Incest/Taboo Mother - Hostile Makeover

When Lauren and Ethan met with Jon in his office that morning she expected a fight.

Her summary of what had happened on Kai'ulau would destroy whatever ideas he still had of partnering with the Novaks. One of their partners had sold out to strangers. Another had disappeared and was missing under suspicious circumstances. On top of all that, and what had nearly happened to Ethan, the truth about how Lauren had spent her days and nights on the island couldn't be denied. She'd done her best to keep the account of Libidramine's effects discreet and general, but it was undeniably a first-person account.

She expected her husband to be hostile and hurt.

He was the opposite. "Ebullient" was the best word for Jon's mood that morning.

"What I'd say is, we've fallen into a manure pile and found a diamond."

"Excuse me? Did you even read what I wrote?"

"Over and over. I had plenty of time to myself last night. You could at least have called. Where were you?"

"I stayed at Ethan's." Lauren stole a glance at her son and sat straighter in her chair. "So, if you read it, you know that there's real addictive potential here. Jan's been so addled by it that NGT has as much as stolen her stake in Blue Oasis out from under her--"

"How many times have you said that our job is to deliver the products that our customers want?" Jon cut her off. "Both of you say it, and I agree. If there are habituation issues, that's not our concern. Let the regulators sort it out when and if they ever step in. And as far as I'm concerned, swapping out Janet for the Novaks and what they bring to the table is trading up, big-time."

It had been ages since her husband's self-centeredness had surprised Lauren, but his callous dismissal of Janet shocked her speechless. Ethan sat quiet and still, not taking his eyes from his father. He was simmering. He and Jon had never been close, in the way you'd expect a father and his only child to be, and there'd been times since the beginning of their business partnership when they'd barely tolerated each other. There was a new charge to that dynamic this morning. Lauren had poured oil on a fire.

She recovered herself enough to ask, in an even voice, "In all your careful reading, did you skip the part where I'm pretty sure they've done away with Frank?"

Jon settled back in his big desk chair, folded his hands across his belly, and smiled. "As it happens, I spoke to Frank for some time last night."

"What?" Lauren exclaimed. "Where is he?"

"He's in hospital in Taiohae. The embassy in Samoa contacted me. It took some doing to get a call through to him."

"Thank God! Is he all right?"

"He was in rough shape--hungry and suffering from exposure. Delusional. He turned up a couple of days ago in Hakahau. No ID, no money, nothing. They treated him, got him stabilized, and flew him over to Nuku Hiva. Someone there reached out to Samoa."

Ethan glared at his father. "You talked to him last night and you didn't tell either of us. This is like a million times more important than any of your one-upping bullshit."

"Watch it, Junior."

"Or what?"

Jon regarded Ethan appraisingly for several moments before turning his attention back to Lauren, he said, "It's not like you've been particularly forthcoming, lately."

"Jon, what happened to him?"

"It's like I said, Frank's delusional. He claims to have been held prisoner by someone named Jakob--I assume that's the same as this assistant of Aleksandra's you wrote about--and that he escaped and swam out to a passing fishing boat in the middle of the night. Scared hell out of an old guy and his sons who didn't speak a word of English, but they took him aboard. One way or another he finally made his way to Ua Pou.

"There's a whole lot he doesn't seem to remember, yet. But he was babbling about brainwashing, mind control, all nonsense. Does that sound anything like what happened to you, Laur?"

Put on the spot, she replied, "It's a lot more extreme than I'd describe it, but--"

"Good. Because if you'd been brainwashed, I'd have to question everything you've claimed so far. And neither of us want that, do we?"

That was too much for Ethan. He got up and spun Jon's chair around, bracing his hands on the padded arms and looming over his father. "You like being the boss, don't you? We can replace you. We can do it this week."

"Ethan!"

"Save it, Mom. He's overdue."

Lauren had never seen her son so furious about anything. He was temperamentally reserved and analytical. She wasn't sure that he'd back off, and guilt stabbed her as she realized what she'd ignited by fucking him. It was like watching elks lock horns on Animal Planet.

"Honey--Give us a few minutes? Please? This isn't business, now. It's personal and it's between your father and me."

Ethan looked at her doubtfully, again at his father, and strode angrily from the office.

Jon stared after him for a long time before saying, "At least he listens to you. Something's got him worked up."

"Something? Maybe the fact that the worse the Novaks turn out to be, the more eager you are to jump into bed with them."

"Maybe that's not the best choice of words for you, right now." Jon rubbed his face with both hands. "What do you want me to say? You and Ethan are both telling me that Lib works as advertised, and way better than we could ever have believed. Not just the sex stuff, but, I mean, look at you. You haven't looked this good since--"

"Knock it off."

"--Since before the kid was born. We can sell the world youth and beauty and sex and we can deliver."

"I don't get you. You've always been obsessed with our keeping tight control of the company within the group. You didn't even want to let your own son in, after everything he'd done."

"This is about keeping our company, period. However underhanded their methods, they've already bought into us. I've talked to the lawyers. We can tie them up in court and go broke in the process. Or we can be friends with our new partners."

"You seriously believe that Frank will go along with this? After what he's been through?"

"Are you sure that the Novaks did that? Aleksandra denied it. Sounds like this Jakob may be a loose cannon."

"Jakob does what she tells him to do. Trust me."

"Frank will come around. He's a rock," Jon said with a wave of his hand.

"You're unbelievable! I know how hard it is for you, Jon, but just try to think about someone other than yourself. Way before Frank became your yes-man, he was your friend. Doesn't that matter more than the company?"

Jon wouldn't meet her eyes. He flipped the pages of the print-out of her Kai'ulau report that lay on his desk, squared up the pages, and pretended to read it over at it as if it were the only interesting thing on Earth.

Lauren gave up. "We all built Blue Oasis together. But the only thing you can see these days is your own legend. In your head, you're busy writing the next chapter in Jon Chase's autobiography. And there's no scene in it where you lose everything. Is there?"

She retrieved her purse from the floor by her chair and walked to the door, paused, and turned back to him. "One last thing. Aleksandra is a shark. She'll never stop, and she doesn't want to be our partner. She wants to own us."

"Sure. Of course, maybe we could insure against that by consolidating our shares. You and I aren't on the same page very often. Maybe you'd like to sell me some of your stake. Or all of it."

"Fuck off."

He smiled, shrugged, and said, "You make Aleksandra Novak sound like an intriguing woman. Can't wait to meet her."

Ethan was waiting for his mother in her office. "All I wanna know is, if I kill the son of a bitch do I have to blind myself?"

Caught off guard, Lauren laughed in spite of herself. "I don't know what's gotten into your father. Grandiosity is his middle name, but this? He's got blinders on."

She tossed her purse on her desk, sank into her chair, and kicked off her shoes. "It's not funny, actually. I thought you were going to punch him out."

"I wanted to. It's not a new thing. Every time he talks down to you I wanna knock him on his ass."

"But you've never gotten physical before. Remember what you told me that one time, about sex being this powerful engine that can drive everything out of control?" Her eyes welled with tears. "Christ, what have I done to you? I'm a monster."

"You're not." Ethan took her hands in his, raising her to her feet. They embraced and she pressed her face into his shoulder, wetting his soft flannel shirt. "You're a weird chick, but you're no villain. You want to do what's right for people."

"Seriously? Look at us now. I've done so many things wrong at this point that I don't know what the right thing even looks like."

"We'll figure it out." One of his thighs eased between hers and she ground her mound automatically against him before she realized it.

"What do you think you're doing, young man?"

"Helping you start your day over." His hands went to her hips and tugged at the twill of her skirt, hiking it up in the back until he could slip his fingers under the waistband of her panties.

"Oh my--We can't do this here!" He gave her buttocks a gentle squeeze. Lauren suppressed a yelp.

"I just locked the door."

"I usually leave my door open. What if someone saw you waiting in here, before?"

"Well, if they suspect us of anything inappropriate they should be ashamed of themselves. I'm your son, lady. Like you said, hide in plain sight."

"Dear God..."

She kissed him and unbuttoned his jeans, pushing them to his knees. His cock was hard and warm in her palm. He hooked his fingers under the elastic of her panties and dragged them down her thighs. She stepped out and kicked them away.

She wished she had a sofa in here. With nothing but the sisal rug under her desk and two swivel chairs in the place, they'd have to do it on the slick mahogany floor. Her son already had her so hot that it hardly mattered.

He walked her backward toward the door and crouched in front of her. He thrust his head up under her skirt and took the globes of her ass in his big hands. Straightening up suddenly, he lifted her into the air.

"Oh-OHH!" Lauren's back was against the door, her thighs draped over Ethan's shoulders with her calves dangling. His face was under her skirt. She squeezed her thighs around his head. "Oh, honey, you're gonna hurt your--"

Her son kissed her pussy. His nose brushed the hood of her clitoris, and when his tongue flicked across the swelling bud itself she had to bite down on the edge of her hand to keep from crying out. At least she'd chosen an office with opaque wall panels, but there was no way the partitions were soundproof against screams.

He feathered his tongue up and down her wet furrow, occasionally taking her labia between his lips and sucking tenderly, driving her crazy. A slow heat flowed from her pelvis outward over her entire body. "Don't stop," she mumbled around her knuckles. "Don't ever stop! Keep sucking my pussy, fuck me with your tongue, honey, that's it, that's it, I'm gonna...gonna..."

She came, bucking against his face so hard she was afraid he'd drop her. But Ethan's strong arms encircled her thighs, and his hands gripped the tops of her legs to hold her firmly in place.

He acted as if she weighed nothing at all. He let go of one leg to slide a hand under her skirt. He slid a finger into her cunt, then a second. Sucking her clit between his lips, he kept working his tongue over the stiff little button at the same time that his fingertips massaged the sensitive lining of her vagina. Her stomach contracted and without warning her body let go, another orgasm powering through her. She shook in the throes of mindless ecstasy.

When the spasms of her core subsided, Ethan lifted his mother effortlessly from his shoulders and stood her back on the floor.

"Man, you are one strong motherfucker." She dropped to her knees in front of her son. She wanted him in her mouth first and after that, well, who needed cushions, anyway? She didn't care now whether she fucked him on the floor, the desk, or hanging out of the window.

"It's hereditary. Those thighs of yours? I thought you were gonna crush my skull there."

"Mama's got muscles in places you still don't know about. I'll wring you dry, kiddo."

"But not this morning." He patted the crown of her head. "Afraid I got a code walkthrough with the UI team in five minutes. New point-of-sale module. Some of us work here."

"Ha-ha." She licked his cock-head and took him into her mouth for a quick suck. The scent and taste of her own son intoxicated her, but she released him after only a few pulls. "That'll give you something to look forward to while your fellow Poindexters drone on."

She smoothed her skirt and went looking for her underpants. "That was a lovely mental health break. A lot more relaxing than one of those damn meditation cubicles downstairs. Say, can we lock those from the inside?"

"They start beeping after fifteen minutes. Management can get in. Can't have people dying while they de-stress."

"Pity." She sighed. "I still have no idea what we're going to do about Aleksandra," she said, sighing as she found her underpants. "I doubt either of us has got any pull left with your father, at all."

"What about Stefan?"

"Excuse me?"

"You told me that Aleksandra wants him here, running Blue Oasis. We could make that happen, couldn't we?

Lauren was dumbfounded at the suggestion. "Are you nuts? Why in heaven's name would we even want to do that?"

"It's logical. Dad is hell-bent on throwing in with the Novaks anyway. You and I can't influence him. But you might have more of an in with Stefan."

"Is that a dig? If it is, I resent it."

Ethan buckled his belt and took her hand. "Don't. Listen, I thought about a lot of things last night, after you told me everything. Remember those happily-ever-after movies Grandma loved to watch on Hallmark?"

"Too well. What does that have to do with the cost of beans?"

"Because that's not you and me. There's no way we end up together on Christmas Eve in a prairie cottage watching snow fall outside. It sounds like you and Stefan might. I'm not going to be jealous, Mom, and I wasn't taking a shot at you. So maybe putting Stefan in actual charge around here is too extreme, but can you think of a good reason that we shouldn't cultivate an alliance with him before Dad starts cozying up?"

"God damn you, Spock." As was so often the case, Ethan's reasoning came out of left field and was outrageous, but sound. It was one of the virtues of having him close to her, if far from the most exciting one.

"Do you trust Stefan?" Ethan asked.

"More than I should. Sadly. Let me think. The Novaks were due to arrive from L.A. this morning. They might be at their hotel by noon. "I'll try to set up a meeting," she said. "Keep your evening free."

"Already planning on it." Ethan kissed his mother full on the lips. "But not because of the Novaks."

When Stefan picked up, it occurred to Lauren that she'd never spoken to him on the phone. His deep voice excited her more than she'd expected. He was relieved and too glad to hear from her and needed no convincing to agree to dinner, even with Ethan and the rest of his party invited.

There was never a wait to be seated at Dulcinea's on a Tuesday evening. Ethan's antique motorcycle was already parked in the far corner of the half-empty asphalt lot when Lauren arrived. She parked next to him. The low, sprawling concrete structure had lost a few more pink faux-stucco panels since her last visit. A local artist's welded steel sculpture of a droopy horseman, too obviously modeled on Picasso's Quixote, stood its weather-worn watch amid the cacti and sparse ornamental shrubs in the small plaza out front. It looked as if at any time it might mistake one of the crepe myrtles for a windmill.

As she parked, she was surprised to get a text from Jakob of all people.

--Must see you. Talk alone. Urgent Please?

What the fuck? She mulled it over for a minute.

--OK

She tossed her phone on the passenger seat, locked the car, and headed inside.

Ethan sat with the Kai'ulauans at a table in the back of the dining room, separated by a brick archway from the bar in front. He and Stefan were involved in an animated discussion over a diagram that he was drawing on the back of a placemat. Jakob was there in full bespoke regalia, nursing a drink and looking on in bemusement. He stood up and waved Lauren over.

"They are discussing engineering ...solvent filters? Ions? Things I don't understand, sorry."

"Water purification," Ethan said, barely looking up from his sketch. It was a crude map of Kai'ulau with various scribbled notations and arrows that meant nothing to her.

"The failure of the phosphate mines left so much of the island's groundwater contaminated," Stefan explained. "Another problem I want to solve. Your son has a proposal using reverse osmosis." He clapped Ethan on the shoulder.

"I know some of the engineering principles," Ethan demurred. "The energy consumption issues can be solved with pressure exchangers, but the cost--"

"--Will not be a problem for us," Stefan turned the diagram around to face himself, taking the pen from Ethan and adding marks to the map. "Look here, the major run-off areas are in the north..."

Finding her son and her lover bonding over solving a problem was a welcome if unexpected development. That didn't keep her from feeling weirdly invisible as they became absorbed in their discussion again. Jakob pulled out her chair. "They are both polymaths, aren't they?" he said.

Lauren noticed that his shirt collar was soaked through, despite Dulcinea's frigid air conditioning. She scanned the room. "Where's Aleksandra?"

"Mrs. Novak chose to remain in Los Angeles for another day," Jakob said. "To consult with the attorneys, she said. I suspect it was to shop, mostly. She leaves the island so rarely."

"Jewelry? Because she's not exactly a clothes horse."

His short chuckle didn't disguise his underlying tension. She could only guess that whatever was wrong had to do with Aleksandra herself. What wasn't he saying? Best to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.

She ordered a drink and glanced at the menu, then made a point of rummaging around in her purse. "Left my phone in the car," she said, catching Jakob's eye. Immersed in their planning, Ethan and Stefan barely acknowledged when she excused herself and left the table. She figured that she could have skipped the subterfuge altogether.

Jakob joined her in the parking lot minutes later. "What's with the cloak and dagger? You carrying a message from the boss lady?"

"Mrs. Novak? No." He was plainly in anguish. "It's-it's you, Lauren." He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms.

"Don't!" Ignoring her protest, he backed her up and pinned her against her car.

"I said no!" she repeated, still more irritated than alarmed. Jakob carrying a torch for her was one more complication that she didn't need. She tried to push him away but he would not let go. Eyes filled with torment, he kissed her. He stroked her cheek, and down the side of her chin, and his fingers found the soft hollow of her throat under the hinge of her jaw.

He pressed his thumb firmly into her unprotected flesh. Her head swam. She struggled, wedging her fists between them and shoving against his chest.

He was too strong. The thumb dug in. Her blood beat futilely against the pinched walls of its fragile channel. His wet blue eyes faded and merged into the dying yellow blur of the Moon above his shoulder.

The Moon went out.

Curled up like a drowsy child in a small darkened space. Jostling and bouncing. The familiar whine of the Miata's engine. She couldn't move her arms. Occasional flashes of silver light filtering from above glinted on metal where her hands ought to be.

Random impressions slowly sorted themselves into the outlines of her predicament. She was slouched in the footwell on the passenger side of the little convertible. Her wrists were bound together in front of her, wrapped around with wide steel tape of the kind that Ethan sometimes used to repair cars. Probably retrieved from the trunk. It didn't cut off circulation but was tight enough that the edges bit into her skin when she tried to twist free.

Jakob noticed her stirring. His eyes flicked downward, then back to the road ahead. He drove in silence, his grim profile barely visible in the moonlight and the dim illumination of the dashboard gauges.

No street lamps or traffic signals. No city lights.

Her head pounded. Squirming up and into her seat without the use of her hands was difficult. Jakob hadn't bothered to seatbelt her. That was discouraging.

"What are we doing, Jakob?" He hunched forward over the wheel, staring straight ahead. "Talk to me, honey." Determined to do whatever it took to save her own life, she leaned toward him but could not reach out to him. "This is Aleksandra, isn't it? I'm in her way. That's why she's not here. She's got an alibi."

Jakob stiffened. His head jerked toward her in surprise.

"Did she just tell you to get rid of me? This is a terrible plan, can't you see? This isn't her turf. If something happens to me, the police will investigate. Negotiations will stop, votes won't happen--"

"Yes. And Aleksandra Novak will fail." The grim combination of satisfaction and utter loathing in his voice left Lauren speechless.

"I had hoped there was another way," Jakob's shoulders slumped wearily as he steered on through the empty night. "I tried first with Frank Palmieri. I was cruel to him, yes, but still I thought it the kindest way."

"You're not making sense. Did you try to kill Frank?"

"Please, I meant him no harm!" As if realizing how absurd that sounded, he added, "That is, I did not intend to injure him. When Aleksandra had me give the Libidramine to the Palmieris, I gave Frank a substitute."

"A placebo." Lauren remembered Stefan's clumsy practical joke back in New Derby. A million years ago. "Why in the hell?"

"To humiliate him. Make him hate us. In his anger and despair, it was easy to convince him that he was in physical danger. And without him knowing it, I arranged for what he believed to be his escape. And I said to myself, this man will never do business with us now. He will warn his fellows, and that will be the end of Aleksandra's scheme."

The two-lane asphalt road ahead wound upward between a steep, scrub-dotted rock face to Lauren's right and a sheer cliff to the left. They passed stretches without shoulder or guard rails. Where barriers did exist some were buckled or broken clear through from heavy impacts. Jakob was taking them up the Ortega, probably headed toward Elsinore, the section of road once nicknamed Ricochet Alley.

At this time in the evening they weren't likely to so much as pass another car up here. It was an efficient place to dispose of someone without going through the incriminating messiness of killing them first--the thousand-foot drop would take care of that.

It might be a while before the body was found. Then a longer wait for them to identify her shattered remains.

"You do hate her, after all."

He scowled. "She calls herself our benefactor. But she is worse than her father. She uses us, as he did. Our bodies. Our souls. She is supremely wealthy but always desires more. She truly believes that the world will discover what we have and take it from us. So she pursues the power that she claims she will use to shield us from that threat.

"But the Tiare itself has always been our shield. It gives us health, and happiness. For many centuries, again and again, the wolves have come to Kai'ulau to exploit us. Some, like her father, promised to bring prosperity. Some claimed to be saving us from evil that truly existed only in their own hearts. But always the Tiare has changed them, and always they have lost their ways."

"Lotus-eaters." Seeing his confusion, Lauren explained, "It's a very old myth. An island where adventurers were seduced by eating a flower. They forgot their lives and their families and their nations. They only wanted to stay there, forever."

"You do understand, then. Even ambitious old Lukasz settled in the end for bartering some of the red flower now and again in exchange for personal influence and money. But his daughter? She thinks she will sell so much and bring Kai'ulau such wealth and power that the world must bow to us. Bow to her.

"She is such a fool.

"I know better. I have lived in your world. A place of greed and waste and violence and slavery. You are destroying yourselves. I can't let you destroy us, too."

Lauren wished that she could touch him, to somehow connect with him again. "Jakob, I can't argue with any of that. You see some things clearly enough. But don't you also see that if you kill me, you can never go home? They won't let you. The police will go through my texts and find out that you arranged to meet with me this evening."

Jakob didn't answer. He veered left and pulled the car up onto the narrow few feet of shoulder on the side of the road by a drop-off cliff. He killed the engine and got out. The ground sloped up away from the road here. With the nose of the car pointed upward, she could not see the land below, only the Moon set in its blue canopy of night. She visualized the flat sea of sparkling lights in the valley beyond, a view she'd admired many times on her late-night drives home from the office. It was going to be the last thing she ever saw.

He walked around and opened the passenger door. He held a knife in one hand. "Hold up your arms."

"Why? You thinking you're going to cut me loose and make me drive over the cliff? Hell, no. Do your own dirty work."

He shook his head in exasperation, leaned over the door, and grabbed her right wrist. He pulled her toward him.

"We will be thrown from the car when it hits." Jakob pointed with his chin toward the valley below. "They won't know which of us was driving. That will confuse their investigation. Slow them down."

We. With that one word, Lauren lost all hope. Jakob was committed beyond the point of persuasion. He was going to sacrifice himself for his cause. He was such a young man. He still thought himself a good man, and he must have believed in his heart that a good man could not go on living after doing so terrible a thing.

The rattle of an approaching vehicle shook the air, a noise more like that of an old lawnmower than a car. A sudden bright flash lit Jakob's face. Startled, he blinked and looked away toward the road.

Lauren drew her knees up against her chest and kicked the car door with all her strength. It flew open and caught Jakob hard across the legs, propelling him backward but not knocking him down. She stumbled out of the car. Backing away from him, she stole a glance at the road and at the rapidly growing, single yellow headlight coming up from the same direction they had traveled.

She backpedaled, putting distance between herself and Jakob, trying to find the space to plant herself. Sharp gravel cut into the soles of her feet. She expected with each step to feel empty air beneath her heel and to go tumbling backward into darkness without end.

He moved in close, knife in his right hand. His first attack was a hesitant, stiff-armed stab from a nearly standing position. No follow-through. Not an experienced move. Like a child pretending to fight with a wooden sword. Or like a man with no stomach for killing, one who had never drawn blood.

His lingering conscience was a small mercy, one that she could not afford to share. She stepped and leaned back, shifted her weight to the ball of her left foot, aimed her right knee at his head, and kicked out as high and as straight as she could.

Lauren was used to sparring on a mat in a gym with a coach barking instructions on Thursday mornings at eleven. It was less preparation for fighting for her life in the dark by the side of a mountain road than she would have wished. She caught Jakob hard in the shoulder. He spun and staggered backward. With her arms bound, she went off balance and fell onto her back on the stony ground.

The knife's blade caught the moonlight as it arced through the air, bouncing off of the rear fender of the Miata with a metallic snick. He dove after it. She rolled over and struggled to her knees.

"Lauren!"

"Mom!"

Stefan leaped from the sidecar of Ethan's old bike while it was moving, running toward her. Her son dismounted and sprinted past him. There was no chance that they could reach her before Jakob would.

He recovered the knife and charged at her. She ran blindly, then realized in horror that she'd gone the wrong direction, up the road away from the car and the motorcycle, away from rescue, right along the edge of the cliff. Every step took her further from any help, and there was nowhere to turn.

Jakob made a desperate lunge forward, knife raised above his head in a reverse grip. She sidestepped as he stabbed downward. Without hesitating, she ducked low and hurled herself at him as he stumbled past. Her shoulder slammed into his ribs. There was a sickening crunch, and he tumbled over the edge.

With a desolate shriek of terror, Jakob was gone.

So was Lauren.

Her momentum carried her after him. She flew, a moment of weightlessness too surreal to be terrible, suspended between the endless canyon of air above and the unseen depths of the earth far below.

Something snatched her back.

In the distance, the Dnepr's little engine coughed and stalled.

"She's breathing okay." Ethan's voice was higher pitched than she'd heard it for a decade. "Doesn't look like he cut her."

"Thank God. Lauren?"

Stefan and Ethan were kneeling at her sides. Her hands were free. She started to sit up, grimaced in pain, and sank back onto the hard ground.

"Does it hurt to breathe?" Stefan asked, rubbing her abraded wrists.

"My arm hurts. And I peed."

"I yanked pretty hard when I grabbed you," Ethan said. "Didn't dislocate anything I don't think, but the shoulder may be sprained."

"Where--How did you know where we went?"

"I got a notification that you'd left the parking lot. I should have checked it right away. I'm so sorry, Stefan and I got so wrapped up in planning..."

"A notification? From who?"

Ethan looked sheepish. "That GPS tracker that I mentioned Lew had installed in your car? I didn't actually remove it. There was so much weird shit going on, and I thought it might be a good idea for the time being to just, well, repurpose it. I set it up to ping me whenever the car moved."

"And thank God he did."

"You could have told me."

"I was afraid you'd get mad. Like I was spying on you."

She tried the sitting experiment again, this time with Stefan's help. "I want to go home." Her own voice sounded dull and strange to her ears. They helped her up and walked her down to the Miata. The key was in the ignition. Her arm was getting stiffer.

"You can't drive," Stefan insisted.

"I'll take her back to my place. Let me show you how to start the bike."

"I should follow you," Stefan suggested.

"No!" Lauren held up the hand attached to the arm that she could stand to move. "Please! Go back to your hotel. We'll talk later. And we'll see each other at the office, if not before."

Stefan was crestfallen. He exchanged looks with Ethan, who nodded slowly in agreement with his mother. "As you wish, then."

When Stefan was a dwindling, forlorn figure in Lauren's side mirror, Ethan said, "That was kinda harsh, Mom."

"I'm just back from the dead, kid. Give it a couple of minutes before you bust my chops about manners."

"Sorry."

"I may be done having adventures with strange men. You, at least, I've known all your life."

They drove on in silence for a few minutes before he said, "Something you ought to know. I was way too far out over the ledge when I grabbed you back there. We'd both be dead, except that Stefan caught my leg and held on. He could have gone right over with us. But he saved us both.

"Dude's strong, Mom. Dude's solid."

Cuddled up beside her son in the big bed up in the loft, Lauren found herself shivering uncontrollably despite the warmth of the night. "It's starting to sink in. I must be in shock. Just hold me, okay?" He enfolded her, and she rested on his shoulder. "I keep seeing Jakob in my mind, down there on the rocks in the dark somewhere. Smashed to pieces. And animals all around." She shuddered again. "What happens now?"

"We'll report it in the morning. It'll be okay. You've got witnesses, and we can all tell the absolute truth about what happened. Pending lawyer's counsel."

"You're always so fucking practical. That's not what I meant. Darling, I killed a man. A man that I...I mean, we were--"

"Mom." He turned on his side so that they lay face to face, and combed his fingers through her hair. "Lauren. Remember what you said this morning, when you cried? Monsters don't grieve."

Several minutes passed before she reached beneath the sheets to fondle him.

"I thought you just wanted to be held."

"Mmm. Must be some kind of survival instinct. One minute I'm mourning the guy who tried to kill me, and the next my body wants to celebrate life."

"You think a whole lot."

"Come to Mama."

Her glossy skin was the color of the blond teak bed frame. The sculpted lines of her calves and thighs flexed in all their sculpted glory as she stood on tiptoe at the end of the bed with her legs spread wide. She bent forward to grasp the footboard and, with a toss of her long raven hair, looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Do my ass again. Please."

"Your wish, Aleksandra..." Jon Chase stepped up behind her. "Lean forward just a touch more."

The Kai'ulauan tilted her rear toward the ceiling. Jon admired the perfect twin globes and the dark little pucker nestled between them that softly gleamed with a mixture of gel lubricant and his own dripping semen. Penetration would be a cinch the second time.

He didn't need to let her in on that, though. "Gotta lube up, first." The swollen knob of his dick glided down her ass cleft to poke between the flowering lips of her pouting pussy, that beckoning pink hole winking out from between fat dusky lips, always drooling wet and ready for cock.

He sank in all the way to his balls on one stroke, Damn, what a fantastic cunt. Tight and elastic as a teenager's and skilled as a thousand-dollar hooker's mouth. He knew quite a bit about both.

Aleksandra's invitation to meet her alone at the Sunset Tower had come out of the blue late last evening. She wanted to break the ice, she said, disturbed by the poor impression that some at Blue Oasis might have of her character and intentions.

The videos she'd attached to the email had gone a long way toward correcting any such "poor impression" for Jon. Aleksandra had no shyness about displaying her body, nor at being recorded in full sexual performance with a number of partners.

He'd had no idea Kai'ulauans were such big dudes. But the visual aid had made the long drive and fight with L.A. traffic a no-brainer.

"I am so eager to take on new partners," she'd confided. "Stefan frankly disappoints me. Oh, I love him of course, in all the ways that a mother should love her son,. But as for business? He lacks what you'd call the killer instinct."

And then she'd demonstrated just how eager she was to take on her new partner. She'd been demonstrating it all evening.

Jon buried his cock in her sultry slit from behind, taking hold of her huge tits and yanking on them. She liked it a little rough, which suited him fine. He'd never had his hands on a set like hers: firm, warm, resilient, and ideally shaped to stiffen a guy's dick despite their enormous size. Natural, too, go ahead and try finding that combo out in the Valley. Squatting on her chest for a tit-fuck and unloading all over her face and funbags had been one of the high points of their burgeoning relationship, so far.

Lauren claimed that Aleksandra was near seventy. Jon didn't believe it for a minute. Her belly was as flat and unmarked, her thighs as firm, and her tits as high as any twentysomething company intern he'd ever banged. No, he was sure she couldn't be older than Lauren and she was a hell of a lot hotter.

But you could never tell Lauren shit. Sure, she was right occasionally, but she was arrogant as fuck. She rebelled against his every idea for the company. On the home front, she'd so doted on Ethan his whole life that she'd ruined Jon's attempts to inspire the kid to excellence.

This was another way that Jon related well to Aleksandra Novak. Offspring had disappointed them both.

Fuck Lauren, anyway. Or don't. It wasn't like Jon had been faithful along his fast track to success. Wealth and notoriety and the availability of female attention went together. In his book, there could never be too much of either.

"My ass, darling," Aleksandra hissed through gritted teeth as Jon kept plugging his cock into her pussy. "This whore needs hard cock up her asshole now."

"Right." He pulled out of her pussy, raised up, and shoved his cock-head against her asshole. Bracing his palms against her ass to steady himself, he pushed forward. Aleksandra's anus yielded as if by command, which Jon knew from their previous round of assfucking was indeed the case. The woman's control of every part of her body was incredible. The little ring of muscle at the entrance of her rear fuck-tunnel worked a guy's cock like an oiled hand. She'd bucked and shrieked like a cat as he'd gone the distance, hammering her ass for ages before pumping what felt like a geyser of cum into her guts.

Then she'd dragged him to the big limestone bathroom of her suite and sucked him off twice in the shower.

Jon didn't know how he'd gotten along all of these years without Libidramine. He'd lost count of how many times he'd come tonight, but they'd been fucking for five or six hours and time after time he bounced back hard as steel and full of jism.

In the last few years, he'd had to admit to more than one doctor that his sexual energy had started to flag just a bit. That he'd experienced failure--only just once or twice--and did they maybe have anything a little stronger than the usual pills and shots? It had been humiliating.

But never again. Here was Aleksandra Novak with the answer to every doubt and trouble in his life, be it sexual or financial.

Jon Chase couldn't stand doubting himself.

Lauren called Aleksandra a shark? Well, that was another thing that Her Highness was wrong about. This was a passionate woman who just lacked a strong man beside her to show her the way. She'd been far too long with no real mate, nothing but hirelings and naïve young punks to fulfill her needs. Jon marveled at how mistaken his wife could be about a person's character--unless, of course, she'd been shrewd enough to recognize Aleksandra as competition and had simply wanted to throw him off the scent.

He didn't believe his wife was that clever. Lauren was just wrong. Again. It didn't matter too much, because either way, Jon could manage this woman. Also, either way, she was the gateway to the miracle drug that was their shared future.

"So, we have an understanding, Jonathan?" Aleksandra purred, wriggling and rolling her broad pelvis. He took hold of her hips, using them as fuck-handles.

"We do. We sure do." Jon laughed and kept on ramming her ass.

Definitely trading up.​