Vibrizzio (6 page)

“It’s just a breakup, Mom. Calm down.”

“Well, do you think you’ll be getting back together?”

“I … I don’t know. I don’t think so. Look, I know you really liked him, but it became clear that he and I didn’t understand each other, so it seemed best to split.”

Penny nodded and her hand slowly made its way down to the table, where she absently ran her fingertips along the rim of her saucer. “When you say you didn’t understand each other, do you mean sexually?”

Pressing her lips together with pressure so fierce it could form diamonds, Lyssa gave a curt shake of her head. “It was a lot of things, Mom.”

“Oh.” It was one those
oh
s that came packed with layers of meaning—none of which merely meant
oh
.

Let it go
, Lyssa told herself.
Talk about the tea or talk about the weather. Maybe encourage her to go on for an hour about Jessica’s homemaking prowess, but do not give in to her bait.
It was a battle Lyssa rarely won. “Why did you automatically assume that sex was the problem?”

Penny’s eyes went wide with feigned innocence. “It was only a question. No need to get shrill.”

Was she shrill? Lyssa looked down and saw her fingers bent like talons, holding her balled-up napkin in a death grip. Willing herself to relax, she released the napkin and spread it across her lap. “I’m sorry, but … why did you immediately go
there
?”

“No reason.” Penny lifted her porcelain cup to her lips. Before taking a long sip, she murmured, “It’s just that you’ve always been a bit of a prude.”

Lyssa's fingers choked the napkin again. Had any other woman in the entire history of everything ever been accused of being a prude
by her own mother
? She decided to meet blunt with blunter. “So you’re still disappointed I wouldn’t go with Jess and the other seniors to the suck-off-the-football-team parties?” For effect, she lifted her wrinkled napkin and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

“That is not what was going on, and maybe if you’d been more social, you would’ve been asked to a prom.”

“You wanted me to
social
myself out for a date to prom?”

Penny tilted her head in the way that said she’d have none of her daughter’s nonsense. “What I want to express is that I understand what it’s like to be uptight in the bedroom. Your father and I … ”

Oh dear God.

“ … but once I loosened up and agreed to some of the things he’d been asking me to try … ”

Oh God, no!
These weren’t random words popping into Lyssa’s mind—she was actually praying.
Please, make it stop.

It wasn’t stopping, and Lyssa did her best to block her mother’s words and focus on something—
anything
—else in the vast room. Her eyes darted about, failing to find purchase anywhere, and the distinct syllables that formed the word “testicles” in her mother’s nasally voice cut through her rising panic. Her eyes stopped on the gleaming flatware resting conveniently on the white linen tablecloth. She momentarily considered stabbing forks into her eardrums, but that’d only stop the noise; she’d still be able to read those lips that didn’t stop moving.

“ … and there’s something very gratifying about causing a man to lose control like that … ”

Lyssa instantly decided on the ultimate superpower Keith had always wanted her to choose. She’d pick telekinesis, and she’d use it to snap off one of the harp strings and levitate it over. Then she’d wrap it around her mother’s throat and squeeze. Squeeze until Mommy turned blue. Squeeze until that larynx could never again spew its torturous revelations. Judging by the sour expressions that were now being cast in her mother’s direction, Lyssa felt fairly certain the other tea room patrons would thank her.

Please, God. Make. It. Stop.

Without thinking what she was doing, Lyssa held her palm out flat in front of her, effectively halting Penny’s sexual memoir. “You know what, Mom? Keith and I broke up. Period. That’s really all you need to know. I appreciate your efforts to guess at what went wrong and offer your advice, but
please
stop.”

Penny gave an insulted huff but complied and, to Lyssa’s surprise, actually dropped the subject. The rest of their afternoon passed with relative harmony between the women … at least as far as anyone on the outside could tell.

* * *

Lyssa was proud that she’d defended herself against her mother’s unfair assumptions, but that didn’t mean some of the words hadn’t stuck with her. “A bit of a prude,” to be precise about which words.

Her mother was naïve regarding those high school football parties, and if not wanting to lose her innocence to a bunch of acne-ridden jocks made Lyssa a prude, then she was fine with that. Besides, if Penny Bates could’ve seen the way her daughter and Keith had been going at it for the last several months, she may have chosen a different word to describe her youngest child.

Prude. Psssh.

Sitting on her futon with her mother safely deposited at the hotel, Lyssa rested her feet on her worn, dark wood coffee table and pulled out House Vibrizzio. Her lip curled. What would her mother make of this? Turning the toy onto its lowest setting, she began massaging, letting her mind wander to … Keith.

“Shit,” she muttered. Not because the thought of him had made her heart sink—though it did a little bit—but what made her curse was the realization that her masturbatory fantasies always started with her boyfriend. Even in her imagination, she didn’t stray outside socially acceptable lines. Turning off the vibrator, she let her head fall to the sofa back. “Maybe I am a prude.”

The analog clock in her kitchen ticked, and somebody outside her building shouted indecipherably, his call followed by laughter that moved down the sidewalk. She kicked Vibrizzio up to the second speed, drowning out the noise, and gazed at it for a few moments. A steely determination settled over her.

Touching it back to her, she willed her mind away from Keith. The baby-smooth chest she typically envisioned sprouted with hair, thick and wiry, and Lyssa pictured her tongue sliding through it, stopping only to pull a loose hair from between her teeth.
You’re thinking too much,
she scolded herself.
Let go.
The hairy man without a face grabbed her and tossed her down onto the ground.

They were on a beach now. A bright, secluded beach with a rocky outcropping ahead of them, a thick jungle to the left. Ocean waves lapped only feet away on the other side. He wasted no time in taking his pleasure and thrust into her, moving fast and striking her most tender spots, never staying long enough to drive her over the edge but teasing her into a frenzy.

She eagerly thrust her hips forward, and he flipped her over onto all fours while he shifted to take her from behind, but he was slippery and clattered to the ground. Lyssa gasped and picked him back up, taking a moment to make sure no important bits had chipped off before resuming the fantasy. The hair had now crept over his entire body, and she felt his fur tickle against the back of her thighs. He snarled as he re-mounted her.

Lyssa moaned. He was hitting a sweet point, so close to her trigger but not quite there. His weight pressed into her ever more urgently, and he slid his strong hands over her abdomen to clutch at her breasts. “You turn me … into an animal,” he huffed into her ear, the pacing of his thrusts reaching desperate levels. Lyssa braced herself to support them both but allowed some give in her elbow so she could rock with his frenetic rhythm without snapping anything.

He’d lost control now and was pure beast, snarling and slamming into her while he clung firmly onto her chest, his claw-like fingers digging in. His power both delighted and terrified her. While her inner tissues rejoiced, her exterior held strong. One little waver and his unyielding force might crush her. He growled and plunged deeper into her. At last, her arm buckled, and her face smushed into her rug, which was now the sandy beach. As she fell, Vibrizzio’s tip flicked across her trigger, and her imagined lover howled as she shouted into the empty apartment, shuddering against the plastic device.

Chapter Six

“Does getting nailed by a werewolf count as bestiality?” Lyssa asked her work friend Carla.

The two analysts sat at a shabby table in a secluded corner of the dumpiest restaurant/bar in the Loop. Nobody else from Fox & Keaton would set foot in the place, so it had become their “safe zone”—a place to dish about their coworkers without worry of being overheard.

“Depends—is he in wolf form or man form?” Carla asked.

“Mostly man, I think, but covered in a really thick, soft hair, like fur. And clawed fingers.”

She clawed her own fingers into the huge plate of chili cheese fries the girls were sharing. In the three weeks since returning from Boston, Lyssa had been working sixty-plus hours a week to prepare the presentation for Project Pineapple, and comfort food was the way she preferred to unwind and reward herself before the big meeting with the client the next day.

Carla quirked a thin, penciled eyebrow at Lyssa’s oddly specific parameters. “Got any particular wolf in mind?”

Lyssa’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Hayden.

Hayden: Where are you?

“Hold on a sec,” she said to Carla as she typed.

Lyssa: Not free to divulge that info.

Hayden: Let me rephrase. How soon can U get ur nicely rounded ass back up here?

“Shit.”

Lyssa: Why?

There was an extended pause before his response came in.

Hayden: BF fucked us.

“What!”

“What?” Carla asked.

“Don’t know. Some kind of problem with one of the Pineapple candidates. Of course. Just when it looked like we had it all wrapped up. She typed back.

Lyssa: Coming. C U in ten.

She grabbed one last loaded fry and mumbled through it, “Sorry. I gotta go see exactly how late of a night I’m in for.”

The streets were light as most commuters had already headed back to the suburbs, so Lyssa grabbed a cab to shave a few minutes from her trip. Upon reaching the office, she went to her desk to grab her DH files. All the analysts and administrative assistants had cleared out of their cubicles, and light glowed through the frosted side windows of only a couple of the senior professionals’ offices.

The smaller wing where Hayden’s office was located was vacant, except for him. He’d left his door wide open, and something about the glare shining through his doorway seemed harsher than the lighting on the rest of the floor. She slowed her steps, approaching silently. Peeking into his office, she saw him standing behind his desk bent over an open report. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and even from the distance, Lyssa could clearly make out the thick ribbons of his bulging arteries.

“What happened?” she asked, stepping inside the doorframe.

He stood straight and pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “They walked. All seven of them.”

“Walked? We’re talking about Bell Funds, right?”

“Yep. The five senior professionals plus their two new analysts have left the bank. Carlo called to give me the heads up before the press release hits tomorrow morning.”

Lyssa sank into the side chair. “That was nice of him,” she half murmured while her mind flickered over the new information.

“Oh yeah, he’s a real prince.” He curled his hand into a fist, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “Would’ve been a lot nicer if he’d clued me in three weeks ago.”

“Wait … what? They were planning on this when we were out there?”

“Planning it? It was a done fucking deal. They’re starting their own investment firm, complete with fully furnished offices, business cards, stolen clients. The whole proverbial shebang. This has been in the works for a long time … and I was blind to every sign of it.”

“Those rat bastards!” Lyssa flew up from her chair. “They lied right to us! Wooed us with bagels and cream cheeses. Just so they could, so they could … Hayden, why would they want to do this to us?”

“To hear Carlo tell it, they’re doing us a huge favor—offering our client the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the hottest new investment firm.”

“They still expect us to give them the recommendation?”

One side of Hayden’s mouth lifted in a tight, ironic smirk, and a flick of his eyebrows confirmed the answer was yes.

“Those rat bastards!” Lyssa shrieked.

Hayden let out a chuckle, seeming to relax as Lyssa took his fury onto herself. “You don’t even know the worst part.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. What we’ve got to focus on right now is revising our presentation for Pineapple tomorrow.”

“You’re not thinking of recommending the new firm, are you?”

“Rat Bastard Capital? No way. Not only because they’re deceptive fuckwads, but because the client just weathered an ill-fated employee shake-up, and we can’t throw them right into the middle of another one.”

“Simple—let’s index all of it. We’ll pick a fund that mimics a large value index and screw taking a chance on the active managers.”

He shook his head. “If it were entirely up to me, I’d spread this portion out among a few different managers and see which one shines, but we have a request from the client for
one
active
manager. We’ve got to give them more than two to choose from, so we’ll have to find one more—by tomorrow morning. Got any suggestions?”

The question made her uneasy. Surely he’d find fault with whomever she suggested. But in studying his earnest gaze and the lack of any sign of a cocky twitch to his lips, she ventured forth. “I’d have to run the numbers against Ardent and Smithson to see how they compare, but there are a couple of firms out west that might be a good fit. Onion Investors right here in Chicago is another possibility.”

“Okay, run the numbers. I’ll do a little digging too. Let’s meet in the corner conference room in an hour and see what we’ve got.”

She went back to her desk and pulled up the stats. When they regrouped in the conference room—in the now otherwise vacant office suite—Hayden quickly conceded that one of Lyssa’s candidates, Ellis Investments in Denver, was the best choice.