by Bella Forro
I felt him stiffen beside me.
“You must know you can’t believe anything Amy has to say to you. The woman has an agenda a mile long that doesn’t overlap with anyone else’s. Her agenda doesn’t even include actual facts.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know she sees right through us and knows that whatever we have is nothing compared to what she had with you.”
I couldn’t help the way my words were laced with anger. Just thinking about the encounter was setting my blood to boil.
This whole evening had been nothing but a disaster from the very beginning. And after seeing all of those beautiful women in all of those beautiful clothes, I was feeling like the ugliest duckling in the world in my borrowed top and skirt.
In response, Mark grunted.
Which, really, did little to assuage any of the feelings I was having since she’d told me he’d strayed in the past and he had always gone back to her.
That part had been the worst, left a gnawing pit of anxiety inside of me. That was the part that had me thinking everything I’d imagined, everything I hadn’t imagined, like that kiss by the window, was just one more layer to a Mark I didn’t really know.
“She said you frequently had indiscretions and always came back to her. She would always forgave you and then you would go on just like before.”
He actually turned to face me. “That’s just crazy. Even for her. I don’t have ‘indiscretions.’ If I’m going to commit to a person, I commit to her.” He shrugged. “After all, there are a lot of women out there who don’t need that. If I didn’t want it, I’d be with one of them.”
I frowned. I’d thought he might be more incensed when I mentioned the accusation, but like everything else, nothing seemed to ruffle his feathers. He just went on denying.
I wasn’t actually sure if that made me feel worse or better about the whole thing.
We’d pulled into a parking garage, and I suspected we were at Mark’s condo. But he hadn’t shared any more information other than that we were going to his place for a review and a nightcap.
I was still thinking about how I should be marching up those stairs at the front of my building — disappearing inside to my own room, to tug off these clothes and pull on a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top and crash for a few hours before I had to endure a Monday morning from hell — when Will pulled open my door and I was stepping out into a garage that hosted nothing but beautiful, imported cars.
There were so many reasons I shouldn’t be there.
But for some reason, none of those were stopping me. And I continued walking through the garage next to Mark, stepping into the over-the-top elevator and we were sliding toward the top of the building.
We’d lost Will somewhere along the way, and I could only assume he was parking the car somewhere, or maybe even did something on occasion that didn’t involve driving the two of us around.
It was just us in the elevator, the quick whir of the motor and the lights on each floor glowing as we passed through.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that we were going to the very top. When we hit the 37th floor and the doors sprung open into a little foyer laid with shiny black stone and he stepped out, I was right on his heels. Somehow, finding myself separated from him here in this building was more terrifying than being alone with him in his condo.
“Come on in, Victoria,” he said as he pressed a code into the keypad at the entrance to his condo.
I didn’t want to ask if Amy was going to be on the other side of the door, if she still had any claim to the place at all. I’d known they had been living together. But now I just didn’t want to know.
The door swung open and I followed him in.
If I’d been impressed by the entryway, the interior of his condo put it to shame. Everything was modern and masculine in white and black, windows everywhere and without treatments, the night sky so close it felt like we weren’t inside at all.
He slipped off his shoes by the door, and I wondered if I was supposed to, too.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”
“A gin and tonic?” I asked as I tugged at the straps of my shoes. I was going to take advantage of slipping them off now, while he wasn’t looking, just in case I made an utter fool of myself and fell on my face while trying to extract myself from them.
The floor was cool and hard against the bottom of my feet and I padded across the space toward him. The whole thing was open, so I could see straight through to the bar, the entertainment space, and the kitchen. Unobstructed views of everything.
I didn’t even want to know where he slept.
He was pouring me my drink, and it didn’t escape my attention that he had top shelf everything. I wasn’t surprised.
He turned toward me with the drink, the tonic bubbles so fresh I could hear them in the quiet between us.
In his other hand was his own drink, amber and strong. His fingers brushed against mine when I took the drink from him, and I was suddenly back in that moment at his father’s flat, where we’d been tucked in the corner and it was like there was no one else there with us. It was like there wasn’t any arrangement between us, and we were just two people who wanted one another and nothing more.
Everything Amy had said to me fell away. All of the crap his Dad had said to me was just as far from me.
And I was stepping in toward him, his eyes hungry.
My right hand held the drink. My left was sliding back up his lapel. Here, in the privacy of his home, I slipped my hand under his jacket and up across his chest.
I wanted him.
“What about your rule?” he asked, and his voice was all gravel. “No sex. No kissing. No nothing. Strictly professional.”
I’d said every one of those things. Multiple times. To myself. To him. To Cassie. To anyone and everyone who would listen.
And now I didn’t care about that at all.
“Forget about the rules. I don’t want to think about them right now.”
He took a sip of his drink before setting it back on the bar. “Oh?” he asked. “And what was it you wanted to be thinking about instead?”
I tore my eyes away from his. I couldn’t bear to look at him another moment. My fingers were brushing against his shirt, desperate to feel his skin. “Just this.”
“This?” he asked, his hand moving up to capture mine.
“Yes.”
“This?” he asked, his mouth coming down close to my ear, finding the hollow there before sliding down along the column of my neck and toward the top of my shoulder.
“Yes,” I whispered, my voice ragged, my free hand rising up to run through his hair, the other still holding the drink he’d given me.
I hadn’t even had my first sip.
“I have wanted to get you out of this thing since I first saw you in it. Hell,” he said, pulling at the top until he was tugging it over my head and leaving it discarded on the floor. “I’ve wanted to take your clothes off since the moment I first saw you. I knew I had to have you.”
He took a step back from me, and I felt vulnerable and bare in front of him, in the black lace strapless bra and the tight skirt, my bare feet and painted toes inches from his.
But that wasn’t going to stop me.
“And?” I asked. My voice was hushed, and still seemed loud in the room.
“And,” he growled, “it’s so much better than I could have ever imagined.”
Then he was pulling me close, his hands reaching out for my waist, his mouth falling on mine, his lips soft and sure, his tongue sliding past my teeth and against my tongue.
I couldn’t help the little moan that escaped me. I didn’t want to.
His hands seemed to be everywhere at once. Playing in my hair, cupping my breast, slipping up underneath the hem of my skirt until the whole thing was a twisted mess.
“I haven’t even given you the tour,” he murmured in between kisses.
“I don’t need a tour
,” I said, pulling at his jacket. “I just need to know the way to your bedroom and I need you in a whole lot less.”
He chuckled. “As you wish,” he said with an exaggerated wink, and I was thinking again about how easily he could transition from the business role into a bad boy.
Which seemed to be in my favor.
His hand was in mine and he was moving away from the bar. I longed for my gin and tonic, but I was going to have to bravely face this without it.
I didn’t have time to be impressed by his bedroom. We stepped through the door and he was shrugging out of his jacket, tossing it over the top of his dresser, and I took a moment to relish in the concept that he was a person, too, with priorities that didn’t always involve hanging up his clothes.
It was just a start to what I was looking for, and my fingers were working on the buttons of his shirt before he had the opportunity to start undressing himself.
He didn’t seem to mind. While I was focusing on that task, he was pulling my skirt down over my hips and I was stepping out of it. Then, in just my bra and my underwear, I was sliding the cotton shirt off of his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor, and he was guiding me back toward his bed.
I tumbled back onto it, and realized that, somewhere along the way, he had managed to pull my hair free, and it fanned out behind me.
His touch was delicious on my skin, and every inch of my body was humming with his touch. Without his shirt on, his skin was hot beneath my fingertips, his body chiseled and hard, and all of the things I knew he would be under those designer clothes.
Christ. No wonder Amy didn’t want to let him go. It didn’t hurt that his kisses were earth-shattering.
We weren’t even naked yet, and I was trembling with need and desire.
He unlatched my bra with a flick of his hand, tossing it down to the floor with the rest of his clothes, cupping my breast in his hand before dropping his head to it, letting his tongue flick out against my nipple.
My hand was in his hair again, tracing his ear, pressing him to me, gasping as his teeth raked against the sensitive skin there.
It was hard for me to focus on anything other than the warmth spreading though me, and his hand was slipping up beneath the lace band of my underwear, brushing up against me so I shuddered against him.
This was far more than I’d thought it would be. And now, I was pretty sure there would be no way to stop the train we were on.
His fingers picked up an easy rhythm against my body and I began to tremble.
“Mark,” I moaned into his skin as he nipped at me with his teeth. “That feels incredible.”
“This?” he asked again, and I knew he was teasing me, but his voice was strained. “This is nothing.”
The promise sent another tremor through me, added to the delicious build of pressure I could feel between my thighs.
“You should take off your pants.”
He didn’t bother with a quip, this time. He just pulled away and rushed out of his pants and socks, until he was gloriously naked in front of me, already ready for me.
I could have stared at him for hours, but he didn’t give me the chance. Instead, he was moving back over me, his hard length pressing against me, entering me, until I felt wonderfully full of him.
I could hear the both of us breathing, and then he began to move, and I was lost in the very feel of him, meeting him with each thrust, anxious to have as much of him as he could give me.
I felt the orgasm spiral through me, and I cried out, pulling him tightly to me as I came.
He wasn’t far behind me. With a sound of pleasure, I felt him find his own release and we quieted in his oversize bed.
He was nestled into me, and I felt his loss viscerally when he pulled away to lie next to me, drawing me toward him until I was pressed into the curve of his body, my legs tangled in his, every move my body made reminding me of the incredible pleasure he had just brought me.
I let my fingers play across the breadth of his chest, the sparse, dark hair there, crisp beneath my fingertips.
In the aftermath, I was thinking about all the reasons we shouldn’t have done this in the first place. And then I was wondering when we’d be able to do it again.
I didn’t even know what I wanted out of this whole thing.
“I can’t do this, Mark. I can’t keep working for you like this.”
I was trying to extract myself from him, trying to pull myself up into a seated position, clutching the sheet to my body.
But he wasn’t making it easy for me, pulling me back toward him.
“What do you mean?” he was asking, and I could hear the post-coital edge of contentment and fatigue, as well as concern.
“I mean; I can’t do this with you. I don’t want your money. I don’t want to work for you.”
“Why not?” he asked, pulling away from me and peering down at me, the fatigue chased away now by the concern. I realized we’d never even turned off the lights. “What do you want?”
I couldn’t look at him when I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “You,” I murmured, and I wasn’t even sure he could hear me at all. I couldn’t look at him. My face was burning. He was on every inch of my skin. “I just want you,” I said into the quiet. “That’s all.”
Chapter 14
Mark
I loosened my tie and turned on the desk light.
Another late night in the office.
Not that I wasn’t used to them. I’d spent too many late nights sitting in a desk chair. It’s just that, up until recently, there had always been a series of expectations that came along with those nights.
When I’d been with Amy, I knew they meant that I wouldn’t be welcome back home unless I came bearing gifts: flowers, jewelry, that handbag that she’d been eyeing at the boutique. I would need to spend hours, and possibly even days, smoothing everything out. Even when it was beyond my control. She never understood, or cared to understand, what it meant to be involved in the kind of business I was in, or what it took to be as successful as I was. She wanted all of the benefit and none of the sacrifice.
But Victoria was something else entirely. She knew what it meant to be under a deadline you couldn’t walk away from. When I became tangled up in a meeting and couldn’t call when I said I would, when I took phone calls at odd hours from overseas partners, she just took it all in stride.
I’d never been with someone who understood so precisely what I needed. It was inspiring and refreshing.
And entirely unnerving.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. Her hair, tumbling around her shoulders. Her eyes, the way they shifted from that blue to a stormy gray. That moment in bed, when she’d pulled the sheets up to her chest and said she didn’t want the job at all if it meant she couldn’t be with me in the most real sense of the word.
I have to admit, that was only the best news of the century as far as I was concerned.
And good news was something that had really been in short supply lately, so I was going to take that and hold onto it tightly.
But Victoria had been so adamant that what we had was a business arrangement that I hadn’t seen any of it coming. Not really. The attraction, of course. It was palpable. But I hadn’t even considered that she might want to move beyond it into something real.
Until we did.
I tried to focus on the material I had in front of me for another minute before reaching for my cell phone.
I wasn’t going to be getting much done until I saw her. I was just going to have to accept that as a fact.
Dinner?
I didn’t have to wait long for a response, which I thought meant she might be as eager to see me as I was to see her. Not that I thought she was just sitting around waiting for me to text her, but it was good to know she was just as interested in me as I was in her.
Definitely.
I checked the time.
My place in thirty?
I figured that would give me the time I
need to get out of the office and dressed into something else, with dinner started before she walked in the door. And we could make the most of the time we had left in the day.
I was already pulling my papers together, packing myself up for the night. I’d take it home with me, and if I got to it after dinner, that would be great.
And if I didn’t, it was because I had something better to do.
I flipped on lights as I moved through the condo, turning the sound system on and unbuttoning my shirt before I even made it to my bedroom.
Two quick minutes later I was in my favorite blue jeans and a t-shirt, the floor was cool on my bare feet. It was amazing how quickly the tension started to ease out of me. Nothing beat coming home after a long day.
Except, maybe, coming home and knowing Victoria would be there in just a few minutes.
I tugged bell peppers out of the refrigerator, reached for the chicken I had been thawing and fired up the stove.
I didn’t have the chance to cook as often as I liked to, but I did enjoy it when I had the time. And I never enjoyed it more than when I was cooking for someone else.
I had the oil in the skillet, and the peppers sliced when I heard Victoria rap on the door.
I’d already told her she should feel free to come and go as she pleased, but apparently, we were still well into the knocking phase of the relationship.
I pulled the door open.
“Hi, there,” I said, leaning forward to press a kiss against her cheek, trying not to become distracted by her very presence. “You know you don’t need to knock.”
“Oh, I know,’ she said breezily, with a little tilt of her head and a full smile, her mouth almost begging to be kissed. “I’m working on it.”
“Work a little harder,” I grumbled as she brushed past me and I gave a little swat at her backside. “Come to the kitchen. I’m in the middle of sautéing the vegetables.”
“Smells delicious,” she said, and I had to agree. The whole condo was filled with the aromatic spices, and the sounds of the dinner coming together.
