Page 5 of Carnal Desire (Sapphic Billionaire Club #1)

Sadie

I t had been a long time since I felt like someone was in my corner.

Since my mom died in fact. Her death had been sudden.

One day she was fine and the next one a blood vessel burst inside her brain.

She was dead before she hit the floor. For the first nineteen years of my life it had just been me and my mom against the world, so her death hit me hard.

That’s why when I started talking to Jane I was so easily wooed.

I felt alone, and desperate for affection.

We met on a gaming site and somehow that led to us becoming online friends.

I created this whole romantic fantasy in my head and when Jane encouraged me to drop out of school and come live with her in Chicago, I thought I was finally going to get my happily ever after.

It didn’t take long to realize that Jane wasn’t exactly Princess Charming.

She held all the power in our relationship, and I never challenged it.

My biggest regret wasn’t that I moved to Chicago to have a relationship with her, it was that I stayed in a relationship with her about five years longer than I should have.

That was the thing about abusive relationships, they started off okay in the beginning. Then something happened and you wrote it off, but one bad incident followed another until you didn’t realize how bad it had become.

Jane had never hit me, but she’d been emotionally abusive. She’d destroyed my sense of self, always making me feel small and worthless, then when she was done with me she stole every dollar I had.

It was my fault for being passive with her. For not learning to stand up for myself, for not learning to stand on my own two feet. I’d learned my lesson the hard way. There was no way I’d ever be so dependent on another person again. I was strong and independent now, relying only on myself.

But when I saw the fierce expression on Ariel’s face as she promised to ruin Jane for what she did to me, something broke loose inside me. And for the first time in a long time I felt something like hope. And the sensation that someone actually cared for me.

Maybe it was inappropriate for me to hug her like this, but I wasn’t sorry about it. Not when her soft curves were pressed against me and my face was buried in the soft skin of her neck. Somehow she smelled good, even after a long day of traveling.

I pulled away slowly, regretfully. “I’ll let you take your shower.”

“Sadie.”

I paused, my face about six inches from hers, and looked into the chocolate brown depths of her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Everything’s going to be okay now, I promise.”

She couldn’t promise that, but for some crazy reason I believed her.

Ten minutes later someone knocked on the front door. Ariel was still in her bedroom, so I pulled open the front door, thinking it was the pizza guy. It wasn’t.

Two blonde women stood in the doorway, looking me over curiously.

“You must be Sadie,” the woman with the wavy hair said as she pushed past me to enter the condo. “I’m Grace and this is Maeve. We’re Ariel’s friends.”

I recognized Ariel’s best friends and business partners from the pictures scattered around the condo, as well as from some magazine articles I’d read about Ariel. I knew that they lived on the two floors beneath Ariel, although I’d never been inside either of their units.

They were both beautiful women, effortlessly sophisticated, dressed casually but wearing clothes that clearly cost more than anything I owned.

The women studied me carefully, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was coming up lacking.

I felt frumpy in my wrinkled shorts and faded tee shirt.

I wondered if they could tell that I wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you both. Ariel should be out in a minute.”

I started to close the door, but then I realized the pizza guy was walking up from the elevator. He handed me two large pizza boxes with a paper bag balanced on top, then hustled off after saying, “Thanks for the nice tip, lady. Enjoy your pizza.”

Apparently Theo had taken care of everything.

“Ooh good, the pizza is here! I’m starving!” Maeve eyed the boxes in my hand hungrily. “We got here just in time.”

I wondered how she knew we were getting pizza.

“Who invited you two?” Ariel called as she walked down the hallway with a bemused smile.

She was wearing navy blue sleep pants and a baggy Chicago Cubs tee shirt, her feet bare. With her face free of makeup and her dark hair slicked back from the shower, she looked younger and more carefree.

“Theo said you had a new friend, so we came to meet her,” Maeve said with a wicked smile. “He sent extra pizza for us. We thought we’d get to know your new friend.”

Maeve and Grace turned to study me again. I resisted the urge to squirm under their perusal. They didn’t seem judgmental, just curious about me.

“Remind me to fire that blabbermouth.” Ariel slid one of the boxes out of my hand and gave it to Maeve. “Why don’t you nosy bitches enjoy your extra pizza downstairs?”

“But…”

She gave her friends a little shove. “Go on now, kids. I’ll talk to you later.”

Maeve and Grace exchanged a look, then their gazes swung from Ariel to me and back again.

“You’ll bring her for Found Family Dinner tomorrow, right?” Maeve demanded, moving slowly towards the door.

Ariel looked the tiniest bit uncomfortable. “Maybe.”

“Oh this is interesting,” Grace said. “You know, I had a feeling about this, didn’t I tell you, Maeve?”

“You sure did,” Maeve answered, her expression amused as she looked between me and Ariel again.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but judging by the expression on Ariel’s face, she did.

“Bye now,” Ariel said firmly.

Ariel hustled her friends out the door and I went in search of plates and napkins.

She came into the kitchen behind me, dropping the food on the dining room table along the way.

The kitchen, dining room, and living room all flowed into one large open space, affording a view of the city skyline from every room.

In the distance I could see the Sears Tower, as the locals called it, or the Willis Tower, as tourists would say.

It was a whole Chicago thing, and I’d lived here long enough now to be in on it.

“Plates are up here,” Ariel said, reaching over my head.

I could feel the heat of her body against my back, and I resisted the sudden urge to lean back and rub myself against her.

She smelled good, like the citrus body wash she favored.

Not that I’d ever noticed her body wash while cleaning her shower.

Oh God, what was I doing? Lusting after my boss and the woman who was helping me out? I was such a jerk.

I scooted out to grab some napkins, then took the plates from Ariel. She retrieved two glasses, pouring us each some water from the filtered dispenser on the refrigerator, then she followed me to the table.

We were both quiet as we served ourselves a few slices of pizza along with some breaded mushrooms.

“I’m sorry if my friends made you feel uncomfortable,” Ariel said.

“They didn’t,” I replied. “Well, not much.”

“We’ve all been tight since we were babies,” she explained. “Our parents were friends and the three of us went all the way through school together before starting our business.”

“You’re in real estate development, right?” I asked, pretending like I hadn’t devoured every single bit of public information on this woman that I could. And spied on whatever I saw in this condo.

“Primarily, although AGM – our company -- has other business holdings as well, mostly nightclubs and restaurants,” she explained. “We all have separate enterprises, but our joint ventures are the big moneymakers.”

I nodded, feeling completely out of my depth. Our eyes caught and held, and for some reason I started to feel hot. A trickle of sweat traced its way down my spine, but I couldn’t look away. When Ariel finally glanced down at her plate, a flush of pink across her cheeks, I felt ready to combust.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. I hadn’t had pizza in more than six months, and I devoured it like it was my last meal.

I’d been relying on the dinners they gave us at the shelter – usually casseroles of some kind – and the boxed lunches of sandwiches and noodle cups they sent us off with in the morning.

Things like pizza were a luxury for me right now. I was going to enjoy every bite.

“Do you have plans this weekend?” Ariel finally asked.

I resisted saying that my weekend plans involved me wandering around the city until it was late enough to go back to the shelter.

“No.”

“Great, you’re going to hang out with me.”

My head popped up. “Oh no, you’re already letting me stay here, I couldn’t impose on you more.”

“Sadie,” she said slowly, the way she said my name in a tone that almost sounded tender made a little thrill go through me. “I’d like to think we’re friends. Can we be friends?”

“Sure, I’d like that,” I said honestly.

Although if I was being one hundred percent honest, I would say I wanted to be more than friends.

Unfortunately I was a broke and homeless cleaning lady and Ariel was one of the richest and most sophisticated women in the country.

This was not some fairytale. Women like me did not end up with women like Ariel, at least not for more than a quick fuck. I’d do well to remember my place.

“Great, then let’s have some fun this weekend, okay?”

I wondered how much her kind of fun would cost. I had about three hundred bucks in the new savings account I’d opened after Jane took me off our joint account and stole all my money.

I needed to save every cent for an apartment.

I could afford cheap rent somewhere, but getting several thousand dollars together for deposits and move in fees were a killer.

To my surprise, Ariel seemed to pick up on the reason for my hesitation.

“Don’t worry about a thing. This weekend is on me. It won’t cost you a thing.”

“Oh no, I…”

Ariel held up her hand. “No arguing,” she said in that sexy bossy tone.

My lips clamped shut without any consultation with my brain.

“Now let’s go to bed,” she said firmly. “You look like you’re dead on your feet.”