Without a Net Chapter 1

[wide_eyed_raven]

Title: Without a Net
Rating: NC - 17
Warnings: Eventually graphic sex.
Summary: Darco Davis is a multimillionare. He's smart and kind of an asshole, but he's content. Well, that's not true. He's obsessed with something that could change his life forever.
A/N: I meant to post this earlier today, but I kinda got sidetracked. Here's to hoping that I don't vanish again. I actually like this one, so we'll see. ^_^



Housewarming
Chapter One

Darco took a sip of his champagne. He preferred whisky, but champagne was expected at parties such as this. He looked around at the people surrounding him. They were laughing and joking with one another, but their masks were as clear as day. His mask was better.

The people he was contemplating were occupying the first floor of his home. However, home was too small a word for the place. His new manor was located by the ocean, and was far larger than most homes. It had three floors and a lower lever that he devoted to his personal study. It explained why the people in his home were all rich snobs, because he was one of them.

“Mr. Avery, how wonderful to see you,” he said to an elder gentleman as he walked by.

The man faced him with a false smile. “Mr. Davis, how are your investments going?”

The man was still put out that Darco had taken his investments elsewhere. Avery would get used to it in time; Darco was not his father.

He returned the smile, but he knew that his was impossible to see through. “Wonderful, actually. I have had a ten percent increase.”

Avery’s eyebrows rose. He knew how odd that sounded, especially with the way that the market was going, but the truth was the truth. It was rare that he didn’t have to fill conversation with half lies and complete ones. He didn’t know if he still knew how to speak to a regular person. He didn’t know if he wanted to.

“Must have been some deal.”

Darco made a noncommittal sound. “Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I promised Ms. Dianna Rice that I would dance with her.”

Avery looked ready to object, but he was already walking away from the large man and towards Dianna. She’d been his friend for longer than he cared to remember and from the ring on her finger, he had missed something.

“Dianna, how are you this evening?”

She smiled at him; her dark eyes were bright. “Wonderful. I see you are surviving the affair.”

He resisted the grimace he felt trying to tug at his lips and took a sip from his champagne flute. “Barely, I assure you. Who gave you the rock?”

She beamed at him. “Michel Warent. I told you about him.”

Darco thought about it and nodded. He remembered the man now. He was handsome and rich, but his personality was lacking and his eyes were a bit odd. Darco doubted that he was good news, but Dianna was hardly better news for any man.

She had a talent for finding men and loosing them just as quickly. Some men were womanizers; she was the female equivalent. Her count was up to nineteen now if he recalled correctly. Nineteen young men she had wooed and then dumped. He’d feel bad for them if he didn’t enjoy watching them crumble almost as much as she did.

“How long will this one last?” he asked. He took another sip of champagne to hide the smile that was beginning to tug at the corner of his lips.

While she was the women that all the young men wanted and sought after, Darco was the young man the women wanted but couldn’t have. He had inherited his dark looks from his father. The only thing to soften the sharp lines of his face was the dimple in his chin. He even kept his hair slicked back in a no-nonsense style.

Women adored it, but he couldn’t care less what they thought. Dianna may have been the one breaking hearts, but he was the unattainable one. The prince that every heiress wanted and one that no one was going to get.

“I’ll let it drag out about a week longer.” She swiped an hors d’oeuvre from a passing server. She popped the item in her mouth and chewed it slowly. Darco barely reined in the urge to roll his eyes at her display.

“Now that you have all eyes on your neck and dipping neckline…”

She tossed her head back and laughed. If there had been someone not staring at her, they were staring now. He suppressed a sigh.

She shot him false moue. “The one man I would settle for, and he does not think me pretty.”

Darco rolled his eyes, but he played along. He took a step back and let his eyes wander up her form. The blue dress she wore was flattering to her curvy figure, but it did nothing for him. He let his eyes rise lower toward the deep v of the gown. He was surprised that when she moved they didn’t pop out of their weak confinement.

She laughed. “Double sided tape.”

He nodded and looked her in the eye. “If there was a woman for me, it would be you.”

She shot him a smirk and touched his arm lightly. “Mmm, don’t I know it?” Her chocolate brown eyes were dancing with amusement. She looked away from him and around the room. “Who should my next victim be?”

He shrugged gracefully. “I do not know.” His dark eyes landed on Avery and he barely staved off a wince. “I told Avery I was coming over here because I owed you a dance.”

The smile that lit upon her lips would have been both cute and coy to someone other than Darco; however, he knew what the bloody smile meant. It was predatory and left him feeling very glad that they were friends.

“Certainly.” She snapped her fingers and a server arrived to take their empty champagne flutes.

“Why isn’t your new beau here?” he asked conversationally as her grabbed her by the waist and began to lead her in the waltz. He hated his own parties; the music was utterly boring and dancing to it always left him feeling lethargic and tired.

Dianna shrugged daintily. It was a show of course. She had been training in various martial arts since she had been six. She was anything but dainty. “He is busy working on some project of sorts.”

Darco frowned at that. “Has it occurred to you that he may be cheating?”

Her eyes darkened at that. Yes, she used men, but she would not stoop low enough to cheat. It was the worst sort of crime to her, and he immediately wished that he hadn’t mentioned it.

“No, it had not occurred to me.” Her voice was flat when she spoke. She had never been as good as Darco at concealing her emotions.

He spun them around, already tired of the dance that he had trapped himself in. “It was merely a possibility.” It was his turn to shrug.

She glared at him. “Darco, when this dance is over, I want you to circulate. I heard the Andrew Edgars is a man with similar tastes to yours.”

He let his eyes settle on the man in question. He was dark as well, but he had bright blue eyes and smiled too much. Darco had met him once before, and he had not been impressed with the other man. He gave Dianna a blank stare.

She pouted. “Fine, I will stop trying to set you up, but you need someone, Darco. I worry about you sometimes.”

He met her eyes. “I will be fine. Now is not the best time for me to find myself with a lover anyways.”

Her eyes darkened and her red painted lips turned downward in a frown. It was real this time. “Are you still obsessing over that thing?”

He looked at her.

She scoffed. “I cannot believe you. It is a myth, a myth!”

He took a deep breath. “It is not a myth anymore than true love.”

“That was a low blow, Darco.”

He shrugged, unmoved by the dark stare she was directing at him. “It was, but if you can believe in true love, I can believe in creatures of myth.”

The song ended and they stopped dancing. He slid his arms away from her slowly, while she did the same. Appearances must be kept. She stepped away from him and grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing server. She handed one to him before taking a drink of her own. When she brought the glass back down her lips were wet with the champagne.

Darco raised a brow.

She gave him a look. “I am what I am, and you are what you are. I know it is silly to worry about you, but you are in this big house all alone.”

“I’m hardly alone.”

“Maids and butlers do not count, I’m afraid.” She looked over at the huge grandfather clock on the wall; it was a quarter to one in the morning. “Darco, I’ve got to go, but promise me that you won’t do something stupid tonight?”

He rolled his eyes and kissed her on the cheek. “I will avoid making an ass out of myself. Go home, and have fun with your new play toy.”

She shot him a wicked grin before turning on her heel and leaving the ballroom. He let his eyes followed her every movement, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

“She is quite the piece of work.”

“Edgars, what a pleasant surprise.” He didn’t comment on what Edgars had said. It had been a statement that he couldn’t deny; Dianna was a piece of work. He loved her for it and would kill the man that broke her heart, but she was what she was.

“Lovely party.”

Darco didn’t think so. “Thank you. I threw it at the insistence of Dianna and my servants. They wanted a proper housewarming party.” He didn’t mention that he was beginning to develop a headache or that the company was suddenly lacking. In a moment, he might though.

Edgars smiled at him. It was a nice smile, but there was something behind it that Darco didn’t like. He chose to ignore it instead. A woman came up to them. She was older, but had still managed to keep her figure.

“Ms. Ellen White, what a pleasant surprise.” He said with a genuine smile.

She smiled at him and allowed him to kiss her hand. The jewels on her fingers were tasteful and matched the ones around her neck delightfully. He was certain that she knew this too.

“Posh, did you expect not to see me tonight?” She looked away from him and her eyes landed on Edgars. “And who is this?”

“Ms. White, this is Andrew Edgars.” Edgars took her hand and kissed it in much the same way as Darco had. Only he looked oily, and from Ms. White’s smile, she could tell. The poor old woman did not need to deal with men like Edgars.

“How is your niece,” he asked conversationally.

Her blue eyes flickered to Edgars before landing on Darco once more. She understood completely. “Anna is lovely; she will be very pleased that you asked. It was unfortunate that she could not make it, some sort of flu.”

Actually, she had morning sickness. She and her husband were expecting, but Edgars didn’t know that. Which was a good thing, because Anna made a decent cover story and he knew the girl, and her husband, wouldn’t mind in the slightest. They were an old family friends that had stayed friends when the money passed over into Darco’s hands.

“I do hope she gets better soon. Perhaps I should call on her?”

Ms. White beamed at him like a woman hoping to snag her daughter a man. There was only the slight tick in the corner of her mouth that proved it false. “Of course, I shall inform her.” She looked over at Edgars. “Forgive us; it has been awhile since we last spoke.”

They had had brunch the weekend before, only a week ago. Her lies were getting sloppy, but Edgars wouldn’t notice, he hoped.

“Mr. Edgars, would you be a dear and get me a glass of champagne?”

The younger man nodded and trotted off to find one. The servers would probably ignore his irritating presence. It would be entertaining at least.

“So tell me what is up with him?”

Darco raised a brow and took a sip of his drink. “I’m surprised that you do not know.”

An irritated look passed over her face, but she didn’t glance over her shoulder at the source of the irritation. A point to her. “Other than being irritating and someone who thinks that they have a chance at being your lover, what else?”

Darco shrugged nonchalantly. “He seems very oily.” He didn’t need to say more, there was a look in the old woman’s eye that said that she was thinking something similar. Before he could say anything more, Edgars was at his arm.

“I brought one for you as well.” He handed Darco the flute, and let his hand slide against Darco’s. Darco ignore it and downed the rest of his champagne. He snapped his fingers and a server appeared at his elbow to take his glass. The look on Edgars face was amusing. Darco slipped the new glass casually.

“Darco, dear, would you be a sweetheart and escort me over to my son.”

“Indeed. Forgive me Edgars, the company has been,” he paused, “stimulating.”

Edgars nodded and watched him leave.

“Stupid boy.”

Darco felt a chuckle building up in his chest. “Yes. Now where is William?”

“Over by the hors d’oeuvres, dear. You know, he’s still not seeing anyone.”

He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. William and he had tried a relationship when they were younger. They had found that they were not compatible. They were still friends, more acquaintances, actually, but anything like a relationship was just too strange.

“Ms. White, you know as well as I, that your son and I did not work out.”

She slapped his arm with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his arm. “Posh. You two were lovely, what happened?”

He had ruined it. “I do not think Will would appreciate me talking about that.” No, it would embarrass the other man. He had thought them perfectly happy until William had found him pounding another man into the mattress. He was surprised that they had not had a bigger falling out than they did. Will had been unusually understanding, but then, he didn’t know that Darco knew about his own lover. She was somewhere on the dance floor with another man, from the look in William’s green eyes.

“William.”

Will look at him and smiled slightly. “I see you’ve brought my mother back to me.” He let those green eyes wander up Darco’s form. It was the type of caress given by someone who intimately knew what he was looking at. William favored gossip much like Dianna did, but he was more subtle.

“I did, she helped me chase off a problem. How have you been?”

William’s eyes trailed back towards the dance floor and he shrugged. “Fine.”

Ms. White seemed oblivious. “I was just telling Darco that you were still single.”

Darco smiled at her, but when he flicked his eyes over to William, he told him silently that he would keep the other man’s secret.

“You did?” Will asked with raised brows.

Darco nodded. “She did, though I hardly think it would work out for us better the second time around.” He looked out over the gathered guests; he still had more people to speak with. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone else. He had filled his quota for the night.

“I agree. Looking for someone?”

Darco looked back at William. “No, I’m looking for and escape route.”

He tossed his head back and laughed. “I wish you luck.”

Ms. White patted his arm. “Yes, but you should speak with Eric before you go wondering off.”

Darco nodded and promised that he would, but he didn’t plan to, not if he could help it. Eric was a pain at the best of times, and with Darco irritated, it wasn’t going to be a pleasurable conversation.

***

Darco finally managed to escape his own party some hours later. People in the floor above were still laughing, gossiping and secretly plotting to stab each other in the back. They certainly didn’t need his help to accomplish all of that. However, it probably would have helped, had they been able to use him as an ally.

He took a sip from his eighth glass of champagne. It really was horrible stuff, but it was for celebrations. And the people above were celebrating the completion of his new house, but they would never see the crowning jewel of it.

His study was all dark woods. Two of the walls, on either side of the door, were covered in bookcases. The books on the shelves were bound in dark leather with gold lettering. There were other items on the shelves too, such as shells and other little bobbles.

In front of the door was his desk, saddled between the two walls of books. It was a large mahogany thing with clawed legs. He liked it; it reminded him of what people must have sat behind during older times. The rich at least.

Behind the desk was an aquarium, but that was an under exaggeration. The entire wall was made from glass and the water behind it could house two sharks and then some quite comfortably. He had a collection of natural coral and fish. From clown fish to sting rays, he had everything.

Sitting in front of the glass with his chair turned around; he scowled at the tank. He didn’t have everything. He was missing the most important piece. It was a very rare creature that most had never seen before and never would. He was not only going to see it, he was going to own it.

He would have loved a pair, for breeding purposes, but finding one of the beasts was proving hard enough. He did not want to even contemplate the amount of money the fishermen would have charged if he had requested two of them.

Running a hand through his slicked back hair, he took another sip of his glass. His hair was probably mused now, but there was no one to see it, so it hardly mattered. His thoughts flittered back up to the party going on in the floor above. He hated most of them, but he couldn’t do anything about that. It was only his house.

He scowled and downed the rest of his drink. He wondered where he had put his whisky. He turned away from the aquarium and began fishing around in the desk drawers. He let out a crow of delight when he found the bottle of Crown Royal and two tumblers. He grabbed the bottle and one of the glasses and filled it. It was going to be a very long night, but he was going to drown out the sounds of the party with his new best friend.

He tossed back the liquor and hoped that Dianna wouldn’t be jealous before he filled the glass back up again.