by Sabrina York
She dropped a pencil between them and bent to retrieve it. When she bent over like that, he could see right down her blouse. He could see her dainty breasts cupped in her dainty bra. As she slowly righted herself, he could swear he caught a glimpse of nipple. He almost swallowed his tongue.
He’d made intricate mental notes about every aspect of her being today. He noticed her outfit—a modestly long tweed skirt and decorously buttoned blouse—the style of her hair, the prim set of her chin, her expressions, the words she uttered. All in an effort to come closer to reconciling the two Shannons. He’d failed miserably. He still couldn’t imagine her doing—or even wanting to do—some of the acts he’d seen on the screen last night, but he couldn’t quell his rampant imagination.
And as for reminding himself of the reasons why the two of them could never become tangled in an array of limbs on his office carpet with him thrusting into her hot wet canal—well, what a waste of time that had become.
He was now more fascinated than before.
The meeting, apparently adjourned by Adam, ended while Tristan was mooning over the woman he could never have. When he emerged from his dark ruminations, he was surprised to see everyone except Adam and Shannon had left the room.
“Tristan?” Adam said. “Can I see you for a sec?”
He wiped a hand over his face. He knew that tone. “Sure, Adam.”
“Shannon, can you give us a minute?”
“Absolutely.” She collected her papers. As she stood to leave, her arms filled with presentation packets, her pencil dropped to the floor once again. “Blast,” she muttered and bent to pick it up.
Two things occurred to Tristan at that moment. First of all, Shannon was certainly having a difficult pencil day. She’d dropped several of them in the space of an hour. And second, when she dipped to retrieve her pencil, the slit in the back of her very modest skirt parted until he could see practically all the way up.
He was still gawking, trying to get another delicious glimpse of bare thigh, when she stood and made her way from the room, closing the door in her wake. Still, after she disappeared from sight he stared…at nothing. He was frozen in place.
“Tristan?” Adam’s sharp tone wrested him out of his stupor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Huh? What?”
Adam propped his hands on his hips and glared at him. “What. The. Hell. Is Wrong. With. You.”
“Nothing. Why?”
“What was with the quarterlies report? You were like a zombie through the whole thing. Thank God Shannon had handouts so we could understand what the hell you were babbling about. And during Jack’s report? Where were you then? You just stared off into space and didn’t even notice when he turned the meeting over to you.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He did.” Adam rubbed his temple with two fingers. “What the hell is up, dude? Are you sick or something? This isn’t like you.”
Tristan’s impatience flared. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sick.” Sick of being horny.
But Adam wasn’t buying. He looked his brother up and down and frowned. “You’re not sick. You’re as healthy as a horse.”
“There’s just something on my mind.” Tristan crossed his arms over his chest.
“You’d better get it off your mind. We have an enormous launch coming up and you need to be on point for it. This is a huge leap for us.”
“I know.” Tristan didn’t mean to snap. But he didn’t need anyone telling him how important this program launch was.
“And that’s another thing…when did you become such a mean fuck?”
“What?”
“Yeah. Lately, everyone’s complaining that you’re just being a bastard, snarling and snapping and growling. And poor Shannon gets the brunt of it.”
“Has Shannon complained about the way I treat her?” The possibility horrified him.
Adam blinked. “Of course not. Shannon never would. But the others have noticed and mentioned it to Kat. And do you know what else they’ve mentioned to Kat?”
“What?” It was a petulant ejaculation.
“Shannon’s been working on her résumé.”
The bottom fell out of Tristan’s world with that one brief statement, that blinding revelation. “What?” Not so petulant now. Appalled was more like it.
Trillo–Maris without Shannon?
There would be no reason to come to work.
Tristan paled. When had that happened? When had his desire to see her superseded his desire to steer his business, craft his fortune? And then he realized the truth. His business was a success. His fortune had been made. But that was all he had in his life, and it was sadly lacking.
“Dude, you’ve got to be nicer to her.”
“She’s not leaving.”
“She’s working on her résumé.”
“She’s not leaving.”
“Okay. Okay. I’m just saying. People are talking. You need to fix whatever is wrong or we’re gonna have a full-scale rebellion on our hands. And if Shannon leaves, brother, I am not cleaning up that mess.”
“She’s not leaving.” But Tristan was talking to himself. Adam had already stormed from the room. For good measure, he poked his head back in and hissed, “Just fix it,” and then disappeared again.
Tristan slumped in his chair. Shannon was thinking about leaving. What a devastating possibility. Despondently, he gathered his papers and his coffee mug and trudged back to his office. Her desk was dismally empty and that only depressed him more. He never liked it when her desk was empty, especially when she could be off somewhere, even now, interviewing.
Interviewing, for Christ’s sake! With a snarl, he slammed his door shut and then he winced, remembering he was supposed to be nicer.
Shit.
He didn’t feel very nice.
Not at the moment.
He yanked on the blinds, closing them with a violent snick, wishing it were that easy to shut out the world. He was going to have to talk to Shannon about this and he dreaded it.
He sat at his desk and fingered the lid of his laptop. Now, as always, he felt the overwhelming urge to open it and slip into his Virtual Life, into a place where everything was easy and controlled and ultimately satisfying.
But it was his obsession with Shannon that had caused this problem, had nudged its insistent nose into his work life. The reason he was so surly to her—to everyone—was because he was so damn sexually frustrated all the time. Every day. Pretty much all day.
He needed to figure out a way to let it go, to release the hunger for her—without breaking his rule, of course. There were other reasons he and Shannon couldn’t be together but he had to think a bit to remember what they were.
Oh yeah. Her boyfriend. Well, that one no longer applied, now that he’d met barfing Bosco. But there was one other critical hurdle…
His blood thickened in his veins as he recalled the third and final reason he’d decided he and Shannon could never be. He had, in his ignorance, decided she was way too prim and proper for his tastes. Too genteel and delicate to be fucked by a wild beast like him.
Hah! What a joke.
He knew better now. Now he knew she liked it rough. She liked a man to dominate and she liked to dominate in return. She liked giving blowjobs to enormous virtual cocks and she liked a little ass play. She even liked toys.
He shuddered and buried his head in his hands.
The only thing standing between Tristan and absolute bliss was his own stupid rule.
Trouble was, he was damned if he broke it and damned if he didn’t.
With a swift, angry flick, he opened his laptop and logged on to Virtual Life. The usual scene opened and he fought a flare of mild annoyance at his pathetic hunger. He hated that he needed this, but he did.
He settled back in his seat as the instance opened. He immediately knew something was different. The shock froze him in place. He’d played this instance every day, sometimes more than once, and it was always identical. H
e’d programmed it like this. But now…
Now when Virtual Shannon walked into the room, she wasn’t wearing a tight leather skirt, form-hugging belly shirt and slick leather boots. She was wearing a decorous tweed skirt and…shit! A blouse suspiciously identical to the one Shannon was wearing today.
What the hell?
“You wanted me?” she purred in a throaty voice, as she always did.
“Care to take some…dictation?”
“Of course.”
The instance continued on in its usual cheesy manner but Tristan barely noticed. He was poleaxed. There was only one explanation for the change in the scene.
Last night, Shannon had accessed his Green Door files and made some wardrobe adjustments. He should be furious but how could he be, when he’d hacked her private files as well?
That she knew he’d created an instance about her gave him pause. He’d had no idea this morning that she’d discovered his dirty little secret. She’d given nothing away.
Technically, she could sue him for all he was worth. Technically, creating a virtual sexual scenario featuring one of one’s employees was way, way, way over the line. The fact that she’d done the same—created an instance where he was tied to a chair, for example—was irrelevant. He was the boss. It was incumbent upon him to protect his employees from anyone who would take undue advantage of their position. Even himself.
Especially himself.
What he’d done, dressing her like a trollop and programming her to suck him off like a common whore, had been despicable. A wash of shame flooded him. She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t. No wonder she’d gone in and changed poor Virtual Shannon’s clothes.
Aw hell.
He scrubbed at his jaw with his palm. Could this get any worse?
Apparently it could. A soft knock on the door ripped him from his morose reverie.
“Come.” He combed his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make himself presentable.
“Mr. Trillo?”
It was her. She opened the door a crack and poked her head around. He stared at her, her corkscrew curls and fawn-like eyes, her heart-shaped face and dimpled chin. God help him. Desire and fury stabbed at him, twin blades in his gut.
He willed his passion to calm. He didn’t want to screw this up. He really didn’t. “Shannon.”
“May I speak with you?”
He sighed heavily. This was it. It was time. “Please. Come in.”
She edged into the room, closed the door behind her and turned to him, clasping her steno pad before her. He opened his mouth and then closed it, unsure how to begin.
Her tongue, tiny and pink, swept out to dampen her lips and he blurted out the thing hovering at the tip of his brain. “Adam says you’re looking for another job.”
She flinched. Obviously that wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. She cleared her throat and whispered, “Would that please you?”
Please him? Hell, it would kill him. “No!” This, he snarled with such vehemence she stepped back. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to calm down. “Sorry. I’m just… I don’t… I’m not good at this,” he finally finished in a huff.
“Good at what?”
He frowned. “Apologies.”
She shook her head, bemused. “Apologies? For what?”
He favored her with a meaningful glance. “I think we both know. I went on Virtual Life just now.”
A charming blush blossomed on her cheeks. She dropped her gaze. “You don’t need to apologize for that.” She spoke so softly he almost didn’t hear.
“Don’t I?”
“Not unless you expect me to apologize for dropping my pencil in the boardroom or rubbing up against you in the bar.”
He gaped. “That was deliberate?”
Her features suffered a subtle shift and suddenly her expression was anything but demure. “And,” she murmured, “not unless you expect me to apologize for this…”
She sauntered toward him, mimicking the moves of the Shannon in Virtual Life. As she rounded the desk, she tossed her steno pad heedlessly on the floor. She stood before him, her knees nudging his. When she slipped one slender calf between his legs and edged closer, he almost swallowed his tongue.
His heart beat, pounded, in his cock. He was hard as a rock. But then his pulse stalled, skittered, because she raised her hands to the top button of her blouse and looking him straight in the eye, slowly unfastened one button. And then another.
Tristan shuddered as pure lust sliced through his body. He should stop her. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted this, needed this.
She spread the lapels of her blouse, revealing her perfect, perky breasts cupped in a sheer coral lace bra. God. She was even more beautiful than he’d imagined.
“Shannon,” he rasped, and then he lost all capacity for speech.
Because she knelt before him and placed her palm, so incredibly small and delicate, on his thigh. Her gaze captured his and held it as slowly, insistently, her caress made its way to his crotch.
She touched him.
That slight pressure on his throbbing, bourgeoning cock made him cross-eyed. With agonizing precision—that took forever—she unfastened his pants and slipped her hand inside the placket. Into the slit of his briefs. She licked her lips as she found his cock—not a difficult task considering its swollen state—and she squeezed gently. Tristan threw back his head at the sensation, the feel of her palm against his throbbing flesh. He arched into her caress.
Part of his mind spun with disbelief that she was here, now, real and warm before him. The other part was excited beyond belief.
Not one of those parts even considered telling her to stop.
With his help, she slipped his cock from its confinement. It sprang free with a vengeance. She stared at it in wonderment. She stroked him from base to head and back again, murmuring with pleasure. She flicked a look at him, a womanly, sultry look that sent pings of delight shooting through his being.
“I want to taste you,” she said in a sweet, soft voice. God. Those words, in that accent, made him wild. “Would you like that?”
“Oh yeah,” he murmured. As an afterthought he added, “But you’re not tying me to the chair.”
Her brow, that beautiful, elegant, patrician brow, arched as she considered his words, realizing he too had peeked into her fantasies. She murmured, deadpan and dry as the desert, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
Her head came down and her mouth engulfed the sensitive tip of his cock. The vision of her lips stretched to accommodate his girth nearly made him come. The sight, the sensation, warred within his mind for dominance. He wasn’t sure which he enjoyed the most but it hardly mattered. It was incredible, any way you sliced it.
He tightened his muscles in an attempt to hold back his impending orgasm, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt it was a hopeless cause. God. When had he ever been so aroused? He was like a schoolboy with his first woman.
Her mouth was a slick, velvet heaven. She rose up on her knees and buried her head in his lap to get a better angle—he was so hard his cock was like an obelisk, long, thick and utterly intractable. She shifted again and eased him deeper. He filled her completely. The head of his cock nudged the back of her throat. He shivered as her muscles caressed him. The pleasure blinding.
She withdrew—he groaned in dissent—and then took the head of his cock back into the cavern of her mouth, licking, nibbling and sucking in turns at his engorged, heinously sensitive glans. When he was certain he was going to lose his mind at the sheer torture of the sensation, she upped the ante, tightening her lips and sucking even harder. And so she teased him. On and on until he thought, perhaps, he might expire.
He writhed there on the chair, panting and moaning like a dying man as she tormented him incessantly. He wanted so badly to come in her mouth, to grab her head and fuck her like the snarling beast she made him—but he wanted something else more.
He wanted to touch her. Taste her. He wanted to
make her come. To watch her and hear her and smell her as she climaxed around him. To make her as mad and helpless and weak for him as he was for her.
He pulled her to her feet. As he stood with her, his pants dropped to the ground and he impatiently kicked them out of the way. They caught on his shoes so he kicked those off as well. He settled her against the desk and cupped her perfect breasts. As his thumbs skated over her hard, distended nipples, she moaned and undulated her hips.
“Do you like that?” he hissed, moving closer, pressing his bobbing cock against her belly, nudging her into the desk and rubbing hard against her.
“Yes, Tristan.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rolled her hips, a hot, horny hunger limning her expression. It was then Tristan saw it. He saw the point where the two Shannons intersected. She was both—sultry and demure. Seductress and saint.
She was a woman he could love.
The sudden revelation was too difficult to take, too intense, too utterly humbling. It haunted him. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He was lost now. A dark beast compelled him. He turned her around and bent her over the desk. His hand roved over the swell of her ass and he squeezed a warm, firm globe. She moaned in response and shot a hungry look over her shoulder. Her eyes flared when his fingers drifted down the line of her skirt and slipped through the slit in the back, skating up her naked thigh to the crux of her being.
What he found there set him on fire.
She was damp—he noticed that right away with a visceral thrust to his gut. Cream coated the skin of her inner thighs, making his approach slick and quick. But there was more. As he tangled with the soft curly hairs—brave sentries protecting the tender flesh of her pussy—he realized, under her prim and proper skirt she was utterly bare.
His response was feral.
Shannon whimpered as Tristan’s caress drifted up her thigh and skated across her clit. She knew the second he realized she wasn’t wearing any panties because his body, already hard and throbbing, went rigid. He hissed a sharp invective and lowered his mouth to her ear, nibbling sharply.
