Page 6 of Power Games

"Oh?"

"You know my name. I don't know yours."

“Charles Grant,” he introduced himself.

“Nice to meet you, Charles Grant, the married man who meets married women in dark rooms.”

She was teasing him again; this time, he didn’t like it, she could tell. Just a simple twitch of his jaw.

“My wife and I have an open relationship.”

She rolled her eyes. Her turn to be annoyed now. It wasn’t his fault, but those two words used side-by-side always set her on edge. Open relationship. She knew quite a lot about that. It had shaped her fate, made her who she was.

Eight years ago, she’d walked in on her parents fucking. She wasn’t the first or the last twelve-year-old to go through such an ordeal. No biggie, right? Only, her parents hadn’t been alone. No; her brother had also joined the party. Well, her half-brother, but still.

Mommy dearest had sat her down to explain the birds and the bees. At the end of the conversation, she learned that she could actually be her brother’s daughter.

Her mother was four years older than her brother. They’d met first, and hit it off. Apparently, she’d also hit it off with his then-single dad. Still. Vanessa had heard quite enough of “open relationships” to last a lifetime.

Listening to that excruciating chat, she’d vowed then and there that she’d live her life differently. Away from the toxic, deviant upper-crust society she was born into. She’d keep her legs crossed until she found a man who respected her. A man who’d marry her first.

She wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t attracted to that sort of guy.

Charles Grant, you’re the opposite of my type, she mentally told herself. It didn’t even sound half-convincing because, well, he was everyone’s type.

“Who doesn't these days?” she replied neutrally.

Distaste dripped from every pore of her being, and he must have felt it, because Charles added, “She suggested it when I demanded a divorce.”

He sounded defensive. She just shrugged.

“You disapprove?”

Hell yes. “Hardly. Open relationships, ménage, swinging tendencies—all these things have a real track record of working.” Not for her. Ever. But she believed what she’d said; it simply didn’t apply to her because of her personal history. “Not when suggested as an alternative to divorce, though. They work when that's what both parties really want to do.”

“So, you think I should go forward with a divorce, then?”

Vanessa threw her head back and laughed.

“Oh, no. You don't get to ask me that and pin the weight of your decision on my shoulders rather than yours.”

Charles had remained in the same spot, close to the door and the light switch, away from her. She liked it that way. It felt safer.

He took a step forward, then another one, and another, until he’d arrived right in front of her, close to her window. For Christ’s sake, he was even hotter up close. That wasn’t fucking fair.

He sat on her armchair.

“You're very blasé for a twenty-year-old.”

“I’m merely used to it. Everyone speaks politely downstairs, drinks cocktails, comments on the latest political bill. And then some of them come up here to suck someone's husband or wife on my bed. I know the drill.”

“But you don’t…” He borrowed her choice of word. “Partake.”

“I don’t,” she confirmed with a nod. “No one will get my pussy until I get married—then, I'll only give it to my husband, as long as I retain sole right to his dick. Does that make me naive?”

His eyes were weird. She would have sworn they’d been green only a moment ago, but now, they were the most azure of blues. Damn pussy-whispering magic.

“It makes you interesting, Vanessa,” he told her. “What are you doing here, when there’s so much going on downstairs?”

---