by Savannah May
With a toss of her lightly wavy hair she pulls a box from the shopping bag, unwraps it with her fingers shaking and slips into a cream silk chiffon blouse. Grace performs a sort of reverse striptease although I don’t think she realizes how fucking sexy she is just getting dressed. The way her soft body undulates and she slides the luxuriant fabric across her skin, she almost purrs.
She wraps the long ties around her hands like I’d like to wrap the skein of her long hair around mine. Her gaze is super-glued to mine, her breathing ragged as she ties the large bow.
I feel completely seduced although the pussy bow surprises me as it’s not what I would have expected a girl her age to choose. Her eyes remain fixed on me and slanted with obstinate challenge. Her bare legs are highlighted now that her top half is covered. I can easily imagine how gorgeous she’d look dressed in one of my shirts, oversize on her delicious body.
A heady mix of sexy and adorable. If she were any closer I’d drop to my knees and trail kisses from her ankle the entire length of her leg. There’s the perfect amount of flesh on her inner thigh to suck nips of it between my lips as they travel higher.
Maybe she can tell all the filthy thoughts that are running through my mind as her lips set firm as she pulls out another box.
Seriously?
Black pants.
She steps daintily into each leg and I almost unravel from the heat raging through my veins. Even though the clothes are more business-appropriate than I envisioned, watching her dress is the hottest thing ever. Unless you count my wild imaginings of going the other way and tearing them all off her. All I want to do is rip those expensive clothes back off her delectable curves. I don’t want her covering them at all, ever. I’d like to make her peel off that graying underwear and bend across my desk, straddled around my legs.
She fastens the waistband and a smile spreads across my mouth as she steps into the screaming high heels she’s pulled from another box. I note the unusual pants. They appear business-like but a band of material, strapped with large metal buckles to each side, impedes wide parting of her thighs. My eyes travel back up her body to find her staring at me with a confrontational ‘What?’ gaze.
Miss Grace has an ironic sense of humor. Not at all what I expected.
This girl is nothing like the usual parolee I usually get as an intern. None of them have been able to dig their way out of their predicament and natural inclination toward a life on the wrong side of the law.
On the other hand, Grace could be a perfect girl if you dressed her up in the right clothes. Using her rain-soaked clothes was the perfect excuse to put her into better clothes and see her at her best. Watching her slip into them has my blood gurgling close to the boil. Not only did I get to see her delectable little body stripped down to the curves, she also proved to me that she’s up for a battle of sexual wills.
“Was that a test of some sort?” she snaps, proving me right.
“No, but I might use that as induction for future trainees,” I joke.
No reaction, just a setting of her mouth even harder. There’s no breaking this girl down. She’s got a wall higher than old East Germany around her perimeter.
“Trainee?” she snips. “I thought I was a temporary summer intern. What am I being trained for?”
“Slip of the tongue,” I say, thinking of the places I’d like to put mine if she were to come here and sit on my desk. “But the trial worked out well,” I add.
I notice how she flinches at that word. It occurs to me she’s suffering from her brush with the justice system in deeper ways that I imagined. A thought suddenly occurs to me.
“How so?” she asks.
Her voice is still testy like she’s never going to give way and trust me but at least she’s making no move to leave my office like before. The tip of her tongue moves without her realizing, I’m pretty sure, to tease at the corner of the mouth I’d like to ravage again.
That kiss from yesterday is still filling the air of my spacious office and sucking out all the available oxygen. As much as she says she wants nothing to do with me, the heat of sexual tension between us in my office is electric.
“I have a job for you,” I tell her.
“I already have a job,” she says, mistrust and suspicion flooding back across her features. Something definitely happened in Grace’s life to make her so on guard. “And like I said before, no more extra-curricular activities.”
“This is the same job,” I inform her, trying to get back to business as I make my unusual proposition. “Instead of the boring task of running errands for my assistant, you’ll be working on a special project directly with me.”
“With you?” she snarls. She makes it sound more like ‘Under you?’
“Yes, I want you to be my girlfriend.”
She emits a sound I don’t hear from the usual prissy New York girls, a sort of snort laugh.
“Your girl friend?”
“Not for real,” I say.
“Of course. Because no extra..”
“...curricular activities,” I chime in. “Yeah I got that. But I need you to act the part, just for the summer.”
Again she erupts into raucous laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You really must be hard up if you need to hire the likes of me to be your date,” she stammers between gasps of hysterical breath.
“Why so down on yourself?” I ask.
She startles then and confusion flickers across her face again.
“No reason,” she snaps. “Just that you the big bossy billionaire could have anyone you want. Why do you need me?”
“Maybe I find you more entertaining than other women, someone different.”
“Slumming it?” “There you go again with the self-deprecation.”
“Not really, I just don’t get what you want me to do, seeing as we agreed that we aren’t getting jiggy with it.”
“It’s summer wedding season. I’ve got invites to society nuptials in the Hamptons pretty much every weekend.”
“Swish,” she says ironically, not remotely impressed.
“I guess, if you like that kind of thing.” “Why go if you don’t?” “It’s a business thing. I have to show up and shake hands with my competitors and clients. And especially spend a fortune at the registry.”
“Such billionaire problems.”
“The problem is that all the mothers have my name engraved on their wish list as most eligible for their ratty daughters. I’ve got girls thrown at me hard and fast for the next three months.” “Big Bad Billionaire problems,” she mutters.
“My problems. So will you do it? It could be fun for you.” “Why because I’ve never seen how the other half live?” “Because you’ll get to dress up and drink craft cocktails and best of all, be on my arm.” She rolls her eyes, no less than I’d expected.
“How much?” she blurts out.
“How much what?” “This counts as extra-curricular, beyond the normal office duties so how much are you going to pay me?” Wow. The girl can negotiate.
“A thousand dollars,” I say, feeling generous.
“Five,” she comes right back.
“Five thousand dollars,” I blast back. “That’s robbery.” She slits her eyes at me so I wonder whether that’s what she was arrested for.
“And also more than most people earn a month.” “Per weekend,” she snarls. “Take it or leave it.” I’m not kidding. The girl can deal.
Chapter 9
Grace
This must be where all those Cinderella fairy tales got started, this sudden rags to riches change of life in the blink of an eye. This morning I came close to being attacked by some Eastern European looking for food vouchers and now I’m going to be earning twenty thou a month on top of whatever minimum wage style salary Mr Big Bucks is gonna pay me.
That’s weekend pocket change for a dude like Hopper Grady but to me it’s a complete life changer. I can get my own apartment, as soon as I’m released from t
he halfway dump. And I won’t ever again be used by a man for his pleasure or illegal activity. That’s all it takes for a girl to be free, enough money. I figure it’s the least Hopper can do as payback for the human rights abuse in the coffee break room yesterday.
A flutter goes through my tummy as I remember his hard hands sliding down my back and cupping my ass. A man I’d never set eyes on. Three minutes after meeting and his tongue is inside me, his hands squeezing my flesh with all the same urgency I felt pressing against my edges. I have excuses for my lusty needs though. Hopper is just a pig.
It’s insane how much I want him. How much a tiny part of me secretly wants him to push me back across his desk. To palm my thighs with his huge hands and push them apart, no polite requests for permission. God I hate it when a man asks ‘can I kiss you?’ or ‘is that okay?’ every time he touches me. A sear of light goes straight to my clit when I imagine Hopper tearing my underwear to one side. The clench tightens my pussy, aware of the missed possibility of having my boss pulling apart my soaking folds and taking me like one of his properties right in the middle of his office.
I shake myself out of the daydream. Hopper is gazing at me with intensity. Whether he’s fascinated by his personal criminal or something else, I can’t be sure. He’s completely under wraps and not giving anything away.
Maybe he doesn't even know about my history. He hasn’t said anything about it or made any allusion to me being one of his charity cases. Why does he even do this for fallen women? Because he thinks they’ll be easier to seduce out of their wet clothes than regular unsullied girls? Perhaps the system doesn't give away all my sordid history and he thinks he’s helping some down on her luck young woman into the business world. He was pretty clear that I shouldn’t speak negatively about myself. So he does have half a redeeming quality outside of being a voracious beast.
“So what does your girlfriend do at the office?” I ask.
With my new role, I’m hoping maybe I’ll be put to work in a nice office, designing some stationery or stuff like that. I loved graphic design at school but that was soon derailed after Curt.
“You’ll do what I ask you to.” The voice behind me makes me leap out of my increasingly comfortable skin. Janice has appeared and she looks both horrified and apologetic at discovering me in Hopper’s office. Again.
“I do apologize, Sir,” she says, looking me up and down in surprise at my new outfit.
I can’t tell whether she approves or is agog as her eyes linger on the designer bondage strap. Hopper shrugs like it’s no biggie but doesn’t come to my rescue or tell her that I’m now his girlfriend and am to be given a corner office.
Janice waggles her fingers at me, indicating I should scoot out of the boss’s office. I turn without a word to Hopper and leave. I do make sure to give my hips a sway as I depart, hopefully leaving him with all sorts of ideas about what kind of girlfriend he’s hired.
Not that I’m going to let him have the real girlfriend experience. I’ve laid the rules and he’s agreed to them. There will be no turning back on them. I just have to make sure I stay strong. Because there’s something about Hopper that’s seductive and delicious. Under that beautifully cut suit, his muscles seem to pump and throb with the bad boy heat of a dangerous biker. A man untamed by societal rules, who does and takes whatever he wants.
That must be my own projection because a man like that obviously grew up in East coast society circles, is concerned about appearing at weddings and is the furthest thing from a wild man.
I have to wait for Janice to tell me what to do and even where to park myself. As I wait by her desk I hear her telling Hopper what calls have come in from business associates and bankers in far flung countries. Those people are the real criminals but they get away with it.
“Oh and Melinda Traverry called,” I hear Janice tell him. A muffled groan of despair comes from the boss. “She wanted to know whether you have a date for this Saturday, the Hamilton wedding.”
“I do,” Hopper announces and a flare of something shivers down my spine. That’s me.
“Oh,” Janice almost squeaks in surprise. “You do?”
“Yes I’ll be taking my girlfriend. You can tell all of them the same thing when they call. My girlfriend will be accompanying me.”
“Oh,” Janice murmurs again. I can tell she’s itching to ask or is lingering for her boss to give her some details. But clearly he’s gone back to work.
She comes out of his office and pulls the door closed with a glare at me. It’s all I can do not to gloat with a creamy smug smile. Perhaps she wouldn’t snap at me so much if she knew how being that girlfriend was my new job description. It’s not that she’s mean at all. I think she’s probably one of the kindest women I’ve ever met, judging by a day’s acquaintance. But she probably thinks she has to keep me in line because my character is so bad. Or like the other do-good types, she assumes I need to be retrained, like an out of control puppy let loose.
I’m probably going to always feel the stigma of the arrest and imprisonment attached to me. No one is ever going to believe I’m not that girl.
Except Hopper. I don’t know what he believes, of course. But if he does know my seedy history, at least he isn’t letting it influence him. Unless I really am a novelty toy. A crazy item you blow a ton of money on even though you don’t need it or even want it but you just have to have it because it’s so unusual. Owning it says something about your own need to be different from the crowd. Everyone’s going to be fascinated by your latest purchase. Or revolted.
“You’ll be over here,” Janice says, leading me to a desk behind hers.
It’s distant enough that I can’t overhear her confidential conversations with Hopper’s clients. But close enough that she can call on me to do this and that all day long. And I get a side view of Hopper Grady at his huge desk through the last sliver of glass wall dividing him from the rest of us.
“Interesting outfit,” she adds as she dumps a stack of files on the desk once I’m seated. “Did you shop for a selection?”
“Nope,” I say. “This cost more than normal people earn in a month.”
“I suppose you’ll have a chance to do some personal shopping now.” She just manages to leave off the words ‘you’re out’ but still, I feel them hanging there. “Maybe something a little less, avant-garde, tomorrow please, Grace.”
“No problem,” I say. “All I’ve got is old style white trash clothes.”
Janice goes to deal with her phone and her important papers. I do as she told me and put the files into alphabetical order before stapling them and stamping each one ‘closed’ then finally noting the date on a computer spreadsheet. Mind numbing work but it leaves me the more pleasant option of watching Hopper through the glass. I keep my head bent so he won’t know and just look up from under my lashes. But I study him so closely, my eyes constantly drawn back to his gorgeous face, that I note how his chiseled jawline gets darker throughout the day as his beard grows in.
At one point he gets up to take off his jacket and throw it over the arm of the sofa. As he walks back to his desk, I can’t take my eyes off the row of back muscles flexing under the white cotton. Or the black belt around his taut waist that edges the perfect rise of his hard round cheeks.
As the tedious afternoon wears on, he looks up from his work and crooks a finger at me. I immediately comply, jumping up and heading into his office. I breeze past Janice who knows better than to say anything. When Hopper orders me to undo my pants, I do so immediately. My knees are close to buckling from their sudden jello consistency being so close to the man again. Heat comes off his broad chest as I drop the new pants and he spins me around then pushes me over his desk.
“I can’t wait any longer, Grace,” he growls. “You’re driving me crazy.”
I go sprawling and have to catch myself on the edges as he yanks my underwear down my thighs. The exposure sends my pussy and heart skittering in rhythm as I pulse hungrily, ready for his touch.
“That’s okay grace, you can leave now.” I look up from my daydream and Janice is calling across to me, on her way into Hopper’s office. My eyes bat to the clock on he wall and I see it’s already five. I’ve managed to lose the late afternoon in my fantasies of the boss spreading me across his desk buffet style. Janice is dismissing me but she gets to go into the office.
Is there any way Hopper could be into an older woman? The age difference between him and Janice is about the same as that between him and me so why not? As I leave the building, I return the cockney concierge’s wink and my brain goes into overdrive.
Chapter 10
Hopper
I can feel Janice’s eyes drilling into me. I don’t know whether she suspects something or she’s just silently warning me off from getting too entangled with Grace.
“I don’t want her past discussed at all,” I tell my assistant.
It comes across more forcefully than necessary as it’s not like she isn’t the soul of discretion. But for some reason I want Grace protected from that human need to belittle the next person, especially in a competitive workplace. Her life’s going to be hard enough with the criminal record hanging over her, following her wherever she goes.
Which makes my earlier offer kind of insane.
I never get involved with the staff now, after a number of the women having thrown themselves under my feet in the past. I trusted their integrity, thinking they were happy to play some games in the office. But women can be so vengeful when they don’t get what they want, downright fucking insane if I’m honest.
Like a champ, Janice took care of the recriminations, blackmail and threats of charges. So leaving myself open to a charge of harassment is not an option. And that means that what I did to Grace in the break room is even more insane. I laid myself out on the line for a moment of irresistible desire. The strange thing is I don’t regret it at all.
