by Claire Adams
“Wouldn’t you, though? I mean, if you’re going to fling yourself off of something tall enough to kill you, why not go out doing something like that?”
“You should work at one of those hotlines.”
He leaned his shoulder against mine and then leaned back. He said, “I believe you. Johnstone was telling me the two of you might have some problems, and she doesn’t swing her arms when she walks—something I’ve always found to be a clear sign of a psychopath.
“Still, though, you scared the hell out of me. Maybe it’d be best to have lunch inside the building from now on, that way we don’t have any more of these misunderstandings.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed it yet or not, but this place can be pretty cutthroat. I’m not going to say anything about it to anyone, but this is just the kind of thing that’ll have the interns ganging up to get you fired, and I’ve seen what interns are like when they smell blood. They’re the most cold, unforgiving, conniving, evil creatures on the planet if they think they can get competition out of the way.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that bad.” I leaned back and looked at my brother. He thought I was in trouble and he came racing up there to save me. It was kind of sweet in a frantic kind of way. “Security in this building sucks, by the way. You got up here like two minutes ago.”
“Yeah, Johanna probably didn’t bother calling them because she knew you weren’t in any actual danger,” Luke said. “Of course, it’s also possible she really did think you were in danger and just decided against wasting the personnel on it. For her sake, I hope it’s the latter.”
“You hope she thought I was in danger but didn’t call security about it when you told her to?”
“Well, if she knew you were safe but she wasted my time with it, that could be grounds for dismissal.”
“But disregard for my safety, that’s all right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It means she cares enough about the job to work for it. Callousness is the key if you’re ever going to get ahead in this business. People with consciences leave this world with PTSD. You’ve got to check that crap at the door and turn the other way when a competitor is about to self-destruct, especially if you’re the one behind the implosion.”
His face was serious enough, but I knew what he was doing. As much as Luke tried to pretend like the sleazy businessman devoid of scruples, he was still my little brother making sure I was feeling all right. “They teach you that in business school?”
“It’s on an insert that comes with the diploma,” he said. “You ready to head back down, or do you need a few minutes to...you know, clean yourself up or whatever?”
“You go ahead. I’ll be down in a minute. I’m just going to find a restroom and splash some cold water on my face.”
“You’ve really been eating lunch out there? I remember when we were kids, you’d sit when you went up and down stairs because you said the increased height would increase your rate of descent and make it not only probable, but inevitable that you would break a bone and that bone would, invariably, end up piercing a vital organ.”
“That happens more than you think it does.”
“That was when you were coming down the three steps on our front porch, Marce.”
“Whatever, I’m doing this whole self-improvement thing. Look, it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re fine?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
Luke went on his way and I popped down to the seventeenth floor where they have clean, spacious bathrooms and a low population, due to massive layoffs in the company that owned the floor. It wasn’t a world of indefinite privacy, but it was close enough that I was able to freshen up without getting any looks or giving any explanations. I got on the elevator and pressed the button for my floor.
It was a strange lunch break. Johanna or not, my episode by the door had set me back quite a ways, and I wasn’t going to be going up to the roof again anytime soon. Rather than let that bother me, though, I decided to just focus on the fact that my brother dropped everything and came running when he thought I was in a bad place and let the rest of it fall by the wayside.
However, as the elevator doors opened on my floor, it became clear I wasn’t going to get to choose what to take away from that stupid misunderstanding. Nobody would look right at me, but a lot of people were nudging each other, whispering and then glancing in my general direction before looking back away. The least casual people on the planet are the people trying to look casual, and that was my whole floor. That’s what my floor was going to be like from that moment onward.
The only person who dared look in my direction for more than a fraction of a second was Johanna. She had no difficulty keeping her eyes on me as she smiled and waved before mouthing the words, “Bye-bye.”
This intern who I thought was just some interoffice floozy up until a few hours before that moment was actually trying to force me out of a job. It seemed so stupid, such wasted effort.
Chapter Twelve
What Change Reality Can Make
We were out on the balcony, Dean and me. It was supposed to be the difference between having sex and making love, being under the night sky so high above the city, but the moment I felt his touch, something else happened.
I’m not sure if it was that Johanna had gotten to me. Maybe it was that the people at work started calling me “Prozac” after she’d invented my suicidal gesture. It could have been the way Luke still patronized me, or the way Dean kept going on like something had really changed between us.
Whatever it was, arousal was sharing the steering wheel with anger as I drove my hips down again hard, burying Dean inside of me again and again.
He was looking up at me with his mouth open, and though it was too dark to see his expression too clearly, I knew his surprise, his muscles tightening beneath me every time I brought myself down on top of him. There was a strip of grass out on Dean’s balcony about thirty feet long and about fifteen feet deep. On top of the grass was a blanket; on top of the blanket was Dean. On top of Dean was me, and I was holding Dean’s arms firmly against the ground. I didn’t want him to move.
I was gritting my teeth behind unparted lips and it wasn’t long before simply pressing down on Dean’s arms and screwing him a little extra hard wasn’t enough anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew how I felt. I felt trapped in this body, trapped in this life.
There I was, living something beyond my own fantasy with Dean, but even that was poisoned by the shittiness of other people and my masochistic need to be defined by whoever’s in the room with me. It was supposed to be the time of my life, but on that balcony, frustration was bigger than my body and I could feel the strain in every breath.
“You okay?” Dean asked with uncharacteristic timidity.
“Fine. You?”
“Yeah, I’m all right.”
I leaned back a little, lifting my arms from Dean’s wrists. He rubbed where my hands had been, one arm at a time. Even my foray into domination, for what it was, had barely given any catharsis. I was sick and tired of my own insecurity ruining everything.
In a lot of ways, I missed the first part of my relationship with Dean because I was too busy planning how I would cope with its end. I’d done everything I could to fit in at work and not piss anyone off, but that just left me open and vulnerable. I’d been the nice girl all my life and it had taken the flavor out of everything and never stopped or even discouraged people from being their rotten selves.
Dean looked up at me, again saying, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I just wanted to feel something different without apology for once. It was easy figuring out my next step, but I didn’t know how to say it. Despite any progress I may have thought I’d made up to that point, I couldn’t imagine a good way to just come right out and say it. So I didn’t.
Leaning forward a little, I grabbed his hands and guided them around me until I felt his fingers against the smooth, sensitive sk
in of my butt. He wasn’t going to get what I wanted if I didn’t say anything at all, so I finally breathed and told him, “Don’t hold back.”
I started rocking my hips a bit, my own timidity briefly overwhelming the stewing weariness of my mind. He lifted a hand a few inches and brought it back down with an almost gentle smacking sound. My body hardly responded.
“More.”
I couldn’t imagine a world in which a cutthroat CEO couldn’t smack a woman on the ass when she’s specifically asking for it, but he just lied there looking up at me like he’d forgotten how he’d gotten there.
“I’ve had a bad few days and I want to feel something different, so are you going to make me raw the way I’m asking you to or am I wasting my time?” I asked. “When I said don’t hold back, I meant don’t hold back.”
His hand came down against my skin again, this time causing me to instinctively jerk forward to the point he was about to slip out of me. I came back down fast and with force, planting my hands, one on each side of him, on the blanket beneath us. After a few seconds, though, that sharp impact was now just a warm numbness and I wasn’t anywhere near where I wanted to be.
“More.”
Dean’s other hand came down harder than the first, propelling me up his shaft before I enveloped his cock once more. His first hand came down again landing with such force on my left cheek I came all the way off of him for half a breath before I slid back over his piercing erection, rewarding him by gripping him as tight as I could with my insides as I greedily moved up and down his shaft.
I wasn’t thinking about work or Johanna or my stupid brother or the company or the god damned mafia. I wasn’t thinking about how every time I heard someone refer to the company I work for as F&T, all I could hear was F.A.T. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all until that pain started to recede again.
I let Dean know I wanted more by slowing down and loosening my internal grip on him. He got the idea quick enough. Another stiff slap to the posterior and I was a woman gone savage.
Leaning forward a bit more, I slipped one forearm under his shoulder. My left hand slithered up the back of his neck, and he lifted his head a little as my fingers moved through his hair. I curled my fingers, pulling the strands on the back of Dean’s head as I leaned even further forward, guiding my breast toward his mouth with my free hand. His lips brushed my nipple and then closed around it, the warm suck of his mouth more urgent than ever before.
He was getting distracted, though, so I stopped rocking my hips again. Dean spanked me hard once more, and his mouth made a slight popping sound, the seal of his lips broken as my body jerked forward and my breast came out of his mouth.
He took a deep breath. “What’s gotten into you tonight?” he asked.
“Are you complaining?” I asked, though it wasn’t so much a question the way I spoke the words.
He chuckled. “Not at all.”
He smiled.
I didn’t.
His hair was still in my hand and I brought my fingers closer together again, never jerking or tugging, simply applying increased and even pressure until he brought one of his hands up to the back of my head. He didn’t pull my hair, though. His hand was firm, inescapable as he brought my head down toward his, my lips toward his. He was kissing me so hard, and he sucked my tongue between his lips as he spanked me again; but his hold on me was tight enough my tongue didn’t even leave his mouth.
He closed his fingers around a few locks of the hair on the back of my head, causing my chin to jerk up and my head back. He was meeting the force of my body falling onto his by lifting himself to drive into mine. We were both sweating.
A few days before, Dean and I were having breakfast in his enormous master bedroom, a space that would kind of resemble the Vera Wang Bridal House if it weren’t for the bed and the naked billionaire eating Cheerios. He was telling me that I’d probably never run across any of his enemies, myself, that his security was “above top notch.”
The thing was, I wasn’t scared. Not anymore. Perhaps it was the extra adrenaline of an already life-affirming moment, or that voice in the back of my head saying “fuck it” and meaning everything, but the inside of my head was a mob war. Every time I’d try to erect a little happiness, another part of me would come in, tear down the happiness, and shoot the part that had dared reach for such a thing between the eyes.
I wasn’t thinking about that, though. As Dean smacked my backside over and over, seemingly harder every time, and his grip held my head back just a bit too far to be comfortable, I wasn’t thinking about anything but the moment. I was gushing between my legs and he was finally getting into it the way I wanted him to. For the first time, I didn’t go somewhere else when my body started to quake. My mind was present, focused. I’d have been looking Dean right in the eyes if that were more within my field of vision.
I wasn’t sure if I was breathing or moving, but I sure as hell knew I was alive. The sound that came out of me started as a whimper, almost inaudible, but on its own it climbed to a full-throated sound I’m not sure I could adequately describe. The wind greedily picked up tiny bits of the sweat which now issued from my every pore, and I was just getting started when Dean slowly released my hair and slowed his pace to a stop.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I have anything left.”
“I bet I can find it if you do.”
“I need to take a break,” he said.
Disgruntled, I climbed off of him. “Maybe we shouldn’t keep doing this,” I said.
Dean was catching his breath as I got to my feet and walked over to the trail of clothes we’d left. I bent down to pick up my dress. I hadn’t bothered with underwear. I knew what kind of night it was going to be and more clothes were just more in the way of it. He walked up behind me as I was standing back up again.
“What did you mean a second ago?” he asked.
“What do you mean what did I mean?”
“You said ‘maybe we shouldn’t keep doing this,’ and I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean we’ve had a lot of fun, Dean, but I think we both know we’re different species. You’d just get into trouble by being with me. My self-destruct button is always about halfway pressed and you’ve got better things to do with your time.”
“Listen, I went along with that back there because, hey, sometimes we all need a good smack, but if there’s something we need to talk about—if something’s going on, I think we should talk about it.”
I groaned and clumsily pulled my dress over my head and down to cover my body. “Our whole relationship has been about talking. We’re not talking enough, or we’re not talking about the right things, or we’re talking, but I still don’t feel like I know the first thing about you, and I’m sick of talking. Human history is 98% people talking about what 1% of people are doing wrong and the last percent isn’t people trying to change anything for the better, it’s just the fucking margin of error.”
“Marcy, I’m worried about you.”
I was being dramatic, but you know what? I didn’t care. “Why do you always need to put everyone beneath you all the time?”
“What are you talking about?” he snapped back, his voice finally showing a bit of the tension I was trying to draw out of him.
“Saying that you’re worried about me means you think you’re on emotional bedrock and I’m the idiot going for a swim in the quicksand. Just what the hell gives you the right to be so superior?”
“I don’t know where this is coming from, but you need to calm down,” Dean warned.
Anyone who’s been upset in any way and told to calm down—and I’d imagine that would be most people—would know telling someone to calm down when they need to calm down is 100% guaranteed to backfire. That night was no exception. “Listen, you smug jackass, you’re not my therapist.”
“Yeah, but I’m your boss.”
Every part of me froze except my head, which slowly turned until
I was staring straight at Dean. “Are we really going to do this? Seriously, do you really want to go down that road?”
“I was joking!” he declared, throwing his hands up. “Jesus, I was trying to get a smile out of you or at least break some of the tension, but you just want to be mad right now, don’t you? Well, go right ahead and be mad then, but I’m not going to stand here and take it just because you’ve lost your senses.”
“There you go being smug again!” I accused, desperate to keep it going as long as possible. “You’re giving me permission to be mad. Well, thanks, Mr. Carrick, you’re a kind and thoughtful employer, now would you kindly blow it out your ass?”
“Okay, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m done hearing about it. You need to leave.”
And there it was. There was that catharsis I’d been looking for, only I couldn’t let him see it, so I held my breath as I slipped on my shoes and walked to the back door. I breathed as little as possible on the long walk through the apartment, and I didn’t care if he was right behind me to reset the alarm or not because I simply had to get the hell out of there.
The elevator doors closed, and I started crying. It was a trickle at first, but I was in full-blown sob mode before the car had made it down a single floor. When you’re so guarded with your emotions for so long, anything outside of tyranny is anhedonia. That was me—that was always me.
I’d learned a long time ago that being anything but the quiet mouse or the occasional verbal punching bag was the quickest way to level everything good I had going. I just wanted to feel something besides inadequate, and I didn’t care it wasn’t Dean’s fault that that’s where I was.
I’d somehow managed to remember to grab my purse on the way out, and so I quickly snatched a few clean tissues from inside and did my best to clean myself up before I had to greet the public again, however briefly. My eyes were dry before the doors opened on the first parking level where not-my-car was parked.
“Excuse me, miss? Could you help me with something?”
