“If you’d given me thirty seconds before you leaped to conclusions, I’d have introduced you. I’d have told you that Nathan’s my coworker. That he’s helped me out with the job, and Martine, and…and everything. That he’s my best friend at your company, and he’s made it so much better, and you’re…you’re…”
Her eyes were shining as if she was about to cry, except that Hope hated to cry. I couldn’t have been wrong. I knew what I’d seen. Didn’t I?
“Hope.” My hand was still on her arm, not grabbing anymore, just holding her, and she wasn’t trying to get away.
“Don’t you see?” She’d stepped closer, not caring that we were in the middle of the sidewalk, three doors down from the office. She put both hands on my forearms, the same way she had in the hotel room, and how was I meant to stand up against that? “If you don’t trust me, if I don’t trust you, it doesn’t work. If you do this, I’ll...I’ll have to leave, Hemi. And I don’t want to leave.”
I started to speak, but I couldn’t think of what to say. I took a deep breath and started again. “Let’s go upstairs. To my office. I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I need to go home. Karen. I was just taking half an hour to catch Nathan up and relax a little. That was all. You could have just asked, Hemi. I’d have told you.”
No. She wasn’t going home. We were going to work this out. “Charles will drive you home. It’ll take twenty minutes. If you’re worried, ring Karen now. I won’t get you home any later.”
She wavered, and I saw it.
“Please,” I said, then wished the word unsaid. I didn’t beg.
But she was turning, walking back into the building with me, getting into the elevator and letting me punch the button for 51, exactly the way it had been on the day of her interview. Still looking so upset, and today, I wasn’t going to stand next to her, because all at once, I couldn’t.
It started out as a touch. I had my hand on her face, and when she turned into me and looked up at me with those big eyes, something snapped.
When I grabbed her, she squeaked. I was reaching under her to pull her off her feet, backing her into the wall, taking her mouth, and one of her hands was in my hair.
My mouth dragged over her cheek, closed on her neck. I bit hard, and she gasped. I was grinding into her now, and she was whimpering. “Hemi…”
A ding, the brushed-steel doors whispering open, and I was stepping out of the elevator with her wrapped around me, headed for my office. And that was when it struck me.
Had she actually said yes? Had I even given her the chance?
“Wait.” I set her on her feet again, got a hand around her elbow when she stumbled, and held her up. “Wait. Tell me you want this. Or tell me if you don’t.”
Hemi wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving? What he said took a second to register.
“Please,” I said.
“Please what?” His eyes were burning me up, and he still had a hand on my elbow, but that was all.
“Please,” I said again. “Show me. Tell me.” I couldn’t say it. “Please.”
It was enough. He had my hand, was leading me down the hallway so fast that I nearly had to run to keep up. And then he was shoving his keycard into the slot by the tall doors that led into his office and pulling me through.
It was dark in there, the only light coming from the windows of offices across the street, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Instead, he lifted me again, and my legs went around his waist exactly as they had before. His mouth closed over mine, hard and ruthless, and he was moving, holding me, kissing me all the way across that expanse of carpet to his desk. He was setting me down on it, was pulling off my coat and tossing it to the floor, and then his hand was yanking my blouse out of the waistband of my skirt, reaching under it, flicking the center closure on my bra, and I was gasping.
“Hemi...”
I should be saying something else. I should be doing something. But I couldn’t, because he was pushing me back onto the desk, his hand under my head as I went down, then pulling my hips to the edge.
“Stay there,” he commanded. “Like that.”
What? He was stepping back, and I rose on my elbows, but he put a hand on my shoulder and pressed me back down. “No. Stay there. I mean it.”
Oh, my God. He was going to do me on his desk, and he was leaving me lying here to think about it. My legs dangled over the edge, because I wasn’t nearly tall enough to reach the floor, the wood surface was hard underneath me, and I was trembling. Desire, anticipation, anxiety—all of them combining, making me shake.
I heard the click, blinked against the sudden onslaught of light from the desk lamp. He was opening drawers, grabbing something from his chair, coming back around again.
“The light—” I said.
“Oh, no. The light stays on. I’m watching this.” He dropped something by my side, was lifting my hips in both hands, reaching for a foam wedge and shoving it under my bottom so I was raised at an angle, tilted for him. And, yes. I was lying on his back support.
“This.” His voice was all dark satisfaction. He had hold of the hem of my pencil skirt, was pulling it up, raising my hips again, then yanking the skirt all the way around my waist. And then he had a hand on either thigh and was pulling them apart.
“Oh.” A weak protest, and I was trying to close them, and he wasn’t letting me. Because he’d come to stand between them now, was pulling my sweater and blouse all the way up to my shoulders, brushing the cups of my bra aside, and his hands were on my breasts, his thumbs flicking over the nipples, every touch sending another pulse of arousal to my center, to where he was grinding into me.
When he let go, I arched my back and moaned.
“Yeh,” he said, his voice low. Rough. “That’s it. That’s what you do for me.” He had both hands around the band of my thong, was pulling it down my legs, over my heels, and it was gone.
He kept one hand on the top of my thigh, holding me open for him, and his other hand was covering me, stroking me in exactly the way that worked best, hard and fast, and I was already jerking against him, and totally unable to keep quiet.
When he shoved two fingers inside me, began to thrust even as his thumb continued to move, I was past moaning. I was whimpering. My hands were sliding over the smooth surface of the desk, scrabbling for purchase, then reaching behind me in desperation, grabbing for the edge and holding on.
“Hemi.” It was a sob, and a plea. His hand was gone, and I bucked, needing him so much. In the next moment, he took both my hips in hard hands and shoved home, and the force of my answering cry startled me.
There was nothing gentle about it. It was fast, and it was hard. I was holding tight overhead, gripping the edge of the desk, trying to get closer but unable to move, because it was all Hemi. His rasping breath filled my ears, and I was climbing. Climbing.
And when he shoved a hand between my legs, began to stroke, I was there. The wave slammed into me hard, and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I cried out, long and loud.
“Shit,” I heard on a gasp of his own. I was still spasming around him, but he was pulling out, leaving me.
“No.” I let go of the desk and tried to reach for him, but he had my hips in his hands again, was pulling me off the hard surface, taking me down to the carpeted floor with him.
“Hands and knees,” he told me. “Right now.”
Oh, God. I scrambled up onto them, my arms trembling, and he’d shoved my skirt high again, all the way to my waist.
He buried himself inside me in a single thrust, and I nearly screamed again. The angle had him hitting a spot that felt...that felt...I didn’t have words for it, because I was about to lose my mind. I was moaning out his name, and he was plunging hard, going so deep, and my hands couldn’t hold me up anymore. My elbows were on the floor, my face pressed into my hands, the rasp of his breath competing with my sobbing cries. One of his hands went to the back of my neck, shoved me down harder, held me there.
It was too much. I came apart. I was keening, spasming around him as he filled me, and he was swearing, moving faster, going even deeper. Filling me all the way, until he was shaking, jerking against me, groaning. Gone.
Ta Moko
“Bloody hell,” I finally managed to say. I’d made it to the bathroom to get rid of the condom and returned to find Hope on her knees, trying to fasten her bra with trembling hands. I dropped down beside her, brushed her hands aside, and did up the clasp, then pulled her blouse and sweater down over her body and straightened them for her. “Tell me you’re all right.”
“Oh, yeah.” She didn’t sound entirely steady, though, and there was nothing for it but to take her in my arms and sink to the floor with her, to pull her in close and smooth a hand over her hair.
“Sorry,” I said, so relieved when she relaxed into me. I hadn’t stuffed up utterly, then. “I couldn’t...”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know you couldn’t. I couldn’t, either. I just needed you so much. Because when you did that in the bar, I was so...so mad, and so sad, too.” She twisted in my arms so she could look at me. “Please don’t do that again.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
She was crawling out of my lap, going in search of her thong and standing to pull it on under her skirt, and I rose with her.
“I got you to say ‘sorry’ again, though,” she said, looking up at me through her lashes in the way that got me every time. “And by the way—if you’re that impulsive in business, let’s just say I’m surprised.”
“I’m not that impulsive anywhere,” I said. “I couldn’t seem to help it. It wasn’t even my brain. You bypassed that, went straight to my body.”
“Primal.” She’d recovered faster than I had, it seemed, because her eyes were sparkling a bit now.
“Could be.”
“Kind of silly of you, though,” she said. “Here I am, a virgin for twenty-four years, which you had to know was real, and your body’s telling you that I’m going after somebody else, so you’d better jump in there fast and stop it? If I wanted some more, why wouldn’t I come back to you for it? Do you imagine anybody else could satisfy me the way you do?”
“Not exactly an expert in that area, though, are you?”
She smiled at that, walked over to me, and pulled my head down for a kiss. “I’m an expert on how you make me feel, though.” She brushed her mouth over mine again, soft and sweet. “I’m the world’s leading expert on that. And there couldn’t possibly be anything better. But I will have friends, and I will see them. Nathan’s my buddy, and I’m going to have a glass of wine with him occasionally, and you’re just going to have to deal.”
“He’s thinking about you naked,” I told her. Call it a last-ditch effort.
That made her laugh. “Come on, Hemi. How many women do you think about naked? He’s a guy, that’s all. Of course he’s suggested it, and of course I’ve said no. And believe me, now that you’ve given him that stare of yours, he’s not going to be asking again.”
“Oh, yeh?” That made me feel a bit better.
“Yeah.” She bent for her coat and put it on. “You going to give me a ride home?”
“Of course.” I pulled out my phone, thumbed the button, and spoke a few words into it. “Straight away.”
She was quiet while we walked to the lift, but when we were descending to the ground floor again, she said, “And by the way. I could’ve thought that you were with two sophisticated brunettes tonight, with the kind of bodies I’ll never have in a million years. Oh, wait. I did think that. And yet I didn’t come over to your table and make a scene, because I assumed you had a good reason for being with them. I won’t deny that I’d love to hear what it was. I’m sure they’re thinking about you naked, though. For your information.”
“Mm.” I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Good thing I’m not interested. Business.” I didn’t tell her what kind. Anything about potential investments, I shared on a strictly need-to-know basis, and she didn’t need to know.
“It goes both ways,” she said. “It looks to me like this is a good time to have this conversation, like maybe we need some more promises. I take it you don’t want me to sleep with anybody else.”
“You could say that. Or you could say that I’d rip his head off.”
I got a little twitch of her lips for that. “And I don’t want you to do it, either. Do we have a deal?”
I sighed. “You drive a hard bargain. But you’ve got a deal.”
She fell silent again while Charles began the drive to Brooklyn, even though I’d closed the partition to give us privacy.
“Remember when you told me the swan story?” I finally said. “And you asked if I’d tell you one?”
“Of course I do. And I remember that you didn’t.”
“Mm. Your story was all about trust, wasn’t it. About proving yourself by what you do. Being steadfast. Makes me think that the Maori stories may be more up your street. More about weakness, and about the strength of overcoming it.”
“Oh.” My hand had been around hers, and now, she threaded her fingers through mine. “That sounds good. Can you tell me one?”
“Yeh.” I felt a bit naff telling a woman a story in the back of my car, but then, I’d always done what was necessary, and this felt necessary. “I’ve got a short one you may like. About how ta moko—the Maori tattoo—came to be. It was on the face, the buttocks, the thighs in those days. And it wasn’t inked. It was chiseled. So why would somebody do that?”
I could feel the shudder that went through her at that thought. “Yours isn’t…chiseled, is it?” she asked faintly.
“Nah. That kind of pain? No.”
“Still. It must have hurt, getting all that.”
I shrugged. “Yeh, nah. But anyway. They say that in the old times, a Maori chief fell in love with the daughter of the king of the Underworld, and she fell in love with him as well. So they were married, and it was good at first, but then he got jealous. As men can do. But he was worse. One day, he lost control, and he hurt her. Beat her, in fact.”
Her hand jerked in mine. “So far, not such a good story.”
“Wait. You’ll like this next bit better. She left him, went back to the Underworld. Because Maori women are strong. They don’t wait to be rescued, and they don’t put up with being treated badly. Just like you.”
A faint smile at that. “And?”
“And he followed her. He wanted to change, and to prove to her that he could, so he could get her back. He saw her father carving a moko onto one of his warrior’s faces, and he asked that it be done to him as well. Went through it all—the carving, having the charcoal rubbed into the wounds for the pigment. For days, weeks, because they didn’t do it all at once, or the shock and pain could kill even the strongest warrior. And as the king carved his skin, the chief sang about his love for his wife and his regret for what he’d done, and his promise that he would change. And because he was willing to endure so much pain to atone for hurting her, she believed him. She returned to the upper world with him, and they were happy, and he never hurt her again. At least,” I finished, “that’s the legend.”
“Wow,” she said. “Bad start. Good ending.”
“Mm. Thought you might like it. So—this.” I held out my left arm, even though my moko was hidden under my suit coat. “It’s my heritage, my genealogy, my journey, like I said. But it’s also a reminder of what strength is, and what it’s for. That it’s to bear what you have to, and to protect the people you...”
“The people you love,” she finished.
“Yeh. The way you do with Karen. And that—that story,” I told her. “I guess I’m telling you that to let you know that I’m not going to hurt you. That I may be stupid. I may even...” It took me a moment to say this one. “I may even be wrong. But you can put me right.”
“Hemi.” She laid a gentle hand on my face, stroked it down my cheek. “That’s—Thank you.”
/> “And,” I said as Charles pulled to a stop in front of her building, “if that offer of a movie with you and Karen is still open, I’m thinking I’ll take it.”
Wonder Woman
The next night was a first for Karen and me: a Women’s Wednesday that would include a man. I was nervous, and because I was, I changed into my PJs, exactly as I normally would’ve. Which made Karen look at me with astonishment and ask, “Aren’t you supposed to, like, dress up if a guy’s coming over? Maybe you want to put on some mustache bleaching cream while you’re at it.”
“I do not have a mustache. And anyway,” I tried to explain, “Hemi’s coming into our place. Into our special night. He’s seeing my real life for once, and I need to know that he can be OK with that. I’m not glamorous, and I don’t have a glamorous life, and it’s just too hard to pretend I do.”
I stopped, sighed, and pulled the mesh bag with my hand washing from its hook. I was way behind on laundry, and I wasn’t going to have anything to wear the rest of the week if I didn’t do something about it. “I mean, like this,” I said, hefting the bag. “Behold my life. I guess I just need to know I can be myself, because being anybody else is going to get too exhausting. If that’s what he wants, I need to know.”
She plopped herself down on the bed and reached for a nail file. “I’ll pretend to get that. The fact that you wear Wonder Woman pajamas might be a little too much reality, though. I’m just saying. If he takes one look at you and leaves again, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Uh...you’re in your pajamas, too,” I told her. “And actually doing personal grooming.”
“I’m just the little sister. Plus, I already puked on him. Nowhere to go but up.”
When Hemi appeared, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt himself. Which was a relief, but fortunately—or unfortunately—didn’t diminish his attractiveness one little bit. He kissed me on the cheek, then, to my surprise, gave Karen her own kiss before standing back and saying, “Wonder Woman and Catwoman, eh. I’m a bit intimidated, suddenly.”
Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire) Page 19
