The Boss

by Abigail Barnette

  What the hell was wrong with me? I had no idea why he was coming over. For all I knew, he was coming to tell me he felt really bad about firing me, but he had to because he was so creeped out to be around me.

  Then I opened the door, and he was standing there, and I had no further doubts. He had come because he wanted me, like I wanted him. I could see it in his eyes the moment our gazes met.

  He was slightly out of breath, and cracked some joke about a higher floor being unavailable when we moved in, but I couldn't process any of it over the sound of the blood rushing to my brain.

  Neil was here, on the threshold of my apartment, looking apologetic and waiting for me to say something. All my words completely deserted me.

  "Um... come in." I stepped back, and closed the door behind him.

  "I'm sorry to come by so late, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep without speaking to you."

  So, we were getting straight to the heart of the matter, then. I had anticipated some uncomfortable small talk, during which I could try to feel out what he'd come to say. Now I didn't know what to do, or where to put my hands. I curled my fingers into the sleeves of my sweater.

  "At lunch today, I may have given you the impression - "

  "That we didn't have a chance in hell of anything happening between us?" I supplied for him. I thought it might make him laugh. It didn't.

  "I must admit, the age difference between us does make me uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable back then, as well. I’m not the kind of man who needs to date younger women to be happy. It’s not a status symbol for me. And I'm not the kind of person who picks up strangers in airports, either."

  "Neither am I," I said, maybe a little defensively.

  His face fell, and he took a slow step toward me. "I wouldn't care if you were. What I'm trying to say is, this is completely new to me. I spent that night with you six years ago because I genuinely liked you, Sophie. You were so cute and direct and a bit odd. And we did have an awfully good time together." He smiled tentatively. "It does trouble me that you're the same age as my daughter. But you're not my daughter. And that night was... it was one of the best nights of my life."

  I was about to respond with something pithy, but he closed the small gap between us and pulled me into his arms. My feet tangled with his, but he somehow kept us upright. Our gazes locked for a fraction of a second, and my mouth opened with a surprised gasp just as his lips met mine.

  Chapter Five

  Neil Elwood was kissing me, and it was every bit as good as my highly detailed memories. His soft lips coaxed mine apart. His tongue swept in and darted along the edges of my teeth. He held me with a splayed hand at my lower back, an arm around my shoulders. Pulled up tight to his chest, I gripped the lapels of his black wool coat and held on. There was little else I could do. It was like the man exuded some kind of pheromone that made my central nervous system go offline. Standing without wobbling was not an option. It didn't help that it had been so long since the last time I'd been kissed, I'd almost forgotten how to do it properly. I tore our mouths apart and, with a noisy gulp of air, inhaled the scent of him, the faint trace of his cologne and the wooden cask ghost of whiskey.

  And that was my clue. "Have you been drinking?"

  "Quite a lot," he admitted sheepishly. "Otherwise I wouldn't have had the courage to come over here."

  "And when the hangover hits you, you'll probably regret that you had the courage." I pressed my palms to his chest and pushed back a step. "As romantic and like-the-movies as you may have imagined this whole scenario, you've jerked me around so much in the last twenty-four hours that I don't even know how to respond."

  Apparently, drunken honesty was contagious. And thank god for that, because I could have easily been swept along in what he wanted, without a single thought to the consequences. That made Neil a very dangerous man for me to be around.

  He looked crestfallen. "You're right. I shouldn't have... I just wasn't sure how we'd left it. And I would like, very much, to see if there's anything between us."

  "I think it's pretty obvious that there is." There was no point in denying that anymore. "But I’m not sure it’s going to work.”

  "It isn't that I'm looking for a serious relationship," he continued, watching me warily. I wondered if he thought he’d hurt my feelings by not holding onto some tortured, unrequited love for me.

  I had to put that notion to bed, right away. Christ, had I just thought about bed? No, serious relationships, that’s what we were discussing. Keep it together, Scaife. You can’t be stupid about this.

  "I’m not in the market for anything serious, either. At least not right now. Not for a while." It wasn't a ploy; having a boyfriend was fairly low on my list of priorities. "I just got a life of my own two years ago, when I graduated college. I'm not ready to share it with anyone else."

  He smiled with... was that admiration? I didn't think I'd said anything all that admirable, just honest.

  "That sounds fair. But earlier today you suggested we might see each other casually." How did he manage to sound so reasonable and smart while being stinking drunk? It probably had a lot to do with the accent. He could have come in here and said he was turning Porteras into a car magazine, and I would have praised his vision, because he sounded so cultured and posh.

  God, I could be so stereotypically American sometimes.

  I shrugged. "That was before I really thought about the job you offered me. I would love to take the position, but the last thing I need is to have people saying I got a promotion because I slept with the boss."

  "That would be a problem, if we were indiscreet. Do you plan on broadcasting all of our sexual activities to the entire office?" He raised an eyebrow.

  "No, of course not." I tried to think of a time I'd ever... Oh, fine. I'm caught. "I do occasionally discuss private matters with one of my work friends."

  "So do I, which is exactly why I'm here." He motioned to the couch. "Do you mind if we -"

  "Oh, yeah, sorry." I covered my eyes with one hand, but it didn't do much to hide my embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I don't entertain much."

  "On the contrary, you entertain me immensely." He sat on the couch and frowned as he picked up the hemostat Holli used as a roach clip. The burned down end of a healthy sized joint was still clamped tightly in the pinchers. I grabbed it from his hand and in my panic, tossed it over my shoulder to clatter on the kitchenette floor.

  "It's my roommate's," I explained quickly. "I would never -"

  "Don't be so jumpy, I'm not here to inform on you." He patted the sofa beside him, but I didn't sit there. I sat on the arm of the easy chair, well out of the field of his sexual magnetism.

  Who was I kidding? He could be in Finland right now, and my girl parts would still be all achey at the thought of him. Just the fact that he’d said “our sexual activities” had sent my pulse due south.

  "Sorry, I thought I might have shocked you." Why had I said that? Maybe explaining further would make things better. "You know, different generation and all."

  Explaining further never made awkwardness better. I should have known that by now.

  "Yes, terribly shocking," he mockingly agreed. "Since youth and recreational drug use were invented only five years ago, I've obviously never been exposed to either."

  My face flamed with embarrassment. "Did you come over here just to tease me?"

  His expression softened into one of remorse at hurting my feelings. "I think it's quite obvious that I came over here because I'm still attracted to you. I've thought of you every day. I may have said that before, but it bears repeating. If I hadn't stolen your plane ticket - and let me express again how very sorry I am about that, in hindsight - "

  "Forgiven," I interrupted him. The sudden shift in his mood seemed to have less to do with alcohol than with me, and I was flattered and slightly overwhelmed. But something he'd said before wriggled in my brain. "You said you talked to a work colleague, and that's why you're here?"

  "Rudy,
" he admitted. "I'm sorry, I know he works with you, but he's been my best friend for years. I suppose it does change the dynamic, now that he's working for my company... but I needed to speak to someone. He’s the only person in my life who knows about you, how we met. And he's the only person in New York I trust in personal matters. There was a bit of a custody battle, and I lost most of my friends here."

  I frowned. "I thought your daughter was twenty-four."

  "Custody of the friends." He smiled sadly. "Acquaintances, really. I spend a lot of my time working. Elizabeth made most of our connections here through her charity work."

  "Ah." I really, really didn't want to talk about his divorce, almost as much as I didn't want to think about him being lonely in the city. I remembered the two weeks at NYU before housing had dropped Holli into my lap, how awful and empty they had seemed. I didn't need to sympathize with Neil in that way, because it was just another excuse to get involved with him for a wrong reason. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it right.

  I took a breath and carefully considered my response. "I don't know how I feel about you telling... whatever it is you told to Rudy. I have to work with him, too. But if you trust him to keep your secret, I can. You have more to lose in this situation than I do, I think."

  Neil shook his head. "This is all going much differently than I expected."

  "You expected you'd show up and we'd fuck?" The word sent a jolt of tension through me.

  "Can you blame me for trying?" He gave me that half-smile that melted my bones. "I should go. This was an inappropriate visit."

  I watched him as he stood and strode toward the door, and my chest tightened. Okay, so he'd let Eye-Rolling Rudy in on our dirty little secret from six years ago. I'd told Holli, hadn't I? And she occasionally worked for the magazine. It might not have been the same level on the indiscretion scale, but if he was feeling even a fraction of the emotional confusion I was suffering from, no wonder he’d needed a sympathetic ear.

  Plus, he wasn't looking for a serious relationship. I loved sex, and finding someone I wanted to have it with, someone who was actually good at it and who didn't want to involve me in their five-year plan, was absurdly difficult in a city of eight million people. Especially when you were holding every available man to the impossible standard of being as amazing as Neil Elwood.

  And here he was, the guy who set the bar for my sexual expectations. And he wanted exactly what I wanted.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He stopped, his forehead creased with confusion.

  "If you're down for a little extracurricular fun, and this isn't some kind of weird male sexual scavenger hunt wherein you need to fuck your secretary to score points..." My voice trailed off. I had gotten off track somewhere. I inhaled through my nose and straightened my spine. "Then fine. Let's just see each other casually."

  "When you say 'see each other'..." he began cautiously.

  "I mean have sex. In a friendly, no-strings kind of way." It never crossed my mind to be worried about whether or not he'd think it was “slutty” of me to want such an arrangement. It was strange, but I felt like I could trust him to be honest with me and not judge me according to some bullshit misogynistic double standard. Maybe having the kind of sex you have with a person you think you're never going to see again is the way all relationships should start.

  "And nothing is going to happen tonight," I stated firmly. It took a lot of self-control not to whimper during that sentence. I'd spent so many years fantasizing about him and only him, and now he was standing right next to me, totally willing to do all the nasty things I'd dreamed of. But I had a strict "no sex with drunk people" policy.

  A slow smile tilted his lips, and the naughtiness promised in the expression was enough to make goose bumps stand out on my skin. "Quite right. We've waited six years, there should be nothing to another... twenty-four hours?"

  "Twenty-four hours?" I echoed, my heart lodging firmly in my throat. I crossed my arms over my chest, acutely aware of my hard nipples chafing against my sweater.

  “Twenty-two?” He stepped toward me, his lips still twisted in a wry grin, and looked down his straight, classically handsome nose at me. He didn't touch me, but he stood so close his coat brushed my sleeves. A thrumming, purely sexual energy throbbed between us. If he'd opened his arms, if he'd made any move to embrace me, I would have fallen against him gladly, drunk rule or not. But he didn't. He just gazed down at me thoughtfully, his eyes moving over my features as though he were deciphering an intricate code. "I think six years of wanting you is long enough, Sophie."

  Six years of wanting you. He'd wanted me, just like I'd wanted him. Relief and tension at the same time make for a strange sensation. I could think of lots of good reasons not to let him push me up against the wall and fuck me with all my clothes on, and none of them seemed good enough.

  My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I glanced up. It was easier to make eye contact when I could be sarcastic and guarded. "Well, now that all that's out of the way... I would offer you a drink, but I think you've had enough."

  "No, I have a car waiting." He leaned down, his lips a fraction of a millimeter from mine. "I'll see you tomorrow, with further instructions."

  He kissed me, far too briefly, and left.

  I stood by the door for a long time, wondering what exactly had just happened. At the moment, it seemed like I was getting what I'd hoped for, after six long years of not hoping very much. At the same time, I'd just agreed to have sex with my boss, again. Holli's bedroom door opened a crack. "Is it safe to come out?"

  "I have no idea." I walked on numb legs to the couch and dropped onto it. I put a couple fingertips to my bottom lip and smoothed over it slowly. I could still feel him there, a relentless tingle that echoed all the way down to my very wet panties.

  "I peeked. Don’t be mad.” She padded into the living room. “In person, he just looks like a normal... person." She shrugged.

  "Okay, clearly you've taken your contacts out, because he's gorgeous." We never, ever agreed on men, mostly because when Holli was into guys, they looked like they'd just run away from their Disney Channel contracts.

  "Yeah, I guess. If you're into the daddy thing." She shrugged.

  It takes different strokes, I guess. "He could have been horrifically scarred in a chemical fire, and it wouldn't matter. He just... does something to me."

  "Yeah, naughty, spanky things." Holli's eyes glittered with lascivious enthusiasm. "What do you think he's going to do to you this time?"

  "If I stopped and thought about it, I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight." I probably still wouldn't. How was I going to get through the night and the next day knowing that I was about to repeat the most fantastic sex of my life?

  God, I hoped I had a fresh set of batteries.

  * * * *

  My eyes popped open before the alarm went off. I'd never been so excited to get to work in my entire life. Not even on my first day. Not even when Madonna came in to have lunch with Gabriella last year.

  I wondered if Neil would appreciate the magnitude of rating higher than Madonna, and covered my face with my pillow, squealing. I knew had to get myself under control. If I spent all day swooning over the fact that Neil and I were going to hook up, I wouldn't bring my A-game to work. I wasn’t about to drop the ball within days of a huge, surprise take over by new employers.

  My morning commute was boring, the way it was always boring. I got to work and was at my desk, periodically checking the time, trying to control my hormones, which were in full-on rage mode before Neil even arrived.

  He got to the office at eight-thirty, and greeted me casually as he handed over his coat. Strangely, knowing that we were going to have sex soon removed a lot of the awkwardness between us, and we were able to function like two normal human beings. Two normal, incredibly horny human beings. I felt confident that I could speak for both of us on that matter, because his hand brushed the small of my back as I moved to hang up his coat, and I
caught his eyes lingering on my backside when I turned.

  "You can't do that," I reminded him. "We'll get found out. Also, it's in the employee handbook, under 'sexual harassment policy.' The words 'zero tolerance' are mentioned."

  "Point taken," he said dryly. "I have six people coming in this morning to throw shoes and scream at me.”

  "Coffee and water for six. No problem." Of course, I already knew about the shoe meeting, but he didn't need to know that. Before I took over the beauty editor job, I wanted to make myself look indispensable, able to conjure things at the drop of a hat. I found it never hurt to leave on a high note, as evidenced by my college transcripts. “Do you need me to sit in and take notes?”

  "Yes, please do. Oh, and before I forget..." Neil set his black leather messenger bag on my desk and lifted the flap. He pulled out an iPad in a sleek black cover and handed it over to me. "Start with the notes app. There are instructions. And you'll need this."

  My eyes widened as he pulled a slender card free from his wallet. He held it between two fingers, offering it to me. "The name of the hotel and the room number are listed in the document. Unless this evening is inconvenient for you?"

  I know for a fact he saw my hand shaking when I took the key card from him. The corner of his mouth twitched. He could tell I was dying for him. Judging by his ruthless efficiency in setting up our "date," I had to surmise he was as desperate for me as I was for him.

  Turning the card over in my hand, I glanced at it with feigned disinterest before slowly pushing it into the unbuttoned top of my black silk shirt. I knew he could see the slightly darker outline of my black lace bra beneath, and I took my time slipping the flimsy key into the cup of my bra.

  He chuckled and shook his head.

  Only when the door to his office had clicked safely closed behind him did I dare to lift the cover on the tablet and press the power button. I saw the notes app on the home screen and I opened it, my gaze flickering nervously to his door. The text of the instructions document was a simple, addressed to me: