by Katee Robert
She pushed the thoughts away. Tonight wasn’t about some faceless ass of a CEO. It was about following through on the promises Grayson kept making that made her weak in the knees.
Danielle had every intention of seeing it through.
Chapter Three
Grayson couldn’t stop looking at her. Her catsuit hugged every curve as if it were painted on. From what little it left to the imagination, it might as well have been. Combined with the lace mask that only accented her dark eyes, and those heels making her legs look a whole lot longer, he was having a hard time reminding himself to play this slow.
The zipper that ran down between her breasts, nearly to the vee between her legs, did absolutely nothing for his control.
Hell, he’d already jumped the gun and pushed her further than he intended, but he’d panicked when she’d said she was leaving. Tonight was the night where everything changed, and nothing would change if she left before he had a chance to make his move. The problem was that he didn’t want to scare her off, especially when she already seemed on edge.
She slid onto the bench next to him, her hip bumping against his in a way that couldn’t be accidental. He hoped. “Now that you’ve got me where you want me, what do you plan on doing?”
“Danielle, this is so far from where I want you, it’s not even funny.” He wanted… No, best not to get into too much detail about what he wanted. Not yet. Play it slow. Do not scare her. Grayson cleared his throat and leaned back to sip on his bourbon. Now would be the time to tell the truth. All he had to do was open his mouth and tell her who he was, but he couldn’t seem to do it. Instead, he took the easy way out. “I’m glad you came.”
“If I have my way, I will be later.” His cock hardened as his thoughts circled around exactly how he’d make that happen. A thousand ways, until she was as completely enthralled with him as he was with her.
He wondered what she’d say if she knew just how detailed his fantasies had become as he sat across from her those first few coffee dates and watched her drink her ridiculous energy drinks and nibble on her daily doughnut. It had only gotten worse as time went on, and he’d become attracted to more than just the pretty package. She was intelligent and driven, and completely unafraid of what the world thought of her. It was a trait he wished he shared more of. Being around her washed away the dust of the daily grind and made him feel new. Added to that, she had a wicked sense of humor that she didn’t hesitate to use when verbally sparring with him.
While he was lost in his thoughts, she slipped his bourbon out of his hand and took it as a shot before setting the glass aside. “Now, let’s stop playing coy. You didn’t lure me over here to this darkened bench just to make small talk.”
She obviously was used to being in control—had more than proven it with some of the encounters she’d mentioned when he first met her. Danielle liked her men where and when she wanted them, and then she wanted them to go on their way. That was too damn bad. Grayson had no intention of relinquishing control tonight—or later.
He’d allowed her to set the terms of their encounters up to this point, but that ended tonight. “Why not? I’ve always enjoyed our talks.”
Danielle narrowed her eyes. “I have, too…”
“Then what’s wrong with talking?” Unable to help himself, he took her hand and ran his thumb over her knuckles and around to her palm. “I happen to love talking.” Though he could think of much better ways to put his mouth to use right now.
Slow. Play it slow.
“Grayson—”
He kissed her knuckles, his tongue tracing the same pattern his thumb had just taken, ending with an openmouthed kiss on her palm. Jesus. It wasn’t the part of her he’d spent considerable time imagining tasting, but the feel of her skin against his mouth was addicting in a way he wasn’t sure he’d be able to shake. All from one little kiss. How much better would it be when he actually claimed her mouth? “Hmm?”
“You’re a terrible tease.” Her laugh came out shaky. “But I guess I should have known that, huh?”
“I’m not the only one who teases.” If she knew how many times he’d fantasized about her raspy voice calling out his name, how many times he’d left their coffee dates and had to go shut the door to his office and palm himself through his slacks, maybe she’d appreciate how difficult it was for him not to yank that catsuit off her right here, right now.
And why not?
Because I am supposed to be taking this slow. Even as he completed the thought, he tightened his hand on hers. What was the point? He was barely hanging on as it was, and if she kept shivering like that, he was going to lose all semblance of control. Once again the little devil on his shoulder whispered, Why not?
Grayson glanced down the hall, to where the party seemed to be in full swing. “Thriller” blared from the speakers, overtaking the laughter and murmur of conversation. No one was looking for them—hell, no one would have expected him to make an appearance here, so they had no reason to look for him.
Why not give in to temptation? What was holding him back? He already knew he enjoyed Danielle’s company in more than a casual way, and that even being around her set his blood aflame. He knew he wanted more from her than just a physical commitment.
Watching her carefully, Grayson leaned in. If she balked, or even hesitated, he was prepared to call this whole thing off. They might have had several months to get to know each other, months of casual touches that turned into sexually loaded ones, but that didn’t mean she was on the same level as he was. Despite her teasing, he couldn’t afford to assume anything.
Danielle didn’t hesitate. She kissed him, once again striving for dominance by grabbing his shoulders and angling her mouth. He almost laughed, but the taste of her swept away the urge as if it had never existed. Chocolate and rum. Grayson couldn’t stifle his growl as he grasped the back of her neck, holding her in place while he plundered her mouth. Danielle clutched his cloak with both hands, pulling him closer as a whimper slipped free.
Fuck taking it slow.
He dragged her against him, only planning on getting more of her within reach, but Danielle took it one step further and climbed into his lap. She writhed against him, rubbing against his cock in a way that made him grab her hips. If she kept that up, he was going to throw his plan out the window, and he couldn’t afford to do so. “Patience.”
“I ever tell you I’m not all that good at being patient?” She licked her way down his neck and nibbled on his collarbone. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be the big, bad guy everyone’s afraid of?”
For a second he thought she knew who he really was and dread turned his stomach to stone. Then Grayson realized she was talking about his costume. Ah, yes, the Phantom. He hissed out a breath as she rolled her hips again. “Maybe I’m just misunderstood.”
Danielle shifted, tracing her tongue along the shell of his ear. “Maybe. Or maybe you should just stop bullshitting and take what you want.”
Take what he wanted? Hell, she couldn’t have given him a clearer green light if she’d waved a flag in his face. He wanted to take her, wanted it so bad he could nearly taste it. Grayson grabbed her ass and pressed her tighter against him. “You feel how much I want you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Thirty more seconds of this and he would have her naked right here and to hell with the consequences. Once again caution reared its ugly head and shouted at him to slow down. They couldn’t do this here. It wouldn’t affect his career—though his reputation might take a hit—but it might damage hers. He refused to put her in that position, no matter how much he wanted to put her in certain other positions.
Which meant they had to get the hell out of this alcove before someone stumbled along looking for the bathroom.
Grayson took a deep breath and sat back, releasing his hold on her. “Get up.”
She blinked at him as if coming out of a daze. “Up?”
“Now.” Need made the word a little
harsh, but Danielle jumped to her feet, instantly responding to his command. Since he knew for a fact that she didn’t instantly respond to any command, he relished it for the rarity it was. It also led his mind down the winding path of how far he could take the game. “This way.”
He pushed to his feet and started down the hallway, not bothering to look back to see if she was following. She was. He could hear the click-click-click of her heels on the tiled floors, just as he could hear how her mood transformed from shocked to confused to angry. “Grayson? Where the hell are we going?”
Instead of answering—he was hanging on to his control by a thread, and he didn’t trust himself to so much as speak if he wanted to get her out of this hallway without fucking her senseless—he stopped in front of the elevator and pushed the up button. The doors opened a few seconds later, and Danielle followed him inside. She grabbed his arm. “Hey, I asked you a—”
He spun her around and pressed her against the wall. “And I didn’t give you permission to speak.” It was a test, in the same way everything had been to this point. He had to push her until she shoved back—or gave in. Only then would he know exactly how far to take this.
Her brown eyes went wide. She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again, the frown line between her brows getting deeper with each thought she didn’t voice. But she didn’t try to get away. Instead, she arched against him, ever so slightly. Grayson stroked her bottom lip, his thumb standing out against the red. “Would you like to play a game?”
She nodded, her eyes still wide.
“If you obey, I’ll see that you’re rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.”
Some of the almost-fear left Danielle’s face and she smiled. “This is where you tell me you’re a genie, right?” When he stared, she made a show of zipping her lips shut. “My bad.”
It had nothing to do with breaking her. He wasn’t the type to enjoy that sort of thing, but Grayson wanted her submission, had craved her submission from the first time he recognized what she might come to mean to him. He dropped his hand to bracket her throat, squeezing just a little to see if it scared her. When her eyes dropped to half mast and a sigh slipped free, he knew he had her.
The doors opened on the executive floor—his floor. There wasn’t much up here except for his office and the offices of his top three employees, all with their own assistant. All of whom were downstairs enjoying the costume party, which suited him just fine since he fully intended on enjoying his office.
Danielle snapped a jaunty salute. “Permission to speak, sir?”
“Now you’re just being cheeky.” But he liked it. He enjoyed this back-and-forth as much as he had the rest of it. As much as he liked the give-and-take of power, he could also visualize lazy Sunday mornings with her, laughing and making love and breakfast in bed.
Christ, he wanted that easily as much as he wanted her on her knees.
“Who, me?”
Grayson managed to keep a straight face, but just barely. “Speak.”
“Who the hell did you sleep with to get access to the executive floor?”
He’d forgotten for a moment that she didn’t know the truth. Grayson tried to decide the best way to approach this, but Danielle kept right on speaking. “Because, seriously, this is somewhere my dad would be comfortable spending time. And by time, I mean every second of every day. The people who work up here are probably more married to their jobs than any family they have on the side.” She shuddered.
Considering the tumultuous relationship she had with her father, it wasn’t exactly the most flattering of comparisons. The truth hit him like a sucker punch to the stomach—if he told her who he was now, she wouldn’t stick around to hear him out, not when she’d already acted as judge and jury to the people who held these offices. She’d take off because it was a knee-jerk reaction, and it wouldn’t matter that they’d spent hours upon hours talking or that a single kiss had him harder than he could ever remember being in his life. She’d still leave.
Unless he gave her a reason to stay.
Then he’d damn well give her a reason to stay. If he could prove to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were so well matched, she’d have to pause long enough to see reason. Tonight was his opportunity to do that. So Grayson gave her his most charming smile. “Mail guy, remember? I get into all the best places.”
“Oh yeah. Duh.” Some of the suspicion left her face, and she licked her lips. “So are we going to be very, very bad?”
His grin widened. “Sweetheart, we haven’t even gotten started yet.” Grayson yanked her against him and kissed her mercilessly, his tongue stroking hers, and then out of reach before she could respond in kind, again and again, until she melted against him.
Only then did he set her on her feet and take a step back. “Come on.”
This time the look on her face didn’t fade as they made their way into his office. He flipped on the perimeter lights, leaving the harsher overheads off. When he turned around, it was to find her watching him with a strange look on her face. “Yes?”
“It’s nothing. Just with the shadows and you in that costume… You really do remind me of the Phantom.” She glanced away, and then back, a slow grin pulling at the edges of her mouth. “Want to know a secret?”
“Tell me.”
“I always kind of had a thing for him. The tortured loner with a devious streak a mile wide—Phantom is my kind of fellow.” She frowned. “Except for the whole not-being-able-to-get-it-up thing. That was kind of a buzzkill.”
Grayson crossed to her and pressed her hand against the length of his cock that was pretty damn apparent through his pants. “Does it feel like I share the same problem?”
“Uh… Not so much.” Danielle leaned back against the desk, idly stroking him. “So, what’s the plan, Stan?”
As difficult as it was to walk away from the feeling of her hand on his cock, he did. He circled the desk and sank into the chair on the other side. “Strip.”
Chapter Four
Danielle blinked, sure she’d heard him wrong. “Uh, what?”
He made a motion with his finger. “Strip.”
With him sitting behind the desk, almost completely in shadow, the only thing that stood out was the brilliant white of the half mask on his face. He could be anyone, a complete stranger.
Except this was Grayson. The same man she’d confessed to about her up-and-down relationship with her father, who in turn told her about how rough things had been for him growing up with parents who were never around—the same man who’d made her wetter than she could ever remember being with only a kiss and a sharply worded command.
He sat in silence, not pushing her, but not giving any leeway either. He wanted her to strip? She could do that. Danielle tossed her hair over her shoulder and unbuckled her belt. Before she could drop it on the ground next to her, he lifted his hand. “Put that on the desk.”
Her gaze landed on the whip and she wondered if maybe she should just call the whole thing off. The thought coasted away under a wave of sheer desire when he tilted his head and she caught the glint of his eyes behind the mask. No one had ever looked at her like that before, as if she were owned. Plenty of men had wanted to possess her, had tried to make her theirs, but Grayson was the only one to walk in and just assume control. He’d done it to a lesser extent up to this point—as much as afternoons in a coffee shop would allow—but this was something else altogether. As if everything were already decided and it was just a matter of things falling into place.
She was so turned on she could barely think straight. Moving slowly, mostly to assure herself she wasn’t a total lost cause, she unzipped the front of the catsuit. It was so tight, there wasn’t exactly room for more than a G-string, so her breasts practically popped out of the thing once she got to the bottom of the zipper.
She was able to peel out of it without looking like a damn fool, but that was due to a whole lot of practice and some well-placed baby powder. As she stepped out of the sui
t, left in only her sad excuse for panties, she waited for him to say something, do something, have some sort of reaction to the sight of her naked.
He gave her nothing.
Perversely, it just made her want to perform further. She turned a slow circle, putting a little wiggle in her hips. Still nothing. Danielle propped her hands on her hips. “Well?”
“The panties.”
Shit, he really wasn’t giving an inch. Danielle toyed with the top of her panties, dipping her finger in, all too aware of how exposed she was. The satiny feel of the fabric against her heated skin nearly drove her to the edge. This was insane. Grayson shouldn’t be able to get her this hot without even touching her. Except he’d already done it countless times before, hadn’t he? This was just the payoff.
And what a payoff it was.
“The panties, Danielle.”
There was no denying the command, and she didn’t want to. She slid her panties over her hips and dropped them to the floor. A quick sidestep and she was completely naked. For all that she’d been with people before this and wasn’t particularly shy, she’d never actually stripped for a man up to this point. Not to mention stripped in such a way that gave him all the power and her none. Her body felt as if it’d been hooked up to a battery, nerves vibrating as she wondered what would come next. Her nipples were hard peaks, giving him a visual indicator of her desire. If he decided to come closer, he’d get a whole list of others. She raised her eyebrows, silently challenging him to keep going.
“Bend over the desk, legs shoulder-width apart.”
Her breath stuttered in her lungs as she obeyed, this feeling so much more vulnerable than the striptease had made her. When she heard him move, she started to look up, but his voice stopped her. “Forehead to the desk, please.”
