Free Falling for Sir by Cat Kelly Page B

outside. Letting their hair down, flirting and meeting people. But
life, for her, was like a photo album full of other people's pictures.
    She wondered if her dinner date had even noticed
she was gone yet. He could still be complaining to the waiter.
    When she went to bed she lay staring into the
dark and thought of The Club again.
    That was what she needed—a place where control
was ostensibly taken out of her hands, a safe environment where she did not
have to be herself. Instead she was someone exotic. At The Club, with the
beautiful, strong, domineering Sir, she'd been completely free of all her usual
anxieties for the first time since she turned twelve and walked in on her
mother giving Uncle Stan a blow job in the woodshed.
    Yeah, Mom, thanks for that. No way anything good
could be made out of that little
nugget of experience.
    Except, maybe, at least it wasn't dad servicing
Uncle Stan. No, poor dad was in his study with his beloved books, lost in the
pages while he waited for his daughter to come back and finish playing chess.
Marianne always won, placing his vanquished pieces in a neat line beside the
board, claiming them one by one until he conceded defeat with a weary shake of
his head and a befuddled frown.
    What she saw that day in the woodshed opened her
eyes, but shut down her curiosity about sex. When her mother belatedly tried to
tell her the facts of life, Marianne had stopped her with, "I've studied
biology, Veronica. I'm sure that will be sufficient to get me through the
ordeal." She'd called her mother by her first name from the moment she
knew what it was. Somehow "mother" never really suited Veronica
Shelton. Yes, she went by her maiden name, using the excuse that she was a
known artist before she married—heavily inferring that those were the best
years of her life. So the term "wife" didn't really suit Veronica
either.  
    No way could she explain all this to her
brothers. Wouldn't want to try. Mike and Ben knew nothing about their mother
and Uncle Stan in the woodshed. Good for them. Ben, the eldest, idolized their
mother and would never believe a bad word about her. Ben looked at their
childhood through glasses with a distinctly rosy tint and Marianne sometimes
wondered if they'd been raised in the same household. As for Mike, he danced
merrily through his life as if he had nothing to trouble him. He was the warm,
friendly guy who always fit in and everybody loved. Life and sex, for Mike, was
simple. He met a woman he liked, they dated, they had sex. Comfortable in his
skin, her brother never had too many questions demanding answers in his mind.
Things followed for him in a natural progression. One day he'd marry and have a
kid, but he was in no hurry because he had no fear that it might never happen
for him. Her brothers weren't teasing when they said Marianne got all the
brains in the family, and they were relieved about it. Why wouldn't they be?
They were never troubled with deep thoughts and even deeper anxieties. They
were men. Her brothers had it easy.
    All these years she'd waited for uncomplicated
desire—for a man to come along and sweep her off her feet so that she forgot
everything and just let go. The only place she'd ever found it was at The Club
in the hands of her boss, Jack Marchetti. As usual, there was nothing simple
for her, nothing straightforward.
    She definitely could not afford to fall head
over heels for Mr. Marchetti. But boy did "Sir" know how to pleasure
her pink.
     
    * * * *
     
    On Monday she met with the notorious Mrs.
Bracknell. Chattering Christie had warned, "She's a sly old goat who knows
everything about everyone. You'll remember her - she probably handed you your
security pass when you started and made you fill out some forms, which are, by
the way, obsolete. My theory is she does some sort of handwriting analysis on
them for Marchetti. I'm surprised she doesn't ask for hair samples. She was old
man Marchetti's personal secretary. Rumor has it she had a crush on