Fantasy Donovan liked that. Liked how I gasped. Liked how my back arched.
“Touch me,” I begged him, my voice echoing against the bathroom tile.
“No,” Fantasy Donovan said in my head. “I won’t.” Because even though I could ease the ache with my own hand, I knew that there was no way to pretend it was Donovan’s—not even in my own mind. “You do it.”
“But—”
My fantasy protest was interrupted by the buzz of my phone on the ledge of the tub.
It was after ten. People didn’t call after ten unless it was an emergency or a wrong number or my sister.
I picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but it was local. Curiosity and alcohol got the best of me. “Hello?”
“They were blue,” Donovan said, his voice so low and husky in my ear I had to press my legs together.
He had my number. Why did he have my number?
“What were blue?” I asked.
“Her panties.”
It took me a beat before I realized he meant Sun’s panties. I groaned inwardly. I didn’t want to know.
Except, I kind of did want to know. So even though I was too drunk for this, for conversation, I picked up my glass and settled back into the tub. “And you’ve already left her house?”
“I’m not a guy who stays the night.”
“Of course you’re not.”
I heard a puffing sound. Was he lighting a cigar? I imagined that he was, that he was reclining in a leather chair in his study, maybe, overlooking the city, his tux rumpled but still on.
“Actually, I didn’t even get out of the car,” he said.
“Then how did you…?” I trailed off.
“We had the car ride.”
“But how did you manage—” I cut myself off sharply. He’d fucked her in his car. With his driver in the front seat. “I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do.” His smile was apparent in his tone.
“I really don’t.” I really did. I wanted to know every sick, twisted detail, even as it pained me to hear. Even as it made me hurt with desire.
“I’ll tell you because you do.” Another pause. Another puff? “She was all over me the minute we got in the backseat. Rubbing against my thigh while sucking on my ear. Which is fine, but not really what I like.”
I’d seen her all over him as they drove away. If I thought he might be lying, that one image was enough to back him up. Besides, why would he lie?
I brought my tumbler to my lips but didn’t take a swallow yet. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what you do like.”
He made a sound that indicated he thought it was a funny remark for me to make. “Oh, Sabrina, I think you know.”
Teeth, I thought. Nails. “I think I don’t care.”
“Biting. Nipping. Nothing too soft. Something with a bit of pressure.”
Vividly I could remember the way he’d reacted to my fingers digging into his back. “I’m not paying attention.”
“You will.” Another pause, this time with movement, and now I pictured him cradling the phone while he pulled off his shoes and socks. “Anyway. You saw the dress Sun was wearing. I could easily flip it up. It wasn’t tight like yours.” He hesitated, letting it settle in that he’d thought about that—that my dress would have been more complicated.
I tipped my glass back and let amber whisky silence the guh that formed at the back of my throat.
“I rubbed her there,” he continued, “with two fingers, along the crotch of her panties while I bit into the flesh of her shoulder. She wanted more. She kept pushing her cunt against my hand, trying to get me to give her more.”
“Did you?” I wanted him to say no. Was that terrible? That I cared?
“Not yet. She was too impatient, and she needed to be teased. So I pushed her into the corner of the car. Hard. She yelped. She bumped her head on the window. I suppose it hurt.”
Jesus. “Didn’t your driver notice?”
“Possibly.”
“He wasn’t concerned about her welfare?” I sounded angry, and I was, but not at his driver so much as with myself. How could I listen to this? Why did it make me ache with envy? Why did it turn me on so goddamn much?
“I pay my driver to keep his eyes forward. Okay, he probably sneaks a peek in the rearview mirror and goes home and beats off later, but that’s a perk of the job. Satisfied?”
No. I was far from.
“So. Where was I? She was in the corner. I pulled off her panties, discovered they were blue, and then pushed up her knees so that her feet were on the seat.”
Involuntarily, I raised my legs so my knees were bent and my soles were planted on the bottom of the tub.
“Then I leaned down, put my face between her thighs and licked along her slit,” Donovan said leisurely. “Slowly, Sabrina. She loved it.”
I closed my eyes and imagined it. Not her, not Sun. But imagined Donovan licking, slowly. Imagined loving it.
“How could you tell?” I asked, hoarse from desire and alcohol.
“She shivered. So I did it again. Then I found her clit. I touched it lightly with my tongue, like a feather, until it was plump and swollen like a tiny little peach. And then I sucked it into my mouth and made her writhe. She came so hard her knees vise-gripped my head.”
The envious ache inside had turned into a throb that I couldn’t silence, spreading wide and long through my limbs, making every cell cry out in yearning. Did he know that he could do this to me? He had to.
Why did I let him?
Scotch. I blamed it on the scotch.
“All of that in the twelve minutes it took to get to her apartment. Fortunately Sun’s not a squirter, so it was easy cleanup.”
My eyes shot open. “She didn’t return the favor before she left?”
“No.”
“What a cunt.” I’ll admit I said it with a smile.
“Don’t be like that, Sabrina. It’s sexy to hear you lash out at her, but it’s not fair. She did offer.” He was patronizing and condescending and it was strangely erotic, but there was something else in his words that caught my attention.
“You weren’t interested?” I took another sip of my drink, prepared for his answer to be flippant or cruel or for him not to answer at all.
“I wasn’t hard for her,” he said flatly.
My heart skipped a beat. “But you were hard?”
“Yes, Sabrina. I was hard.”
Oh, god.
I put my drink down and splashed my hand in the water before running it over my face. “Why did you call me, Donovan?”
“Why did you come here, Sabrina?” He sounded as angry and as desperate as I felt.
“You were in Tokyo.”
“And then I had to be in New York.”
“Why did you have to be here?”
He hesitated before answering, a full beat, the time it would take to puff on a cigar. I pictured him exhaling, a fog gathering around him as he perched on his windowsill looking out over the city.
“You know why I have to be here,” he said finally. “Goodnight, Sabrina.”
The phone clicked off before I had a chance to make him clarify. Because I didn’t know why. Not really. Was it because he had to help out the team? Because Reach had gotten too busy to run with just two presidents? That was the story that had been told around the office.
But there was another story. One I told myself once the phone was safely on the ledge of the bathtub and my eyes were closed and my hand was under the water stroking my clit, turning it into a ripe little peach like Donovan had described into my ear. In this story, the reason he’d come home was the same reason he’d come to the party late, which was the same reason he’d left the party early. It was the same reason he’d made Weston marry Elizabeth Dyson instead of volunteering himself.
And it was the reason he’d called.
Because of me.
Chapter 13
Monday was a chaotic st
ream of activity. Between team meetings, project deadlines, and staff introductions, I barely had a moment to breathe, let alone think about anything that didn’t have to do with A/B testing and calls to action. This job was going to be a test of my abilities, but I was ready for the challenge.
But although I was committed to my new career—or maybe because I was committed—I had walked in the building that morning wearing what I considered was my power suit, with the specific intention of speaking to Donovan Kincaid.
Saturday night should never have happened.
Saturday night could never happen again.
I’d had to work harder than those who had graduated from Ivy Leagues, but now that I was where I wanted to be, I was not going to do anything to jeopardize it. Including messing around with the likes of Donovan. Particularly when I knew what he brought out in me.
The only way I could be sure our current trajectory was corrected was by facing it head-on.
The power suit, a gray skirt with a tailored matching jacket, was important not only because it gave me confidence, but also because it was not an outfit that said sexy.
It said mastery.
It said domination.
It said determination.
It did not say girl against a bookcase with her pants down around her ankles.
So just before my lunch meeting with the head of media—a hard-nosed Princeton graduate who didn’t seem to like the idea of taking orders from a woman—I made my way to see Donovan.
Since we worked in completely different departments, Donovan and I hadn’t had a reason to interact at all since I’d arrived, and this was the first time I’d sought him out. His office, as it happened, was the one that I’d seen on my first day with the opaque glass walls.
They were still clouded when I arrived today, but his door was open. I peeked in from the hall. It looked like he was preoccupied. He was bent over something on his desk. His jacket was off, so when he brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck, his arm muscles stretched taut against his shirt. He was intense when he worked, and it reminded me of watching him in class as he studied at his laptop at the front of the room. It was something that I knew about Donovan, and while in so many ways he was a stranger, it was oddly satisfactory to find I still knew this.
It also made me wonder what kinds of things he still knew about me. The thought made me even more nervous. Made me want to turn around and walk back to my office.
It also made me strangely irritated. Because how dare he think he knew things about me. Whatever he thought he knew, he was wrong, and I intended on telling him just that.
I walked up to his secretary’s desk. She was an attractive woman with black hair and dark skin, but her ethnicity wasn’t immediately recognizable. She looked up from her computer when I got near and gave a welcoming smile, though her expression said she was still lost in whatever project she’d been working on.
“We haven’t met yet, but I’m—” I started to say but was cut off.
“You can send Ms. Lind in, Simone,” Donovan called from his office. He always noticed me. Even still.
I glanced in at him and found he was leaning back in his chair, waiting, whatever he’d been working on put away.
I turned back to Simone. “…and I guess I’ll just go on in.”
“Yes, Ms. Lind,” Simone said, still smiling, then turned back to her computer.
I hesitated just long enough to take a deep breath. Ninety-five percent of confidence is looking like you have it when you don’t feel like you do, I told myself. I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded true, and I was going with it.
Now I just had to hope I looked confident.
“Sabrina,” Donovan said as the door shut on its own behind me, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Great. He had both the walls and the doors on an automated system, probably something he controlled from behind his desk. I bet it made him feel superior to have such power at his fingertips. Likely a useful tool when he was dealing with wayward employees. He could psychologically subdue them without even opening his mouth.
It psychologically subdued me as well. Especially when he took advantage of my hesitation and turned that intense gaze on me.
“Don’t tell me you have a grade you need to discuss.” His wicked smile said he was remembering in detail the last time we’d been closed in an office together. When I’d given him my virginity.
Bye-bye confidence. There went my dry panties as well.
No, I wouldn’t let him get to me. If I didn’t go through with this, it was going to be like this forever—him with the upper hand, turning every encounter into another perverted version of our past, never letting me live up to my full potential.
I couldn’t live like this. I wouldn’t.
“No, I do not have a grade to discuss,” I said boldly. “I thought perhaps we could talk.”
“Go ahead and have a seat. I’m all ears.”
I shook my head. “Not here.” Not where he had the obvious power. I’d done that before. I wasn’t doing that again. And the conference room wouldn’t work. I didn’t want other people from the office seeing us and gossiping. “I was thinking we should have dinner.”
“Dinner?” he asked, arching a brow. “Or do you mean dessert?”
His devilish grin was distracting. Really distracting.
But I’d been prepared for that type of response, and I kept my spine straight. “Dinner. I think we have things to say. Don’t you?”
His smile faded slightly. “I suppose we do.”
He tapped his fingers across his desk. Two times. All five fingers in succession.
Then he said, “Eight o’clock work for you?”
“Tonight?” I’d expected we’d pull out our calendars and schedule for something like Thursday or maybe the Wednesday after. Something that wasn’t less than twenty-four hours away.
“Unless you have other plans.”
I couldn’t back down now. It would weaken my position, and I needed to stay strong on this. “No. Tonight is fine.”
I looked down at my power suit, which was totally inappropriate for dinner wear. I’d have to try to get out of the office by six, which was going to be tough on my first week, but as long as I left at six thirty, seven at the latest, I’d have time to get home and change.
I turned to go when I realized the other problem with such a short notice appointment. “Do you have any suggestions for a restaurant? I’m still new in town and don’t have ideas, though I could ask my assistant.”
Donovan leaned forward and picked up his phone. “How about I take care of the arrangements?”
“Are you sure?” I sounded defeated because I was. This was supposed to be my dinner on my terms to discuss my agenda, and somehow he’d already switched the plans to the night and time he wanted. Now it was going to be the location he wanted as well.
“I’m sure,” he said. Into his receiver, he said, “Simone, send a driver to pick up Sabrina at eight sharp. Her address is in the system. Then call Gaston’s and let them know to have a table ready for me around eight fifteen.” He paused while she spoke. “Yes. Just the two of us.” He hung up.
“The driver will text you when he arrives. I don’t want you waiting outside alone.” He met my eyes to make sure that I knew he wanted me safe. “Am I clear?”
My chest felt tight.
Of course any man might show that concern for a female coworker’s safety. But I knew he meant it as more than that. He meant that he remembered once I’d been outside waiting alone, and I hadn’t been safe.
And that touched me.
“Yes, you’re clear,” I said.
And then I stood there.
Had it really been that easy? I’d been ready for a battle. I’d been prepared to have to explain all the reasons why I wanted to take the conversation away from the office and why it couldn’t be conducted on a phone call. I’d never expected him to be so amenable.
“Is there something els
e?” Donovan asked.
“No. I just. Thank you for agreeing.” I walked out of his office bolstered. Hopefully tonight’s talk would go just as smoothly.
With Donovan, though, I was learning that nothing ever turned out quite like I expected.
I just hoped I could learn not to like that quite so much.
Chapter 14
I made it home by seven-thirty, which meant all I’d have time for was a change of outfit and no freshening up, but it wasn’t like I was trying to impress him. In fact, I was going for the opposite. The dilemma, it turned out, was finding something to wear that fit the bill.
I flipped through my closet for the seventh time. Why did everything I own look good on me?
I chose a red sheath dress. It was short, but the neckline was high, and since we’d be sitting at a table most of the time, my bare legs wouldn’t be an issue.
Unless he was in the car with me…
No. I would not think about the things he’d told me about that he’d done to Sun. I was not Sun, and that was exactly why we were doing this—so that he’d know that I was not Sun. That I never would be.
The sheath dress would be fine.
I made it to the lobby at seven fifty-nine, and as Donovan had promised, the car arrived exactly at eight. It was the same Jaguar that I’d seen him use previously, but when I slid into the back seat, I was alone.
This is good, I told myself.
It was strange how good felt so much like disappointment.
“Will we be picking up Donovan next?” I asked the driver as he pulled away from the curb.
“He’ll be meeting you there, Ms. Lind,” he said, then didn’t bother to speak again until we arrived at our destination, a high-rise on Fifty-Eighth.
“Take the elevator,” the driver said. “Restaurant’s on the top floor.”
I shared the elevator with another couple. When we reached the top, the doors opened to the hostess desk for Gaston’s. I gestured for the couple to go ahead of me and stepped aside to look out the windows.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 12
