Pearl (The Pearl Series) by Arianne Richmonde

but—”
    “What?”
    “You mentioned that those crystal glasses were a wedding gift, and your doorman calls you Mrs . Robinson. Are you married, by any chance?”
    She laughed. “You think I’d be lying here, now, in this uncompromising position if I were married?”
    I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe.”
    “No, that’s not my style. I was married but got divorced a couple of years ago.”
    I could hear my lungs heave out a sigh of relief.
    That’s when, I guess, most men would have fucked her. And yes, I was tempted. Of course I was.
    But I wanted to wait. Why? Because I realized that I was dealing with a neo-virgin. A woman who hadn’t had an orgasm with anyone in all those years? I’d need to take it slow, I decided. Make her first time with me special. Something she’d never forget.
    As she lay there, slightly tipsy, she said, “Really, Alexandre, I’m too much of a head-case. You should be with someone much younger than me. Someone more receptive.”
    I thought she was kidding. She was the most receptive woman I had been with in ages. She was honest, vulnerable. When she came, I thought she might collapse she seemed so affected. I didn’t want some sassy college girl who’d experienced very little of the world, who’d never had any real knocks or bruises to call her own. I needed, I understood in that moment, a damaged bird. I wanted to repair her wing and help her fly again. Set her free. Hope that she would fly back to me of her own accord.
    Pearl was that bird with the broken wing.
    The more she tried to convince me that I was wasting my time even trying with her, the more I was determined to fix her.
    She stroked me tenderly on the cheek. “I don’t want you to be disappointed with me, Alexandre. I can’t come with sex, not even oral sex. I haven’t been able to for years. You’re gorgeous and everything but—”
    “There are no buts, chérie,” I told her. “An orgasm isn’t just physical. It’s all about your mental state of mind. The biggest sex organ of all is your brain. Think of the Big O as an orchestra that needs a conductor. I want to be that conductor, to conduct sweet, mind-blowing music that climaxes….right—” I trailed my finger down her stomach over her mound of Venus and tapped her gently between her legs—“here,” I said.
    She closed her eyes blissfully but shook her head as if to say that what I was describing was impossible.
    But impossible is not a word in my vocabulary.
    I had a mission:
    To be the best fuck that Pearl Robinson had ever had in her life.

6
    I was still thinking about Pearl while I navigated my way around the capital city of Mumbai. It was hot and sticky. Traffic everywhere. The streets were seething with ramshackled activity: cows dodging rickshaws (because cows are holy in India so they hang out, loose on the streets), scooters, diesel-belching trucks, cars, all ebbing and flowing as people tried to cross jam-packed roads without getting mowed down. Although India was still a third world country, it was innovative and ahead when it came to I.T. Not to mention the sheer volume of inhabitants. That’s why Sophie and I were keen to establish HookedUp there. But it was proving to be less than straightforward because of government corruption. So we decided that the best approach was to keep ourselves out of running the show in India. Sell them our company’s franchise and let them deal with it. There was no way either of us wanted to get embroiled in the day-to-day bribery and fraud that was an evil necessity there.
    We’d take the money and run, so to speak.
    Not in cash. But in precious stones and gems.
    Sophie and I had several specialists on our team because we didn’t trust a soul. Especially, the baggy, boozy-eyed bastard who was procuring the gems: Indira’s cousin.
    Indira…
    I was on my way to see her. We’d always meet at the Leela Hotel: a lavish, five-star piece of heaven that sits on the outskirts of the city, amidst the chaos