36. New York City

36

New York City

NICOLE LAMB

Months went by, months of stolen moments, criminal glances.

Trysts in supply closets, locked offices, the stairwell, his car in the parking lot, and now that they could stay after hours without getting locked in until the following day, with her bent over the second-floor conference table.

When Kingston told her what to do in a dark, sexy voice, his eyes intent on her, Nicole did it, whatever he wanted, any way he wanted, and she didn’t want to say no.

Maybe it was the scientist in her, but she just wanted to see what would happen.

Maybe it was an addictive adrenaline rush of getting away with it.

Maybe it was a dopamine craving because he positively reinforced her obedience with mind-blowing orgasms to the point where she worried about her brain cells dying.

Or some serotonin because she was happy around him.

But surely it wasn’t oxytocin.

It wasn’t love.

Because it was just sex. It was hot, seductive, obsessive, toe-curling sex, but love required more.

If it was love, she was on a fast track to getting her heart broken again, so it couldn’t be love.

Finally, one night when Kingston had taken her away for the weekend to a resort in Carmel by the Sea where no one from Sidewinder would discover them, he asked her as they lay in bed, sweat covering their bodies, “Come with me to New York for the Javits Center trade show.”

“We can’t travel together to hang out at a work event.”

“Why not?”

“Everyone will know,” she whispered in the dark.

“No one will find out, I promise,” he said, his voice rough. “Let me show you New York City. It’s brilliant.”

Sometimes he had a British accent, which was crazy, of course. He was born in Pennsylvania and now lived in Connecticut, but he did say he’d lived in London, Paris, and other places that West Coast Nicole had never been to. “I don’t know, Kingston.”

“Come, my little engineer. Let me take you to a Broadway show and supper at beautiful restaurants. Come see my life.”

“You sure live high on the hog for a small-time sales guy.”

“Oh my sweet, I do nothing small.”

Nicole put in for PTO, which was readily granted because she had four months saved up from the last few years.

The following Friday after work, Nicole picked up her backpack and roller bag from home, made sure her neighbor had a key to water the plants, and waited outside her apartment in the heat for Kingston to pick her up in his dark gray M-something BMW rental car.

She’d never seen anything Kingston actually owned. He flew to California and rented a different car every time, running the gantlet from medium gray to black, though they were all BMW M-class models. He stayed in various villas at the Four Seasons for each trip.

Everything Nicole had seen of his was a temporary rental, not even a long-term lease.

His clothes fit well, though. From the beginning, that first night when they’d gotten locked in and played Pebble Beach in the simulator, his clothes had been made of tailored fine cloth, and his shoes and belts had been soft, rich leather.

His credit card was black.

But that wasn’t—solid.

Kingston’s car slid to a stop in front of her, putt-putting from its tailpipe.

As always, he stepped out and trotted around to get her luggage. “I told you not to wait outside. I’ll park and come to your door.”

She dumped her backpack in his backseat and climbed in. “I’m fine. It’s a nice day.”

He laid her roller suitcase in the trunk along with his roller board suitcase and garment bag. “Suit yourself.”

“When we get Back East, are we going to your house first? Maybe for the weekend?”

“We’ll land in White Plains, but a car will take us into the city. I want to get started on showing you the Big Apple.”

“But you’ll need to do laundry.”

He smirked. “I had clothes sent ahead to the hotel. I’ll have the hotel dry clean these suits for the week, too.”

“Oh. Okay.”

A thought kept wriggling around in Nicole’s head: Kingston walked into her life, a visitation, but she never really entered his. He knew her work friends. She’d even taken him to a get-together with a few of her high school friends at a bar, where he was gregarious and curious, asking questions about them and her.

But not answering many questions.

He never answered questions about himself in any real depth.

Other than the fact that he knew a guy or some guys at Last Chance, Inc., and he’d gone to boarding school for junior high and high school, she only knew some biographical data about him.

Even this trip to, supposedly, his home turf wasn’t to his home, whatever that might be.

They were going to a city near where he lived.

A car service would pick them up from the airport and take them to a hotel in New York, where they would do tourist things for a few days, and then she would fly back home.

Connecticut wasn’t a stop on their itinerary.

Was Nicole worried that Kingston Moore had a wife and kids in a big house in Connecticut, and she was an unwitting side piece?

No.

Not a lot, anyway.

But she felt like she was circling his periphery and wasn’t near his heart.

Mulling over what-might-be wasn’t good for anyone.

This trip was supposed to be fun as he showed her around New York, the capital of the world, a place she’d never been.

He held the door for Nicole, and she scooted into the car.

When he’d walked around and got in the driver’s side, she asked, “So we’re not going to Connecticut at all?”

He smiled a confused frown. “Why do you want to go to Connecticut? There’s nothing to do in Connecticut. The eastern half of the state has some beaches, although Rhode Island is better for beach time.”

“I just—I don’t know—I want to see where you live. You’ve seen my apartment. You’ve slept over in my apartment.”

“I don’t even have any plants for you to meet. I’m never there. If I were in Connecticut any less, I’d stay in a hotel and establish residency someplace with lower taxes.”

Not California, then. “That seems—fiscally strategic.”

“You’ll love New York. I got us tickets to Wicked tomorrow night.”

“And tonight?”

“Dinner reservations, and then we’ll be wicked.”

A little thrill ran over her arms and down her back. “Yeah, that does sound good.”

They talked about Sidewinder, movies, and the weather after that, Kingston dodging traffic on the freeways and Nicole along for the ride. The traffic was normal for Friday afternoon traffic, a boiling white-water river of vehicles.

Kingston was a good driver, Nicole had decided some months before, just assertive enough in Southern California traffic so that they didn’t get sideswiped by the crazy people, but not aggressive enough to make it any more dangerous.

When they’d gotten caught in a jam after a Chargers game let out once, Nicole had mentioned something to him about how crazy the traffic was that day, and he’d just shrugged. “I drive in Boston, and I travel to Delhi. Nothing scares me.”

They talked so much that Nicole barely noticed that they had missed the exit to the airport. “Hey! Wasn’t that the John Wayne exit?”

“We’ll take the next one.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been talking so much and let you drive. Now we have to go around the long way.”

“We didn’t miss the exit,” he said. “We’re going in the back way.”

“I didn’t even know there was a back way into John Wayne.”

“We’re not going to the commercial terminal. I booked us out of the FBO.”

“What’s an FBO?”

“Fixed-based operator. You’ll see.”

And then, Nicole had the weirdest airport experience of her entire life.

Nicole had flown before. She’d been to all the states on the western seaboard, plus other western states for trips with friends, school trips, and family vacations. She’d learned to ski in Colorado as a kid and wasn’t a fan. Too cold. She’d been to Cabo with friends and definitely was a fan of Cabo. Art and culture weren’t any farther than Los Angeles or San Francisco at most. She lived an hour or two from Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, and Universal Studios Hollywood. Las Vegas was a long car trip or a short plane hop away.

How far do you really need to travel when you live in California?

But that day, Nicole learned that an FBO is a private airport terminal.

When Kingston drove up to the very front of the building and parked, an attendant came out, asked his name, and drove the rental car away with their luggage in the trunk.

Nicole lifted her hand like she could catch the retreating car. “My backpack was in there!”

“They’ll put it on the plane,” Kingston told her.

“It’s fragile. It shouldn’t go in the hold. It’s my carry-on.”

He glanced down at her, amusement crinkling his eyes. “You brought your work laptop, didn’t you?”

“I’d feel weird without it. Besides, this is a work trip for you because you have to do the show. I might as well noodle on designs while you’re at the Javits Center all day.”

He shrugged. “The hotel suite comes with a thousand-dollar credit at the spa that someone will have to use up while I’m at the trade show.”

“Well, I didn’t say I would work the whole time.”

The building was essentially a lounge with a few discreet ticketing and information counters tucked away near the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Costa Mesa.

As soon as they walked in, a man wearing a navy blue uniform that was not Air Force but kind of close approached them, holding a silver tray with drinks on it. “Hello again, Mr. Moore. I assume this is Miss Nicole Lamb?”

“Yes, indeed,” Kingston said, taking the two glasses off the tray and offering the champagne glass to Nicole. “Mimosa?”

Nicole loved mimosas. “Yes, thank you.”

The guy who’d approached them said, “I’m Vasily, and I’ll be your point of contact today. Your plane should be leaving shortly. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask Ms. Lamb to show some identification, as it is her first flight with us. If you’ll just follow me to the counter?—”

And they walked toward the counter where there was no line or even people milling around. A similarly uniformed lady smiled at Nicole as she glanced at Nicole’s offered driver’s license and typed quickly into the computer. “Excellent, and thank you, Ms. Lamb. Your flight will be leaving in about fifteen minutes. If you’d like to help yourself to some hors d’oeuvres, the brunch buffet is against the wall to your right, or you can order from the waitstaff.”

Kingston squired Nicole over to the buffet. When she dithered, uncertain about all this, he grabbed a plate, tossed some flaky pastries, and led her over to a hightop table. “Do you want coffee?”

“Oh, I had a cup before I left home. I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I asked. You usually have three cups before noon at Sidewinder.”

“If it’s not too much trouble?—”

Kingston flagged down a waiter who practically tire-screeched as he stopped beside their table. “A caramel macchiato for the lady and a cappuccino for me, please.”

The plane was a small, silver jet, and the seats inside looked like the leather-clad loungers Nicole had only seen when she’d passed through first class to get to the normal-people part of the plane.

Once they were on board and settled in seats so luxurious that Nicole almost fell asleep immediately, a flight attendant wearing the now-familiar blue uniform offered them yet more mimosa.

Nicole lifted it off the tray and fixed Kingston with a pointed stare. “This is a private airplane.”

Kingston was sipping his mimosa and raised one eyebrow over the rim of his glass. “Why, yes. Yes, it is.”

“Are you flying private every time you come into the office from Back East?”

“Not always.”

“But enough to where they know you by sight.”

Kingston set his mimosa on the table between their chairs with a rueful smile. “The plane is serviced by a flight management company. I booked the plane for today. Vasily and the desk attendant looked up my ID before we arrived at the airport and were looking for us. I’ve never met Vasily before.”

“And yet, that doesn’t happen when I fly Southwest to Las Vegas for the weekend with friends.”

His amused smile irritated her as he picked up his champagne again. “No, I suppose not.”

Nicole leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her hands clasped as if she were staging an intervention like back in college when she’d been a resident assistant in the dorms. “Look, Kingston, I know you’re a big shot and bringing in good amounts of money for Sidewinder—I mean, great sales numbers —but Sidewinder is having cash flow issues. I don’t know if you noticed, but ten percent of the staff was laid off, and everyone thinks more cuts are coming. Maybe we could have flown on a regular airplane. Maybe you should be flying on regular airplanes all the time.”

He shrugged and vaguely gestured to the airplane’s fuselage with his champagne flute. “It’s not coming out of Sidewinder.”

“Then where is it coming from? Do you have a sugar mommy or something? Or a sugar daddy? I won’t judge.”

“No, no. I am not trading ‘services rendered’ for private flights.”

Though Nicole sort of was, but she wasn’t going to look at that too closely.

“Another business venture I’m associated with provides private flights,” he said.

She squinted at him. “Do you have a second job? Because I think your contract with Sidewinder says you can’t do that.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing it out. “A second job. My contract with Sidewinder doesn’t forbid it.”

He was bringing in an extraordinary amount of sales. Nicole had peeked again that week, and his numbers had remained astounding and had increased.

Anyway, Nicole was R&D, and this seemed like an HR or Sales department problem. “I guess that’s okay, then.”

“Indeed, and rather than discuss employment contract details, how about we discuss what activities we will be partaking in this weekend?”

He smiled that sultry smile at her, half-smirk and half fire, and Nicole suddenly wondered just how many mimosas he was going to ply her with on this rather long private plane flight, and to what end.

Three.

It took three mimosas until Kingston chaperoned a very giggly Nicole past the air hostess who studiously avoided looking up at them into the private plane’s lavatory, where he sealed his hand over her mouth as he spun her around, flipped her sundress up to her waist, and angled himself inside her with one slick thrust.

The way his demeanor changed from charming and good-natured to darkly commanding took her breath away.

His growls in her ear from behind as he ground up into her, his muscular arm encircling her waist, his cologne’s dark musk, his finger between her legs massaging her clit, and then his teeth sharp on her shoulder avalanched her into an orgasm that shook her so hard she couldn’t see.

Maybe her reaction wasn’t so much adrenaline or serotonin, but Pavlovian.

When she was a limp octopus afterward, her limbs dangling like ribbons in a breeze with Kingston still hard inside her, he growled in her ear, “You are mine for the week, my little engineer.”

“Yes, please,” she whimpered.

“On the way back, I’ll book a flight without a cabin staff and with a locked-door pilot. I’ll bend you over and make you orgasm so hard you scream.”

Against all odds, her body managed one last pulse of ecstasy. “Yes, please.”

And her mind stopped thinking, for just a while, about how the new sales guy could summon up a private plane and fly her to New York.