“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help. I want to keep you safe. I want us to spend more time together. I can make this world easier for you. As easy as this world will allow it to be for anything. So if this is where you think you belong, then you’ll belong here with me.”
Part II
Tricks Of The Trade
Chapter 8
Natalie
“This is not how I thought we would start the training,” I told Penn.
My freshly manicured hands brushed down the front of the dark blue dress that had been delivered earlier that morning. It was simple and elegant. A sharp contrast to the jaw-dropper I’d worn only last week for New Year’s Eve.
“Well, this is where we will begin. You’re under my tutelage now, and I believe in a hands-on approach.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “That I did know.”
The tilt of his lips said he was amused by me, but he didn’t let it show otherwise. He was fully in control tonight as we took a sleek black car to a charity dinner for the children’s art foundation. It felt too soon for me to be out in public. I’d thought that he’d want to show me the ropes or give me a PowerPoint slide lecture or something equally professorial. But he’d insisted this was the best way to learn. Since it was how they had all learned.
It made me unbelievably nervous. I’d been to any number of events for the Upper East Side, but I hadn’t been trying to be one of them. I’d just been me and thought that was enough. But, for me to pull all of this off, I had to be more than me. I had to belong.
“I can tell you how to act and think and feel. I can walk you through it. Observe and critique as if I were in a classroom, but it would be for nothing. Think of this as an immersive language experience. Instead of learning French in school, you’re being dropped into Southern France with a family who speaks broken English. You have to find a way to fit, and you have to do it pretty quick.”
“You make it sound terrifying,” I told him.
His eyes flicked to mine. “Now, you’re getting it.”
“Thank you,” I said softly. “For helping me even though you don’t want to be in this world and you hate stuffy dinners and galas.”
“I’m thinking that, if I fuck you at all of these stuffy dinners and galas, I might find them more tolerable,” he deadpanned.
My cheeks flushed, and heat flooded my body. “You’re not serious.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
No. No, he did not.
“I do have one rule,” he said carefully, sidestepping right over the fact that he intended to have sex with me in public places as part of my training.
A fact that I was…very interested in hearing more about.
“Oh? I’m surprised you only have one.”
“It’s an important one.” He looked tense as he said it. “I reserve the right to add more as we go though.”
I chuckled. “Fine. What’s the main one?”
“This is going to be…uncomfortable for me. This training is unorthodox and goes against the man that I was trying to become. I realize that I was only half as successful as I wanted to be. And only tried about a quarter as hard as I should have to get there. So the Upper East Side is home, and I guess it’s where I’m to stay, but that doesn’t make me okay with that fact.”
I nodded in response. I had known that he was conflicted on helping me. That he was only doing it after he saw my breakdown about Lewis. About this damn seductive world that had pulled me in like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
“I’m not always going to be the Penn that you know. I will have to be the Penn Kensington who owns Manhattan. The dark beast within that paces through my mind and threatens to unleash himself upon the world. The beast that I’ve leashed ever since my asshole father died of an overdose and left me to realize what the fuck I was doing with my life. You won’t always like what I do, what I say, or who I am. Are you okay with that?”
I swallowed before nodding. I’d seen his mask before. I knew what he was capable of. And I was the one unleashing him on the world.
He blew out a breath before regaining composure. “You say that now. We’ll see later. But the only thing that I ask from you, the only rule I want us both to follow, is, no masks in private.” He stared deep into my eyes as if he could convey the importance of that rule in just one look. “No matter who we are or what we do or how we act in public, you’re still my Natalie in private, and I’m still your Penn in private. Can you do that?”