“Before I tell you the rest, I want you to know that I knew, before any proof, you hadn’t done this. I knew immediately it was a set up. I swear this to you.”
My hurt feelings were somewhat mollified by his admission. “Then why?” I asked, the tears threatening again. I hadn’t cried this much since my grandma died.
“Because, someone went to a lot of trouble to make it appear as if you’d done it. I wanted to find out why and set a trap.”
“Why couldn’t you tell me?”
“Because, your face. You’re too honest. I wanted to tell you, to explain. I tried to call you, to meet with you outside the office, but you didn’t answer. I swear, it was only to make sure it appeared as if I believed you’d done it. I need time to catch the real culprit. Your face had to look as if I’d handed you your ass on a platter after having kicked it through the goal posts.”
Well, that was a colorful metaphor or whatever. “Well, you did do that. Security? Really?” I laughed and cried at the same time, blowing my nose in the midst of it.
I looked up in time to catch the ghost of smile on his face.
“I did say with pay, you know. That was supposed to be your clue,” he chided softly.
I froze for a moment, thinking about it. Yeah, technically, without pay was the standard for that sort of suspension. I had been too busy thinking along personal lines to think that one through. “I…I didn’t catch it. I understand now, though.”
“Do you? I hated the hurt on your face. As soon as I had a minute alone, I called you.”
“I couldn’t answer. I needed time.” I wished I had though. My stubbornness had interfered. And pride. I hated that he’d seen me hurting like that. If I’d answered and met with him as he’d wanted, I might not have had to spend the whole day feeling like I’d lost the best thing in my life.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s my stubborn pride. I should have known better after all this time of working with you. I let my hurt get in the way. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. Just, trust me now?”
“Funny thing is, I still trusted you on one level. I couldn’t believe you’d done it. I think that is part of why I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t want to face you if I turned out wrong about you, because part of me still trusted you, even after all that.”
You’re quite amazing,” he said then turned those intense eyes on me.
Fuck. I should have looked away while I still could. His eyes did things to my insides that made him impossible to resist, and I think he knew it. At least, they worked on me.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered then, and this time, when he stepped toward me, I didn’t move away. I didn’t shift closer either, but he came all the way to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I had to put the techs on it and prove what I already knew. It couldn’t be me. Since it involves our trust account, I had to make sure there was no question of nepotism or favoritism, or anyway they could say I mucked about with things. I was trying to protect you, protect us.”
That made sense. I sighed. “It hurt. Deeply. In case you couldn’t tell by the signs of my ugly crying,” I replied, trying to joke as I always did, hiding behind it like a Viking with a shield.
Apparently, he wasn’t fooled by the joke. His hands slowly caressed my shoulders, and his eyes got this look which I tried to describe to myself, part pain, part love, part regret…wait, part love?
“I knew the second I asked you to shut the door that you were hurt. It’s why I had to pretend to not be paying attention. I couldn’t have followed through with it if I’d had to see it on your face. I already struggled with the pain I did see.” He raised a hand and caressed my cheek, and I found myself rubbing it into his palm and closing my eyes. “I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me.” He leaned in for a soft kiss, and my heart just melted.
It would take a while for that feeling of betrayal, for the hurt of going all day without knowing what was going on to heal, but I was more than willing to allow him to be the balm to my pain, more than willing to forgive him. He held the key to my heart, if he but knew it.
I kissed him back, tentatively, finding my place, unsure of my role anymore, despite his pleas of forgiveness. After a minute of the soft kissing, he deepened it, mating with my tongue, gently, but with more and more intensity. He pulled me into him, and though his erection pressed into my pelvic area, he didn’t seem in a hurry to go to sex.
He stopped the kiss and lifted his head just far enough to stare into my eyes. God, I wished he’d quit doing that. I’d do anything for him when he gazed at me like that. Our bodies were basically touching from knee to chest, but in that moment, it was if we were one.
“Am I forgiven,” he asked quietly.
My eyes filled with tears of relief. “Of course I do,” I whispered huskily. “How could I not? You own my heart.” Well, was that better or worse than admitting I love him when he never said it to me? Too long had I denied it to myself. I sighed. I didn’t care. My love was given freely, not only if he loved me back.
He stared at me for so long, I began to squirm. He was still turned on, and his nearness had its usual effect on me. But his intense stare had me nervous. “You really do love me, don’t you,” he said in wonder, as if he’d only just believed it right then.
In answer, I kissed him and then begged, “Please, make love to me. Make me forget, if only for a moment, the awfulness of today, the horrible pain of believing you were gone from my life. Make me forget it, please.”
He groaned and kissed me again in response. However, this one was hard, bruising. Then he stepped away and took my hand, leading me to the bedroom. Once there, I started to take off my clothes, but he stopped me with his hands. With no words, he knelt and began to lift my shirt which hung to my thighs. His lips caressed every bit of me as he pushed it up. I tingled everywhere he touched, my skin feeling like the shore that waves were crashing on.
As he made it to my chest, he stood, bending to suck my taught nipples in and giving them a quick nip. My breathing had long since gone to erratic and stayed there, and I know my juices had started dripping. More, my heart had started healing. He soon had my shirt off, having kissed my cheeks and forehead, and even a quick peck on the nose. Then he knelt again. I had put on cotton underwear when I changed. Somehow, he made them feel like the sexiest underwear ever as he pulled them down.
“I can smell your enticing scent,” he said while slowly sliding my undies down. “Smell your excitement for me, for my touch.”
My breath was captured by his unusual words. He normally didn’t speak much, especially during sex, except to boss me around, and here, it was as if he worshipped my body. I don’t think I’ve ever been this turned on in my life, and I could only whimper in response. My knees threatened to hold a mutiny and let me fall on my own as he kissed his way down my legs.
If I hadn’t loved the man before, I would have by the time he had me lying back in bed. He was gentle, touching, stroking, bringing me to completion before he even lay beside me. Once he lounged by me, he gently caressed my breasts, tweaking my nipples as he was wont to do. I was glad to feel that bit of roughness. I loved the gentle, but I hadn’t wanted to unman him with my anger. Well, maybe for a second when he’d mentioned security and every time I thought of it after. But not really. I wanted and loved him for him, bossy and all.
I decided to take matters into my own hands at that point. I sat up and lay across him, my lips making their way across his chest, to his nipples, then down to his pelvic area, where I kissed his inner thighs before licking my way up his erection. I held onto the base of him and then drew him in, all the way down, moaning in pleasure, relief, and anticipation. I watched him as I laved attention to his dick and loved how his eyes closed when I increased the speed of my up and down motion.
I wanted to prove to him he was forgiven, so I sucked and licked and tongued the tip for a long time. Then, when my pussy had clenched and warned me of the impending orgasm I was ab
out to have, I straddled him and guided him inside me. As I slid down the length of him, it was my turn for my eyes to close as the sensation became greater than I could contain.
I experimented a few strokes and adjusted to the spot that felt the best, and then I rode him, slowly, sensuously. I held my breasts up as if offering them to a god, and to me, it was the same. I opened my eyes and caught him staring at my hands as if mesmerized. He brought his hands up to my breasts and fingered the tips into hard peaks.
I began to ride him faster as my climax started taking over my body. He grabbed my hips when my orgasm slammed me into immobility, and he rode me from underneath, taking charge of the pace, and I screamed as the wave of my lust hit harder. He went in even deeper than before, and my heart spilled over. I cried out, “I love you.”
“I love you, Fiona. God.” His hands on my hips clenched so hard, I knew I’d have bruises, and then he cried out. His orgasm triggered another in me. It was a long time before my aftershocks subsided enough I became coherent again. I simply collapsed on his chest, resting my head over his heart, finding comfort in its rhythm.
When I could move again, I rolled to the side, and he pulled me in, tightly for a moment, then back to comfortably. After the crying jab and coming like I was the ocean in high tide, my body was done. I drifted off to sleep, content in his arms.
The next morning, I got up with him. “So, I can’t go into work even though you know it wasn’t me?”
“No, not until we have this fixed. The time stamp is when you and I were in Long Beach having a late night drink. Whoever did this did not realize you were out of town. What would you usually have been doing around ten thirty on a Saturday night?”
I sighed. “Since meeting you? Sitting at home fantasizing about you and watching Netflix.”
I laughed as his eyes bugged out. “I’m sorry. Was that too honest?”
“No,” he said in a decided fashion. “Just makes me more determined. So, as far as the office knows, you’d normally not have an alibi, even if they suspected something had started between us, they can’t have known we’d have spent the night out of town.”
“Agreed.”
“If they find out, I’m afraid you’ll be hurt to cover it up even more. This was a huge amount of money. It alone would be worth killing for to a lot of criminals. I need to get to the bottom of this. Let me protect you. It is my job, both as your boss and especially as your Dom. For my sake, please, don’t let anyone but me into the house, ask who it is before answering the door, even for delivery. Which reminds me, don’t have anything delivered.”
I gaped at him. “You think someone wants to hurt me?”
“I’m sure of it. And possibly me now as well, for having slept with you.”
“I’ll stay home,” I said giving in. “But what about you?”
“I have security crawling the office all day and in the parking garage as well.”
“Please, be safe,” I implored. The idea of losing him so quickly after finding him…well, I already had a glimpse of how that would feel, and it would be ten times worse if he were dead.
“I will be careful,” he promised, holding me closer.
“Text me every half hour. Just something so I know you’re safe. Just an…N.”
“N for Nicholas,” he joked, his hand stroking my hair.
“No, n for nipples,” I said. His laughter swept over me, warming the coldness leftover from the awful day yesterday. “See, now you’ll remember,” I added.
5
I paced the apartment, waiting for him to come home. Practicality had won out, and I only requested a text every couple of hours. This was the third day since my infamous walkout. From what Nicholas said, the tension lay so thick over the office, it produced its own weather pattern. I’d laughed, as I think he’d intended, but worry still set heavy on my heart.
Every night he came home, the stress caused lines across his forehead which only went away after sex. He kept apologizing to me for not having me back at work. Now that I knew he didn’t believe I did it, I had decided to just enjoy my paid vacation. I read books I didn’t have time for, took bubble baths, shopped for toys I thought he’d like to use on me, and treated myself to a spa and had my hair done with the luxury of not being in a hurry.
It was him I worried about. The more the investigation uncovered, the worse the tension became. About a week after our makeup sex, he came home, even more stressed than usual.
“This might break me,” he admitted, pacing the kitchen while I cooked us seared scallops in a white sauce and artichokes. “This isn’t the first time money has gone missing. The other times are covered up, and it had to take an accountant to do this. It’s worse than I imagined. Some going back to before I took over the business from my father.”
I wanted to go to him and comfort him, but knew he needed to get it all out, to work through it away from the office. “I’ve had to eradicate this sort of problem before. I thought I’d closed the loop holes. Seems I only redirected their efforts. They’ve used lots of people’s computers. Most of them are dead now.”
I gasped. “What? How?”
“I’ve had the investigators put on it when we found it out. I wanted to ask them questions about it, but one after the other turned up dead. So far, an accidental poisoning, a couple car accidents, a seeming heart attack. They were far enough apart, no one thought much of it. Now, with all the other evidence, the local police are going to re-investigate the deaths, see if there was something overlooked before. One of them…” He stood there, one hand on his back, the other pulling at his hair. “One of them is the reason I hired you. The poisoning. It’s how your position opened up. This is…”
Now I did go to him. I wrapped my arms around him, a little afraid for myself and a lot afraid for him. I was tucked away in my apartment, but he had to go be around the person or people responsible for whatever was going on. “This is looking like a long term sabotage, at the very least,” I finished for him.
“Or could just be plain greed. Going back only two years, I’ve lost about two million dollars in siphoned money across all aspects of the company, not counting the latest coup. Whenever I came close or put in new measures, there is a drop in money disappearing, but it only takes them a month or two to get back into the swing. The amounts are small, usually. A hundred charged to an account which never makes it to the company books. That sort of thing. I have an independent forensic accountant on the case. But, like they did with yours, they used multiple computers. Someone has a keystroke hack or something in my system that multiple scans haven’t found.”
He absently stroked my back as we spoke, his chin on the top of my head. “What are we going to do?” I asked, fearing for him more by the second.
“We are going to keep you away from the office,” he said grimly. “I don’t want you to have an accident, too,” he answered grimly. “It could be anyone. Ernie, Fred, George, at least one of them has to be involved, along with a slew of others, and the closer we come to catching them, the more I fear they’ll retaliate against you. Somehow, you’ve been a catalyst. I’m trying to go over everything you’ve worked on, especially the last few months. I’m convinced that you saw something that whomever is behind this didn’t want you to see. Which gives me hope that there is a way to catch them.”
“That doesn’t help as much as it sounds. I’m the one who checks all the files. I’ve worked in every division, at least one day.” The groan this elicited almost made me feel bad for bringing it up, but I sensed it was more that he knew that already and the headache it would all be. We continued to discuss things as we ate. I racked my head for anything which set off any alarm bells, but nothing came to mind. I always found small things in every file. It was part of the job and why someone like me was needed. I’s not dotted, t’s not crossed, but nothing that had hit red flag status. Usually, I just gave the file to person responsible and had them fix it with their client.
That night, we didn’t have sex, he
just held me as he fell asleep, murmuring words of love. I stayed cradled in his arms, offering him what comfort I could, but what could I give him that would help with the knowledge someone was systematically trying to destroy him?
The next day, I was jumpy at every little sound. I wanted to leave the apartment, but wasn’t sure where to go where I’d be safe. I felt like I was living in an Agatha Christie novel, with no idea whom all the players were.
Nicholas called a little after lunch. “Fiona,” he said happily. “We’ve had a break. One of the lines of code has been traced back to the hacker. The local police also found evidence that the poisoning wasn’t accidental. They’ve apparently been looking into it for the past year. The thing they lacked most was motive.”
“That’s a relief. Does this mean you can save your company, everything you’ve built?”
“Yes. It’ll be lean for a bit as news leaks out, but my safeguards have kept them from being able to do more than skim off the top before it’s in the system. I’ll have to hire a lawyer, and I’m keeping this forensic accountant on staff until I figure out all the players, but yes.”
I grinned. His happiness had him talking more than usual, and it made my heart sing. “I’m so happy for you. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“You’ll be giving celebratory sex tonight,” he teased.
“My pleasure,” I replied, relief pouring through me. “Be safe. I’ll go pick stuff up for a special dinner.”
“Okay, but be careful. We don’t have all the names yet. This took a lot of help. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I promise.”
I made a quick dash to the local deli, picking up some special herbs and spices and a nice prime rib. I grinned as I did the prep work and seasoned the meat. I texted him to ping me when he left so I could start cooking at the right time. I took a shower, prepping as if for a special date. And it really felt like it was. I would be cleared and back to work, his business was saved, and hot sex. What more could a girl ask for? I smiled in the mirror as I plucked a stray hair between my brows and finished putting on my makeup.
Seduction in a Suit: An Office Romance Collection Page 96
