Carly smiled. “Okay.”
For some reason her smile reminded Trevor of something else they needed to discuss. He released her hand, and began eating again. “I understand,” he said, “that you’re looking to purchase a house.” He said this and looked at her.
Carly stared at him. “How would you know?” Then she caught herself. How would he not know, given that he always had somebody following her around? “Yes,” she said. “I think it makes sense.”
“It makes sense for you to buy a house when I’ve already bought this condo for you?”
“This is your condo, Trevor. You wanted me to live in this building because you think it’s safer for me here. But I want a home. My own home. In my name. Something I pay for and own.”
“And when did you plan to tell me about this want of yours?”
“When you weren’t so overwhelmed.”
“That’s never,” Trevor made clear. “You hear me, Carly? Don’t hold things back from me thinking that tomorrow will be a better day to tell me. Just tell me. I can take it.”
Carly was shocked. Trevor actually had a look of hurt and pain in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“If you want to move on, just tell me that,” Trevor said. “You know I’ll understand. Hell, I’ll probably encourage you to get as far away from me and my madness as you can get. Find yourself a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or a banker. Or any fucking body but me.” He looked her dead in the eyes. “I’ll understand, Carly. I’ve never had anybody who loved me, or cared about me. This shit new to me. It’s not the norm. Being by myself is the norm. I’m used to it. And I’ll be fine. I just want you to be okay.”
Carly couldn’t believe how much he misjudged her intentions. She wasn’t trying to leave him! She just needed her own space.
She stood up, and went to Trevor. He dropped his fork and leaned back. He was certain she was ready to drop the we need to talk bomb on him that would effectively end his happiness forever. And he braced himself.
But Carly, instead, got on his lap. She opened her legs and straddled him to where she was face to face with him. She placed her hands around his neck and looked him dead in his eyes. He loved the smell her sweet scent, and the closeness of her sweet body. He was all talk, he thought. He wasn’t going to be fine without her, that was a bald-faced lie. He had no clue how he was going to make it without her.
“I’m not leaving you, Trevor,” Carly said to him flatly. “That’s not why I want my own place. I just have a need to get my own, and do for myself, that’s all. It’s the way I’m built. But I’m not thinking about leaving you.”
Trevor studied her beautiful face. “Even if life will be better for you if you did leave?” Trevor asked her.
Carly wasn’t going to hide the truth. “Yes,” she said. “Even though it would be easier to have a boyfriend who wasn’t my boss, and we could date freely. Yes.”
Trevor stared at her. Did she not understand the real reason? If it was just a matter of her working for him, he would have been open about their relationship on the job long ago. He cared about her just that much. But if he exposed their relationship on the job, he was exposing it on his other job too. “That’s not the only reason, honey,” he said to her.
“No, I know,” Carly said. “The main reason is because you don’t want your enemies to know your Achilles Heel. Yes, I know that’s the main reason. That reason goes without saying.”
Trevor smiled. He had a smart one on his hands.
“So, yes, it would be easier for me to marry some regular guy,” Carly continued. “But I’m not looking for easy.”
“What are you looking for?” Trevor asked her.
“A man who excites me. A man who isn’t regular.” Then she placed her hands on the sides of his face. “You,” she said. “I was looking all my life for you. And guess what? I’ve come to realize that I need you, too, Trevor.”
Trevor felt a surge of emotion for this woman. He placed his hand on the scruff of her neck, pulled her gorgeous mouth to his, and kissed her for the longest time. He loved her taste. He loved the fact that she didn’t say she wanted him. She said she needed him. He’d never, not ever, had another human being feel that way about him. He was overjoyed. And although he was not the kind of man who could speak that love language, he decided to show her just how deeply he felt for her.
He lifted the shirt she wore completely off of her, rendering her naked, and continued kissing her. Then he began sucking her breasts.
Carly kissed his hair, laid the side of her face on the top of his head, and enjoyed the pleasure of his tongue on her nipples. She was accustomed to them making love in the oddest places, and at the kitchen table would not have been out of their usual way.
But this time, instead of doing her now and taking her up for a second round, Trevor rose to his feet, lifted her in his arms, and carried her upstairs for the first round. This was about love, not sex, for him. This was about showing her how much he truly cared for her. And a quickie at the kitchen table wasn’t going to cut it.
Carly was thrilled with his decision too. As he carried her, she grabbed his chin, lifted his face up from her breasts, and began kissing him all over again. They kissed with a fervor that made them both feel the temperature rising even as they sought to take it slow. They tongue-kissed as he carried her up the stairs. He recaptured her breasts as he carried her to her bedroom. They couldn’t stop kissing even as he shoved over the papers she left on her bed, laid her naked body down, and removed his bathrobe.
Carly admired his big, muscular body, and his big, muscular penis as it stood out stiff and ready in front of her. Then he knelt down and ate her, as he always did, with a hunger that had her lifting her legs for a deeper penetration. By the time he’d finished, and was standing back up, she was so wet she was dripping. And then he turned her onto her stomach, and got on top of her.
Carly sighed a sigh of welcomed relief as his penis entered her wetness. And then Trevor gave her that slow motion, sensual movement that caused his rod to feel stuck inside of her. It could barely move. But when it did, when it broke through her tightness and began to slide with that precision Trevor was known for, Carly found herself already on the verge of orgasm.
But Trevor had a way of keeping her on the verge. He had a way of keeping himself on the verge.
He made long lasting love to her that caused both of them to experience it beyond the feelings. The more he gyrated inside of her. The more he stroked and slid inside of her. The more his ass tightened as he pushed through more and more friction and made gentle love to her, they embodied their love. It was more than a feeling. It was them. Carly was in tears by the time she came.
Trevor had laid down on her back, and had wrapped her in his arms, as his cum released a torrent of sensations that left his slow motion behind. He began thrashing into her, to keep up with the sensations, until he was pouring into her like a sudden, flashflood. And Carly felt the heat of his flood, and her entire body began to pulsate, as another orgasm gave way.
After showering together, they went to bed. They laid there, with the bedding around their waists, with Trevor on his back and Carly facing him. Carly rubbed her hand across his massive chest, and smiled at him. “I’ve never had a boyfriend quite like you,” she said.
Trevor found the idea of being somebody’s boyfriend an amazing feat for him. He looked at her. Carly, a woman in her twenties, was nearly ten years younger than he was, and sometimes he felt the difference. “What kind of boyfriends have you had?” he asked her.
“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “Boys would be the operative word. Compared to you, that is.”
“Compared to my age,” Trevor asked, “or something more?”
“Surely not your age, Trevor,” Carly said. “You aren’t that old.”
Trevor laughed. “Not that old, hun?”
Then her look turned serious. “Something more,” she said. “Definitely something more.”
“You ever were in l
ove with any of these boyfriends?” He asked this and then looked at her, as if he could gauge truth in her eyes rather than in her words.
But Carly was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know how to love that way. I had too many issues myself. Then I met you. And I didn’t have to know how to do it, because you didn’t know either.”
Trevor would have laughed at such a slight, but he didn’t. She was being brutally honest.
“So we’re learning together,” she continued. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“Because we’re learning together, and despite the fact that you’re gone a lot and we can’t express our commitment openly, I never feel alone in this relationship.”
Trevor stared at her with an intensity he couldn’t help.
“I’ve had boyfriends who were always there,” Carly continued. “They were always willing to do this, that, and the other for me. But I felt so alone. Not so with you. You don’t have to be with me all the time. You don’t have to give me this, that, or the other. But yet I never feel alone in our relationship. Strange, hun?”
“No, honey,” Trevor said and pulled her into his arms. “I feel the same way too. It’s not strange. It’s just us.”
Carly looked up, into Trevor’s eyes, and they both smiled. And began kissing all over again.
But the next day, back at work, Trevor, her boyfriend, would give way to Mr. Reese, her boss.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The room was quiet, but filled with the kind of tension that caught them all off guard. Carly was on the hot seat, because she was the head of the department, but her subordinates, including Dallas Shephard, were feeling the heat too. They blew it. For the second month in a row their inability to come up with a winning strategy cost Reese Marketing a major contract with a major oil company in need of a reputation overhaul after a spill that contaminated an entire town’s drinking water. And Trevor Reese, a completely different animal who didn’t cut Carly any slack when they were at work, was not happy.
He entered the conference room with that calmness that never fooled any of them. Even though he was a man who rarely raised his voice, his demeanor spoke volumes in and of itself. He always had the look of a man who was one wrong word away from an explosion. Like a volcano ready to erupt. Like lightening in a bottle. Like a storm brewing. They all knew not to push him.
But now, as he walked over to the table and stood at its head, there was no way they could avoid this confrontation. He called this meeting. And he called out the names of every one he wanted in attendance.
Carly, the youngest member of her staff, already told her people that she would do the talking; she would do the arguing; she would take the heat. But she didn’t have to tell them anything. When Trevor sat down at the head of the table, she was the only one he directed his calm but undeniable fire toward.
“What happened?” he asked her.
Carly didn’t stutter. “Every strategy we recommended, the same strategies that were winners in the past, backfired.”
“Examples,” Trevor said.
“We sat up an interview with CNN. To our credit, we recommended that the CEO should handle the interview. But he sent his Senior VP instead. He was ill-prepared and the interviewer pounced. Their shares lost nearly eight percent of its value on that interview alone. And they blamed us.”
“As so they should,” Trevor said.
Carly didn’t expect that comeback. Neither did her staff. “How was that our fault, sir?” she asked him.
“When a company is drowning,” Trevor said, “they don’t need an audience. What they need is to get out of the water. Your entire strategy should have been all about pulling them out of crisis first. Then you clean up the mess. Then you clean up their image.”
“We thought we could do both, sir,” Dallas interjected. She was the one responsible for the contract. She was the one who blew it. “We thought we could rehabilitate their image while they cleaned up the spill.”
“You thought wrong,” Trevor shot back. “Drinking water was contaminated. Who gives a shit about rehabilitating them? Tell them to offer money to all affected households. To offer to buy water coolers. To involve the local leaders in the decision-making. That’s what we should have been advising them to do. Not to go on television pretending that everything is okay and look at how concerned we are. Nobody buys that shit! This was fucking amateur hour!”
Trevor stood up, and looked at Carly again. “Clean up this shit today,” he said. “I’m going to try and convince them to give us another go. I’ll handle the contract myself, with you as my backup. But this staff of yours who fucked this up? You clean up this shit today.”
“Yes, sir,” Carly said, and Trevor left. She knew he hated to be so harsh. But she also knew when it came to his business, he wasn’t going to go easy on anyone. Especially, she sometimes felt, not her.
Carly also knew what he meant. When he left the conference room, she didn’t waste time. She excused everyone. Except Dallas.
When they all left, gladly, she stood to her feet. “This is the second time in a week that you’ve made the wrong decision. The PR department can’t afford to take another hit, and Mr. Reese will not tolerate it even if we did take it. You’re fired. Effective immediately. Clear out your desk. Security will escort you out of the building.”
But Dallas couldn’t believe it. “I’ll go to Trevor,” she said. “He’s the one who hired me. Not you!”
Carly pressed the intercom button. “Security,” she said when a male’s voice came on the line, “bring one of your people upstairs to my department to escort Miss Dallas Shephard off of the premises.”
“Immediately, ma’am?” the guard asked.
“Immediately,” Carly said. Then she released the button and looked at Dallas. “You aren’t running to anybody. You will get out of this building, and get out now. Or embarrass yourself further by being dragged out. I’m young, but I’m your supervisor. You’re about to realize just what that means. You’re fired. Now get out.”
Dallas was fuming. “Okay. Okay.” She began moving around like a wounded animal. “Every dog has his day,” she said. “But you’d better watch out. Your day will come too.”
And then, as a sadness appeared in her eyes, Dallas left, slamming the door behind her.
Carly sat back down. Sometimes she hated the responsibilities of her positon at RM. But right now was not one of those times.
But it only went downhill from there as later that same day, when Carly was heading out of her office and giving a stack of folders to her secretary, Bridgette Collier, her assistant, stepped off of the elevator, hurried up the hall, and hurried over to Carly.
“We’ve got a problem, Carly,” she said.
Carly let out an exasperated exhale. “What is it now?”
“There’s a woman in Mr. Reese’s office, and she won’t leave. I told her he was in meetings off campus.”
“Well is she one of his clients?”
“I don’t know. She told me to leave her alone like I wasn’t high up enough to say a word to her.”
“Then you should have called Security,” Carly said.
“Right!” her Secretary agreed.
“But what if she’s one of those super-secret, high-ranking clients he has that only he deals with? If I called Security on that lady and that’s who she turns out to be, he’ll fire me!”
“Oh, Bridgette, that’s ridiculous,” Carly said. “You would have done your job.”
“I can’t risk that. I’m not up there like you. I’m not his favorite like you. I’m dispensable.”
Carly exhaled. His favorite? He almost cussed her out in a morning meeting, and she was his favorite? Carly was convinced Trevor played no favorites at work. “Where is she now? Still in his office?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carly looked at her secretary. “Contact Shirley Nance,” she said. “She’s in the conference room with LaQuan Thompson. Tell her I’m r
unning a little late, but I’ll be there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the secretary said, and picked up her desk phone.
“I’ll go with you,” Bridgette said, following Carly toward the elevator.
Carly looked at her.
“Just in case you need backup,” Bridgette said.
Carly didn’t argue. This woman already showed she had gall to just slip into Trevor’s office the way she did. She might need backup after all.
What struck her most when she and Bridgette entered Trevor’s office and saw the woman sitting behind his desk, was how beautiful and elegant she looked. A black woman in her early thirties, with unusually large brown eyes, short, straight brown hair in a stylish and bouncy pixie cut, and a look of entitlement about her that Carly knew meant trouble. She was somebody, and she wanted the world to know.
“Good afternoon,” Carly said as she and Bridgette walked up to Trevor’s desk. “May I help you?”
The woman stared at her, but didn’t respond.
“May I help you?” Carly asked again.
“And you are?” the visitor asked.
“She’s the Director of Public Relations for Reese Marketing,” Bridgette quickly answered.
“Mr. Reese isn’t here,” Carly said.
“Yes, the other one told me.”
“We don’t know when he will return,” Carly said.
“I’ll wait until he returns.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
The woman looked hard at Carly. She looked her up and down. “I’m going to wait for him.”
“No, ma’am, you are not. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Now. Or do you prefer I call Security?”
The woman rose then, with a smirk on her pretty face. She grabbed her designer purse and designer shades and walked from around the desk.
“I can leave him a massage,” Carly said. “Are you a client?”
Trevor Reese: His Secret Love Page 9
