by Max Henry
I check the time and note that half an hour has passed since I saw him step into a meeting. Can’t hurt to check. Millie didn’t say if it would be a long or short meeting, so maybe they’re done already?
My heart hammers as I make my way down the hall to the spare office he’s camped out in while he’s here. If he’s back, then that’s where I’m bound to find him. I need to say this now before I get a chance to over think it. I need to tell him how I feel.
My breath hitches when I catch sight of him in the break room—alone. This is it. No backing out now.
“Mason?”
He spins at the sound of my voice, a coffee stirrer in hand. “Lisa.” His gaze flicks behind me. “I was on my way to see you.”
I turn to check there isn’t anyone within earshot. “I need to talk to you.”
He steps around me, pushing the door closed. His masculine smell invades my senses, making what is already an emotional conversation ten times more intense.
“Is this about yesterday?” His eyes search mine as he moves to stand before me. “Because I haven’t been able to stop worrying.”
I nod, unable to speak when faced with him in all his glory at such close proximity. I mean, the man is a dream. What if this all is too?
“Talk to me, baby,” he urges. “Whatever it is, we can deal with it.”
His hand slips to my face, caressing my jaw. I lean into his touch and pull a deep breath. Does he really mean that? No matter what, he’ll stick by me?
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I assure him, “but I’m on the pill.” I swallow, searching his eyes. “I… I need to know if you’re clean, though.”
“As a whistle.” He visibly relaxes.
“Did you really mean what you said, though?”
He watches his thumb as it traces my bottom lip. “Mean what?”
“That you’d work through whatever came up?”
He chuckles. “I meant it. I only want you. However, that happens.”
“I want this too,” I admit. “All of it. I’m sorry I judged you.”
His sigh tells me instantly that something is off.
“What’s happened?”
He pulls his hand from my face and steps back. I don’t like the separation one little bit. Has he changed his mind? Did he speak in the heat of the moment, and now he regrets it?
“That meeting I had?” His hand rubs the back of his neck as he paces the break room. “I was told to let you go if I wanted to keep my job.”
“I know.”
He stops moving, his brow showing his apparent confusion. “You do?”
“Alf told me the same thing.”
He steps toward me, taking my arms in his hold. “You know they can’t do that, right? Block us from seeing each other?”
I nod. “Yeah, I do.” I frown. “Why are you worried about it then?”
“I pushed back.” He sets his hands on my chest, fingering the sides of my blouse. “I told them I wanted this bullshit agreement in writing.”
“Why?” He’s not thinking of going along with it anyway, is he?
“I want them to load their own gun. I thought if I had it in writing that I could sue their asses.”
Smart man. “But?” I trap his hands against me before he can pull them away.
“In the heat of the moment, I didn’t think it through. All I wanted was to get payback for treating me—us—unfairly.” His eyes search mine as he pulls a deep breath. “I don’t want to work for a bunch of assholes who’d try to deny me you,” he says. “I walked back in there and quit.”
I glance to my right and take stock of what he was doing when I interrupted. His laptop is packed up, the cables coiled on top. His paperwork fills the satchel he brought with him.
“You’re leaving.”
He nods. “I planned to come say something to you before I did.”
“Something” wouldn’t have been enough, though. My gut coils at the thought of losing this love I’ve so recently found.
Because I do love him, in a lust-fuelled, new way. He’s sparked something inside of me, and I can’t shake the feeling that given time to connect beyond the physical, we’d be amazing together.
“For how long? What happens to us, then?”
He squeezes my hands in his own. “Let’s face the facts: long distance would never work. It would be a four-hour plane trip, maybe twice a month—one weekend each. The costs would add up.”
“And you know I can’t afford to do that.” I counter. Damn the truth hurts.
He shakes his head, moving his hands to slide his arms around my waist. “Which is why I have a proposal for you.”
“I’m listening.”
Mason rests his forehead against my own, gently nuzzling my nose with his. “I can’t explain why just yet, but I know that all I want is you there when I get home every night.” He lifts a hand and grazes my lips with his thumb. “I want your smile the first thing I see every day. I want you with me, Lisa.” He whispers the words that cement how I feel about him. “If you’d let me, I want to sell my place back east and buy something here. Something for us.”
Silly, silly man. I take his face in my hands and kiss him like I did the night we met, raw and with all the passion he incites within me. He returns the favor tenfold, growling into my mouth as he guides us to the wall and cages me with his large, muscular body.
My breaths come short and fast as I pull away and look him in the eye. “Tell me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Could you say that, even after barely a week of knowing each other, you love me?”
He smiles, the sight enough to make me fight back tears. “The day I saw you Cupid laughed because he knew he’d found the right fool for you, Lisa. The moment you crossed that dance floor and spoke those first words to me, it was his arrow straight to my heart.” He pauses, my stomach doing fluttery flip-flops while I wait for his next words. “I love you. Why? I don’t know. I just know that you’re someone worth keeping, baby—my someone—and I want to keep you forever.”
I kiss him again, yet this time our union is accompanied by a tangle of limbs as he palms my breast through my blouse. I reach between our bodies to cup his growing erection in my palm, giving his balls a slight squeeze through the restriction of his slacks. He moans into my mouth, grinding into my hand as I feel my panties soak for the second time today.
Maybe the way we met was unconventional. Maybe it broke all the rules of what you should do, but regardless, I know without a shred of doubt that this man is the one worth turning my life upside down for.
“Don’t leave until I come back, okay?” I push against his chest gently to urge him to let me go.
He backs away, lips swollen from my kiss, cock swollen from the stolen moment. “Where are you going?”
“Just stay here and do whatever you had to, okay?”
Because I’m about to do either the most romantic, or the stupidest thing in my life.
Only time will tell.
TWENTY
Mason
The longer she’s gone, the more I start to worry. My things sit packed in a neat and orderly pile on the table, ready for me to pick up and take when the cab arrives to take me to the hotel for my last night in town.
She took the news well. Probably because it hasn’t sunk in yet that selling my residence and relocating could take weeks, possibly months. I scroll my emails on my phone to avoid the staff who come and go while I wait for Lisa. There aren’t many new messages; the confirmation from the airline for my flight tomorrow at the top of the list.
I don’t want to go. What have I got to return to? A bare apartment because I never found the strength to redecorate after my ex cleaned out most of our stuff? Long solitary nights where I immerse myself in work that really could wait until the next day, all so I don’t have to face the confrontation of my own company at home?
I can see a life with Lisa. I can spoil her rotten, have something worthwhile to work for, a person I love enough
to provide for.
She’ll never have to worry about job security again if I’m here to take care of her.
Never.
“Thank God, you’re still here.” The woman of the moment sweeps into the break room, as stunning as ever.
Her hair sits on her shoulders, perfectly framing her face as she looks at me with wide, eager eyes.
“What have you done?” I set my phone aside and rise from the God-awful plastic chair.
“So call me crazy, but”—her hands wave through the air as she speaks in an apparent need to expel her pent-up excitement—“I quit too.”
“You what?”
“I quit,” she repeats with a wide grin. “I figured, why should I work for people who want to bully me about my personal life? You know as well as I do that if I had stayed here while being with you, they wouldn’t have let me forget it.”
She has a point. “But you keep telling me how much you need a job, baby.” I take hold of her hand and kiss the knuckles.
“I know.” She tips her head dismissively. “But I figure I might have somebody who’s willing to help out with a place to stay while I find another one.”
She really hasn’t figured it out yet.
“It could take months before I sell my place and relocate here.”
She chuckles. “I know, silly. Why would I wait until then?”
Say what? “You better run this by me again,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “And this time, don’t spare the details. Your plan, start to finish, Lisa.”
“I quit,” she says slowly as though to spell it out for me. “Because I want to stay with you. At your place. I quit so I can move to be near you. Long distance problem—gone.”
“You’re right,” I say with a laugh. “You are crazy.” I tug her to me, no fucks to give on what any of the arrogant old bastards think now she no longer works for them. “But that’s part of why I love you.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
I sweep my lips across hers, peppering kisses to her nose and forehead. “Not even close.”
She sighs, snuggling into my hold. “I couldn’t wait until you moved here. The thought of how long that could take panicked me.” She smiles softly. “I’ve got no ties here, Mason. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be me making the sacrifice to be with you.”
“What about Emma?” I frown.
Her fingers trail down the front of my shirt, her eyes hungry as she tracks the path. “She’s my best friend. She’ll understand.”
God, I hope so. I really don’t need to add to the list of people who have it in for us.
“So,” Lisa says with a lift of one eyebrow. “What time do we leave?”
“You’re coming straight away?” I honestly thought she’d take some time to pack her things up, make sure her affairs were in order. “Not that I’m complaining.” Goddamn—my flight just got way better.
“I’m all in, Mason.” She places a chaste kiss on my lips. “I can get Emma to help me send things over. There’s no way I’m spending even a week without you.”
“You’ve made my day, baby. You know that?” And when she says yes to my proposal, she’ll make my year.
First on the agenda when I get home: ring shopping.
They say you know your soulmate the moment you meet them. Well, Lisa is precisely that. The sooner she can be my mate for life, the better.
She leans in close, her fingertip to my lip as she watches my mouth and whispers, “Now you can have me whenever and wherever you want, Mister. No more guilt.”
I laugh, binding her tight in my arms. “Oh, baby. I never felt guilty about a thing.”
How could I when letting her go would have been my ultimate regret?
Mrs. Mason Roberts.
Mark my words, it’s going to happen.
And soon.
“Now how about one last time in the archive room for old times sake?” I tease.
A wicked gleam shines in her eye as she smirks, arching her back to press those luscious tits tight against me. “I have a better idea.”
“I sure hope it involves my cock in you soon, because I swear to God you keep looking at me like that, and you’ll have me coming in my goddamn pants.”
“You up for a dare, then?”
I grind my hips against her in response. This woman. She keeps talking like that, and I’ll have to show her what else she could put her mouth to use on.
“My office,” she says. “Or should I say, my old office.” Her finger taps my lips before she trails it over my chin, down my throat, and to my chest. “Three minutes, two positions, and one rule.”
“I’m listening.”
“We keep the door unlocked.” Her teeth pinch her bottom lip. “You game?”
“With you?” I cup her pussy through her skirt. “Always. Now show me how sturdy your fucking desk is.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and bred in Canterbury, New Zealand, Max now resides with her family in beautiful and sunny Queensland, Australia.
Life with two young children can be hectic at times, and although she may not write as often as she would like, Max wouldn’t change a thing.
In her down time, Max can be found at her local gym, brain-storming through a session with the weights. If not, she’s probably out drooling over one of many classic cars on show that she wishes she owned.
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