Graydon knew people mocked him for his young lovers. That they saw him as a sad old queen, desperately clinging to the vestiges of his own, long-lost youth. Those people could all go fuck themselves. Graydon knew the truth: he was a huge success; rich, famous, preposterously talented. The rules of the hoi polloi did not apply to him. If he wanted a twenty-year-old lover, he would buy himself one, just the same way he bought himself a slice of chocolate cake or a couture smoking jacket or anything else that brought him pleasure.
Graydon James lived for pleasure. Yet, at the same time, he enjoyed a challenge, romantically as much as professionally. It wasn’t Guillermo’s young, perfect body that made Graydon feel alive so much as moments like this one. The drama. The tension. The passion. Sex was all well and good, but nothing beat the addictive thrill of romance. Hope and despair. Agony and ecstasy.
Graydon patted the seat beside him. ‘What do you want, William? Exactly? Come and talk to me.’
‘It’s Guillermo,’ the boy smouldered. ‘And you know what I want.’
Graydon patted the seat again. Guillermo narrowed his eyes briefly, then trotted to his master’s side like a chastened puppy.
‘I want the London job. The castle.’
Graydon shook his head. ‘It’s impossible. Hanborough’s a huge project. You can’t possibly manage it alone.’
‘I wouldn’t be alone though, would I?’ Guillermo put a hand suggestively on the old man’s thigh. ‘You could come with me.’
‘Only part time.’ Graydon closed his eyes as the boy’s fingers crept higher. ‘I can’t leave New York for too long. Besides, I’d go mad. I loathe the countryside. You do realize Hanborough Castle isn’t actually in London? It’s in the middle of nowhere. You’d hate it.’
‘I want that job.’
Guillermo’s dark brown eyes locked with the great designer’s. A challenge. Graydon’s pupils dilated with desire.
‘I’m a good designer, Graydon.’ Guillermo coiled his fingers around the old man’s hardening cock and squeezed gently.
No, you’re not, thought Graydon. But it was hard to hold on to the thought as Guillermo’s fingers began to move and the waves of pleasure built.
Flora Fitzwilliam was a good designer, perhaps a great one. Flora was Graydon’s protégée, and he had already as good as promised the Hanborough job to her.
He’d first come across Flora’s work by chance when an important client, a minor member of the Rockefeller clan, had dragged him along to some ghastly charity event at the Rhode Island School of Design. Flora was one of the graduating class whose portfolios were being showcased. Graydon only had to see her fabric prints and a single chaise longue to realize he’d found a pearl among swine, a rare and precious diamond in the rough. The bold simplicity of Flora’s designs, her eye for light and her pure aesthetic, elegant and classic but with a wonderful youthful twist, reminded him of his own, best early work. Flora Fitzwilliam had something that Graydon James had once had, but lost. That was the brutal truth. Graydon could choose to be envious, or he could harness Flora’s magic and use it to revivify his own vast but flagging brand. He could subsume her talent, polish it up a little, and present it to the world as his own. Better yet, if he managed the girl properly, she’d be grateful to him for doing it.
A few cursory enquiries into Flora Fitzwilliam’s background told him all he needed to know. Born wealthy and privileged, Flora’s family had lost everything when her father had been sent to jail for fraud. The penury and shame that had followed had destroyed Flora’s mother. But the teenage Flora was made of stronger stuff, and had turned to art and ambition to drag her out of the morass. She was a girl after Graydon James’s own heart: ambitious, artistic, and profoundly insecure. She knows what it’s like to have a good life and then lose it, Graydon thought. She won’t want to risk that again.
He was right. By artfully combining carrot and stick – the dangled chance of promotion and responsibility, along with the constant threat of being replaced – Graydon had managed to tie Flora’s star to his own over the last three years, with a nigh on unbreakable bond.
It wasn’t so much that she had earned the job restoring the magnificent Hanborough Castle (although she certainly had done that). It was more that Graydon knew Flora would hit the ball out of the park, then roll over meekly when he, Graydon, took the lion’s share of the credit for her work. Well, perhaps not meekly. But she’d accept it in the end. There were other advantages too. Flora had been to boarding school in England, and understood the English upper classes and their tastes far better than Graydon. Henry Saxton Brae, Hanborough’s new owner, was closer to Flora’s age. Plus, if Flora was on site at Hanborough, Graydon didn’t need to worry about rushing straight back to New York, a city it pained him to leave as much as it hurt to abandon a lover.
Unquestionably, Flora Fitzwilliam was the best person for the job.
On the other hand, Flora was not able to do the things to his dick that Guillermo was about to.
Decisions, decisions …
Running his hands through the boy’s hair, Graydon murmured, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then he pulled Guillermo’s head down into his lap, groaning with satisfaction as his young lover got to work.
Mason Parker looked up from his Mac when he heard the key in the lock.
‘Flora? Sweetheart? Is that you?’
‘No. It’s an axe murderer.’ Flora dropped her suitcase in the hallway with a loud thud and walked into the bedroom.
Sprawled on top of the bed in his immaculate bachelor pad on Broadway and Bleecker, wearing a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts and a faded James Perse T-shirt, and with his blond hair still slick from the shower, Mason looked as preppily handsome as ever. He did, however, close his computer hurriedly when Flora walked in.
Flora grinned. ‘Was that a porn slam?’
‘Of course not.’ Mason blushed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You won’t mind if I take a look then,’ Flora said archly.
Before Mason could stop her she’d reached across the bed and grabbed his MacBook Air, flipping it open to reveal a screenshot of some very boring-looking graphs. ‘Bloomberg? Really? Wow. I guess it’s true what they say: While the cat’s away, the mouse will check out bond yield curves.’
‘You sound disappointed.’ Mason looked hurt. ‘Would you rather I were watching porn?’
‘Of course not. I’m only teasing.’
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Flora kissed him on the mouth. He tasted of toothpaste and his skin smelled of soap, the same Roger & Gallet variety he always used.
The truth was, Flora sometimes wished that Mason would watch porn. Or lose his temper, or wear the wrong kind of shirt to an event, or forget to clean his teeth. Something, anything, to make him more normal, more fallible – more like her. Other Wall Street bankers spent their days manipulating the Libor rate or insider trading. Why did Mason always have to be so good?
But of course she was being silly. Flora loved Mason, and she knew how lucky she was to have him. He was smart, handsome and kind, not to mention loaded. Manhattan’s pretty, blonde, gold-digging socialites had always been drawn to him like moths to a flame. But he chose me, Flora reminded herself. The girl with no money, no family, no connections. He loves me.
Mason’s family, the Parkers, were old East Coast money, with estates in Westchester County and an impressive portfolio of real estate in the city. OK, so Mason wasn’t wild and rebellious and unpredictable, like Flora’s beloved father Edmund had been. But Edmund Fitzwilliam had wound up in jail at forty and dead at forty-six. Hardly an example Flora wanted her future husband to emulate.
‘I