TAYLOR JONES SAYS: In When She’s on Top by C. X Brooks, the LuxeLinks Club—No fortune hunters. No gold diggers—was set up to provide safe escorts for busy, professional, and wealthy women without the threat of scams and gold diggers. The book consists of several short stories, each one involving one of the main characters and their escort/protector, with an underlying subplot of an evil man seeking revenge.

Both erotic and suspenseful, the stories blend mystery and intrigue with hot sex and romance. What more could you ask?

REGAN MURPHY SAYS: When She’s on Top by C. X Brooks is the story of wealthy, powerful women and the men who love them. The women portrayed in the book are all professional, intelligent, and driven, and as a result, are the target of evil men, who want to destroy them and everything they have built. Devastated by the suicide of their mother after their father’s betrayal, the Hirsch sisters have formed the LuxeLinks Club, where heiresses like themselves can meet men who are not after their money. Told in a series of short stories, the book focuses on the relationships of powerful women with the men in their lives, strong men who are not threatened by an equally strong woman. Each woman is forced to deal with an unknown threat by a man bent on revenge, determined to bring her down.

An erotic romance, whose plot has some teeth, with excellent character development, showing strong but realistic women of color, and plenty of spicy sex scenes, When She’s on Top is one both erotic romance and romantic suspense fans should love.

CHAPTER 1
This Mark Changes the Game
The LuxeLinks Club Story 1

Twenty Years Ago:

“Send in my next visitor, please, Nancy.”

Estate planner and family trust attorney Jaime Lowenthal straightened his silk tie after using the intercom on his fancy new office phone system.

Glancing around at the freshly painted space conservatively decorated and minimally furnished with a few cast-off collectible antiques from his grandparents made him glad that he had opened his own practice instead of joining his papa’s firm.

The closed door that separated his office from the short hallway to the small reception area glided open silently.

“Here we are, Miss Hirsch and Mrs. Brown,” his secretary said as she guided a young girl wearing a plaid school uniform, and an older woman in a denim shirt and overalls into his office. Nancy introduced the child as his prospective client, Miss Margeaux Carr Hirsch of the New England department stores Hirsches, and her chaperone as Mrs. Janet Brown.

Nancy waited for them to be seated before she backed out of the office and closed the door softly.

“How may I be of service to you, Miss Hirsch?”

Solemn brown eyes framed by thick lashes, much darker than the cap of toasted brown curls atop her head, stared directly into his eyes for several slow blinks. She nodded once then reached into her Wonder Woman backpack and pulled out a silver piggy bank, which she balanced in her lap.

“Daddy stole all of Mommy’s money and divorced her to run off and marry a gold-digging tramp. Then Mommy killed herself because she was so sad. Now we’re going to live with Daddy all the time.” She paused until her lower lip stopped quivering. “Mr. Lowenthal, I need to hire you to protect my trust fund and the trust funds for my little sister, Julianna, and our baby sister, Chloe.”

CHAPTER 2

Present Day:

The padded envelope was small, three inches by five according to the pre-printed details on the back just below the pull tab. She flipped the package again, and again read Alexa Davis Spencer in uniform block type above her residential address rendered in the same bold font on the shipping label. The return address was an unfamiliar post office box. The postmark was local.

She frowned as she tested the weight of the parcel on the palm of her hand. She hadn’t ordered anything, and even so, she always shipped her deliveries to her workplace to guarantee someone was available to sign for them.

She pulled the tab. Inside, an unassuming black thumb drive with a “play me” sticky note tempted her curiosity beyond her willingness to resist. Repeated warnings from her company’s mandatory quarterly seminars, about security protocols and personal safety measures, cycled through her brain while Alexa headed toward her home office at the back of her secluded residence in an exclusive suburban gated community. She located her tablet, which she used primarily as her e-reader. If the drive was infected with a virus that her high-end computer security software couldn’t handle, she wouldn’t lose anything that couldn’t be recovered.

She curled into the window seat as the video file automatically opened. A sunny scene filled with clear blue skies and citrus trees tapped into her memories of her recent long weekend getaway at the Seaside Enclave in Florida with her secret boyfriend, artist Beckford Gallegas. When the focus swung to an ornately scrolled iron fence with the letters S and E worked into the design, Alexa’s breath hitched with a sudden spike of anxiety.

The image faded to black, then dissolved into the setting of an exquisitely appointed bedroom suite. The king-sized bed held her attention, not only because it dominated the space, but because it was occupied by a woman and a man—by Alexa and Beck.

That moment of recognition split her consciousness into two levels of awareness. Horrified shock and anger and fear at the irrefutable evidence of the violation of her personal privacy, of Beck’s personal privacy, rolled through her in nauseating waves. At the same time, she recognized how sensual and loving the two bodies locked together looked in the moving image. The absence of sound made their embrace appear even more explicit.

Alexa had never recorded herself having sex or permitted anyone else to record her. She had never understood the appeal of doing so. Until this moment. From the wavy fall of her disheveled hair atop her tipped back head to the rise and fall of her full lips and open mouth, down her rounded chin to the long curve of her exposed neck drawing the eye to her breasts, prominently displayed to heaving advantage encased in a pale yellow confection of lace and satin, the undulations of her body broadcast the joys of carnal abandon. Stretched along the upward curve of her deeply arched back, her softly padded ribs and her stomach contracted and expanded up and down, in and out with Beck’s driving thrusts unimpeded by the crotchless panel of the lace and satin matching bottoms between her bent and spread legs.

With the soles of her feet propped against the low foot rail and one of Beck’s arms coiled across her lower back to hold her perfectly angled to receive him from tip to root, Alexa watched the video and remembered every stroke. So did her body. Her nipples ached. Her clitoris ached, and the crotch of her leggings was already soaked as she watched Beck use the strength in his straight arm braced against the mattress to keep them elevated while he pivoted on the balls of both feet planted firmly on the hardwood floor.

Watching the video transported her back to that physical place and headspace. The way her glutes, her thigh muscles, and calf muscles quivered from the strain of being folded and spread to cradle his pumping hips. The slick, sweaty slide of his skin over hers and the squelching squish of his erection as his balls smacked her butt. His sweat. Her sweat. Their commingled scents. On the window seat, Alexa pressed her thighs together as tightly as she could manage while dragging her sopping wet crotch against the tufted cushion for stimulating friction. Doing so aggravated her much more than it helped.

In the video, Alexa’s hips rocked forward and back in opposition to Beck’s rapid thrusts, slapping their sweaty flesh together. She watched herself unraveling as the strong hand clasping her hip moved to push into the back of her lacy bottoms to delve between the crease of her buttocks. One long, callous finger breached her, making her whole body jerk at the titillating discomfort. Beck sped the pace and force of his thrusts while screwing his finger deeper into her bottom until she felt on the verge of splitting apart from the overwhelming pressure of fullness.

As she observed her past pleasures, Alexa stretched one leg along the window seat and the other with her foot on the floor, spreading her legs and leaning back against the window. One hand held her tablet. The other reached under her running t-shirt, into the waistband of her leggings and used two fingers to penetrate the gushing wetness of her vagina while her thumb stroked her clitoris.

In the silent video, it was clear from their facial expressions and body gyrations that she and Beck were uninhibitedly vocalizing the escalation of their imminent orgasms.

Alexa remembered Beck’s hot breath in her ear. His grunts and groans and incoherent exclamations as he’d forged deeper and harder into the heart of her desire had loosened her own grunts and cries when he worked another big finger into her tight anal chute and launched her into screaming, shuddering orgasm.

In that moment and in this, she felt her internal muscles clamp down hard on the thickness between her legs, squeezing tighter and tighter while her clitoris pulsed with each glancing stroke. The gateway to her womb contracted and released, milking Beck’s hard erection in the past and her two fingers in the present. Then and now, she creamed hard as she writhed and panted in sexual ecstasy.

***

Alexa paused the video playback to change her clothes, to spot clean her body and the seat cushion with a little mild soap and water, then she got comfortable sitting in lotus pose on the floor of her home office.

Masturbating had taken the edge off her excitement, allowing her to watch the remaining fifteen minutes of imagery with a measure of clinical detachment. There was still no audio, and the camera angle appeared fixed to cover the length of the bed from headboard to a little beyond the foot rail, from only a few feet above the mattress to the floor.

“Focus on the details,” she whispered under her breath when watching Beck as he collapsed atop her, but kept thrusting while executing a slight pushup and a tilt of his head to put his mouth at the perfect angle to suckle one of her breasts nearly derailed her attention away from the practical aspects. Remembering the hot, damp suction of his mouth pressing soft lace and satin against her stiff nipple threatened to lure her into more self-pleasuring, but Alexa forced herself to maintain a two-handed grip on the tablet, even though watching him turn his head to suckle her other breast flashed the sensation of beard stubble dragging across the soft mounds of her heaving breasts.

“Focus, Alexa,” she whispered again.

The video ended after running for a total of thirty minutes before fading to black. While the runtime counter kept ticking off seconds, Alexa sorted her thoughts. Her observations about the fixed camera angle and limited scope in addition to the short duration of this recording of what she knew had been their first intimate encounter as soon as they checked into their isolated bungalow suggested a motion-sensor trigger to start recording.

“Alexa Davis Spencer, CEO of Universal Tapestry Group, a Fortune One Hundred company,” a computer-generated voice spoke calmly from her tablet. The screen remained black except for the runtime counter.

Knowing she was alone in her house didn’t stop her from looking around while the altered voice continued.

“Publicly announce your intention to resign from your position and name a male successor within the next forty-eight hours or this video will be sent to the chairman of the board then posted online. Do you want the world to see you like a black bitch in heat receiving stud service from the man paid to please you and to indulge your dirty whorish desires? We think not. Going to the authorities or consulting with your colleagues will result in the immediate exposure of your shameful nature, which violates the morals clause in your employment contract. You have until eleven a.m. Eastern Time on Monday to comply.”

Complete silence. The screen blanked.

Slowly, Alexa lowered her tablet to the floor in front of her before her trembling hands could drop it.

She breathed in through her nose for five counts and out through her nose for five. Again. And again. Her eyes welled with furious tears, but she didn’t cry. She refused to cry. She needed to plot a strategy. She needed to see Beck.

***

Beckford Gallegas removed his welder’s mask and set it on its stand on the long metal work table while he turned his head from side to side, then rolled his shoulders once his hands were free from holding the torch, the mask, and wearing his welder’s gloves. He hooked the protective apron on one of the iron pegs hammered into the edge of the work table.

Seeing the finished metal sculpture pleased him greatly, but it wasn’t the source of the spontaneous grin he felt stretching his scruffy face. His unexpected muse was. Alexa Davis Spencer fascinated him, challenged him, inspired him, pleased him. She often confused him. She always made understanding her worth his effort.

He’d almost passed up on the opportunity to meet her seven months ago. Financially precarious circumstances had forced him to accept the unsolicited offer from the exclusive LuxeLinks escort membership service that catered to a refined female clientele. Each member’s liquid assets totaled at least fifty million dollars to qualify for an invitation to join. Escort candidates were exhaustively vetted through medical and psychological testing, criminal and credit background checks.

Beck made decent money as a tenured elementary school art teacher during the regular school year and as a freelance children’s book illustrator, muralist, and mixed-media artist in his spare time. Not really much spare time between supporting his widowed mom stricken with ALS, and ensuring that his significantly younger twin sisters had money for college text books and supplies and everything their academic scholarships didn’t cover as they completed their sophomore year.

The LuxeLinks director had said that his character and his finances made him the perfect candidate as a potential escort: his need to support his family. All the escorts were required to have college degrees or equivalent in life experience and a documented history of gainful employment in addition to three personal and three professional references. Their slogan was No fortune hunters. No gold diggers. And their rigorous selection process and mandatory confidentiality agreements honored that pledge.

LuxeLinks paid a monthly retainer for escorts to remain on-call to act as arm candy on evenings and weekends, or for longer assignments during his spring, summer, and winter school breaks. The contract specifically stated in bold underlined text highlighted in bright yellow that LuxeLinks facilitated introductions and platonic companionship, not sex. If consenting adults decided to engage in sexual acts, those were private decisions unrelated to LuxeLinks. The club, the members or the escorts could terminate the contract at will without prejudice. Beck had terminated his contract after his second companion assignment with Lex. When he met her for coffee the next day to tell her what he’d done, Lex had pulled out her cell and terminated her membership with a provocative smile on her face while he listened.

They had been monogamously committed to each other ever since that day six months earlier.

Each month since, the gallery that sold his work on consignment requested more and more of his newer works in his “Defiant” series. Paying the second mortgage and for full-time in-home nursing care for his mom no longer required him to subsidize his calorie intake by eating leftover cafeteria breakfast and lunch at school during the week to stretch their grocery budget as far as possible.

His twin sisters claimed that they sincerely preferred living at home and commuting rather than being on campus because doing so made the money from their part-time jobs go farther. If his finances kept improving, maybe he could afford to convert the half-bath in the basement into a luxurious full bath. Then Portia and Lindsey wouldn’t need to share the one in the upstairs hall with their mom—or with him, too, whenever he spent the night. Their family home was his official address and the one on his driver’s license, but he really lived here in his studio in a renovated warehouse in a blighted part of the city that had once been a thriving industrial district. The city had sold him the structure and its half-acre lot for the cost of a few thousand dollars in cash for back taxes owed by the previous owner. Its location offered plenty of space and peace and privacy. It was his sanctuary. Storage units and auto repair shops were his neighbors.

The chime of an old-fashioned doorbell rang throughout the cavernous space just as his phone vibrated in his front pocket. He pulled it free as he walked toward the smaller door set into the cinderblock wall next to the double loading bay doors of corrugated steel.

>I’m @ your door.

He read Lex’s text from the phone cupped in one palm while his other hand cranked the mechanism to retract the full-length bolt from its slot in the thick wall barring the solid steel door from swinging open.

“Lex—umph,” he said as she propelled herself over the threshold and into his arms, which automatically closed around her. Both of their phones dropped to the polished cement floor.

“Hey now, hey, Lex, what’s wrong?” he crooned, turning to kick the door closed while she trembled in his embrace. “Are you hurt, Lex? Lex?”

He pushed back to hold her at arm’s length with his hands cupping her shoulders. His eyes started a visual inspection at the wild mane of dark waves falling from a zigzagged center part and stopping at the soft curve of her chin. Her dark eyes stared at him through a glossy sheen of unshed tears. Her smooth brown skin looked as lickable as ever, but there was the shadow of an uncharacteristically sallow undertone.

Beck released her shoulders in favor of claiming her hands to tug her toward the lounging area in the corner farthest from his designated work area. “Talk to me, Lex,” he said when they were seated on the queen-sized day bed arranged between two leather recliners all facing a huge curved-screen television, the flashy new centerpiece of his impressive home entertainment media setup.

Her delectable breasts rose and fell with her sigh before she shrugged the vermillion tote off her shoulder and down off her arm. She reached in and pulled out her tablet and a black thumb drive.

“This was delivered to my house today, Beck.”

Lex’s body tightened up as if she were bracing herself to absorb a hit as she inserted the drive into its slot and held the screen so he could see.

Seeing the sunny blue skies, citrus trees, and entrance gate would have made him smile with fond memories of the most satisfying sex of his life, if Lex’s trembling body were not so rigidly held beside him. As soon as he saw the familiar bedroom interior, his arm embraced her shoulders and pulled her into his side, tucking her more delicate frame against his larger, stronger body. After watching the first minute in real time, Beck fast-forwarded to the last image.

“Wait, Beck, there’s a message for me,” she said when he moved to lay the tablet on the nearest end table he’d crafted out of discarded glass and scrap metal struts.

“Alexa Davis Spencer, CEO of Universal Tapestry Group, a Fortune One Hundred company, publicly announce your intention to resign from your position and name a male successor within the next forty-eight hours or this video will be sent to the chairman of the board, then posted online…

“You have until eleven a.m. Eastern Time Monday to comply.”

He let her remove the tablet from his clutching grip and place it on the end table while he marveled at his ability to feel sexually aroused and thoroughly appalled at the same time.

Lex hadn’t looked him in the eye since she’d started the video playback.

Beck shifted, pushing toward Lex until gravity had them lying across the day bed with Lex flat on her back. He hovered above her in a low plank pushup. “Tell me how you want us to fight this, Lex.”

***

Meeting his fierce dark gaze directly was very difficult—almost as difficult as inhaling deeply to speak the words she needed to say next.

“Beck, I can’t give in to these people. First, because it’s just wrong. Second, there’s no guarantee that they won’t release the video anyway.” She took a deep breath that nudged her breasts against his muscular chest. “I don’t want your reputation to get smeared with mine.” Looking deeply into his eyes, Lex very softly said, “I think we should take a break until this is resolved.”

Beck was already shaking his head. “No, Lex,” he grumbled. “Not just no, but hell, no, Lex,” he whispered before his mouth claimed her parted lips.

He dropped his weight upon her from chest to crotch, settling into the cradle of her splayed thighs and dry humping her as if they were horny virgin teenagers.

Between carnal kisses, he asked, “Do you know why that video got you soaking wet?” His tongue licked deeply into her open mouth while he angled his hips to grind his hard penis covered in worn denim against her mons, her clitoris, and her vulva. He raised his head. “Do you?” he rasped.

“Yes,” she moaned, using her double-fisted grip on his thick hair to drag his mouth back down to her lips.

He used his tongue to fill her, to stroke her, to invade her senses through penetrating her mouth while his strong hands wrestled with her clothing until the rip of tearing threads and rending fabric preceded the rush of air between her splayed thighs.

Beck looked up from her drenched folds, framed in shredded material, to hold her motionless in his feral gaze.

“You’re primed to go off with one stroke, aren’t you?” he asked as he unbuckled his belt, loosened the top button of his waistband, then unzipped his fly to push his jeans and briefs down until his erection and sac spilled free. “Do you want me?” he asked, firmly gripping the base of his erection in one hand and sliding forward to trace the tip up and down her labia before prodding her stiffly protruding clitoris.

They both cried out at the jolt of the tip to tip connection.

“Do you want me, Lex?”

Her hands reached between her legs to guide him into her vagina. “Yes, Beck, I want you now, tomorrow, always.” She screamed the last word as he plunged forward and continued thrusting until her voice was reduced to hoarse whispers of demand.

Finally, the rushing warmth of his orgasm flooded her, and his full weight collapsed upon her with a deep, sighing groan.

***

Soft cursing accompanied gentle tugging on her lower body. When Alexa opened her eyes, she saw that Beck was all tucked away and covered up again and had worked the remnants of her destroyed leggings down to her knees, but he seemed stumped about how to get them over her calves pressed flat against the mattress without waking her.

“I’m awake,” she said, drawing his frowning gaze from the bunched up leggings to her face.

He smiled. “Good.” He jerked once, and the leggings rolled down her calves, over her ankles and off her bare feet. He must have removed her leather ballet flats.

She couldn’t remember kicking them off.

Beck reached toward the floor and straightened up with a large metal bowl in one hand. With the other he grabbed one of her ankles and pulled, dragging her closer, sliding her bare bottom across quilted cotton and making her fitted knit shirt ride up until she was exposed from plain black cotton bra to painted toes.

Beck’s eyelids drooped, and his nostrils flared, suggesting the imminent start of another round of debauchery. Instead, he dipped his hands into the metal bowl to squeeze the excess water from a wash cloth, which he used to clean gently across her inner thighs and at the apex between her legs.

“Here, Lex.” He reached behind his back and offered her one of his white dress shirts after he rubbed his hands dry on his jeans. “Lindsey and Portia have some clothes here if you want to borrow some pants or a skirt to wear home,” he spoke softly while his eyes tracked her every movement as she tugged her shirt down to her waist, then shrugged into his shirt and buttoned the bottom four buttons. She rolled each sleeve cuff several times until her wrists and forearms remained visible.

His relaxed pose didn’t fool her. Beck was ready to fight.

“Loan me one of your solid neckties to use as a belt, and I’ll just wear this as a shirt dress.”

© 2018 by C. X Brooks