Page 23 of Omega
“But there were other women?”
He shrugged. “Of course. Many. But none of them held any real meaning.” He glanced at me. “Do you remember our first conversation about the difference between sex, making love, and fucking?”
I nodded. “I remember the conversation, yes.” I thought back. “You said something about how all of your previous sexual partners were—how did you put it?—carefully chosen for their willingness and discretion? There was something about a contract, too, I believe.”
He nodded, taking a long pull on his wine. “Correct. I didn’t have girlfriends, or fuck buddies, or anything like that. I would choose a woman, bring her to my office, explain the contract to her, have her sign an NDA regardless, and then if she was agreeable to the arrangement, she would sign the contract.”
“I have so many questions, babe,” I said. “Like, how did you find them? How did you choose them? And what was the contract?”
Roth hesitated. Or, rather, took a long moment to consider his response. “They were not prostitutes or escorts, which I know is what you’re thinking. They were mostly employees of the corporation, or one of the subsidiaries. Never anyone that worked in the tower itself, never anyone who might accidentally come in contact with me on a day-to-day basis. I perused the employee dossier registry, if you want total honesty. They were chosen primarily for their looks. Every employee of VRI Incorporated, as part of the hiring process, was required to take a basic psychological profile test, males and females, no exceptions. I had an assistant who would comb through the list of single female employees and create a file of potential candidates, which I would look through and choose a girl based on a criteria of looks and psychological willingness to participate in the arrangement I had in mind. Not every female employed by VRI fit that bill.”
I frowned. “Jesus, Roth. That’s…very…I don’t even know. Logical. Mechanical.”
He just nodded. “Well, yes. Of course. That’s the idea, after all. It wasn’t about a connection, or about romance, or seduction, even. It was about meeting a physical need. So, I would have the individual brought to my office, and I would lay the proposal out for her, which was very simple, actually.”
This system just seemed so…odd. So calculated, so cold, so utterly logical. Choosing a sexual partner isn’t a logical thing, it’s a chemical thing. Attraction, lust, need, desire. Not psychologically profiling someone to filter out the attachment-prone. Not sorting through a roster of potential candidates and choosing the most suitable among them. Was I disgusted? Sad that he was so closed off, that this system of his was all he was capable of? Glad that he kept himself so aloof, because it meant I got to have you for myself?
A little of all of the above, I think.
I was quiet for a long moment, trying to sort through my feelings. “I don’t know what to think, Valentine,” I said, eventually.
“It was a long time ago. When I decided I had to have you, I stopped all that. When I brought you to my home, I hadn’t touched anyone else in…months. Nearly a year. And you were the one and only woman to ever enter my home.”
“So you just…used them for sex, and that was it.”
“They used me just the same,” he pointed out, a note of frustration in his voice. “That was part of the psychological profile. I chose women whom I thought would have a more…pragmatic approach to sex. Never anyone emotionally vulnerable or given to attachment. Casual, consensual sex was the purpose of the entire agreement, and that was made clear from the very beginning. So I feel they used me just as much as I did them. We used each other, by contractual agreement. They each had the ability to say no, to back out. One girl got cold feet once we were there. I never even touched her, never removed a single article of clothing, but the moment she saw the bed, she asked if it was too late to say no. I put her on a plane within the hour and sent her home.”
“It just…I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
I shrugged miserably. “You’re mine.”
“I am now, yes.”
“I don’t like the thought of you just…casually fucking other women. You didn’t just have a fuckpad and a little black book, Roth, you had a goddamn system. An entirerosterof fuckable employees, and a fuck-resort you took them to..” I stepped back, walking over to the covered deck circling the building. “God. I’m…I don’t know. I wish I hadn’t asked.”
He moved to stand behind me. “Kyrie, love. I will never lie to you. That’s why I told you. That was the truth. That was my life. Am I proud of it, now? No. It was all I was capable of, then. After Gina, I just…shut down. I wanted nothing to do with an emotional connection. I thought I loved her, but she turned on me. Controlled me, used me, tried to have me killed. Tried to own me. I wanted, after I’d gotten away from her and her father and that whole lifestyle—I wanted something I could control. Something easy, no strings attached, simple.”
“I get that,” I said. “And I don’t…I guess I don’t hold it against you. Like, I’m not mad. I just…I don’t know. I knew going in that you’d had other sexual partners. But the reality of it, hearing your whole system…” I shrugged again. “I’m just jealous, I guess.”
“They weren’tpartners, Kyrie. It was just sex. Nothing else—maybe that only makes it worse, I don’t know. It doesn’t lessen your right to jealousy, though. Or mine.” He turned me around, and his eyes were intense, but warm, the eyes of my Valentine once more. “You think I’m not jealous of your exes? I hate all of them for getting you before I did. I hate the thought of anyone else putting their hands on you. It makes me sick to my stomach just to think about it.”
I sighed and pressed my forehead to his chest. “There weren’t that many of them, though.”
“So? Is that supposed to make it better, somehow? You’remine. All mine. Whether it was one man or a hundred, I hate the idea of anyone ever having any part of you.” He touched my chin and lifted my face. “But at the same time, I know that each of our respective experiences led us together. Your past makes you who you are, just as mine makes me who I am. And…it’s hard to put this into words.” He paused to think, and then continued. “In a way, I’m glad we didn’t meet each other as virgins. I want all of you, forever. But…that you had experience before you met me…it meant you knew what you wanted, what you liked, it meant you knew what to do with me. And my past meant I could make you mine, it meant I knew exactly what to do with you, how to make you scream, how to make you need me.”
“I never thought of it that way,” I admitted, resting my cheek on his broad, hard pectoral.
“Regardless of jealousy or our pasts, how we feel about any of it…there’s nothing we can do about it, is there? We’re here, and what happened, happened. We each have the right to our feelings, to be upset or angry or jealous. But the real question is, what are we going to do about it? Will it change our present together? Our future? Does knowing how I chose which women to engage in sex with before I met you change how you feel about me right now?” He brushed his hand down my back, smoothing and scratching over my shirt.
I shook my head against his chest. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Good.” He was silent for a moment, and then tilted my chin up so I had to look at him. “And to be totally honest, I sold the…fuckpad…as you called it, precisely because I didn’t want to be anywhere with you that I’d been with anyone else. I want us to make new memories together, in a place that’s totally ours.”
“That makes me feel a bit better,” I said. “I do have one potentially stupid question.”
“What’s that, love?” He sounded resigned, and slightly amused.