that you can be brought to excruciating heights by a man who doesn't know you very well or love you in the least and who will never make love to you, but that you can be fucked so hard you forget your name by that very same man."

  Arden opened her suddenly parched mouth, but nothing came out. She couldn't seem to wrench herself away from him, as if she was completely mesmerized by what he was saying. She should have been running away from him, running down the hallway and down the stairs and back to the relative safety of her car.

  But she felt as if her feet were rooted where they were, even as she stared down at them.

  Loch took a step towards her, watching her carefully, gauging her reactions as he took another step, so that she was now easily within reach of his long arms, surprised that she hadn't backed away from him, but not willing to question his good fortune.

  "Don't answer just yet, Arden," he whispered, so softly she felt compelled to look up at him. That was when he reached out and tugged her into his arms, enjoying her slight, ladylike, "oof," holding her against his hard, muscular body, plastering her blatantly against him and tipping her entire body just slightly towards him, so that she was off balance and had to lean on him to keep from falling forward.

  His fingers delved forcefully into that carefully coifed bun, pulling out the pins that held it in subjugation and letting her wavy tresses fall over his hand while he tilted her head back and kissed her in a way that was at once almost tender—but not quite—and almost ruthless—but not quite but that very definitely demanded a response from her.

  One that she found utterly impossible to deny him.

  Her mouth opened as if it always had and always would when his lips slanted across hers, and he took what she was offering without the slightest bit of hesitation, accepting her slight submission as his due and demanding more, bending her to him in every sense of the word as he claimed the deepest recesses of her mouth, plundering and possessing until—a long while later—he finally lifted his head.

  Loch's eyes raked over every inch of her face, noting the slight sheen of perspiration, the heavy breathing that matched his rhythm perfectly, the lowered lids over enlarged pupils.

  Arden stiffened a bit in his arms as she fought for control—fought herself and her sense of morals and duty and commitment and loyalty—losing badly at every turn.

  And he would have none of it. "No, don't fight me now." He pressed his lips to hers in an almost gentle kiss. "You said that night that I didn't know you, and in some ways, I don't. But I bet I know more about you than you think I do."

  It was all she could do to muster enough strength to raise an eyebrow at him.

  The fingers that had been buried in the hair at the back of her head slipped down to tug slightly at the delicate chain she'd proudly worn around her neck for more than a decade. "This is your collar. He was more than just your husband, wasn't he? He was your dom."

  That—more than almost anything he could have said or done—snapped her out of her trance and she wrenched herself away from him, reaching for the purse she had dropped on the ground by her chair.

  For his part, he let her go without trying to stop her in the least, his hands lingering in the same position they had been when he was holding her. He didn't try to prevent her from leaving, but he wasn't silent about it. "I didn't say that the heights I'd bring you to would always be those of pleasure, Arden."

  His words were almost soothing, although his tone abraded her flesh and her heart—but not in the same way at all.

  She made her way to the door, leaving it open behind her as she stalked down the hallway towards the stairs, just as she'd imagined she should have earlier.

  "My offer stands, Arden, whenever you decide to accept it. Don't wait too long. I won't be happy if I find out you've been homeless when you have the means to prevent it."

  Surprisingly, of everything he'd said to her during that truly bizarre encounter, it was the last ones that kept running through her head.

  It sounded just like something her husband would have said—if he'd ever stooped low enough to find himself in similar circumstances with her, and that was much more unacceptable to her than anything else he'd ever said to her.

  Chapter 3

  How'd it go?

  She got the text even before she got home and ignored it, along with the eleven further texts that arrived not much later, as well as the seven emails, two phone calls and a voicemail that followed.

  If she was actually calling her, then Sylvia must have realized the error of her ways and was truly desperate to make up to her. She hated talking on the phone.

  Of course, every bit of it was overly apologetic, not that she bothered to glance at more than the first few words of the first few texts. She was sorry. Arden already knew that. She wouldn't be surprised if her friend had already called Loch and found out what a fiasco it all had been, all on account of her.

  For her own part, Arden was inches away from sobbing as she walked slowly around a house that had seen so much love and laughter—not to mention sex, since they'd christened pretty much every room—between herself and her husband. And now, she was relatively certain that she was going to lose it, lose what had been her husband's legacy and the center of all of their wonderful memories when they'd been meant to grow old in it together and die in each other's arms.

  Well, one of them had been able to fulfill his destiny. Her, not so much.

  Not long after she'd fallen face down onto her bed, the one she'd shared with him, in a storm of tears for herself and the mess she found herself in, allowing herself for the first time in a long time to truly wallow in despair and self-pity, she heard someone banging on her door and knew exactly who it was.

  After forcing herself to get up, Arden stood in the foyer, glaring fiercely in her friend's general direction. "Go away!"

  "Nope," Sylvia answered flatly. "You knew when you ignored me that I'd show up here, and I'm not leaving, even if I have to spend the night on your verandah."

  "Go back to Vi. She needs you. I don't."

  There was a long pause that reflected the depths of pain that existed on both sides of the door.

  Then a very quiet, very heartfelt, "Ouch," drifted to her ears.

  For once, her best friend didn't sound flippant in the least.

  "Okay, that hurt, and I know you're really angry with me, and I'm sorry. And Vi's with Mrs. Trumbull."

  Since the old woman had neither chick nor child, she doted on Violet. Sylvia could stay as long as she needed to in order to wear Arden down.

  So, Arden decided to skip to the chase and removed the chain and the bolt from the door. Syl had long since been given her own key out of self-defense, so that Arden wouldn't have to get out of bed to let her in. When she was going through a very bad divorce, Sylvia would often come stay at her best friend's place rather than in an apartment in which she felt unsafe.

  "Look, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have meddled; I shouldn't have interfered like that and set you up to get all huffy and mad at him over the misunderstanding—and at me for being stupid and impulsive and not considering the consequences of my actions. It was idiotic of me. I'm just so sorry."

  Despite that she could hear the sincerity in that little s
peech didn't mean that Arden was through ignoring her friend. "Just because I let you in so people didn't think I have a vagrant on my porch doesn't mean I'm talking to you."

  At that, Syl casually flipped her off with the surety of long acquaintance, although Arden was pointedly not looking at her, so she missed it. They'd weathered worse things than this together and come out on the other side closer than ever, although Sylvia never again wanted to see her friend as devastated as she had been when she'd lost her husband. This wasn't nearly that bad, but it was, admittedly, a major fuck up on her end.

  "You don't have to talk to me; you just have to listen. I've never heard anything bad about how Loch treats his women, and you know what a hotbed of gossip most offices are and how people seem to want to tell me everything, like I'm some kind of priest in a confessional. If he was a dog with women, I'd know. He's had a lot of women, yes. But all I've ever heard—and this is from friends of friends, not employees, because he doesn't dip his wick where he works, which is a point in his favor—is that he's phenomenal in bed. Now, of course, that means different things to different people, but still. I've heard that from several women, most of whom were sporting really nice jewelry he'd bought them—supposedly unsolicited—while they were seeing each other—and I know he completely paid off one girl's student loans."

  "Robbing the cradle much?" she murmured sarcastically under her breath while staring blankly at the contents of her fridge.

  But her friend wasn't having it. "Why not, as long as they're legal?"

  Arden huffed at that.

  "Look. It was wrong of me to do that, and you can feel free to beat me about the head and shoulders with a pillow any time you'd like as penance, but I just—I wanted you to live a little. You've been so bottled up, and you've kept yourself apart from almost everyone and everything except me and your family. I know you miss him. I do, too. He was my best friend, right along with you. And I know you'll never find that kind of love again, but that doesn't mean you have to become a nun, for crying out loud. You've got another forty something years on this planet, and I don't want you to spend them alone."