by Ella Brooke
When she stood up hesitantly, he took her hand as if they were friends who had always touched. There was something instantly comfortable about it, instantly recognizable. She watched, almost hypnotized, as he drew her hand to his jaw.
“There, can you feel that?”
At first, all she could think about was how smooth his skin was after a fresh shave, and how good he smelled. He had used something that smelled warmly of amber and musk, a perfect evocation of this sensual man.
Oh god, stop it, you're being a creeper! The man just shaved!
After a moment, she tilted her head to one side. “I feel...a little ridge there, maybe?”
He grinned. “Somehow, at the age of sixteen, I managed to trip while I was shaving. Don't ask me how I did it. I spent a year or so all knees and elbows, or so I recall. Anyway, tripped, razor next to my face, and then, well, razor in my face.”
“Oh gosh!” she gasped, shuddering at the thought.
“Yes. Blood everywhere, and the razor was so sharp that for a moment, I had no idea what had happened, none whatsoever. It was like I saw the blood and I was genuinely concerned because I had no idea where it was coming from. That wasn't a good day.”
“You poor thing, that sounds awful,” Benny muttered, and then she realized that all through the story, she hadn't actually removed her hand from his face. As strange as that was, however, Jinan didn't seem bemused at all. Instead, his hand was held lightly over hers, and the smile on his face took a slightly smoky quality.
“So I was thinking,” he said, so quietly that she leaned in closer to hear.
“Oh yes?”
“Hmm, yes. You certainly did give me quite an education last night.”
“Oh, well, I am happy to do so, I guess?”
“Well, I was very happy that you did so, at least,” he said with a chuckle. “And I think it was such a good lesson that perhaps I am in a good place to improve my initial score?”
For a moment, she had no idea what he was talking about, but then she remembered and blushed hot.
“I think your score was quite good to begin with,” she said, but then her brain stopped her.
He is asking to kiss you, you little idiot.
“But I certainly wouldn't mind a chance to step up and evaluate how far you've come. I do warn you, I will be more exacting this time now that I know what you are capable of...”
“Well, then, I shall have to be certain to do my very best...”
She held her breath as he leaned in. The kiss started out slow and gentle at first, but there was a heat there, something low and soft that lay just beyond her reach. His hands closed around her waist, and without thinking, she leaned into him.
Benny had underestimated the power of a kiss where their bodies were touching, sharing heat, exchanging a kind of energy that she barely understood, that felt almost mystical in its power.
She leaned into the kiss until her body was pressed hard against his, and then suddenly something changed. The kiss was no longer light. There was something desperate about it, something needy and wanting that felt as if it had been neglected for years, if not her entire life.
I want this man, Benny thought in hazy surprise. I want him. I want him so much that I can barely stand it.
One of his strong hands slid up her back, leaving fire in its wake to cup the back of her neck. It felt almost primitive, like a gesture of claiming and need, and suddenly, she knew in a clear and undefinable way that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
She wanted to explore him. She wanted more than his mouth. She wanted to know how he tasted, how he felt when he was overcome with passion. The intensity of her own need shocked her, but it wasn't until he pulled away, smiling slightly, that she realized what was going on.
"Well, beautiful," he said in a voice of burnt sugar. "Shall we spend the rest of the day in bed?"
It was on the very tip of her tongue to say yes, to sigh it or perhaps even to moan it, but then Benny came to her senses.
"Oh gosh!" she yelped, lurching back. She moved so suddenly that he was shocked into letting her go, and it took her a moment to catch her balance again. When she looked up, Jinan was looking at her with surprise, though she could still see the remnants of his lust hanging around him like some kind of mist.
"Are you all right?" he asked gently, and though she knew she was acting strange, she couldn't help it. The problem wasn't that he had made the offer. The problem was how very much she had wanted to say yes.
"I, um...wow, that got a bit out of hand, didn't it?"
"I would say that went just fine," he said warmly, a touch of laughter in his eyes. "That is, assuming that I got better marks than the first time we did this?"
"Far better," she said with a slight, shaky smile. "I mean, if I'm the judge, I would say improvement on all fronts, approaching excellent."
"Well, that's better than being damned by faint praise, I suppose," Jinan said with chuckle. "So shall I take it from your reaction that I should keep my further interests to myself?"
For a moment, she had no idea what he was talking about, but when she realized, she blushed and then felt oddly angry with herself for doing so. She was an adult woman, he was treating her like one, and she could darned well act like one.
"I think we better have this out right here and now," Benny said, drawing herself up and looking him in the eye.
"Right here and now? I would generally prefer the bedroom for the first time, but I can see that you are an energetic woman..."
For a moment she simply stared at him, and her brain no longer worked because it was stuffed full of images, her perched on the counter, her held up in the air against the wall by those powerful hands as he kissed her passionately.
Jinan must have misread her look because he held his hands up in surrender.
"All right, all right," he said with a sigh. "I'll listen. Go ahead."
"Thank you," she managed to get out, even if she was still thinking about being lifted up and kissed.
"Look, I think we're going to work well together," she said. "I think I know my stuff well enough to manage your trip very well, and that you are a genuinely good person who is an excellent boss. Elli said as much.
"However, we can't be...doing this all over Chicago. It is just not going to work. It is going to look bad for you to be seen smooching your assistant, and it's going to be distracting as heck for me as I try to get things organized because there is nothing more distracting than trying to avoid thinking of kisses when I am trying to make a reservation."
"So what should we do about that?" he asked, and she wondered if he was making fun of her, but Benny forged on anyway.
"We're going to keep this utterly platonic. No more kisses, nothing like that. That's what we need to do the best job that we can do, and that's my professional advice as your assistant while you are in the States."
Benny held her breath as he looked as if he was thinking it over. It did occur to her that if he refused, she had increasingly fewer options as to what she could do about it.
"You make very good sense," Jinan said with a gusty sigh. "I suppose I will simply have to pine and hope that I can find someone who is half so generous when it comes to grading my kisses."
For some reason, the idea of him kissing anyone else made something within her furious, but she choked it back, because that really wasn't the best reaction for this situation at the moment.
"That's...that's fine," she managed. "I think this will work out just fine then."
As they continued on to talk about more mundane things, however, Benny found that she couldn't take her eyes off the thin line of dark hair that trailed down his belly and past the waistband of his low-slung jeans. She wondered what it would be like to follow that line of hair, first with her fingers and then with her mouth.
She swallowed hard and realized in an elemental way that this was going to be a very long job.
***
BENNY LEFT, DECLINING an invitation to d
inner with a slightly melancholy smile. It was on the tip of Jinan's tongue to try to convince her to stay, but he remembered their earlier resolution and let her go.
He was bemused by his sudden interest in his assistant, and he wondered if it had been that long since he had spent time with a woman. He supposed he had been busy, but there had been plenty of brief encounters, intense but short, over the last few years.
No, Jinan decided reluctantly, it wouldn't matter how many women he had been with or who were dancing on attention around him. The truth of the matter was that there was something about his seemingly prim, unexpectedly passionate assistant that was simply engaging, something that drew him like a moth to fire.
He wondered if it was just the lure of the forbidden, but he knew it wasn't. Benny was just special, and he couldn't explain it.
A part of him wondered why he didn't fire her and then take her on as a mistress, but Jinan could already see Benny's dismay and fury at that idea. She wasn't a woman who was only trying to get what she could out of the world. Instead, she was trying to do a good job and advance herself. Jinan had to respect that, even if that attitude was damned inconvenient when what he wanted was more earthy and elemental by far.
All right then, beautiful, he thought. Have it your way.
Even as he made the decision to keep things platonic, however, a part of him wondered if he would be able to stick with that decision. If either of them would.
Chapter Four
When she looked back over it, Benny was startled by how quickly six weeks had passed. They had been incredibly full weeks, and she’d had a little less sleep than she would have liked. But the truth of the matter was that, between the excitement of the work that she was doing as well as the traveling they were doing, there really wasn't a lot of time to regret things.
She had come to learn that Jinan was a man who worked hard and played hard, and she was often swept along for the ride. She made arrangements for him to meet with the representatives who could change the very fate of his nation, and she made sure he got meals on days when he was busy from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed.
She was slightly amused that she had ended up taking a bedroom at his townhouse after all. One evening, after they had been at an opera benefit in downtown Chicago, they had gotten back to the townhouse close to three in the morning.
"I'm not sure it's even safe for you to drive, it's so late," Jinan had said casually. "Please, if you won't take a cab, consider staying in the spare bedroom. It's all set up for guests."
Benny was exhausted and doing everything she could to stay awake, and without thinking about whether it was a good idea or not, she had agreed. She was too tired to worry about whether it was right or proper, and fell into bed wearing just her camisole and a pair of panties. In the morning she had to wear her clothes from the night before, but Jinan was perfectly casual about the whole thing, which her tired brain appreciated.
"You should consider just leaving an overnight bag here," he’d said over a breakfast of bagels and lox. "It'll make things easier in the future."
Looking over a schedule of late nights and early mornings, she couldn't help but agree.
It was only after the third time she had used her overnight bag that Benny realized she had seen more of Jinan than she had anyone else as an adult.
If I were a normal woman who dated or had a family, I would probably be upset about that, she thought wryly. With a guilty pang, she thought of Sandra, Jodie and Paul, who she had managed to Skype with a time or two, but the promised visit had never materialized.
"I promise, as soon as I can get away," she’d said, but she knew she was just repeating herself over and over again. Well, they were her family, and if anyone was going to forgive her, they certainly would.
Things continued as they were until the night that Jinan decided he needed a date to the grand opening of a major museum exhibit.
"And...you want me to get you one?" she had asked, staring at him. "Look...I know the joke is that assistants will do anything for you, but this is really..."
Jinan's laugh was deep and rich, and even after all this time, it could make her shiver.
"That was an impressive way to miss the point," he said kindly. "No, I want you to come with me. You mentioned you were going to come along at the beginning to make sure I got pointed towards the right people, so there’s no reason why you shouldn't stay and enjoy the exhibit."
She bit her lip. That sounded...amazing, but she couldn't, could she?
"I don't have anything to wear..."
He snorted. "Please. I know that Chicago doesn't exactly have the dress sense of Dubai or Asrac, but I'm sure you can find something. Here."
To her shock, he pulled out his wallet and flipped a credit card at her.
"Get yourself a dress, some shoes, and at least some jewelry to go with it. You probably know better than I do what women wear to these things."
"Um... Wow, this is highly unorthodox, but are you sure?"
"Of course," Jinan said firmly, and then he met her eyes with a surprisingly stern expression. "Don't waste your time penny-pinching. I can practically read your mind, and you are thinking that you are going to try to save me money or some nonsense. No. You are going to go and spend at least...hmm, let's say three thousand dollars."
She gaped at him, feeling her stomach drop. "Three...THOUSAND dollars? For one night?"
"Well, I am the Prince of Asrac, and I need to have only the best, after all," he said with a grin. "But are you going to agree, or should I raise the number to five thousand?"
"No!" she yelped. "No! Three thousand...three thousand is fine! I'm... I can do it."
"Good. Then I'll see you tomorrow night."
Honestly, she almost didn't. She had to start from the inside out, with new underwear, and then to the blue beaded dress that draped over her and made her feel like an Austen heroine and the shoes which were dyed to match and beaded as well. There was still money to spend, so she found a matching purse, and finally, almost out of desperation more than anything, she bought a long necklace with a toothy black crystal on the end. There was still some money left out of her limit, so she took herself to an honest-to-goodness stylist, who bemoaned her usual wash and wear style and gave her a trim that somehow made her blonde hair fall in loose waves around her shoulders, a look she was certain she couldn't reproduce at home. Benny figured it was fine for one night, however, and after this, she would go back to her bun.
Still, for one night, there was a part of her that was privately, secretly and incredibly thrilled to look like a princess, even if it was just once in her life.
She barely recognized herself in the mirror, but when she climbed into the limousine, Jinan only smiled.
"That's lovely," he said, and she felt like a flower opening up to the sun.
"You know, 'lovely' is nice, but I was honestly hoping for something more like, 'I didn't even recognize you,'" she joked, leaning back into the leather seats. She had ridden in the limousine plenty of times with Jinan over the last few weeks, but now there was something distinctly different. For one night, she got to pretend to be a part of Jinan's world, rather than simply being an employee.
"Well, that would be a lie," he said. "I know it's you, and I recognize you, and as far as I am concerned, the outfit is beautiful, but it is only beautiful because the woman who is wearing it is so gorgeous herself."
She blinked, and tried to laugh it off, but there was something strange in the air between them that night, and that feeling persisted all the way through the event.
She stayed close to Jinan's side, and she was perhaps a little quiet for a date, but Benny found herself feeling as if she was floating on air. In all her life, she had never before imagined a place where she was attending an event like this one, or at least attending it without doing something like checking the coats or helping serve the food. The fact that she was wearing a dress that cost more than three months worth of rent, on the arm of
a man who was devastatingly handsome, seemed like some kind of illusion. When she checked her phone and realized that it was midnight, she almost felt as if her gown should melt away and her coach should turn back into a pumpkin.
But perhaps the most stunning moment, the one she would always remember, was when Jinan came to offer her his hand.
"Would you care to dance?" he asked. "It seems as if they are clearing the floor for the musicians."
Hesitantly, she put her hand in his and was grateful to follow as he led her into a gentle slow dance.
"You know," Jinan remarked. "It is considered customary to look at your partner while you dance, or at least it is in my part of the world. Perhaps things are slightly different here?"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said guiltily. "I was just so worried that I was going to step on your feet...and we are awfully close, aren't we?"
“Well, stop worrying about stepping on my feet, and if I have asked you to dance...that does mean that I am very comfortable with how close we are to each other..." She gasped when he tugged her a little nearer, and she looked straight into his dark eyes.
She felt as if she were falling into his gaze, as if she could see right to the center of his heart in that moment.
"Thank you for all of this," she said when she could finally speak again. "I...I have never had a night like tonight."
"There is something wrong with that. A woman as lovely as yourself... This is your natural setting. Wearing gems, surrounded by people who admire your beauty..."
"I feel like a pig's ear dressed up as a silk purse," she said with a slight smile. "Take me out of this dress, and no one would look twice."
"Take you out of that dress, and I can guarantee that even more people would be looking," he said with a wicked grin, and she blushed all the way up to her hairline.
After the dance ended, he stepped back and actually bowed slightly, bringing her hand up to his mouth for a gentle kiss. Instead of kissing her on the knuckles, however, he turned her hand over and brushed his lips over the sensitive, almost-ticklish skin of her palm, sending tingles all the way through her body.
