Chapter 77

Chapter 77


Shortly after takeoff, Zander sent her aunt a heads-up of what was to come. Diplomatic it was not, but if she was looking for direct and honest, she certainly received it, and in spades.

Zander: Hopping on a plane to discuss Matheo with you, who, by the way, fucked my second wife. Consequently, I was back with Elvie, my first wife. I am bringing her over, so keep your claws tucked in.

P.S.

Bella, my assistant, booked a conference call with the entire board later this afternoon, and that includes your philandering ex-husband. I sent you some recordings you need to listen to, so please do that in between auditioning for new boy toys.

P.P.S.

I meant it about the claws. I am planning on keeping this one for a while.

After they landed, Elvie was surprised to find they were sharing a Mandarin Hotel suite, but she didn’t let it show. She dove headfirst into the huge bed, making a snow angel on the sheets. She didn’t know why that made him want to fuck her so hard that he’d nail her to the mattress. Zander only knew that scraping her off of it was going to be a bitch, so he opted for jumping in the shower, seeing as he’d been working for thirty-six hours straight so they could take this trip and probably smelled like something had died inside of him, which wasn’t far off.

They still hadn’t discussed his end-of-contract with Kristal properly. He didn’t think it was worth mentioning. They were both available now, mentally and physically. He could fuck Elvie raw against the news green screen with zero consequences, other than having to replace the screen, which was something they were already planning on.

Everyone at work was already privy to the fact that Kristal had gotten the boot after her little performance. Including, by definition, Almera and Geraldo. Whatever his name was.

When he left the bathroom, Elvie was out on the balcony, her elbows on the white bannister overlooking the ocean. Her ass, clad in those ripped black jeans, swayed from side to side as she stood on one foot. Zander was still wrapped in a towel when he approached her, clasping her midriff from behind and grinding his erection into her ass.

“Spent some overtime to cover for your ass.” He bit her earlobe, feeling her body break into chills beneath my touch.

“Looks like you’re still covering my ass,” she sassed, wiggling her round butt so his shaft was now between her cheeks through her jeans and his towel. Zander’s hands slid down, undoing the button on her jeans and sliding the zipper down.

“Bend over and hold on to the bannister, wife. Gonna get a little rocky.” He licked his lips, sliding down her jeans and underwear in one go and dropping the towel.

He wasn’t much of an exhibitionist, which was why he’d also rented the rooms on either side of them. But of course he wasn't going to let her be privy to his level of crazy.

What can I say? Having the option to fuck Elvie everywhere in the room and outside of it took first priority, and I wasn’t much of a hedonist, but booking an entire floor was a luxury I’d chosen to take this weekend. He thought to himself as I spread her ass cheeks and slapped her outer thigh lazily as I guided my cock into her already-dripping pussy. I wanted to go slow and steady this time. The last thing I needed was for her to tip over the edge. Literally, not figuratively.

“Oh, Zander..." My name on her lips was a prayer.

“Yes?” I asked, thrusting a little harder, bending her down so her upper body was level with my cock, and placing a hand over her lower back.

“I missed this,” she whimpered.

I missed you. But of course, she couldn’t milk those words out of me if my life depended on them. I slapped her ass instead.

"I didn't peg you for a filthy girl, wife. Yet here you are, fucking in front of him.”

“In front of who?” A trace of panic touched her voice, and I laughed, gripping her head and fucking her a little harder.

“Kipling,” I hissed, glancing at her notebook lying on the bed behind us, next to her book.

Yesterday, after Kristal had unleashed her crazyness in my newsroom, I’d caught Elvie writing around the deep hole my ex had created in her notebook, and I’d suppressed the urge to rush out and bite down on her lower lip in front of everyone. Elvie’s loyalty, even to objects, mesmerised me.

“Jesus,” she moaned as I thrust deeper into her. “You’re such a jerk.”

“So I’ve been told a million times. Half of them are by you.”

I dipped my hand between her legs and rubbed her slit, licking her neck and jaw and the inside of her ear. I didn’t want to admit that fucking Elvie felt different and that I was doing things with her that I didn’t usually do with my one-night stands. I wasn’t a thoughtful lover. I wasn’t necessarily against eating pussy if it looked delicious, but putting my mouth on a crack meant I was really crazy for a girl. And licking and sucking her every body part while fucking her? That was a first. I didn’t even remember preparing Kristal like that.

I felt Elvie tighten and spasm around me, and then she came all over my cock, her ass shuddering against my groin. I wanted to come as hard as she had, so I grabbed her by the hair and turned her around, plastering her against the glass of the balcony door.

“Safety first,” I groaned as I drove mercilessly into her. My balls tightened, and I pulled out, milking my cum all over her lower back. That was more like it—a fuck, not lovemaking. I gave her ass one last slap and walked into the room, leaving the towel on the floor.

“I’m ordering room service. Clean up and let me know what you want, because your pussy is about to be my starter.”



They never ate the lobster he ordered.

Elvie said eating a room-serviced lunch was clinical and sad, and that vacation meals equaled dodgy street food from questionable trucks and 7-11 candy bars he didn’t know existed.

She was begging for food poisoning, but Zander couldn’t deny her. And that was a problem she was beginning to recognize. There was something free and unhinged in the way she viewed life.

Her lack of materialistic greed both stunned and ate at him.

So they went for a walk on the beach after they video chatted with their daughter and promised the little girl that they'd bring her here next month as they ate peanut butter sandwiches and drank iced tea on the promenade. The food was greasier than Geral’s hair, yet oddly satisfying.

Elvie then asked if he knew how to skip stones across the water. Zander told her there were not many things he couldn’t do, and he meant it. He didn’t mention that their servant had taught him how to do that during summer vacations at our chateau in St. Jean-Cap-de-Ferrat. He wasn’t normally ashamed of his elite upbringing, but for reasons unknown, he decided to keep this to himself.

Elvie asked him to teach her. He did.

“Flat, round stones are best. And you want to go fast.” Zander wrapped her fingers around a little stone he’d found.

She held it in her hand with a smile similar to the one Kristal had flashed at him when he gave her the engagement ring. Both were stones. Only one was worth more than a fleet of Bentleys. Yet Elvie only cared about the important stuff, which reminded him to look down at her feet.

“Yellow?” he asked.

She grinned impishly. “Figure it out.”

They took a walk, and he didn’t hold her hand, he didn’t kiss her, and he didn’t fucking breathe, because he didn’t trust himself not to do any of those things if he looked her way. Zander was torn between liking how it felt to spend time with her and hating how she made him want things he’d never cared about.

“How’s your relationship with your aunt?” she asked.

He sighed and thought, We’re officially in family territory. Fun-fucking-tastic.

“It’s okay. Why? ”

“I sometimes wonder what it feels like. To have a mother—I mean, a mother who cares.”

He raised an eyebrow. He loved his aunt like a mother, but he couldn’t commit to saying they had a great relationship. For one thing, they were business partners, and he knew she’d run him over for the right price. Still, she was better than Matheo, not that it said a whole lot.

“Depends on the mother. I have a feeling your brother is better than both my aunt and Matheo combined, so I wouldn’t worry,” Zander mumbled.

“My ill brother,” she added.

“Not for long. The secondary growths are shrinking, and he’s responding very well to the treatments. He will be fine, mentally and physically.”

She raised her brow. “And how do you know that?” She stopped walking, her entire body pointing at him like an arrow.

He shrugged. “I visit him every Sunday when you go to the library.”

“Oh, really?”

“We were friends before. It wasn’t a big deal. We were both Roma fans, and it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. My career was my life, which meant that on Sundays, I had no life. My soft spot for Joey had nothing to do with our arrangement, and I certainly didn’t want you to think I was expecting anything in return. Plus, I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about a relationship.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” She smiled, but she didn’t look surprised.

“I'm telling you now.”

She frowned.

He always arrived a few minutes early. He tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t want Elvie to bump into him on her way to the library, but in practice, he liked to stop at the Polish deli and watch her through the window as she walked to the building with her headphones deep in her ears. Zander always wondered what she was listening to.

“Yeah." Zander resumed our walk.

She followed, jogging behind him. “You can’t just walk away from this conversation. You’ve been visiting my brother, who you thought killed your parents, and taking care of him, and you haven’t even told me,” she panted.

He liked her little pants. He wanted them against his palm as he fucked her somewhere public, where no one could hear.

“Watch me do exactly that. Walk away from this conversation.”

“Zander, why?”

“Why am I walking? Because I can. Because I have legs. Why am I walking away from this conversation? Because it’s pointless, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means.” He stopped again, this time in front of an old record store with signs in Spanish covering its display window. He wasn’t even sure if it was open, but he wanted them to stop talking because he wasn’t ready.

Calling it a real relationship was one thing.

Acting like they were a couple was another.

He pushed the door open. He walked in, and she slipped in after him. The place was dark, with only vinyl records in sight. A man who looked like Meatloaf (the singer, not the dish) was snoring behind the counter, dribbling into a copy of NME. Elvie immediately shut up and started browsing.

Nice save, asshole.

Getting her into a record shop was like giving a baby a pacifier. Only hotter, because he still remembered her playlist and had imagined fucking her to it countless times while they were close to killing each other in the office.

“Did you know Barry Manilow didn’t write his song ‘I Write the Songs’?” She slid said singer’s record out of a batch, grinning at him.

He didn’t. He liked that he didn’t. His general knowledge was usually superior to everyone else in his vicinity—it came with the territory of making news and having to know everything about anything. Money, properties, finance, and more money talk was his music. Nah!

But Elvie was just as hungry for information as he was, which made her even more attractive. Not to mention lethal.

“Did you know ‘Jingle Bells’ was originally written for Thanksgiving?” he countered.

“Impossible.” She made a shocked face, her jaw slacking. He laughed. She poked him with the tip of the record she held. “The British Navy uses Britney Spears’ songs to scare off Somali pirates. I shit you not.”

They were playing like this now?

“The piano Freddie Mercury plays in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the same one Paul McCartney plays in ‘Hey, Elvie’,” he countered, leaning into her face and flicking her little nose. “Hey, Elvie.”

He thought. Was I flirting? I was. But why? It didn’t make any sense. She was already mine in all the ways that mattered. She was in my bed. I’d shoved my fingers into every single hole in her body. Why was I doing this?