In the Stars

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Waiting in the Wings

Damian Waincroft was a man of contrasts. He liked fast and sleek. He also liked rough and tumble.

His cars were always glossy and Italian. His clothes were finely tailored; so crisp as to leave behind paper cuts. These were all well documented aspects of his persona.

There were also things that the general public was ignorant of. Things that colored him a different shade of ambitious.

He liked women who got off on being choked.

He also liked the odd orgy, but what man couldn't say they'd thought about having one? The more sex skirted the line between decent and wrong, the better it was. He loved the second of fear that came into their eyes, just before the pleasure took over. That's what did it for him.

A therapist might say he was the product of a sadist father and cowed mother. They'd say witnessing his father raping the sixteen-year-old Argentinean au pair at the age of eight had solidified his fate. Maybe it was the ecstasy in his father's eyes that day. Maybe it was the vacant, drugged look in his mother's. Either way, Damian had no problem with his habits. Nor his thirst.

Power was the antidote to life's mundane toll. It fed the beast inside him.

Being at the head of the Cavendish House board was most certainly a coup. He could do better. He wanted the British Museum, but that would have to wait. Alistair had instructed him to be patient.

Patience was not one of his virtues.

The Orion Foundation had funded the small art museum since it acquired the Cavendish estate. This had been no small feat, seeing as the remaining Cavendish family had fought the purchase with every last piece of their legacy they could scrounge up. It was a good thing titles didn't trump money.

Damian sat back in his leather chair and stared out the glass window that looked down at the atrium below. The Orion Foundation building had a prime spot in Canary Wharf, all the glass and chrome shining in the morning sun to create a prism of light around it.

It was good timing. At that moment, a woman walked into the atrium from the main entrance, looking windblown. Despite this first impression, he could see her beauty was extraordinary.

She could try to tone down her looks with her quiet clothing- a burgundy pencil skirt and oyster gray silk blouse- but it didn't disguise the fact her bone structure was stunning. Those cheekbones were high and delicate. Her collarbone was exquisitely elegant. Even from that distance he could see that her skin had the color and smoothness of cream.

Then there was her hair. A vibrant strawberry blonde, it was coiled into a bun at the back of her perfectly round head. Something about that hair made him want to let it free, bury his face in it, wrap it around his fingers and pull.

She had come to see him. It was her first day as curator of special exhibits at Cavendish House. He had asked her to meet him at the Foundation building as a strategy. She needed to see his position, his prestige. He liked his subordinates fully aware of his rank.

His desk phone rang.

"Mr. Waincroft?"

"Yes?"