The Vessel Read online

  “My apologies, Mr. Blacksmith. Is Elise bothering you?”

  I bristled at her tone and glanced at her. The fact that she implied me just being in his presence was some kind of hindrance pissed me off. I gnashed my teeth together, and when I cut my stare back to Lucius—his focus still on me—I could see a smirk start to form across his lips. It was clear I wasn’t even trying to hide my annoyance.

  “No, not at all. In fact, I’m very much enjoying her company.”

  I felt my cheeks heat once again and quickly put all the cleaning supplies back before putting what I needed in the bucket. I kept my head down and looked at him from under the fall of my lashes, suddenly feeling awkward and embarrassed, like a child who’d just gotten scolded.

  “Have a good evening, Mr.... Lucius.” I shouldn’t have called him by his first name in front of Marla. She would most likely reprimand me, even if he told me to call him by that. But I felt a spark of rebellion, this pleasure that he wanted me to call him by his given name.

  I wasn’t one to break the rules or toe the line, and certainly wasn’t unprofessional, so the fact that I felt this way so instantly didn’t sit well with me.

  But as I made my way out of the kitchen, I still felt him watching me. And a look over my shoulder right before I turned the corner showed me I was right.

  Lucius Blacksmith was checking out my ass again.

  3

  Lucius

  I wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that I checked Elise out. In fact, she’d seen me looking at her ass as she bent over, and what a fine fucking ass it had been. It was grossly inappropriate for me to have done that, but after getting the news of my father’s beyond-the-grave demands, I was in a mood where I just didn’t give a shit.

  I inhaled deeply, still able to smell the scent of lemons and lavender that clung to her. I didn’t even try and tame my desire, now that I was alone, and the result was my cock starting to harden.

  Elise Coral had been working for me for the last few months, and although I hadn’t hired her on—and when I did see her, we shared a brief smile or greeting, but pretty much zero communication—there was absolutely no denying she lit my blood on fire. I couldn’t even say what it was about her, couldn’t pinpoint why she made me feel unraveled in ways I never felt before.

  She was gorgeous—that went without saying—but not made-up in the way socialites were. She had a mass of long, silky black hair that she kept secured at her nape. I only knew it was long, because when she first started, I noticed her pinning the locks up one morning before I left for work.

  The thoughts that slammed into my head on what I wanted to do to her, how I wanted to wrap my fingers in the strands and jerk her head back to expose her throat, had been so intense that I’d gone to the bathroom and jerked one off real quick.

  It had been in that moment I knew keeping things professional and keeping my distance with her was for the best.

  But keeping my distance and being professional didn’t mean I wasn’t fucking her in my head any chance I got.

  I pictured her standing just a few feet from me moments before, her big eyes this unusual shade of gray. I could look into them and instantly know she took in the world with an open mind, probably knowing struggle and heartache, maybe even knowing love.

  The latter caused distaste in my mouth and a tightening in my belly.

  I went to the fridge and opened it, grabbing another bottle. Tonight was the night for getting blackout drunk. It was the only quick fix to help after my father screwed me over one last time. I didn’t even know how he did it, making that shit legal, able to pull my entire life out from under me, but he managed.

  It was never about love or caring for your family with him. It was only about growth and success. More money and keeping his fucking name going on long after he rotted in the ground.

  I leaned against the counter again and popped the cap, bringing the bottle to my mouth and taking another long pull. I thought about Elise. I was good at reading people. It was my job to be able to weed out a prospective client or foe. But although I could pick up on little things here and there about her, I could also tell she kept herself shrouded, this wall around her.

  A protective mechanism.

  Had she been hurt? Maybe by a lover, a family member?

  I wanted to know about her, to learn about what made her tick. I shouldn’t. I was her boss and she worked for me rather intimately in my home, but regardless, she made me curious, and a woman hadn’t done that—ever.

  I lifted my free hand and ran it over the back of my neck, feeling exhausted, which had nothing to do with being physically tired and everything to do with being mentally drained. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do about the whole heir thing. I did want children, wanted a wife, all that. I wanted those whole nine yards. But having a baby with someone I didn’t care about, or using a surrogate just so I didn’t lose the business, sounded pretty fucked up to me. And losing everything I worked so fucking hard for, a passion I put blood, sweat, and tears into my entire life, was equally just as fucked up.

  I finished off the beer and tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. I grabbed the bottle of scotch, put the square-cut glass in the sink—because tonight, I didn’t need anything fancy but instead would guzzle right out of the bottle—and headed into my study.

  When I said I’d get wasted, that’s exactly what I planned on doing. At least I’d have a reprieve from my thoughts for one night. I’d feel like shit in the morning, but I’d deal with the consequences of that then. Seeing as tomorrow was Saturday, I had no plans on heading into the office, and instead I would deal with my hangover and try to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

  But tonight… tonight, I was getting trashed and saying fuck it.

  4

  Elise

  I should have told Merla I wasn’t going into work on the weekend. Those two days were for me, although I didn’t do anything but hang around the house and read or run errands. Yet I could use the overtime, not just for me, but for my mother too. Living in the city in a one-bedroom was just a small step up from the rest of the city’s shithole low-income living. It was all I could afford, but one day that would change. I was working hard for the two of us.

  For many of my adult years, I lived with my mother. A drunk driver accident caused her to be paralyzed from the waist down, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about not taking care of her. But as her health deteriorated, the round-the-clock care and medication administration she needed, she decided to move out. There had been no arguing or pleading with her to stay, that we’d make it work. She didn’t want to “be a burden on me,” despite me telling her a child takes care of their parents, just like she’d taken care of me when I was a child.

  But she refused and now lived with her sister, a retired nurse who’d been more than happy to have her only living sibling move in. To say I was depressed over my mother moving an hour away was an understatement, and even six months later, it was still hard to come home to an empty place.

  But that’s why I was working as hard as I could, to be able to buy a home that could facilitate not only me and my mother, but my aunt too, who was getting up there in age and wouldn’t be able to take care of my mom forever.

  They were all I had left, and with no other family between the three of us, we needed to stick together.

  I wanted to buy a little piece of property—nothing major, but enough that I could have a little garden out back, one where my aunt and mom could tend to it, be out in the sun and fresh air. And we won’t even talk about the smog I practically choked on every time I stepped out of my apartment building. We wouldn’t have to hear the traffic from rush hour every damn morning. And most importantly, I’d have my family close.

  Going to Lucius’s house was actually really wonderful, even if I was there to work. The land that surrounded his house was picturesque, always maintained. It was half an hour outside the city, so the air was so much cleaner, crisper. It
was as if someone went to the highest top of the mountains and bottled up the air. I could inhale deeply and smell the freshness of it, feel the sun on my face, since no skyscrapers blocked it. And it was so isolated that there wasn’t a single sound of cars honking, people cursing, or the congested feel city life brought on.

  But I guess everything was better when you had money, even oxygen.

  In essence… it was perfect.

  I’d woken up an hour earlier so I could enjoy some coffee and call my mother before heading into work. I grabbed my cell and punched in my aunt’s number. I sat on my tan loveseat I’d gotten from the neighbor down the hall before she tossed it. Carla was a middle-aged woman who divorced her ex-husband five years prior. She didn’t talk much about it, but over the last year of us being neighbors, we’d become close and she opened up about that much.

  She hadn’t wanted anything for the loveseat—which was my kind of price—but I didn’t feel right not giving her something. So I made her a couple meals that she could freeze and just pop in the oven when she wanted a cook-free night. I swore the look on her face had spoken volumes. It had said those meals were worth a hell of a lot more than if I’d given her fifty bucks.

  “Hello?” my aunt answered after the call connected.

  My aunt Frannie was old school. And that meant she only had a landline, had an old-ass TV that only got five channels on a good day, and believed in being self-sufficient. She walked to most places she needed to go, and when she had to use a vehicle, she took the bus. She only had a postage-stamp-sized yard, so gardening was out of the question for her, but she had a little raised bed with some herbs, and it was therapeutic for my mother and her. It brought them the happiness they could get with where they were at.

  “It’s me, Aunt Frannie. How are you?”

  “Elise, sweetheart, I’m good. You hanging in there?” She asked me this every time I called.

  Am I hanging in there?

  Meaning, had the city swallowed me whole yet?

  “I’m good. Things are going well.” I listened to my aunt start going on about her friends who’d come over so they could all play poker—something my mother was extremely good at for some reason. She told me how my mom had taken all their “cash.” And by cash, she meant the Monopoly money they used.

  I chuckled in between listening to her story and drinking my coffee. I stared out the window, my view the brick apartment building next door. If I pressed my cheek to the glass and craned my neck to the left, I could just barely make out the strip of the main intersecting street in front of my place.

  “All right, Beanie. Calm down,” my aunt hollered to my mother.

  She’d nicknamed my mom Beanie when they were just kids, and to this day I have no idea why. All I knew was it had stuck, and the only time my aunt called her by her real name—Charlene—was when she was angry.

  “Your mother is hounding me about giving her the phone. Talk to you later, honey. I love you.”

  “Love you too,” I said between a chuckle.

  There was some static on the other end as the phone was being passed off, and then I heard Mom grumble to my aunt under her breath.

  “Hi, Mom.” I balanced my coffee cup on the armrest of the loveseat and shifted on the cushion.

  “I was just thinking about you right before you called.”

  I smiled even though she couldn’t see me. My mom seemed to always be thinking about me right before I called. It was really endearing.

  We talked for the next twenty minutes about everything and nothing in general before I had to get off and start getting ready for work. But she made sure to slip in about me finding a “nice boy” and “settling down.” Nothing like your mom guilt-tripping you into getting hitched and popping out babies, despite the fact that I was barely twenty-four.

  After I disconnected the call and promised I’d come by tomorrow to have lunch with her and my aunt, I sat there and just stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Lucius and our encounter yesterday. It had been so random and different, not like any of the other instances where we passed each other.

  Despite my raging hormones, I’d been able to tell something was off about him, something different in the way he held himself. He’d been guzzling down the beer, and who knows how many swigs he’d taken from the scotch bottle before I walked in. But none of that was my business, and I sure as hell didn’t need the complication of wanting my boss. He was out of my league as well as out of my reach.

  Not like he’d want me anyway. I’m a nobody who scrubs his toilets. I snorted.

  He probably had a whole slew of svelte supermodels lined up to drop their panties and grab their ankles for him.

  I wrinkled my nose the image that thought conjured up. I also didn’t want to think too hard on how this spark of jealousy slammed into me at the thought of him with one of those no doubt gorgeous women who hung around in his circle.

  And here I was, thick around the edges, curvy in all the spots I didn’t even know if they were supposed to be curvy, but still loving my life and who I was. I never pretended I was perfect, because being human meant we were all perfectly imperfect. But I loved myself, had the love of a wonderful mother and aunt, and one day I’d find a man who loved me as well.

  But the very thought of Lucius being that man did send a flight of butterflies through my belly.

  “You are living in a damn fantasy world, girl,” I muttered before I got up and started getting ready for work.

  And as I finished and was heading out the door to take the subway, followed by a cab to Mr. Blacksmith’s place, it wasn’t lost on me that I might have dolled myself up just a bit more than usual. After all, maybe we’d have another run-in.

  Or maybe I was truly thinking I could be Cinderella and snag myself a prince.

  5

  Lucius

  It was the pounding in my head that had me slowly opening my eyes. And it was the sun filling the room that had me cursing loud enough it made my head pound even more.

  “Fuck,” I said more softly and pushed myself up, the leather sofa in my study creaking from the motion. I sat there for a second, my elbows braced on my knees, the empty scotch bottle lying on its side a few inches away from my feet.

  I was good and hungover.

  Fuck.

  I closed my eyes and ran a hand over my jaw. The scruff on my cheek slightly abraded my palm, and the sound of my skin scraping over the short hairs sounded so damn loud it was like a megaphone being blasted in my head.

  I dropped my hand to the cushion and wanted nothing more than to lie back down and sleep the rest of the day away. But I was fucking thirsty as hell, needed a shower to wash the stench of liquor off me, and wanted a few pain killers for the war drum beating behind my eyes.

  Getting my ass off the couch was easier said than done. As soon as I stood, the room spun, and I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and prayed I didn’t throw up right here on the hardwood floor. This would teach me to get shitfaced. But the repercussions were well worth it, given the fact that last night I hadn’t thought about the corner my old man had put me in.

  No, I just kept thinking about Elise and all the things I wanted to do to her. They’d been dirty thoughts, filthy images that were highly unprofessional. I wasn’t a saint, had jerked off to the thought of her, but it seemed when I was three sheets to the wind, my mind came up with some pretty elaborate, explicit things the two of us could do.

  I groaned again as my head pounded.

  I might not remember everything from last night, but I sure as fuck remembered those filthy sexual thoughts about Elise.

  Christ, I was too old to be getting drunk like this, and way too fucking old to be lusting after the forbidden, and that’s what Elise was. Forbidden. She worked for me, and crossing that line would put everyone in an awkward position, not to mention be highly unprofessional. Hell, I had a fucking no-fraternization clause in the employee contract I had everyone sign before I hired them. That didn�
��t just go for me, but for them as well. I didn’t need couples bickering or being pissy to each other while they were on the clock with me. It was just a cleaner situation to have everyone neutral.

  I ran my hand over my hair, knowing the short blond strands were probably fucked all over my head. I didn’t give a shit. I still wore my slacks, button-down shirt, and tie from yesterday. Although my tie was loosened around my neck and slightly askew from me sleeping. My clothes were wrinkled as fuck, and the amount of alcohol I consumed last night meant it was probably coming out my pores.

  I headed out of my study and into the kitchen. The first step was trying to get rid of this pounding headache. The house was fairly quiet, since it was early morning and Saturday, but I could hear some light commotion coming from another room. I insisted my employees take two days off a week, but that was my only stipulation. I let Merla handle the schedule, let her schedule everyone and give them overtime if need be. I wasn’t a bastard like my father, where I tried to cut corners at every turn to save a dime. If my staff needed extra money, I offered unlimited overtime. It wasn’t like this massive house wasn’t always in need of tending.

  And because Merla was in charge of scheduling, that meant sometimes there were people here on the weekends to keep up with things. That also meant every once in a while, I had the house completely empty. Sometimes, it was welcome; other times, that heavy oppression and loneliness sucked the fucking life right out of me.

  I headed into the kitchen, grabbed the biggest glass I could find, and filled it with water. I drank it down and repeated the process three more times. Even after that, I still felt fucking parched, like I’d been eating sand all night, my throat tight and raw, burning.