by Claire Adams
behind a solid glass door. He would have to have superhuman hearing abilities to be able to hear this conversation. Although, it would hardly surprise me if he did possess such a skill; almost everything about Zayden Sinclair was a notch above the average human.
At 32, he was the owner and CEO of the Southern National Bank empire, but you didn’t need to know about his economic stature to feel the power that he exuded through sheer physical presence. He had the tendency to command the attention of anybody within a 5-mile radius without so much as saying a word. Women of all ages gravitated towards him, and his dashing looks and defined physique were only partially responsible for the effect. In fact, dashing did not begin to accurately describe his rare combination of piercing blue eyes, perfectly chiseled jawline, and dark, wavy hair straight out of a men’s shampoo commercial. Sometimes I could swear I saw his six-pack defined through his shirt, or even his sweater. Maybe my imagination interfered at that point.
And my imagination is where Zayden’s shirtless body should remain. I had seen too many girls fall prey to his charms and had no interest in losing the job that kept me in college just because I couldn’t control the desire to touch whatever was underneath that shirt. This branch went through tellers faster than the days of the week, and I wasn’t going to become a number in the statistical chart of Zayden’s conquests.
***
Half an hour later, I was thankful for the clock to indicate it was my lunch break. After my admiring customer left holding back tears, there was a sudden stream of traffic in the teller’s booth, and I had to deal with an old woman who accused the bank of stealing from her. It shouldn’t be that difficult to convince somebody that a multimillion-dollar corporation would gain nothing from robbing an old lady of 50 bucks.
I was relieved to find that the pantry in the back end of the bank was empty. Normally, I enjoy some commotion, but today I was just really tired, mentally and physically. And hungry. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I sat down on the first table looking away from the door and removed the box of leftover sushi from my bag. Before I could open it, however, I heard a very familiar voice.
“So, when’s our wedding?”
Shit. I could hear the thudding sound of my chest as though it were adjacent to my ears. It must have been a whole minute before I gathered the courage to slowly turn around, ignoring the chills in my fingers.
“You heard that?” I laughed. Thank you, Acting 101 Gen-Ed requirements. “Spying on your tellers now? The NSA would be so proud.”
Zayden’s lips crooked very slightly. Was that a smile? Was he amused? Angry? Oh God, I really couldn’t tell.
“We keep a microphone at the teller’s booth in every branch for surveillance, in case there is any suspicious activity from a customer. Handling money is serious business.”
I actually knew that. How could I have been so stupid?
“Which is why I made up that little story about us, so that guys like that don’t continue to distract me from my very serious job of handling your money.”
I was quite surprised by the confidence in my own voice.
He laughed. Phew. It was an adorable laugh, and I wouldn’t mind kissing him while he did it. No wonder the other tellers couldn’t keep their hands off of him, with his dashing looks. Men this powerful are hard to turn down.
He was fumbling with a button on his coat and I tried hard not to wish that my nipples were his buttons. I should have been embarrassed; he had heard me claim I was engaged to him, and imply he was connected to the mob. If embarrassment was the socially acceptable reaction to such a situation, then why the hell was I so aroused? He was coming closer and I momentarily forgot how to breathe.
“Let me make you a proposition,” he said as he sat down across from me. “We will never have to speak about of your encounter with that bespectacled guy if you let me take you out to lunch tomorrow.”
“I have to work,” I said automatically.
Was I even breathing? I couldn’t be sure.
“I’ll pay you to take the whole day off. And maybe after lunch we can spend the whole day in my apartment being, you know, ‘married’ for the day.”
He winked. I felt my pulse rising. Right now I couldn’t think of a single reason to turn his offer down, but I had to get ahold of myself. This was what Zayden did, and I was smarter than the women who fell for it.
“Sure, we can meet each other’s parents and raise some children after,” I laughed. It wasn’t convincing laughter. I got up before things could get out of hand. “I’ll eat this later. Have a nice day, Mr. Sinclair,” I said and walked away without looking back.
This must have been what a tornado felt like.
Chapter Two
ZAYDEN
I looked at the girl lying next to me with a mixture of confusion and amusement. I was pretty sure she was faking sleep. Just like last night, she had pretended to be too intoxicated to go home, even when I suggested I would have my chauffeur drive her in one of the limos. Girls like this got on my nerves, and I was starting to regret taking her back to my place.
Not that I wasn’t used to girls clinging on like this; usually, however, after a good fuck I would just tell them that I was “emotionally unavailable.” There would be some crying, but eventually those words would drive women to flee without much egging on my part. I let out an involuntary snort. Women. All I knew was it worked. Anything worked. Everything worked.
Most of the time, anyway. Very rarely did women deny my advances, and Aria Roberts had been the first in countless years to so casually turn me down. It excited me to maddening degrees; it had gotten far too easy for me to get women and I needed a good challenge. But last night, I was so frustrated that I picked up the first pair of sexy boobs that flashed in my face at the Tavern. Boring personality, if she had one at all, and an even more boring lay. I had half the mind to finish myself off in the middle of it, but felt sorry for the poor soul. Another reason it pissed me off that she was still lying comfortably in my king-sized bed.
“Wake up!” I tapped her shoulders. “Quick! It’s time to go home.”
She opened her eyes slowly and got out of the covers, still naked. She did have nice breasts; maybe it wasn’t the worst pick-up ever after all.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, ruffling her hair. Trying to be cute. Women. “I didn’t realize I overslept. I was…”
Yeah, the breasts were really something. She was rambling on but I didn’t catch a single word, or care to. I felt myself get harder watching her nipples and just threw her back into the bed. She seemed way too excited about it; I’d have to deal with it later, but for now, I just grabbed her and closed my eyes.
I thrust myself deep inside her, picturing Aria Roberts’ tiny body and perfect little ass in my mind. Fuck.
***
“Mrs. Sinclair asked me about your whereabouts this morning,” my driver Ned said.
I grunted. My mother had a way of getting on my nerves.
“Tell her I’m in Bali for the rest of the month.”
“I think she plans to surprise you with a visit,” he said apologetically.
Ned was one of the only people in the world I would trust with my life. He had been with our family for over two decades, and helped me keep it together when my dad passed away, six years ago today. It was the day of my MBA graduation, and I was supposed to leave for a vacation to Spain that night; I had no real plans, no rush to hurry into a career. He had a stroke, and all of a sudden I was left without a father and without my youth, and with the South National Bank empire as compensation for my loss. Every single day of my life since that day six years ago has been dedicated to growing what my dad had built, to honor his legacy, to take his company further than his wildest imagination.
This left no room for friends or any kind of social life outside of what the business demanded, and I couldn’t be happier about it. There would be parties and overseas cruises and models in penthouses, but all for the business, all to convince shar
eholders and investors that I made them happy and that their money was best suited in my expert hands. The models in penthouses were the only mildly pleasurable part. Generally, though, any social situation was an arena for manipulation and cunning, and just another way to build on my dad’s empire. People tended to hold me back and there was no room in my life for a pause.
Ned was, in some ways, my only friend.
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of it, Ned.” I sighed. “You don’t worry about it.”
When I got to my desk, I was welcomed by a slew of emails. The union in the Nashville branch was organizing a third strike this year and had closed up for business. What a bunch of fucking babies. I was all for fair wages and benefits; so much so that I had been invited to a local TED talk to address the importance of solidarity and understanding between company executives and the lowest level employees. I turned down the invite – only people who don’t practice have time to preach – but was subsequently featured in ZEN magazine for running the only set of banks in the nation that paid even the cleaning staff over twice the minimum wage. The first union strike hadn’t phased me—it would have almost moved me if I were capable of such a thing—and I had raised companywide salary. The second time and onwards it had just started to look like they were testing how far they could push me. I felt a tremor of anger as I dialed Tom, the Nashville VP.
“Shut it down,” I said sharply.
Tom huffed and puffed some words that faintly resembled coherence, but my attention drifted away from the problem at hand as I saw Aria Roberts walk into the building and towards the teller’s booth. She had a fascinating body. Not stunning in any traditional sense. I had fucked far too many supermodels to be excited by infinite legs and plastic breasts. Aria was what could only be defined as cute. Cute in the sexiest way possible. She had a petite figure and couldn’t be much taller than 5 foot 3, if that, and it suited her heart-shaped face and bright, brown eyes. Her long red hair covered half of her tiny body, ending slightly above her lower back. Her breasts were on the smaller side, but all I needed was a mouthful. There was a mouthful there for sure, and plenty to spare. What really stood out was her perfectly round ass. It was bigger than most of her and I wasn’t sure how she could fit that curve in her small body and still walk with a stride. I was getting hard just looking at her through my glass door.
“Zay? You there?”
I snapped out of it. “What? Uh… I don’t wanna hear it Tom, I don’t wanna hear any of it. Just shut it down, alright?”
My eyes drifted towards Aria again. When would I get the opportunity to throw that little body into the air and fuck her brains out? Would I ever? The fact that I had to ask myself that question surprised me. Never before had it been a question of if but when, with any woman: actresses, models, athletes—they all gave in eventually. But I couldn’t seduce a teller in my own bank! They usually begged me to take them any way I liked, anywhere I liked. Some just gave in right after their first interview here – they never actually made it to work afterwards, though. I didn’t do repeats and I didn’t like the idea of employing girls that would be too distracted fantasizing about me to get their jobs done. I usually sent them to work for a business partner or another shareholder with the highest recommendations, so I wasn’t exactly making them suffer. That would be Aria’s fate too, and perhaps the knowledge of that made her shy away from me.
Or maybe she really, truly, genuinely had no interest in sleeping with me. The way she shrugged off all my advances with confident scorn and polite laughter surely suggested that was the case. That fascinated me endlessly. She had told me she was single, yet she seemed to turn men down right and left. I knew she was a junior in college. Perhaps between the coursework and working almost full-time hours at the bank she simply did not have time for some fun. Maybe if I gave her the right kind of incentive and somehow assured her that she will be compensated for her company more generously than she was for her job…
But I realized I had already tried that, and she was still not interested. I was back at square one, at a complete loss. I had unions to deal with, people to fire, emails to respond to, but all I could focus on was a 20-year-old girl’s ass. All I cared about was finding a way to get her into my bed.
I was hovering on dangerous territory, but I loved a good challenge. I picked up the phone again and watched her answer from the teller’s booth.
“South National Bank, how may I help you?”
She was looking towards me. She knew.
“I can think of so many ways.” I grinned. “None that would require your clothes, though.”
She chuckled, flashing her dimples. It was a nervous laugh. I made everyone around me nervous; it was the natural reaction I had come to expect from people over the years. The reaction coming from her was a source of thrill because she hadn’t given into me yet.
“Did you need something, Mr. Sinclair?”
“Well, first of all, I need you to call me Zayden. Zay is fine too. Can you do that for me?”
“Okay, Zayden,” she sighed heavily. “You’re watching, so you know that took everything out of me. I like to be professional.”
Mrs. Brian, the other teller on duty, looked at Aria disapprovingly. She had worked for this bank for many years, and had seen my shenanigans with many different women.
“I could take so many things out of you, Aria.” My face was serious now. Wanting. “Just give me a chance to show you. I’ll make you feel things you never thought you were capable of feeling.”
She looked away. I was beginning to get irritated that I couldn’t get through to her.
“Thank you for the very generous offer, Mr. Sinclair, but I think I’ll pass for now. Please let me know if you need anything.” She paused for a second. “Anything else, I mean.”
She hung up, leaving me more ridden with desire than before.
Chapter Three
ARIA
My roommates Nick and Stacey were having the hardest time deciding on the kind of pizza to order, as the three of us curled up on our living room couch watching “Friends.”
“God Stacey, you’re such a Monica!” Nick exclaimed.
“Well excuse me for not wanting to give us all cancer,” Stacey snapped back.
“Get off WebMD, Stace. Pizza crust cannot give you cancer.”
“You would be surprised by the kinds of things gluten could do to you if you took some time out of playing space games to actually read about important things on the internet.”
Nick sighed and looked at me as I began to cover my face with my palms.
“I am not going to play judge to yet another pseudo court drama about the importance of video games in your burgeoning career as a programmer,” I mumbled. “Deal with your girlfriend yourself.”
Stacey gasped. “Traitor! You’re supposed to be my best friend!”
“I am. Which is why I am staying out of this.”
They both looked confused and annoyed, as though they were completely clueless about where to go from here. It was comical. Nick and Stacey were the best couple I had ever seen; they were best friends first, and argued over everything from Nick’s video games to Stacey’s Cosmo-inspired women’s blog to pizza and gluten. I also happened to secretly know that they were both working extra shifts – Nick at the Southern Eastern University’s IT help desk, and Stacey at the library – to save money so they could surprise each other on their three-year-anniversary.
Stacey had been my best friend since 9th grade, and when she had met Nick – a freshman in college at the time – we were in our senior year of high school. At first, I was worried sick that we would grow apart after she had found a boyfriend, but it turned out that Nick was incredibly cool and we got along well. So much so that when Stacey and I joined him for college at SEU two years ago, moving into his two-bedroom apartment seemed the natural thing to do. Most people seemed surprised to learn that I lived with a couple, but to us it was just three best friends being roommates and goofing around the hou
se. And my room was far enough away from theirs for me to not hear things I wouldn’t want to hear. I was going to miss them when we all graduated and they moved on to get married, have babies, and do other things couples do. I was a tad envious of what they had. They really were perfect for each other.
Watching their relationship had been one of the reasons I had grown to become ridiculously picky about men. The other reason was a guy I had dated my freshman year who cheated on me with a sorority girl. Rick – a dick if there ever was one – was my first boyfriend, and things seemed to be going great as our first anniversary was approaching. I was going to lose my virginity to him that night. Everything was planned. Nick and Stacey were on a weekend getaway, I had cleaned and double-cleaned the apartment, bought candles and incense and all kinds of other romantic crap. I had cut my shift short so I could set everything up, but when I got home I caught him in bed, in my bed, with a blonde girl I had never seen.
I ended up getting drunk to try and wipe away the sadness, and that led to having sex with another bar-goer. When I woke up and saw my mistake next to me, I pledged that I would not casually date men, I would not settle for anything less than what Nick and Stacey had. One year later, I was still going strong on the pledge. Except for the part where I often dreamed of my boss’s naked body. These dreams were sporadic at first, but were occurring more and more frequently. I was still very firmly set on never acting on my feelings or falling for his advances.
I turned my attention back to Nick and Stacey’s bickering and gave up. “Guys, just get a medium pizza with rice crust and a medium regular. Problem solved.”
After a short pause, I looked at Stacey with amusement. “I’ll be eating the regular, Stace, but I am still morally on your side.”
She threw a pillow at me and we burst into simultaneous giggles.
Half an hour later the doorbell rang.
