by Penny Wylder
I swear I see the three of them relax a little. “Thank you,” Jason says. “That was very informative. We’re scheduled for the same time tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Chris says. “I look forward to it.”
They shake hands, and the mood in the room seems thick and tense. Chris attempts a smile. “You wouldn’t mind pointing me towards the bathroom before we get out of your hair?”
“Down that hall, to the left,” Jason says.
Chris disappears, and I gather up the papers he left on the table, shuffling them into the folder and into his briefcase. There’s whispering at the other end of the table, and they clearly don’t mean for me to hear, but I do. It’s the woman speaking. “It seems like he’d benefit more from using some of our toys instead of selling them. He’s got some sort of stick up his ass.”
I’m careful to remain interested in the papers in front of me as Jason responds. “The conversations I’ve had with him have been way less tense and uptight.”
“Well, they’d better have one hell of a marketing plan to overcome that. If we’re going to work closely with him, he has to understand the vibe of the company. That’s not it.”
Chris comes back into the room, and I hand him his briefcase. “Thanks,” he says, taking it from me. We say one more round of goodbyes, and bundle up into our coats. There’s a small amount of snow falling onto our heads while we call a cab.
“That went well,” Chris mutters, and I can tell from his voice that he’s not expecting me to respond. His face is dark, and he’s retreating inward, probably reliving the last twenty minutes of awkward agony. He addresses our cab driver in a curt voice, ordering him back to the hotel. I decide to at least try to engage him in conversation. “Do you know where dinner is tonight?” I ask.
He shrugs. “The Colson rep decided. It’s in my phone. They’ll send a car at seven.”
There’s finality in his words, and I back off. I already have to be in close quarters with him for the rest of the trip, I don’t want to make it worse. The car ride is painfully silent, and he stalks up to the room like an angry bear, all quiet energy and barely contained rage. He tosses his coat onto his bed and heads straight for the wet bar. This brooding silence suits him. I must be crazy for finding him even more attractive like this, but seeing him vibrating with contained strength, makes me wonder what it would be like for him to choose to unleash it. To take control of whatever is in front of him and bend it to his will. I shudder, flashes of carnal commands and his hands on me race through my mind.
I head into my room, shedding my coat and my shoes. I hear him sink onto the couch, glass rattling with ice cubes. I turn my TV on low, prepared to wait out his storm. But as an hour passes, and then two, and three, I get tired of waiting. Sighing, I turn off the television from the self-help reality show I was barely absorbing, and I head into the main room. I lean against the doorway. Chris is sunken into the couch, his glass empty, his face dark.
“How many of those have you had?” I ask.
“Just the one,” he says. “I needed to take the edge off.”
I nod. “Then tell me what’s going through your head. Because if you don’t I think you’re going to explode and take the entire hotel with you.”
His glare strays to me for just a moment, and I meet him stare for stare. He maybe intimidating and sexy as hell, but I told him I was going to be helpful, and this is the way I’m going to do it. I’m going to get him out of his head so he can actually focus. He sighs. “I just don’t know what I did wrong. I’ve had half a dozen phone calls with Jason Childs, and they all went well. They went fantastically. But none of that came across in the meeting today. I expected them to be happy, to be impressed. But they seemed like they were barely invested. I’ve spent a lot of time on this proposal, and I don’t want it to fall apart. Especially if I don’t know why it’s falling apart.” He sighs again, reaching out to put his empty glass on the coffee table.
I weigh my options. I can sympathize with him and tell him it’s going to be okay. Or, I can tell him the truth that he doesn’t want to hear—that I wasn’t supposed to hear. I look at him, his hair messed up just enough to make him look like he rolled out of bed, his entire being dissolved enough to look out of control. It makes me think of the ways I would have rather he gotten that way, and I have to shake my head to get the images of us rolling together, sweating and panting out of my head. “I know what went wrong,” I say, even though I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.
His head snaps up to look at me, but I keep going. “I’m not supposed to know, but they didn’t whisper quietly enough when you stepped out of the room.”
Chris stares at me, waiting, but I’m still on the fence about how to say it. “Well?” he demands.
“They think you have a stick up your ass,” I say, opting for the blunt delivery. “They think that you’re too tense, and because of that you don’t understand the vibe of the company.” He leans back, scrubbing his hands over his face, and I continue. “They’re not wrong,” I say. “You need to blow off some steam. You need to relax. You’ve been tighter than a drum since I got here, and maybe if you just chilled a little bit, you’d be more likable.”
I bite my lip, not intending to go that far, but he huffs a laugh. “You want to help me blow off some steam?”
“Sure. However you want to blow it off,” I shrug.
His eyes suddenly focus on me, sharp and searching. “Is that an innuendo?”
My mouth falls open at what he’s suggesting, and I close it quickly because as mortified as I am, my mouth is watering at the thought. I blink. He didn’t really suggest that. I’ve gotten caught up in my imagination again. This gorgeous man in front of me isn’t actually suggesting that I put my mouth on him. His voice is rough. “If you want to help out so badly,” he says, “I’ve tried everything else.”
Heat shoots through me straight to my core, and I already know that there’s nothing I want more than to let this man do whatever he wants to me, but there are other things to consider. This is my job. What happens when we go back to Seattle if we do this? I take a step forward and stop myself, suddenly seeing what I missed before—Chris is hard. His pants do nothing to hide that fact, and he’s hard because of me.
Shit. Maybe I’m not actually imagining this.
5
Chris
I’m not drunk. Not even close. But I still can’t believe what I just suggested. I must be utterly and totally out of my mind. I’m not sure what it is about Scarlett that gets under my skin, but seeing her stand in the doorway, hair messily pinned back with a pen, feet only in stockings…
I’ve totally lost control. I can’t stop thinking about this morning when I walked in on her dressing. It wasn’t even that revealing, but now the memory of her skin is taunting me, and I keep imagining what it would look like under my hands, under my body. And damn it all to hell, she was right. She was more helpful than I thought she would be in that meeting. She saved me from looking like an ass by forgetting that budget folder, and she seamlessly filled in the gaps when I stumbled.
I look at her now, and she looks like walking sin to me, those conservative office clothes hiding what I know now is a body that could wake a dead man. I’ve been half-hard since she walked in the door yesterday, and even last night in the shower hadn’t been enough to take care of my desire. I’m fully hard now, and she can see it. The words were out of my mouth before I could even think to stop myself, but in this moment, I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I want to see those sweet berry lips wrapped around my cock.
I’ll show those corporate pricks at The Pleasure Chest just how much a stick is up my ass. I know how to let loose. I know how to be wild.
There’s a twinge inside as I recognize the lie I tell myself, but fuck it. Enough is enough. Scarlett just issued me a challenge, that I’m too tense to be likable, and if she’s willing to do this, I’m not going to stop it. Fuck, I’m going to make sure I enjoy every second of it.
“You’re serious?” she asks.
“Are you?” I stare back at her, daring her to back down, daring her to take back the things she said about me being too up tight. I see her eyes go dark and I wonder what she’s thinking. Her gaze drifts to my more than obvious erection, and I see her tongue dart out to touch her lips. She looks hesitant, but I see her chest rising and falling quickly. She wants this too. I let my imagination drift to what could happen. Anything could happen—we have this suite to ourselves and two large beds at our disposal.
Scarlett walks over to me steadily, and she looks down at me. Her hands are flexing with nerves, and I find myself tingling with nerves of my own. “This is a terrible idea,” she says.
I nod, totally agreeing. “This is probably the worst idea either of us have ever had.”
She sinks to her knees in front of me, and that sight sends all the blood in my body straight to my cock. It hardens to the point of pain, and I hiss out a breath. I can’t help myself. She looks up at me, and I notice that her eyes aren’t blue like I thought. They’re more gray, like stormy weather, but right now there’s so much heat in them they feel like a tropical storm.
She reaches for my belt, and I find that I can’t move. This isn’t happening. I’m not going to let her do this, am I? But even through the fabric of my pants her hands feel so good on me. It’s been way too long since I felt this way, since I’ve had any kind of pleasure like this. All too long since—
I shove the thought away and watch as Scarlett unzips my pants. My cock is straining through the cloth of my underwear, and it springs free as she pulls them away. She gasps, and it gives me a wicked satisfaction that she’s impressed by me. She reaches out, touches my skin, and it feels like ice because my skin is burning. I groan, already feeling her touch rippling through my body. Her fingers run lightly up and down my cock, and I have to hold my breath. It feels so good. Too good. If she doesn’t stop, I’m not going to make it to having her mouth on me. “Fuck.”
It’s the only word that could possibly come from my mouth right now.
Without warning, she takes the head into her mouth, and I swear loudly. I feel her laugh on my cock, and the sensation is absolutely indescribable. I close my eyes as she takes me deeper into her mouth, utterly undone. She sucks along my skin, and I swear I’ve never felt anything like it. Her tongue is drawing little patterns on the underside of my cock, and it twitches with every lick. She dives down onto me, taking me deep and pulling back slowly, milking waves of pleasure from me. I open my eyes as her mouth leaves my cock, just in time to see her dip her head and suck my balls between her lips.
I almost come right then. I grip my hands deep into the cushions of the couch, fighting back the urge to let loose and let it be over. Her hand is on my cock again, stroking its length from the root to the tip and back, my entire being focused on that single point of contact. She looks up at me with those gorgeous eyes, locking with mine as she takes me in again, pushing me so deep the tip of me brushes the top of her throat. My continued curses come out somewhere between a sigh and a moan.
She steps up a rhythm, bobbing up and down on my cock, and her lipstick smearing on my skin may be the sexiest damn thing I’ve seen in my life. I reach out to her, pulling the pen from her hair and watching it tumble down. I weave my fingers through it, guiding her, showing her the exact rhythm I need. Gripping her harder, I feel her give up control, and I know there’s no way I can hold back any more. My other hand joins the first in her hair, pushing her down onto my cock as my hips thrust up to meet her lips.
Her mouth swallows me, and I feel the tip of my cock slip into her throat, squeezing me, and I’m seconds away from breaking. I pull her back again and thrust into her mouth a final time, holding her in place as I come. I feel the first blast of my seed exploding warm around me in her mouth. I hold her head still while I fuck her mouth, filling her mouth with my cum. I see drops of it leaking as she tries to contain it all.
Finally it subsides, but I don’t let her go. I hold her on my cock as I feel her swallow, feel her mouth empty of everything I gave her, feel her press deeper onto me so her mouth can reach the little that escaped. When I let her go, and she releases my cock from her mouth, it’s glistening with the wetness from her mouth, and there’s a gleam in her eye. There’s a leftover drip on the corner of her lips, and I feel my cock stir again at the sight.
I reach for her, because there’s no way that this can be it. No way in hell are we finished. Now that I’ve had a taste, I’m not going to stop until I consume her and every bit of pleasure that Scarlett has to offer. Now that I’ve let myself loose, there’s no way to be contained. She’s in my lap now, and my fingers are stroking across her ass as she opens the buttons on her shirt. I place my lips against her skin and it tastes like heaven. I’m about to find out if her nipples taste as good as I imagine when my cell phone rings.
Fuck. What now?
6
Scarlett
The ring of the phone in the room is harsh and loud, breaking the bubble we’ve created. What just happened comes crashing down on me, and cold reality settles in. I just gave a blowjob to my boss. My colleague. Shit.
It was amazing too, which is why my body is screaming for him to touch me. I want him inside of me more than I want to breathe. But this was stupid. I didn’t lie. This was a terrible idea. We’re frozen, listening to the ring of the phone, Chris’s mouth pressed against the skin of my breast. Slowly, as if waking up from a dream, he pulls back, reaching into his suit pocket to get his phone.
“Hello?” His voice is deep and rough, and I imagine that raw tone used on me as he takes me. My whole body shudders at the thought. His hand is still possessively on my ass, and I feel his fingers press into me. Chris sighs, “Yes, of course. That will be just fine. See you soon.” He hangs up the phone, tossing it onto the table behind me. “That was Chelsea Miller from Colson Foods. They want to move dinner to an earlier time. Our car will be here in twenty minutes.”
“Shit,” I mumble under my breath, scrambling off his lap. “I need to change.” I grab my dress off the closet door into my room and head into the bathroom. I need to disappear into the bathroom because we don’t have time for him to fuck me, and my body is still screaming with the kind of arousal I’ll never be able to endure through dinner. I hang my dress on the back of the door, peeling myself out of my skirt, tights, and panties in record time. I brace myself against the sink, fingers already brushing against my clit, when the door opens. Shit shit shit. I forgot to lock the door.
Chris has his shirt off, and I barely have a moment to look at the glory that is his body before he yanks me against him. “Allow me to help with that.” His hand snakes into my hair again, lifting me up and tilting me back just enough that I’m totally at his mercy. His other hand is at my pussy, already stroking, already driving me mad. “I know desperation when I see it,” he says, voice full of sinful promise. He slips a finger inside me, and then another, burying himself to the knuckle. I gasp, try to move, but his hand in my hair keeps me still. My hands find his shoulders and I grab on as he slowly starts to thrust into me with his hand.
“I know you thought we were finished out there,” he says, punctuating his words with hard, deep strokes of his fingers. “You were wrong.” His thumb strokes over my clit, and my body starts to shake. “When we come back from dinner,” his voice drops low and quiet, “I’m going to take you. I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember anything but the feeling of my cock inside you.”
He starts to move faster, and I can’t think. “Oh, god. Don’t stop,” I say, my fingers digging into the muscles in his shoulders.
“Is that what you want?” he asks. “For me to fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked in your life?”
“Yes.” The admission slips out of me like a sigh, my body relaxing into this new reality. My orgasm is building swiftly, and Chris knows it. He fucks me with his hand, and I can’t do anything to stop the pressure buildin
g inside me—don’t want to do anything to stop it. His thumb is stroking my clit with every thrust, and each tiny wave brings me closer to that edge of pleasure. My voice is coming out of me in tiny moans, his fingers drawing it out of me. Our eyes are locked, and I can see the lust as he looks at me, watching me take the pleasure he’s giving me.
Chris pushes down on my clit as he curls his fingers, and I lose it. I come, my voice breaking out in full-throated moaning as my pussy squeezes his fingers. I can feel my orgasm running down my legs, but Chris doesn’t stop grinding his hand on me and in me as the pleasure has its way with me. It grows in waves, and my knees feel weak and watery. When it’s finally over, leaving me breathless and happy and oh so relaxed, Chris slowly removes his fingers from me. He doesn’t release my hair as he brings his hand to his mouth, sucking my juices from his fingers.
The sight makes my heart tick up a notch, telling me it’s ready for more of this.
“Mmm.” Chris makes a sound that goes straight to my clit as he tastes me. “I’m going to look forward to tasting more of this tonight,” he says, releasing me. I catch myself on the bathroom sink, weak from his attention. He smirks at me, like he knows exactly what he did to me and enjoyed every second of it.
He opens the door and heads out in to the main room, and I hear his voice calling back to me as he walks away. “Oh, and Scarlett,” he says. “Leave your hair down.”
7
Scarlett
Dinner is torture.
Don’t get me wrong, the food is delicious—an Italian restaurant that I’d never be able to afford on my salary. The conversation isn’t half bad either. Chelsea Miller from Colson Foods is a fun person to talk to and has a lot of personality. If she lived in Seattle, I imagine that we’d be friends.
