by Nicki Elson
Oh dear God.
“ … but once I loosened up and agreed to some of the things he’d been asking me to try … ”
Oh God, no! These weren’t random words popping into Lyssa’s mind—she was actually praying. Please, make it stop.
It wasn’t stopping, and Lyssa did her best to block her mother’s words and focus on something—anything—else in the vast room. Her eyes darted about, failing to find purchase anywhere, and the distinct syllables that formed the word “testicles” in her mother’s nasally voice cut through her rising panic. Her eyes stopped on the gleaming flatware resting conveniently on the white linen tablecloth. She momentarily considered stabbing forks into her eardrums, but that’d only stop the noise; she’d still be able to read those lips that didn’t stop moving.
“ … and there’s something very gratifying about causing a man to lose control like that … ”
Lyssa instantly decided on the ultimate superpower Keith had always wanted her to choose. She’d pick telekinesis, and she’d use it to snap off one of the harp strings and levitate it over. Then she’d wrap it around her mother’s throat and squeeze. Squeeze until Mommy turned blue. Squeeze until that larynx could never again spew its torturous revelations. Judging by the sour expressions that were now being cast in her mother’s direction, Lyssa felt fairly certain the other tea room patrons would thank her.
Please, God. Make. It. Stop.
Without thinking what she was doing, Lyssa held her palm out flat in front of her, effectively halting Penny’s sexual memoir. “You know what, Mom? Keith and I broke up. Period. That’s really all you need to know. I appreciate your efforts to guess at what went wrong and offer your advice, but please stop.”
Penny gave an insulted huff but complied and, to Lyssa’s surprise, actually dropped the subject. The rest of their afternoon passed with relative harmony between the women … at least as far as anyone on the outside could tell.
* * *
Lyssa was proud that she’d defended herself against her mother’s unfair assumptions, but that didn’t mean some of the words hadn’t stuck with her. “A bit of a prude,” to be precise about which words.
Her mother was naïve regarding those high school football parties, and if not wanting to lose her innocence to a bunch of acne-ridden jocks made Lyssa a prude, then she was fine with that. Besides, if Penny Bates could’ve seen the way her daughter and Keith had been going at it for the last several months, she may have chosen a different word to describe her youngest child.
Prude. Psssh.
Sitting on her futon with her mother safely deposited at the hotel, Lyssa rested her feet on her worn, dark wood coffee table and pulled out House Vibrizzio. Her lip curled. What would her mother make of this? Turning the toy onto its lowest setting, she began massaging, letting her mind wander to … Keith.
“Shit,” she muttered. Not because the thought of him had made her heart sink—though it did a little bit—but what made her curse was the realization that her masturbatory fantasies always started with her boyfriend. Even in her imagination, she didn’t stray outside socially acceptable lines. Turning off the vibrator, she let her head fall to the sofa back. “Maybe I am a prude.”
The analog clock in her kitchen ticked, and somebody outside her building shouted indecipherably, his call followed by laughter that moved down the sidewalk. She kicked Vibrizzio up to the second speed, drowning out the noise, and gazed at it for a few moments. A steely determination settled over her.
Touching it back to her, she willed her mind away from Keith. The baby-smooth chest she typically envisioned sprouted with hair, thick and wiry, and Lyssa pictured her tongue sliding through it, stopping only to pull a loose hair from between her teeth. You’re thinking too much, she scolded herself. Let go. The hairy man without a face grabbed her and tossed her down onto the ground.
They were on a beach now. A bright, secluded beach with a rocky outcropping ahead of them, a thick jungle to the left. Ocean waves lapped only feet away on the other side. He wasted no time in taking his pleasure and thrust into her, moving fast and striking her most tender spots, never staying long enough to drive her over the edge but teasing her into a frenzy.
She eagerly thrust her hips forward, and he flipped her over onto all fours while he shifted to take her from behind, but he was slippery and clattered to the ground. Lyssa gasped and picked him back up, taking a moment to make sure no important bits had chipped off before resuming the fantasy. The hair had now crept over his entire body, and she felt his fur tickle against the back of her thighs. He snarled as he re-mounted her.
Lyssa moaned. He was hitting a sweet point, so close to her trigger but not quite there. His weight pressed into her ever more urgently, and he slid his strong hands over her abdomen to clutch at her breasts. “You turn me … into an animal,” he huffed into her ear, the pacing of his thrusts reaching desperate levels. Lyssa braced herself to support them both but allowed some give in her elbow so she could rock with his frenetic rhythm without snapping anything.
He’d lost control now and was pure beast, snarling and slamming into her while he clung firmly onto her chest, his claw-like fingers digging in. His power both delighted and terrified her. While her inner tissues rejoiced, her exterior held strong. One little waver and his unyielding force might crush her. He growled and plunged deeper into her. At last, her arm buckled, and her face smushed into her rug, which was now the sandy beach. As she fell, Vibrizzio’s tip flicked across her trigger, and her imagined lover howled as she shouted into the empty apartment, shuddering against the plastic device.
Chapter Six
“Does getting nailed by a werewolf count as bestiality?” Lyssa asked her work friend Carla.
The two analysts sat at a shabby table in a secluded corner of the dumpiest restaurant/bar in the Loop. Nobody else from Fox & Keaton would set foot in the place, so it had become their “safe zone”—a place to dish about their coworkers without worry of being overheard.
“Depends—is he in wolf form or man form?” Carla asked.
“Mostly man, I think, but covered in a really thick, soft hair, like fur. And clawed fingers.”
She clawed her own fingers into the huge plate of chili cheese fries the girls were sharing. In the three weeks since returning from Boston, Lyssa had been working sixty-plus hours a week to prepare the presentation for Project Pineapple, and comfort food was the way she preferred to unwind and reward herself before the big meeting with the client the next day.
Carla quirked a thin, penciled eyebrow at Lyssa’s oddly specific parameters. “Got any particular wolf in mind?”
Lyssa’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Hayden.
Hayden: Where are you?
“Hold on a sec,” she said to Carla as she typed.
Lyssa: Not free to divulge that info.
Hayden: Let me rephrase. How soon can U get ur nicely rounded ass back up here?
“Shit.”
Lyssa: Why?
There was an extended pause before his response came in.
Hayden: BF fucked us.
“What!”
“What?” Carla asked.
“Don’t know. Some kind of problem with one of the Pineapple candidates. Of course. Just when it looked like we had it all wrapped up. She typed back.
Lyssa: Coming. C U in ten.
She grabbed one last loaded fry and mumbled through it, “Sorry. I gotta go see exactly how late of a night I’m in for.”
The streets were light as most commuters had already headed back to the suburbs, so Lyssa grabbed a cab to shave a few minutes from her trip. Upon reaching the office, she went to her desk to grab her DH files. All the analysts and administrative assistants had cleared out of their cubicles, and light glowed through the frosted side windows of only a couple of the senior professionals’ offices.
The smaller wing where Hayden’s office was located was vacant, except for him. He’d left his door wide open, and something about the glare shini
ng through his doorway seemed harsher than the lighting on the rest of the floor. She slowed her steps, approaching silently. Peeking into his office, she saw him standing behind his desk bent over an open report. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and even from the distance, Lyssa could clearly make out the thick ribbons of his bulging arteries.
“What happened?” she asked, stepping inside the doorframe.
He stood straight and pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “They walked. All seven of them.”
“Walked? We’re talking about Bell Funds, right?”
“Yep. The five senior professionals plus their two new analysts have left the bank. Carlo called to give me the heads up before the press release hits tomorrow morning.”
Lyssa sank into the side chair. “That was nice of him,” she half murmured while her mind flickered over the new information.
“Oh yeah, he’s a real prince.” He curled his hand into a fist, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “Would’ve been a lot nicer if he’d clued me in three weeks ago.”
“Wait … what? They were planning on this when we were out there?”
“Planning it? It was a done fucking deal. They’re starting their own investment firm, complete with fully furnished offices, business cards, stolen clients. The whole proverbial shebang. This has been in the works for a long time … and I was blind to every sign of it.”
“Those rat bastards!” Lyssa flew up from her chair. “They lied right to us! Wooed us with bagels and cream cheeses. Just so they could, so they could … Hayden, why would they want to do this to us?”
“To hear Carlo tell it, they’re doing us a huge favor—offering our client the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the hottest new investment firm.”
“They still expect us to give them the recommendation?”
One side of Hayden’s mouth lifted in a tight, ironic smirk, and a flick of his eyebrows confirmed the answer was yes.
“Those rat bastards!” Lyssa shrieked.
Hayden let out a chuckle, seeming to relax as Lyssa took his fury onto herself. “You don’t even know the worst part.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. What we’ve got to focus on right now is revising our presentation for Pineapple tomorrow.”
“You’re not thinking of recommending the new firm, are you?”
“Rat Bastard Capital? No way. Not only because they’re deceptive fuckwads, but because the client just weathered an ill-fated employee shake-up, and we can’t throw them right into the middle of another one.”
“Simple—let’s index all of it. We’ll pick a fund that mimics a large value index and screw taking a chance on the active managers.”
He shook his head. “If it were entirely up to me, I’d spread this portion out among a few different managers and see which one shines, but we have a request from the client for one active manager. We’ve got to give them more than two to choose from, so we’ll have to find one more—by tomorrow morning. Got any suggestions?”
The question made her uneasy. Surely he’d find fault with whomever she suggested. But in studying his earnest gaze and the lack of any sign of a cocky twitch to his lips, she ventured forth. “I’d have to run the numbers against Ardent and Smithson to see how they compare, but there are a couple of firms out west that might be a good fit. Onion Investors right here in Chicago is another possibility.”
“Okay, run the numbers. I’ll do a little digging too. Let’s meet in the corner conference room in an hour and see what we’ve got.”
She went back to her desk and pulled up the stats. When they regrouped in the conference room—in the now otherwise vacant office suite—Hayden quickly conceded that one of Lyssa’s candidates, Ellis Investments in Denver, was the best choice.
“Now we have to rework every single one of the graphics, rewrite the entire report, and we’re all set,” Hayden said with a sarcastic bite to his tone. “Remember much from your data analyst days?”
Lyssa groaned. It’d been a while since she’d worked with that software, but she was far more familiar with it than Hayden was since he’d never been entry level at Fox & Keaton. She pushed her chair back. “I’ll fire up Jamie’s computer—you get the coffee brewing.”
While she loaded in the numbers, Hayden sat at the cubicle directly across the aisle and went through the old report, marking the text with red ink. As Lyssa finished each graphic, she printed out a draft and handed it to him. After she had finished loading the numbers, the reports came fast. She didn’t bother sitting back down, instead standing to click at her keyboard, cueing the next printout. She’d been back at the office for over four hours now, and fatigue was setting in, so she bent to prop her elbow on the desk and rest her chin on her cupped hand.
Hayden had likewise made himself comfortable across the aisle. His chair was turned sideways and his legs stretched out in front of him with one arm leaning on the desk. His hand threaded through the short waves of his dark hair, supporting the back of his head as his blue eyes flicked over the papers in front of him. His focus was intense, and the two of them worked in silence except when words were absolutely necessary.
Lyssa found a parameter that needed tweaking and slid her eyes sideways for the shift key. In her peripheral, she noticed that Hayden’s eyes were no longer on the papers in front of him—while he lounged against the side of the desk, his gaze had wandered toward Lyssa’s derriere. She hadn’t noticed that when she’d leaned over, this choice component of her physique had extended out directly toward him.
She clicked the key and moved her eyes back to the computer. “I’m having lunch with Sabine on Monday, so you’d better be nice.”
Papers rustled as Hayden apparently recollected himself. “I think I’m being very nice. Besides, nice wasn’t part of the deal. All I have to do is not tell anyone what I saw in your overnight bag, and I haven’t.”
“That’s enough to get me to put in a good word for you. If you want me to put in a great one, you might want to refrain from pointing out that I have a big butt.” The graph started to print, and she stood straight, turning toward him.
His hand fell to the desk, and he pulled his legs in, sitting erect. “I never said anything like that!”
“Oh, really?” Lyssa walked over to her own desk and came back with her phone. She pulled up his recent text and read aloud: “Ahem: ‘get ur nicely rounded ass back up here’.”
He crinkled his eyes and tilted his head while the elegant lines of his mouth curved into a slight gape. “How is that not nice? I even used a form of the word nice.”
She turned the phone around and held the screen out toward him. “Translation: get your ginormous backend up here.”
“Uh uh, no way.” He emphasized his point by standing. “Nicely rounded is a good thing. I thought you knew that. Isn’t that why you always wear pants? Because of the way they curve up from the seam and hug your … ” Apparently thinking better of finishing that statement, he reversed the motion of his hands, which had started to curve in front of him as if cupping the asset to which he referred. “Come on. Don’t tell me your juicy posterior isn’t your boyfriend’s favorite part your body.”
Lyssa lowered the phone. The flattery she was beginning to feel was stung by the mention of her no-longer-existent boyfriend. “Because the rest of me is so horrible, right?”
Hayden groaned. “That’s not what I said. What’s up with you tonight, Bates? You’re twisting everything I say into a put-down when all I’m trying to tell you is that you have a nice ass. But look, I know the ‘nicely rounded’ comment—even though it was a compliment—was unprofessional. I’d just gotten off the phone with Carlo and was a little stressed, but that’s no excuse, and I’m sorry.”
Lyssa gave a small nod, taken off guard by his forthright apology. “Okay. Thanks.”
“For the apology or the compliment?” Hayden pulled his lips tight, but his flirtatious smile showed through—by design, Lyssa was
sure, so she didn’t answer, instead half turning to look back at the screen. “Fine. Don’t answer, but can we at least agree to my right to silently and respectfully admire it?”
Lyssa bit back a grin. “I suppose I can allow that.” She returned to her work, but, feeling self-conscious, covered her nicely rounded ass by sitting while the remaining drafts printed.
It took a few more hours to finish revisions, double-check them, proof the final report, and then print copies onto hard stock and bind them. Hayden plopped the final copy onto the pile in the center of the long, printing room table and arched his back, stretching and pressing his palms to his eyes while his mouth opened wide in a yawn. His shirt had come untucked a while ago, and now it spread open below the bottom button, exposing a sliver of flat, abdominal muscle and a tiny tuft of black hair as his undershirt lifted with his stretch. Lyssa glanced away, stacking the reports into a small box.
“We’ve got six hours before the meeting,” Hayden said, his voice gravelly. “We better allow half an hour to get there and another forty-five minutes to shower and primp, so that leaves just over four hours to get home and sleep.”
“Do you mind if I head straight to Pineapple’s from my apartment?”
“It’s three in the morning—have you watched the news lately? I’m not letting you walk through Lincoln Park alone.”
“I’ll take a cab.”
“Not alone at this hour, you aren’t.”
“What are you going to do? Chaperone me all the way out there and then head back this way to your place? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He pulled a hand through his hair, and his bleary eyes narrowed in thought. It was strange to see the typically pulled-together Hayden so dangerously close to rumpled. But if anyone could pull off rumpled, it was him. “Do you have makeup in your purse?” Lyssa nodded. “Good. You can stay at my place. We’ll iron your pants and Febreeze your shirt, bada bing bada boom.”
“I … what would I sleep in?”
“I’ve got T-shirts and boxer shorts.”
