Fortune by Annabel Joseph (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

She could see he was trying his very best to present himself as the responsible and well-intentioned suitor. To be honest he was doing quite well, but Kat recognized the nervous tension underneath.

Sure, she could have called and warned him that Elena would make him stay for dinner, make him undergo an interrogation only slightly less aggressive than those conducted by the State Department. She could have, but that would have ruined all the fun. Anyway, he should have known. When he was just a “friend”, a successful doctor and polite dinner guest who seemed to have a passing interest in her daughter, that was one thing. Now he was something else… A prospective son-in-law.

At least her mother jumped to that conclusion. Kat had told her nothing of the “one month” agreement or her dabbles in power exchange with the fresh-faced young doctor in the spiffy tie. In Kat’s family, when you moved in with someone it was to practice for marriage. Kat hadn’t told Ryan that, hadn’t seen a need. But he realized it now, certainly. Elena had just pried the last few generations of his ancestry from him in conversation. Now she was moving on to religious and political beliefs. Next would be questions designed to intuit his morality, his integrity on personal issues Elena considered important. Fidelity, personal responsibility, social issues. She’d heard it all before, witnessed this dissection with each of her sisters’ husbands.

She only half listened, tuning in for the parts where he revealed something that surprised her. Stepsiblings she didn’t know he had, a childhood sojourn in the Far East. Agnostic beliefs that were well thought out and interesting. But she already knew most of what she needed to know about him. Everything else was extraneous, insights she wasn’t in the mood to analyze. Some part of her didn’t want to know him that well. Some part of her wanted to preserve a distance. She knew he could control her—he’d proven that already. She wasn’t quite ready yet to give up that control. She thought he could get a dangerous grip on her if he wanted to.

She fully intended to move out at the end of a month. She knew she’d be over him by then, probably long before then actually. She was always that way… Got obsessed with something or someone and moved on when she’d scratched the itch. She’d done her best to warn him that she wasn’t good relationship material, so she wasn’t going to waste a lot of time feeling guilty when she left. Or feeling guilty while she watched him squirm through Elena’s questions.

“And you want children, I guess?” Elena asked him with a smile.

“Oh yes, Mrs. Argounov. Tons of them.”

Kat choked on piece of dinner roll. Her father’s face lit up over his cabbage and potatoes. Ryan looked around the table at Kat’s sisters, at their messy, squalling babies and impish children.

“You know, I think that’s the real meaning of life. Love, connection, family. All this. You all… You don’t know how lucky you are. Or perhaps you do.”

Kat almost applauded. What a slam dunk. Her mother would be pure putty in his hands now. Elena looked around at her family too, the beaming matriarch. “I share your idea, Dr. Ryan. I like this idea of family.”

“Please, call me Ryan,” he said, reaching for Kat beside him. He put his arm around her, pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Kat looked past him to see her father’s eyes shining, a tremulous smile on his face.

* * * * *

“That was really wrong of you,” she told him on the way to his house after dinner.

“What was really wrong?”

“Leading them on like that. Feeding them those bullshit lines about kids and family. I can’t believe my mother at least, couldn’t see through you.”

He glanced over at her, then back at the road. “It’s not bullshit. I didn’t tell one lie to your mother or father. I told you, Kat. I never lie.”

“Well,” she said, feeling sulky at the reprimand in his tone. “You were trying to manipulate them. You manipulate people. I’ve seen you do it. You manipulate me.” He made a soft sound, a cross between a laugh and a sigh. “Do you deny it?”

“I manipulate you every chance I get, doll.”

“Ugh. Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Because I want to. Get used to it, doll. And you’re no stranger to manipulation, if you’re going to be pointing fingers.”

She fell silent, watching the tree-lined sidewalks out the window, the tiny Cambridge house gardens. Little disciplined managed plots of color maintained in a crowded Boston suburb. She thought she would be disciplined and maintained that way by Ryan. He would try to make her thrive where she didn’t naturally belong. And her mother and father were one hundred percent behind him—as Ryan had forecast, Elena practically packed her bags and carried them out to Ryan’s car. She felt anxious, scared. Excited. Ryan looked over at her and stroked her thigh softly for just a moment.

“You’re going to spend tonight without any clothes. When we get home, they come off and you stay naked until tomorrow morning when you go to work. Understood?”

“Um…”

“Yes Sir.”

“Yes Sir. But um…may I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“Is that every night? Or just tonight?”

“It’s whenever I say so.”

Kat looked down in her lap, at her hands clasped there. “Oh. What if I get cold?”

“You won’t get cold.”

The way he said it left no mystery behind the meaning. When they got to his house, he took her inside and had her strip in the foyer. He took her clothes down the hall, into the room that was “hers”. He returned and approached her in silence with that intent look that always rattled her a little, made her want to hide herself. He put his hands on her, pressing on the small of her back so she had to stand up straighter. He pushed back her shoulders so her breasts were thrust forward.

“Don’t