by Christa Wick
"Name?"
"Glenn Wilson Ames," I answered softly, knowing my answer made it a matter of days, if not hours, before Collin new the truth. With any luck, he wouldn't bother to inquire about Glenn's background until we had returned to the United States. I didn't want to max out my credit card on airfare home if Stark fired me on the spot after finding out Glenn and I had been lovers.
Abruptly halting, Collin turned my body until I faced the glass doors of the elevator bank that would return me to the suite. Shocked into forgetting that I had no intention of looking at myself in the clothes he had secured for me once I realized there was no a chance of his finding me desirable, I came face-to-face with the woman in the mirror.
The up-do I had piled my dark brown hair into had an Audrey Hepburn feel to it, old-time Hollywood glamour even if I had modeled it after one of the thinnest women ever to grace the silver screen. The heavy hand I'd taken in applying the brow liner and borrowed eyelashes heightened the effect, as did the limited color palette Stark had selected for the cosmetics delivered to my room. Smoky eyes, a full pucker of lips of the softest frosted pink pearl -- I didn't want to look below my chin and ruin that first impression.
I looked anyway and smothered a gasp.
Ignoring my reaction, Collin pressed the elevator call button. When his attention finally found its way back to me, his gaze dropped down the length of the mirror as both hands found my hips. I felt the soft butt of his torso and pelvis against my padded backside and then he smiled, the expression almost hidden as he pressed his nose into my hair and inhaled.
His eyes jumped up to meet mine in the reflection and he gave both hips a little squeeze. "Straight back to the suite, baby. We'll...talk...when I return."
**********
Stark didn't return to the suite until midnight. Lunch and dinner were delivered and, around nine, a bottle of champagne and a bucket of ice. I crawled into bed, alone, after having used the phone earlier to secure the speedy delivery of my original luggage. If Stark fired me once he got back to the suite, I didn't want to camp out naked at the airport.
I somehow managed to fall into a light sleep before he entered carrying two flutes filled with champagne. Placing the glasses on the nightstand, he touched the base of the lamp once to give the room a soft glow. I gazed up at him, knowing my face gave my guilt away, but unable to stretch my expression into something more neutral.
His shadow falling across me, he reached with one arm to lazily draw the covers down to my hips. For the first time in six months, I saw shock skitter across Collin Stark's face before he strangled it.
"This is not what I provided you with."
"No." I reached for the covers. "It's what I provided me with."
He chuckled, surprising me with an indulgent shake of his head. "Flannel, Mia, in the god damn desert. I should spank you just for packing that granny gown."
I bit back any response.
A pinch of his fingers and flick of his wrist had the rest of the top bedding spooling on the ground. "I'm definitely going to spank you for Glenn."
I swallowed the reply that first jumped to mind. If he really knew about Glenn, he would be firing, not spanking, me. Instead of immediately giving myself away, I asked an open question.
"Why?"
Capturing the bottom hem of my nightgown, he playfully eased it up my shins. "Your posture while talking to him."
Clearly Stark wasn't as good at reading body language as he thought. With a blurt, I made my first major misstep of the night. "My posture was mortified. I had no idea he would be here. I haven't seen him in over six months. I hate him!"
"Hate is a strong word for a mere classmate, Mia." One hand still gripping the edge of my nightgown, he stretched an arm toward the lamp, tapping twice more to bring it to full brightness. He looked over every inch of the granny gown, with its long sleeves that ended in frills, to the pearl-like buttons that ran in a line from the middle of my breasts up to my chin.
Unnerved by the way his smile softened, I tried to scoot all the way to the opposite side of the bed as I glared at him. He let me retreat, but only so he could slide onto the mattress next to me.
He tugged the bottom of the gown all the way up to my hips. He pushed at my far thigh, then ran the back of his knuckles against the gusset of my panties. "I was wondering how long it would take to get you wet, angry as you are."
He slipped a finger beneath the elastic band and ran the tip along the seam of my labia once from top to bottom before pushing gently into the well of flesh that gated my cunt. "Wet already. Were you thinking of me or Glenn?"
Fuck the arrogant bastard! I had been wet almost as long as he had been in the room, just fighting like hell not to notice. Now that he had called me out over the drenched fabric and dripping pussy, I would be damned if I gave his overinflated ego another direct pump.
"I told you, I don't like him." Still glaring at Collin, I folded my arms across my chest and shoved my hands into my armpits to hide their shake.
"Hate him," he corrected. "But that doesn't answer my question. This thick cream could be for him."
"It isn't!" He wanted to force me to admit my arousal, just as he had done on the plane. "It doesn't matter how attractive Glenn is, he's a complete asshole."
Another chuckle and my panties came off with a sharp rip of fabric. "An attractive asshole -- sounds like your opinion of me, baby. So which one of us has your pussy all worked up?"
I shut my eyes, wishing he had left the light off. My cheeks started to burn and I bit furiously at my lip in an effort to cool them until I blurted at last, "You!"
He rolled until a third of his body rested lightly on top of my hip, arm and breast. "Open your eyes. I can't trust you until you stop hiding."
I obeyed, cursing at him inside my head with each centimeter my eyelids lifted.
"Tell me again." His fingertips whispered over the soft fur of my cunt.
"I'm wet for you." There -- he won again, wrested one last humiliating admission from me. Now he probably intended to fire me, had been holding back revealing his knowledge of my past relationship with Glenn until I was wet and trembling beneath him.
His lips ghosted along the side of my face. "Such a dirty thing to say when you look so sweet and innocent, with your flannel gown and its pink flowers, love."
Love?
Oh, Mia -- you fucking dolt!
Stark was far from finished with his sensual torment. He had just upped the attack using that word, a word that had no business falling from his lips when directed at me. I was an employee, a lying employee in his opinion, not to be trusted but to be exposed and ousted.
Love...
He started undoing the buttons on the gown. "Let's at least get you naked so I don't feel like such a defiler."
"Collin--" Catching my error, I hastily amended my ambiguous plea. "Mr. Stark..."
His head jerked back, his gaze narrowing quickly. "We're alone, Mia."
We had been alone on the plane when he had admonished me, but I didn't remind him. I merely remained mute. I was on thin ice in so many ways. My body wanted to capitulate, to risk and endure the humiliation for the slim chance that he would continue touching me a few minutes more or call me love again with his voice so tender and accepting that I would believe him were he any other man.
"You'll call me Collin when we're alone."
I continued staring at him, mute, my eyes wildly blinking as I held back tears.
He growled and the remainder of the buttons came flying off, their thin strings snapping from his sharp tug. He pulled a breast through the gap, his mouth instantly fastening on the swollen tip as two fingers pushed into my cunt. His thumb landed atop my clit to synchronously rub up and down as his fingers fucked in and out of my pussy.
I arched, like a bow with the arrow notched and a firm hand pulling back on the string before releasing. Collin didn't intend to lessen the tension that kept me with my back off the mattress, my mound and breasts pushing at him. G
ently he chewed at the nipple as he spread his fingers wide inside me.
Trembling, I groaned and felt the slow, crawly drip of my arousal as it leaked from my cunt and trailed down my perineum. My sheath squeezed around his fingers, sucking at them with needy little slurps. Another rough groan slid to a whimpering keening cry before I collapsed back to the mattress.
Withdrawing all contact, Collin lifted his upper body just long enough to peel the jacket from his powerful torso and shred the panel of buttons that secured his dress shirt. Without removing the shirt, he moved down my body, roughly forcing my thighs apart.
Fingers parting my labia, he placed a kiss against the spine of my clit. His tongue pushed past his lips to slither down and curl beneath the hood, finding and swirling around the nodule tucked inside. The aching whine restarted in my throat and I heard him chuckle as his tongue moved lower to circle the wet gate of my pussy.
His lips breaking contact, he pushed three deep into me. "Stop pretending, baby. Stop hiding."
There was no pretense left to me in that bed. Before, after -- certainly I would try to reclaim my dignity, to pretend that I had not surrendered yet again.
His free hand reached up to the bottom edge of the row of missing buttons on my nightdress. Sharp jerks and tugs eviscerated the thin flannel gown. Moving onto his knees, he brought both hands to my shoulders, gripped the remaining fabric and pulled it to the bend in my arms.
"That little sham of a girl inside you, I'm going to destroy her tonight." One hand pushed between the small of my back and the mattress, gathering the back panel of the dress and looping it until he had the remnants of my nightgown binding my arms. "You won't listen to her ever again."
He cupped my mound, his palm bearing down as three fingers once again invaded me. "This is what you'll listen to. This soaking wet hole that wants to be filled and completely possessed."
I couldn't deny his claim. There wasn't an ounce of audacity or braggadocio in his words. He had me there already, all my inhibitions quieted beneath the soft moans that his faintest touch produced.
"Do you want to come, Mia?"
"Yes."
His thumb replaced his palm, its fat tip burrowing between my plump lips to stroke up and down my clit as he stared into my eyes, gauging my reaction, my malleability. "No more hiding?"
"No -- none." Possessed so masterfully by Stark, I had forgotten what I still hid from him. I forgot myself as well, the too ripe flesh that his body brushed against. I was that stranger in the mirror, the woman whose raw beauty had made me gasp right before Collin had propelled me into the elevator.
"I won't let you go back," he warned, sliding into place between my thighs. Each hand pinching a labia to the side, he inspected every inch of my pussy, from the way my clitoral hood jumped from the contractions squeezing inside me, to the quiver of my urethra and the heavy pulse of arousal that kept a fresh stream of cream oozing from my pussy.
"Not ever," he promised and put his mouth to me once more.
Pure heaven licked up and down my flesh, his thick tongue spearing inside me before pressing a firm line up to suckle that small pearl once more. I squirmed, moaned. My fingers tingled with the need to wrap around his head and hold him in place, but my arms remained bound by the gown.
"Please," I moaned, unsure of what exactly it was I pleaded for or against.
Collin seemed not to hear, his attention devoted to producing a volley of jerks and whips throughout my body as his fingers stroked inside me and he nibbled forcefully at my clit and labia, his lips a protective barrier shielding me from his teeth as he gnawed and nipped me toward the edge of climax.
I was right there, every muscle straining to clear that last hurdle and come crying his name, crying Collin and begging him to enter me with more than his hands.
From the floor, a ring tone began to play on his phone, the fanfare and building layers of the Ride of the Valkyries signaling that the caller was not only Stark's second in command, Trent Kane, but that the call came from Kane's second line -- the one reserved for operation command.
With a growl, Collin rolled to the edge of the mattress and fished the phone from his jacket pocket. Punching the accept icon, he barked at Kane.
"Report."
Whatever Kane first said, I saw the tension ease from Collin's shoulders. His hand moved across the bed to reclaim my pussy as he listened. His fingertip ran a circle around the rim of my cunt then raced up to run a slick oval around the hood of my clit.
"Tell me about him."
I tensed at that, suddenly nervous that him might be Glenn, although it seemed ridiculous to have Kane track Ames' background and overblown for Kane to use the operation command line to make his report. Collin must have sensed the change in me because he gave a hard little flick to the underside of my clit and his gaze cut in my direction. Suspicion clouded his eyes as he continued listening to Kane and I realized, ridiculous or not, the topic of their call really was Glenn.
"How long?"
Stark never stopped stroking me as he talked to Kane, but the rubbing turned rough. I could see all the small changes in his expression, the minute narrowing of his gaze, the barely perceptible flattening of his mouth.
Then his hand stopped.
He ended the call without saying good-bye to Kane then reached for his jacket. When he didn't slide the phone into the pocket, but started to push an arm into one sleeve, I knew I had been busted. He wasn't leaving because of some emergency -- he was leaving because I had held back information about Glenn Ames.
Only one sleeve on, he stopped and looked at me. "What's your excuse this time?"
It was pointless to say I had lied because he didn't trust me. He would never trust me again after this last omission. I knew that -- I knew it when I failed to disclose that afternoon. Trust was never part of the day's equation. Humiliation was the sum total by why I had kept my mouth shut. Glenn had humiliated me when we broke up and any number of times while we were together. Stark had demonstrated a far greater capacity for control and degradation than Ames could ever dream of possessing.
"Mia..."
"Because it's humiliating," I whispered. "You were going to fire me anyway. You weren't ever actually attracted to me -- that was all part of your game. Why should I tell you about an ex-lover who didn't think I was good enough for him, either?"
I sucked a big breath in, the words tumbling out even though I tried to stop them. "Why should I tell you how I had to crawl across the street from a job I wanted to Stark International, applying for any position just to keep an apartment and groceries because the man who was supposed to stand by my side couldn't even drive me to interview for my last opportunity in my field?"
There! If Stark needed any more of an explanation, I would have to go get an L tattooed on my forehead so that it would be beyond clear to him that he had suspected a total loser of corporate espionage.
Stark remained motionless and mute for longer than I could bear, my sense of stupidity mushrooming with each second I continued to clasp to my breast one small grain of hope that Collin would confess an actual attraction to me and forgive the omission, perhaps even realize his own role in my failure to disclose.
Finally admitting that moment would never come, I struggled to sit up. I clutched the ruined edges of my night gown together in a failed effort to shield my disheveled and naked body.
"I'll leave," I choked out, abandoning my grip on the material and my piecemeal dignity. "I just need to grab my clothes."
I wouldn't leave with anything he had given me. My foot touched the floor, my brain doing a scattered inventory of what I needed to gather before I could leave. I hesitated before my other foot could slide into place -- all of my documentation was in Stark's keeping.
His hand wrapped around my hair, the iron grip immobilizing my retreat. His other hand pressed flat against my chest, just below my collarbone. Pulling and pushing at the same time, he roughly forced me onto my back on the mattress. He shredded the remaini
ng fabric of the flannel nightgown, leaving my body entirely exposed to his view for the second it took him to spread my thighs and settle his torso over mine. He jerked his arm from the jacket then barked a command at me.
"Close your eyes."
Trembling, I obeyed. When I heard the slide of his zipper, the tremble magnified to a quake.
"Collin..."
"Quiet," he rasped. "Unless you're going to say no, don't say a fucking word."
I sucked a wet cry in and held it. He pushed into me all at once, his thick cock stretching me to the point of straining despite the warm, lubricating layer of my juices. Shame rolled through me. I didn't understand why my body still wanted this man.
With Glenn, I had stayed bone dry during the sex that followed our fights. Those experiences had been a penance -- the fat girl's apology for questioning the love or motives of her handsome fiancé.
In that bed in the suite, Collin's muscular legs filling the gap between my soft, plump thighs, I was a river. My cunt the delta, mouth open to pour my wetness into the sea of linen beneath us. I contracted around his cock, not in an attempt to expel him, but to squeeze every ounce of pleasure I could get from him before he sent me away.
The wet cry I had inhaled released as a humid moan and my hips began to rotate in a slow grind against the hard plane of his lower stomach. I didn't dare open my eyes, didn't want to see his expression and realize his arousal and attraction related solely to his domination of me, with no regard to the flesh and bones or spirit on which he exorcised his anger.
His mouth touched my throat. I braced for the hard nip or bite he would deploy to ensure my submission. The lips glided smooth as butter over my skin to fasten at the hollow of my throat and gently suck. His hands, which had fisted the sheets around us, gripped my shoulders, roughly massaging as he held me down and threw all the power of his body into the thrusts with which he took me.
I whimpered, mewled, knowing he didn't care if I came but coming nonetheless, my body breaking down into jerks and quivers until I heard his harsh exhalation and he stopped.
