by Julie Kriss
In short, he was the opposite of me. He wasn’t the icy cold Man in Black, who never made a move without thinking it through. No, John improvised. He took chances on pieces of art that spoke to him. He took chances on beautiful women in bars who were far, far out of his league. As a result, what had started out as yet another lonely night was turning into one of the best nights of his life.
This woman, Sarah the CEO, was a challenge. John knew he had to up his game to please her, even for just one night. She was used to being disappointed, and he wasn’t planning on disappointing her.
Besides, he really, really wanted to fuck her again.
I kicked off my shoes and socks, then dropped my pants. Pushed off my boxer briefs and kicked them away, too.
Her eyes were wide and dark as she took me in, head to toe. For once she didn’t have anything smart to say.
I took a step toward her. “Your turn,” I said. I was already half hard again, which wasn’t a surprise, because the hottest woman I’d ever seen was sitting on this bed, her round, pert breasts tucked behind a scrap of lace bra and no other clothes on. Just the thought of that perfect, bare ass against the bedsheets made heat travel down my spine. Her gaze fixed on my cock and stayed there.
It was flattering, but I was impatient. I stepped close and took the panties from her hand. “First, these,” I said, dropping them. “Then these.” I lifted one of her ankles and pulled off one high heel, then the other.
I put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so she was looking me in the eyes again. “Adequate?” I asked her.
“Um,” she said, a soft, utterly turned-on sound, and I pressed my advantage. I kissed her, taking her mouth, letting my tongue slide in. She groaned softly and sucked on me, as if she’d been waiting for this and nothing else. My cock got harder. Still kissing her, I reached behind her and unclasped her bra.
Her hands dragged down my chest, my stomach. I cupped her breasts gently, running my thumbs over her nipples. “I’ve been waiting to see these,” I said. In truth, I’d been waiting to see them for three months, not just tonight. But I hoped she didn’t see through me.
She stopped touching me—it was almost painful—and lifted her hands behind her head. She pulled the pins from her hair, letting it fall past her shoulders. Then she moved back on the bed and lay down, her hair falling against the bedspread, her gaze still on me, serious and intent.
We’d moved past a quick fuck in a hotel room, but I didn’t care. This was what I wanted—what I had wanted for a long time. This woman, naked on a bed, relaxed and ready for me. Trusting me. I kissed my way up her ribcage, her breasts. Her shoulder and the dip of her clavicle. I nibbled her neck, feeling her go warm and soft beneath me, listening to her breath come faster.
Her hands ran through my hair. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?” she asked.
“Never,” I said, which was easy because it was a fucking lie.
“This is just tonight.”
I sucked her earlobe. “Yes.” Another fucking lie, if I had any say in it.
Her voice was hoarse with desire as she said, “Good, because that’s what I want.”
I settled my hips between her legs, pressing my now-hard cock against her. “I think I’ve made it clear that I know exactly what you want.”
“Oh,” she said, and by instinct I knew that wasn’t a Sarah sound. That was a Samantha sound. It made my cock throb harder against her skin. I kissed her again.
Eventually we parted long enough for me to find a condom in the stash I’d put here earlier. I put it on and rolled back over her. I braced myself with one hand, and with the other I grasped both of her wrists, squeezing them together as I pushed her hands above her head. There was no harshness to it, and she could easily escape, but it was a signal that I was taking control.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said as I put her in position. “I mean, I think—oh, God.”
I slid into her in one smooth thrust, angled just right, as far as I could go. The first round had taken the edge off, and now we could take our time. I tried to hold off my own orgasm and do it right.
She was so perfect beneath me, naked, her hair spread, her arms pinned above her head. “Relax,” I told her as I moved. “I’m going to make you come.”
She bit her lip. “I think you are,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I think you are.”
In that moment, she was mine. Completely. Later, we’d dress and I’d go home alone. Later, I’d sit alone in my penthouse, unable to sleep. But right now, I was the man who completely possessed this woman. The man who got to see her like this, feel her. The man who got to listen to the perfect sounds she made when she came.
I didn’t care that our time would be up.
Right now, this was the only man I wanted to be.
Twenty-Two
Samantha
* * *
And then… Monday morning came.
It was warm and sunny, the sky high above the skyscrapers a beautiful blue. Spring was warming New York. I dressed at six as usual, eating breakfast in my kitchen and checking my boss’s schedule on my phone.
My boss, Aidan Winters. Who I definitely had not fucked on Saturday night.
Oh, God.
You can do this, Samantha.
In my work clothes and my regular makeup, I looked nothing like Sarah, the woman who had picked up a stranger in a bar. The man she had hooked up with was a beautiful specimen in a dark blue suit, not New York’s infamous Man in Black.
I scrolled through Aidan’s schedule for today. He was scheduled to be at the Monday meeting, which was a company-wide check-in to set up the week. Since Tower had only twenty employees in the New York office, it was easy to have meetings that included everyone. Sometimes Aidan attended them and sometimes he didn’t. Today he was going to be there.
He had more meetings in the afternoon: with Finance, with Legal. After staying away from the office for weeks to avoid me, now he was going to be there all day. It was probably on purpose, because everything Aidan did was on purpose. Let’s see if we can get along, this schedule said. I’m willing to try if you are.
There was one way to find out. I finished my breakfast and went to work.
I got to the office at eight and did my usual routine. I opened Aidan’s office and booted up his MacBook. I prepped the meeting room for the Monday meeting. I went through Aidan’s email, sorting the urgent from the not-so-urgent and the garbage. I picked up the firm’s mail from the receptionist at the front desk and sorted through the things that Aidan would need to see.
At eight forty-five, I heard his voice in the open office, talking to the receptionist. As if I had a radar attached to me, I heard his footsteps as he walked into his office and sat at his desk.
The moment of truth. I picked up papers from my own desk and walked—briskly, normally—to his office door.
Aidan was behind his desk, dressed in his usual black. He was clean-shaven, his hair combed neatly back from his forehead, his dark eyes intent as he read something on his MacBook screen. He looked up at me, and his expression gave nothing away. “Good morning, Samantha.”
“Morning,” I said. I stepped into the office and put a paper on his desk. “This is the itinerary for the Monday meeting. Oscar is sick today, so he’s going to phone in.”
“Did the signed contracts get sent to Wells and Vane?”
“I couriered them first thing. I’ll get a call when the receptionist signs for them.”
“They have to be there by ten.”
“They will be.”
It was a normal conversation. We’d had a dozen Monday morning conversations just like it. And what I felt as we talked was pure, unmixed relief. With the strangeness of Chicago and the weeks afterward, I’d missed Aidan, my boss. I’d missed my job, which I genuinely liked. I’d missed feeling normal.
We were normal again, thanks to the game.
Well, almost normal. When he handed me papers, the sight of his hand reminded me of
the moment when it was inside my black panties, making me come as he said dirty things in my ear. And I definitely, definitely wasn’t thinking about him deep inside me, saying I’m going to make you come. Which he had.
Those things had happened to different people. I had a staff meeting to arrange.
We had finished our business conversation, and Aidan had drunk most of his first coffee of the day. I was turning to leave his office when he said, “Oh, Samantha, there’s one more thing.”
“Yes?” I turned back.
“I have some dry cleaning I need to have picked up this afternoon. Do you mind doing it for me?”
Never, not once, had Aidan made me pick up his dry cleaning. He’d always treated that job as beneath me. For a second I was angry, and then I remembered Aidan never did anything unless it was on purpose.
He was up to something.
His expression gave nothing away, so I said, “Picking up dry cleaning isn’t really in my job description, Aidan. Maybe you should get an intern.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t trust an intern with the codes to my penthouse, Samantha. I only trust you.”
His penthouse. I’d never been there, though I knew he lived on the Upper East Side. “You need your dry cleaning dropped off at your penthouse?”
“I would appreciate it.” He paused, then added, “Just this once. And I’m asking nicely.”
We had a momentary standoff. I gave in, not because he was my boss, but because I wanted to know what the game was. “Just this once,” I said.
He pulled a set of keys out and slid them across the desk to me. “I’ll text you the address and the entry codes,” he said. “And I’ll tell the concierge you’re there with my permission. You can go anytime.”
Aidan’s building was at Third Ave and 83rd Street, a low-rise red brick building with immaculate wrought iron railings. The noise of Manhattan was hushed here, as if this were a different city. My own Hell’s Kitchen apartment—which was far from cheap—seemed a long way away. The only sounds were a few car honks a few blocks away and the barking of a dog.
I got out of the taxi, the dry cleaning bag with Aidan’s clothes in it over my arm. The doorman let me in with a smile and a nod; he was expecting me. The foyer was clean white marble, the elevator to the sixth floor classic with a wrought-iron door. The entire building was as hushed as a library.
The elevator doors opened to the penthouse suite, and I typed in Aidan’s code. The door clicked and I opened it.
Aidan’s apartment was beautiful, a huge open-concept space with a bathroom and bedroom on one side. The main room held a dark gray sofa, square and masculine, with a matching dark coffee table. The kitchen had marble counters and gleaming steel appliances. A bank of windows overlooked 83rd Street, facing north. Next to the windows was a glass-topped desk with a computer on it and stacks of papers on it.
I stood looking around, curious. I’d seen plenty of my former bosses’ apartments when I dropped off mail, fed pets, or picked up forgotten jackets or cell phones. I was no stranger to luxurious places to live. In all of those cases, I’d never had the urge to snoop, which was why I was so good at my job. I may have had their security codes, but my bosses’ private business was just that—private.
Still, none of my previous bosses had been Aidan Winters.
I shouldn’t look around too closely. Then again, he’d invited me here, hadn’t he?
The dry cleaning was heavy over my arm, so I walked to the bedroom. It was masculine in here, too, the king-sized bed swathed in a navy comforter, a dark wood nightstand and matching dresser along one wall. The bed was made, but hastily, the blankets pulled up and left slightly mussed. He didn’t have a maid service, then, or at least not one that had been here today. I looked away from the bed, trying not to picture Aidan’s long body, possibly naked, sprawled out on it.
His closet was big and contained a lot of black clothes, as expected. But as I hung the dry cleaning bag I also saw other colors. There were casual pants and button-downs, and a stack of sweaters on the top shelf. The suit I’d seen on him Saturday night was in there. The closet smelled like Aidan, a scent I’d become closely acquainted with. I ran my fingertips over one of the shirts, remembering what he had tasted like when he kissed me in the elevator of the Lowell hotel.
Get it together, Samantha.
I backed out of the closet and closed the door. I looked around, wondering why Aidan had sent me here. Was it just to have me in his private space, to know that I had been there? Or was there another reason? He wasn’t trying to impress me with his expensive penthouse—he wasn’t the type, and he must know I wouldn’t be impressed anyway. There was something here he wanted me to see.
When I came back out into the main room, I spotted it. An envelope on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and took out the piece of paper inside.
It was a ticket to an exclusive art gallery showing. The gallery was in SoHo, the artist was obscure but trendy, and tickets were limited. The show was this Saturday night.
I ran my finger over the edge of the invitation, thinking. This was obviously an invitation to continue the game. The question was, did I want to continue it?
Last Saturday had been incredible. I’d discovered aspects of myself I never knew I had. I wanted that again.
But today he’d made me pick up his dry cleaning.
I couldn’t make things too easy for him. I had to make him suffer a little. I could make him wonder what I was going to do next instead of assuming he owned me.
I put the ticket in my purse. Then I walked back into Aidan’s bedroom. Standing next to his bed, I lifted my skirt and slid off my panties. They were a pair of my favorites—slate gray, slim cut, soft as my own skin. They undoubtedly smelled like me. I put them on Aidan’s pillow.
Then I left the apartment, locking it behind me.
Twenty-Three
Aidan
* * *
It was a hellish week. I had no idea time could go so slow. Saturday seemed to be years away.
Samantha had given me not a flicker of a signal when she came back to the office on Monday afternoon. I’d come home to find the ticket gone from my kitchen counter and her panties left on my pillow. I’d groaned aloud, alone in my bedroom, at the thought that she’d spent the afternoon at work bare beneath her skirt and I hadn’t fucking known. It was like she was born to torture me.
I’d been tempted to take a shower and jerk off, thinking about it. But I didn’t. She was teasing me. I’d have some self-control.
So on Tuesday I went to the office all business. I went to meetings, reviewed reports, and met with Samantha about my schedule. Looking at us, no one in the office would guess that I’d had her bent over a hotel room bed, her hands in the sheets, her legs spread for me. No one would know that I knew what color her nipples were, knew what her skin tasted like, knew exactly what sound she made when she came. We were the same boss and assistant we’d always been. And that made the game more exciting to play.
Finally, on Friday afternoon—a thousand years later—I went over a few end-of-week notes with Samantha in my office. I watched her sitting in the chair across from my desk, her legs crossed and her head angled down as she wrote a note on her notepad, and I said, “Do you have any plans for the weekend?”
She didn’t look up; she kept writing. But a smile touched the corner of her mouth. Of course it did—she’d just won a victory. I hadn’t meant to cave in and ask her, but the words had just come out. Damn her.
She took her time answering, finishing her note first before looking up. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I haven’t decided.”
I met her gaze. “So, a quiet weekend at home, then.”
She shrugged, as if I hadn’t given her a ticket to SoHo’s most exclusive art show. “Possibly,” she said with believable casualness. “Possibly not.”
I nodded. “I hear there are some very good shows on Netflix right now. You know, if you’re spending the weekend alone on th
e couch.”
A muscle in her cheek twitched in annoyance. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Maybe you should join a meetup group. Try to make friends if you’re lonely.”
“You’re full of advice today.” She put her pen down. “It’s very generous of you.”
My pulse started to beat a little bit faster. “I’m just trying to be helpful. You live in New York, you know. If you want to find something to do on the weekend, there’s plenty happening.”
“I see.” Was that a flush on her cheeks? “And what exactly are your exciting plans?”
I shrugged. “You know my schedule is empty. I always find something to do. There’s an art exhibit in SoHo I’ll probably attend.”
“Because you’re an art fan,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Sometimes, yes. I find looking at art a pleasant way to spend a Saturday night.”
“And you plan to attend by yourself.”
“If you believe the tabloids, yes.”
Samantha narrowed her eyes, and I fought off a smile. Fuck, this was fun. “Well,” she said finally, “I hope that you have a nice time, whatever you decide.” She stood and picked up her notebook.
“You, too,” I said. “Goodbye, Samantha. See you Monday.”
“Hm,” she said noncommittally, walking out of the office and closing the door behind her.
This was definitely going to be good.
We were going to play the game again.
Twenty-Four
Samantha
* * *
The air on Saturday night was warm and thick, slathered like honey. I stood in front of my mirrored closet and looked myself over, assessing the effect.
A button-front shirtdress from Target, navy blue with small white flowers. Bare legs, white flat sandals. Very little makeup, my hair tied in a ponytail at the back of my neck. A gray cardigan over my shoulders. Once again, I looked nothing like my usual self. Tonight I was an art student who had scored a ticket to an edgy art show from her roommate, who had come down with the flu.
