Vicki couldn’t answer. Even though she’d prepared herself for this, having her deductions physically confirmed had knocked her sideways. She gasped in air, her hand across her chest again, still trying to calm the pounding in her heart.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Vick?” Lisa had momentarily forgotten the new arrival, who even now would be ascending in the elevator. “You’re as white as a sheet. Do you want to sit down? Why don’t you go back to your office and I’ll bring you a cup of tea or a strong coffee. With a bit of sugar.” She glanced towards the elevator at the end of the landing. The mechanism was clanking into place.
“No. I’m fine. I’m staying here.”
I’m not hiding. No way. I’m going to be right here waiting when those doors open.
As if thought created action, the dark polished doors sprang apart, and the newly arrived owner of Wickham-Drake strode out, leaving his followers dithering and frowning in his wake. From behind his shades, he surveyed the landing like hawk and spotted Vicki straight away.
You bastard! Why do you have to be so magnificent? It’s just not fair.
Fate itself was bearing down on her, and it took a supreme effort to stiffen her spine, lift her chin proudly and meet the still-hidden eyes of the man who approached.
He stopped a couple of paces away from her, and suddenly, he didn’t look quite so all-conquering.
Are you nervous? Just like me? Astonishingly, for a moment, she wasn’t the only one with a hand pressed to their chest to apparently still a beating heart.
Then F. W. Shanley III pulled off his shades, and Red Webster met her gaze.
“Well, I said I’d be here today, didn’t I? I’ve come straight from the airport. I couldn’t wait any longer.”
The expression on his oh so familiar yet different-looking face was complex. There was that slight, teasing smile that perplexed her so. But at the same time, his remarkable eyes held a look of apprehension.
You might well look worried, stringing me along like this, you pig.
Vicki wanted to be cross. She knew she had a right to be. But seeing him, and smelling a hint of his beautiful cologne, and feeling her senses reach out invisibly and mesh with his seemed to obliterate all her negative emotions. She could only feel joy, exquisite joy at having him back again. It had only been a few days since he’d left her in the bedroom at the Ivory Pavilion, but it felt like a dozen lifetimes since they’d been together.
“Hello, Mr. Shanley, how very nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand and fighting a losing battle against smiling back at him.
He took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Still clutching her fingers, he stood and stared at her, grin broadening. He tilted his head, as if getting the measure of her reaction and formulating one of his many game plans, and lifted his free hand, ready to stroke his absent beard.
Laughing, he shook his head. “Uh-oh, I forgot it wasn’t there.” He rubbed slowly at the strong, firm jawline, newly revealed.
And still he held her hand, his fingers warm and possessive as invisible electricity passed between their two bodies. The entire world of Wickham-Drake receded away around them, and they were back at the hotel, alone, about to play.
“Look, do you think we could possibly go to your office for a bit of privacy? We seem to have gathered quite an audience.”
Vicki managed to drag her gaze away from his face and glance round at the astonishing sight of the entire workforce of her floor gathered around them. In the vanguard were the directors and senior partners of the firm, all gaping nonplussed at their new employer and apparently completely unable to speak to him.
“Certainly. This way.” She paused and gave him a defiant look. “But of course you know that, having worked here.”
Spinning, she strode off, forcing him to match her steps as he seemed determined not to let go of her hand.
“Gentlemen, why don’t you go up to the boardroom and wait for me?” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be up later…or this afternoon…or perhaps tomorrow.”
There was a slight commotion and a few halfhearted protests, but Vicki barely heard them and Red seemed set on ignoring everything but her now. The great and the good of Wickham-Drake might as well have been on another planet.
Once he’d kicked her office door closed behind them, she turned to him and with some reluctance prized her fingers out of his.
“So…what do I call you? F. W. the third? Sir? Your majesty?” She gave him a long, level look. “Or perhaps just master?”
Those beloved eyes narrowed, as if to say Don’t tempt me…
“My name is Frederick Webster Shanley. But my friends and the people I love all call me Red.” He blinked, once and slowly. “For obvious reasons.”
The people I love?
He was asking her to acknowledge that she knew he loved her. Asking her to confirm what he knew too. That she loved him. It was all so clear, and yet also crazy. The most bizarre, astonishing situation.
Part of her wanted to give him a piece of her mind. Part of her wanted to just throw herself into his arms and ignore any and all complications. A part of her—a deep, thrilled, trembling part of her—wanted to fall to her knees in awe and worship of her master.
For he surely did look magnificent in his long flowing coat and his perfect suit, with his grooming so immaculate and elegant. He had all Red’s familiar power, only magnified and rarefied to the nth degree.
It would have been all too easy to fall down and adore him, but a stubborn core inside her wasn’t giving in without at least a protest.
“You really are the limit, you know,” she said, her chin coming up as she met his fiery eyes with a fire of her own. “You deceive me…you deceive everybody…and then you come swanning in here like the King of the Universe, as if nothing matters.” His smile was slow and teasing, and for just a moment she wanted to be the one doing the punishing. An image of him on his knees, kissing her feet, made her blink. “Oh, I know you’re my boss and you can sack me in a heartbeat, but still, what’s it all about, this charade of masquerading as your own employee and spying on everybody?”
“I like to know what’s going on in a firm. To know the people. Really know them.” Red shrugged, his broad shoulders lifting beneath somber cashmere. “Because you never really get a true picture of a workplace or the people in it when you’re cloistered away up in the executive suite. And nobody acts naturally when you come down to inspect the troops.”
Plausible enough.
“Oh, so it’s not just a way to pick up women to play your kinky games with?”
“Well, it’s that too.” He showed his white teeth in a wide, devilish smile, and Vicki melted inside. Heart. Loins. Any shred of resistance she might have ever had against his charms.
“So what happens now? Do we go on playing? What am I to you? Girlfriend? Employee? Submissive? What?”
His beautiful eyes grew suddenly serious, and he reached out and took her hand again, his grip on her fingers light and gentle yet resonant with meaning.
“You’re the woman I love, Vicki.” His voice was quiet, level…honest. “And yes, I would like us to go on playing. But not just elaborate, temporary erotic charades, magnificent as they are.” He paused, as if there was a great weight of importance and meaning riding on what he might say next. “I want to share the long game with you, my love. The forever game. I want us to be together and live together and play together for the rest of our lives.”
“I want that too!”
The words just flew out—driven by her subconscious, her heart and her every primal yearning—long before the shreds of her reason could catch up with them. But as Red pulled her towards him, slid his arms around her and settled his firm, mobile lips lovingly on hers, her reason caught up and concurred with the decision, as wild and crazy as it was.
She was in the arms of a man who was almost a mystery to her, and what she did know about him was based on a brief but volatile interaction with him under a
slightly assumed name and a false identity. It was completely insane to commit herself to him for the rest of her life on just this. It didn’t make sense.
Furthermore, he was a billionaire, for heaven’s sake, and she was just what she’d told him she was. An unremarkable employee working in the middle management of just one tiny part in his enormous business empire.
It couldn’t work.
It couldn’t fail.
Because she loved him, and she knew he loved her.
Smiling beneath his kiss, she sensed Red holding back. The unstoppable, all-powerful, domineering Red Webster, King of the Pervs and King of the Universe, was restraining his desires. Waiting on her word. Not kissing her with half the demanding ferocity that the jut of his rampant cock against her belly told her he was feeling.
The fact that she had the upper hand for once was intoxicating, and grabbing his face between her hands, she put him away from her a little and looked up into his eyes.
“Don’t worry, I want you too, Red. Even if you are an arrogant, lying, infuriating, manipulative bastard!”
“Well, thanks for that.” His large hands came up, taking hold of hers and bringing them down again. Walking forward, he gently but determinedly made her retreat until the backs of her thighs were pressed up against her desk. “Do you think you could bring yourself to marry me, then?”
His eyes gleamed and he looked down at her mouth, and Vicki could feel the delicious, crazy, thrilling balance between them tipping again, and her beloved’s power rising. It didn’t matter what she said or did now, he wouldn’t take no for an answer and she wouldn’t have expected him to. Even though she had no intention of denying him.
But still, she had to play.
“I’ll consider it.”
“Well in that case, let me give you something to help you make up your mind.”
Laughing low and wickedly, he caught her under her thighs, hoisted her up onto the desk, then reached up deftly beneath her skirt, past her hold-up stockings, and caught hold of her panties.
“Mr. Shanley!” she squeaked in mock protest, reaching down to help him get the offending garment off her. “Someone might come in!”
“Not if they value their jobs,” he growled, swooping down low to whip her knickers off over her ankles before guiding her legs apart and encouraging her to spread her thighs.
“Isn’t this inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace?” she muttered, reaching down for his zipper as he worked on the buckle of his belt.
“I should hope so.” He took her by the hips again and drew her to the edge of the desk.
“Now, Ms. Renard, isn’t there something you’d like to tell me before we proceed?”
She paused for a second, her sex already fluttering at the touch of his beloved cock against her silky entrance. She rolled her eyes and made a show of deep thought, even though all she wanted to do was impale herself upon him.
“Tell me, you perverse little witch. Tell me!”
“I love you,” she gasped, her hips jerking forward of their own accord, just as his did the same.
Then their bodies joined and she met his gaze, staring back boldly. Right into the mysterious, gleaming eyes of the devil who loved her…
About the Author
Portia Da Costa has lived and worked in West Yorkshire, in the north of England, all her life. She began her writing career by mistake, when an artist friend in search of a story to illustrate asked Portia to step up. Although a voracious reader since childhood, Portia had never considered writing herself, but accepting the challenge, she wrote her first ever piece of fiction, a melodramatic tale of doomed romance between a mortal woman and an unusually handsome zombie.
After several years writing purely for pleasure, Portia was first published in 1991. Since then, she’s written well over a hundred stories for magazines and anthologies, as well as about thirty novels and novellas across a variety of sub-genres. Although she’s written sweeter romance in her time, she’s best known for her sizzling hot erotica and erotic romances, some vanilla and some straying into edgier areas like BDSM.
Portia writes full-time and lives in a small, typically Yorkshire town with her husband and their adorable tortoiseshell cat. When she’s not writing, Portia likes to read, chill out and watch television. She also loves hanging out online with cyber friends on Twitter and other social networking sites. Her other interests include art, fashion, Victoriana and popular science, and she also shares her husband’s passion for military history.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9317-9
Copyright © 2012 by Portia Da Costa
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Intimate Exposure
Letter to Reader
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
Where no great story goes untold.
Copyright
Intimate Exposure Page 13
