by Mia Madison
“This is what I want... You’re who I want,” she whispered, husky and breathy with lips that pouted, ready to be kissed.
It was all I needed. The mantel of my argument of right or wrong fell away from me, and I surrendered to my baser needs to have the most amazing woman I’d ever met cry out my name when I filled her senses to overflowing with me.
Chapter Nine
Addilyn
My body tingled from head to toe as he looked me over, but I wasn’t willing to wait for him to show me what he liked or what he wanted. I had ideas of my own.
Pulling his head down to mine, I crushed his lips in a bruising kiss as my fingers tore at his shirt. I didn’t bother with unfastening his buttons, and I heard them ping and bounce off the nearby desk before landing unheard on the carpeted floor. I also didn’t bother with his tie, leaving it on as I bared his shoulders and chest of every stitch of fabric until there was only the feel of hard, hot flesh beneath my palms. He gasped into my mouth when my nails raked down his muscular pecs. His body was better than that of most younger men I’d been with.
I broke the kiss as I positioned his back to the desk before giving him a hard shove so that he fell backwards on it to rest on his elbows.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said as I looked over the shadowed canvas of man flesh in front of me. The soft light of his desk lamp painted the dips and ridges of his six-pack abs, making them look as though they’d been airbrushed on, but the caress of my fingertips over his stomach let me know that that wasn’t the case at all.
The look he gave me at my appraisal of him was as cocky as a frat boy’s. “Personal trainer. Personal chef.”
“Mmm, remind me to send them a thank you card,” I said as my hands went to work unbuckling his belt. Once unlatched, I jerked it free of its hoops hard enough that Harris had to hold on to the desk to maintain his position. I liked that. I liked it a lot, but not as much as what I found after I unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. What he had to offer was already tenting his groin when I worked his pants and shorts off his hips as one, yet I was still surprised when the bounty of the man I was having my way with sprang up, completely free of restraints. My brows arched. “Your trainer and chef do that for you too?” I asked as I eyed a manhood every bit as thick and heavy as a summer sausage.
He looked down at his straining, bobbing length. “I’m sure they’d like to think so, but I suspect that the only one who can truly take credit for it is you.” His grey eyes had darkened when he turned his gaze back on me, and I shivered as a spasm of anticipation traveled its way up my center.
I was out of my panties two seconds later and climbing into position over his body a half second after that. With my knees above his hips and my ready heat already dripping with want, I positioned my hips low and dragged myself up his length, painting him with my juices, earning me an anguished, hungry groan from him. But, when I reach between us to wrap my fingers around his unbelievably thick girth to hold him in position for me to sink myself down on top of, I froze. His skin was hot and slick under my touch... his skin. His bare, naked skin. “You don’t have a raincoat on.” I was ready to scream. We were in an office on the fourteenth floor of a building in front of a wall of windows about to have wild, uninhibited sex, and the man I wanted to ride like a bucking bronco on PCP wasn’t wearing a condom. “This isn’t happening. Tell me you have some protection.”
Harris’s face went blank. “I—uh... Don’t carry any on me.”
At least I knew from that answer that he wasn’t a complete player, scoring with random women everywhere he went throughout the city. “Rich, handsome, the body of a wrestler... and chaste. Just my luck.” My nether regions throbbed with a crazed want that made me shake with near desperation. It wasn’t me, I swear. It was my body’s need to be impaled by him that took over my tongue. “I’m clean. Safe. I’m on the pill. You?”
“Same—though, not the pill. I’m not on the pill.” The words spilled out of him as his fingers gripped my hips with an intense ownership that fueled the fire in my blood.
“That’s okay, baby,” I said, taking his lips in a hard, short kiss. “I won’t get you pregnant. Promise.” And with that said, I lowered myself on top of him, groaning out load from the magnificent stretch he forced on my body. “Oh my God, you could be a gigolo if your company ever fails.” My eyes flashed open when the sound of what I’d said traveled through my ears to finally reach my brain. I had just told my boss that he could be a man-whore and had meant it. Yes, definitely, we had crossed a line somewhere. “I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of me.
“Shut up,” he said, hooking me by the back of the neck and pulling me down to him. His mouth ravaged mine as his hands unclasped my bra to free my breasts, but gravity didn’t even get a chance to take hold of their freedom before his hands were on them. His palms were warm and strong, commanding even as they held the swell of breasts that hadn’t been touched by someone who knew what they were doing in way too long. His thumbs stroked over my pert nipples, followed by a pinch and pull that had me tightening around his invading shaft.
“Yes... More,” I moaned as I adjusted the angle of my hips. I couldn’t sink completely down to his base, but with my hips titled forward I could rub my clit against his body with each rocking stroke on his cock. I’d never felt so full in my life, and there was some spot deep inside of me, some spot no other man had ever made feel so good, that made me heady, made me feel as though my spirit was bigger than my body. It was the stretch being forced by his granite hard cock and the freaking bulbous head of his. I’d meant it when I said he could have been a gigolo. Women would have lined up to pay him thousands for just a half an hour of his time. He felt that good, that life-shattering. I wasn’t even sure I could call it sex. Sex felt like a sneeze compared to what he was doing to me. I felt his hands on my ass as he took control of his stroke from below. My whole body was shaking, and if I’d been asked my name at that moment, I wouldn’t have remembered.
A sound filled the office, bouncing off the walls, filling my ears, and it took me a while to realize that that sound was me, crying out as the overwhelming pleasure that dipped into a pain so sweet filled me beyond all my comprehension. His name was on my lips next as I cried out, “Harris... Oh God, Harris! Oh God!”
I felt him swell inside me. I felt every single one of his heartbeats through the place that we were joined. Something shifted. Maybe it was him, maybe it was me, but I arched my neck back and screamed the ecstasy that filled my body a heartbeat before liquid heat spilled inside of me.
Spent, completely drained of all energy and strength, my body wilted on top of Harris and his strong arms wrapped around me, holding me tight. His lips kissed my sweat slicked brow, and I couldn’t stop shaking. “What did you do to me?” I’d never in all my life been so spent by what a man did to me when I’d taken his body inside my own.
“I’ve got you,” Harris whispered into my hair, and for some reason, for the first time in my life, I believed a man was telling me the truth with absolutely no doubt… and no regrets.
Chapter Ten
Harris
“Your meeting with the CEO of Mascatar has postponed your meeting, and Planning and Development are scheduled to meet the day after tomorrow.” Pam’s voice managed to wiggle its way past my memories of how Addilyn felt, sounded and tasted, but her words didn’t take hold. Rather, they slipped away, forgotten as soon as they were heard.
“I’m sorry, Pam. Do you mind briefing me again in the morning? I just need some time with some of my thoughts.” I wouldn’t mention to her that those thoughts were wondering what it would feel like to have Addilyn under me as I made her come all over my cock again. Sleeping with a subordinate was bad enough. I didn’t need to add a sexual harassment claim from Pam from admitting to her that I had a half-chubby thinking about the fact that Addilyn was sitting at her desk just down the hall from my office. If I thought that I could stifle her pleasure cries, I’d call in he
r right now, put her knees over my shoulders and have a long, slow lunch with her on my face.
Okay... so my half-chub just grew to a three-quarter chub. The constricting fabric of my slacks felt less than good, and the pants seam was slicing into me. I desperately needed to adjust myself, but I had to get Pam out of my office first.
“Yes, sir,” Pam answered, her consummate and usual professional self. “You’re meeting with Mr. Druthers is in ten minutes.”
Druthers. That was enough to sober my mood. He was the accountant who was embezzling from the company. Against my better judgment, I’d taken Addilyn’s advice and scheduled a meeting with him to let him know that his theft had been discovered.
“Thank you, Pam.” I watched her leave and resisted the urge to crane my neck to the side in hopes of catching a glimpse of Addilyn. When the door closed, its latch clicking into place, I groaned and dropped my forehead to my desk. “What am I doing?” I hadn’t let myself get let around by my dick since I’d been in college, but I knew it was more than that. I was wild about Addilyn. I loved her defiant attitude. I loved the way she always managed to say the wrong thing while still speaking the truth. And, though I was resisting her influence on the matter, I loved her compassion and her belief in human nature. She believed there was a chance that money management errors could happen by mistake rather than by design, but at this level of business and oversight, I had never once found that to be the case. Not even once.
Lifting my head, I slouched back in my chair. This thing with Addilyn had to be gotten under control. Even if she didn’t see it, what I was doing wasn’t right. I’d seen the abuses that had happened within such relationships throughout my years as being head of a corporation. Careers had been ruined, sometimes families had been destroyed. I’d seen betrayal and manipulation happen both down and up the chain of command. It rarely ended well, and I cared too much about Addilyn’s future to subject her to the scandal that would be attached to word getting out about our... I didn’t even know what to call it. I didn’t want to call it an affair. She was more to me than the heaven that was between her legs. She was a whole person. Yet, despite that how much I wanted her, the truth was that she wasn’t mine. I had no rights over her, the same as her with me. We were coworkers who had shared a moment, nothing more, and the sobering truth of that fact eased the uncomfortable tension that I’d been feeling at my crotch as want and desire were overridden by the sensibilities that time gave. Yet, despite that, despite my better judgment, I longed for her companionship… the sound of her laugh, the way she turned her head when she was lost in a thought, and the gentle scent of her favorite perfume. Though I could see her at a moment’s notice and had seen her numerous times today, I missed her.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come,” I called out, keeping the order succinct. The door opened and the pale face of Mr. Druthers leaned in. “Come,” I said again, waving him in with my hand. Only then did he build up the courage to step into my office, yet he hesitated when I told him to close the door behind him.
I said nothing as he made his way to my desk. He walked like a man who was knowingly on his way to the gallows. He moved as if an anvil were due to crash down on his head at any second—but he didn’t know which second. After he sat in the chair in front of my desk, I took my time to study him before I spoke again. His skin was waxy and there was a hollow, sunken quality to his eyes. Guilt was eating the man alive, leaving him a wraith where once a vibrant man had existed.
“I know that you’ve been embezzling,” I said. I saw no point in dragging the matter out. As if the shock was too much at being called out for what he’d done, Mr. Samuel Druthers started coughing, and for a moment I thought that he would not be able to quit. Finally, he gasped in a full breath of air, his watery eyes locking with mine.
“What?” His voice was weak, tremulous.
I softened my voice and leaned forward. There was no reason to beat the man now that he was down. “I know that you embezzled from the company. I called you into this meeting as a courtesy before I alert the board and notify the police. Over the last year, you have managed to manipulate the quarterly report to reflect an under-earning of one point seven million dollars. It was well hidden, but the discrepancies have been found and the authorities will be notified of the theft.”
“No.... No!” Sam seemed to melt before me as if the cords of his marionette strings had been suddenly cut. “This can’t be happening. Not now. Not on top of everything else.” I let him have his moment without interfering. Sometimes a person needed the chance to work through the heft of their grief before being ready to face what was to come next. But, to my surprise, Sam’s head lifted and his watery gaze locked with mine. “I didn’t steal from you. Not one penny. Not once in all of the years that I’ve worked for this company.” He scooted forward to the edge of his chair, leaning in to what he had to say next. “I have cancer.”
It was my turn to feel as if my marionette strings had been cut. I’d had my fighting gloves on, ready to pummel the man into the floor with the facts about what he’d done, but I had not expected this.
“I’ve been going through radiation and now chemo. I’m in pain—” His voice broke. “Most of the time, but I’ve got a kid who’s going to Julliard and I haven’t wanted to go on medical leave until there wasn’t any other choice. I—” His voice broke again. “I wanted to give my family everything I could give them while I still had something left in me.”
My throat was tight, almost refusing to work, as I forced the words out. “It’s terminal?”
Sam leaned back once more in his chair, exhaustion seeming to move in after all of his energy was depleted. “Maybe. I mean, I hope not. I still have a chance. There’s still a chance, you know?” His eyes dropped to where his hands lay in his lap before he lifted his gaze to meet me again. “I’m sorry. I must have screwed up somewhere. I didn’t take anything. The sickness, the treatments—they’ve used me up. I... I didn’t cheat. I...” He took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. “I wouldn’t want to leave my family with that kind of legacy.”
It was time for an executive decision, and if not by men, then by who? “Sam, you are now on indefinite medical leave. You have shown yourself incapable of performing the tasks of your job as described by your job description. Your salary during your medical leave with remain at 100% of your current pay, including any scheduled bonuses. At the time that you are ready to return to work, a position of equal standing will be made available to you if your current position is no longer available, and I will inform HR to provide you with financial assistance out of the company’s crisis fund to assist with your medical bills. And, if you do succumb to your illness, college scholarships will be arranged for your children.”
Sam’s face fell, seeming to melt as all tension left it. Shaking hands lifted to his face to wipe away a stream of runaway tears that had finally spilled over the brim of his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Don’t keep this kind a thing a secret, okay? The company—me—I’m not the enemy, Sam. We’ll be here for you as much as we can.” I couldn’t save him from his illness, but maybe I could save him from all of the related fears. If I managed that, there was a chance that I’d be able to sleep tonight rather than relive the moment that I realized that an employee of mine was staring into the abyss... alone, with the knowledge that I’d been too blind with my own misconceptions to see it.
Chapter Eleven
Addilyn
“Aren’t you done rebelling yet? Quit that job and come home!” I held the phone away from my ear as my father’s voice boomed out of it. He was as filled with outrage as I was, but I didn’t care. He thought that he had the right to design my life, and I was in complete disagreement. I loved my father, but he didn’t own me.
“I am doing good work,” I said through gritted teeth while doing my best to keep my voice level. “I have a place to live that is my place, and I like it! I got my job myself and I like it, too. I like my life, and I’ll li
ve it however I see fit!” Okay, so I might have been overstating how much I “liked” my job. I did like it, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. He didn’t need to know that, though.
“You ingrate of a child!” he fumed, and that’s when I clicked the phone off, ending the call. I didn’t need to listen to his berating. I’d heard it enough times already to know through and through just how disappointed he was with me.
The phone, still held in my hand rang again as “Daddy” flashed across the screen. I ignored it, letting it go to voicemail while I willed my blood pressure to drop back into a normal range. It stopped ringing, was followed by silence, and then started ringing again. This happened three times. Finally, having had enough of his obsessive behavior, I clicked answer. “This stops, do you hear me!” I yelled into the phone. “I have had enough of the badgering and I have had enough of you!”
Silence met my ear, and I thought that for the first time in my life I’d managed to get my message through to a man who only ever gave consideration to his own ideals. “Addilyn? You okay?” It was not my father’s voice.
“Harris?” I asked, practically squeaking. “Harris! I’m so sorry! I — I...” I had to think fast. I wasn’t ready to go into a huge explanation about my interpersonal dynamic with my father. “A rogue telemarketer got on my last nerve.”
Harris laughed, and I had to squeeze my thighs together because of how good that sound made me feel. “Kind of makes me wish that I was the telemarketer. You’re damn sexy when you’re mad.”
My thigh squeezing ramped up to almost a full-blown orgasm, and I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning Harris’s name.
“Let me take you to dinner. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
It was my turn to laugh. “How do you even know where I live?”
