Dirty Filthy Rich Men

by Laurelin Paige

  In the back of the closet, next to rows of neatly folded ties, I discovered a shelf of plain white T-shirts. I decided he wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one. Or, rather, I decided that I didn’t care if he did mind.

  After stopping in the bathroom to freshen up as best as I could and swish with some mouthwash I found in his cabinet, I padded downstairs toward the smell of the coffee.

  My nose led me to the kitchen where I also found Donovan. He was standing with his back to me at the island, reading on a tablet. He wore a light gray T-shirt and a different pair of sweatpants than he’d worn the night before, and though I liked this look on him as much as any, I was slightly disappointed to find his beautiful torso once again covered up.

  He didn’t turn around when I walked in, though I was sure he heard me coming down the stairs. Sure he felt my presence the same way I felt the heat radiating off him in my direction.

  He was going to make me be the one to break the Morning After ice.

  Okay. No big deal.

  “Hi,” I said, feeling my cheeks redden for no reason other than I was in the same room with Donovan Kincaid.

  Slowly, in his own time, he turned around. He narrowed his eyes as he looked me over. With a frown, he crossed over to a cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug. “I don’t recall setting a shirt out for you.” He handed me the cup.

  I smiled, sure he was teasing, but quickly sobered when he didn’t return it.

  “I was cold,” I said in my defense. Now that it was daylight, he could want me gone as soon as possible. “I’ll change into my dress after I shower, if you don’t mind.”

  Or did he want me naked?

  I held my breath waiting for a clue.

  “I suppose I don’t mind.” His tone was neutral, though, and didn’t give me anything to go on.

  I went to the coffee pot and poured myself a cup, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach and the tightness of my chest. The air between us was charged, but it felt like razors when I inhaled, I was so unsure of what we were. What would happen next.

  Usually, I took my coffee with both cream and sweetener, but I didn’t want to push his hospitality so I spooned some sugar from the bowl and stepped away from the counter.

  Donovan was waiting for me with creamer from the fridge. “It’s plain. It’s all I have.”

  Goose bumps rode down my skin.

  “Thanks. Plain is great.” I held my cup out and let him pour some in, wondering if I’d ever told him that I usually drank my coffee with hazelnut or if he’d just guessed.

  “I had a protein bar for breakfast myself. But I can get you anything. There’s toast. Or fruit. Or eggs.” He opened the refrigerator and reached inside.

  “I usually just have—” I stopped abruptly as he handed me an individual-sized cup of Greek yogurt.

  “Or yogurt,” he said.

  “Yogurt,” I said at the same time. “Thanks.”

  “Spoons are in the drawer behind you.”

  I didn’t move. Guessing that I took flavored creamer was one thing. My choice of breakfast food was another. “How did you—?”

  “You eat your breakfast at the office most mornings.” Reaching over, he removed the foil lid on the yogurt. “Same thing every day.” He pulled on a lower cabinet handle and a recycling can emerged. He tossed the foil inside and shut it.

  “You are perceptive.” I hadn’t even realized he’d ever seen me eating my breakfast. I was obviously the one who wasn’t perceptive.

  “I said I was.” Since I hadn’t moved to get a spoon, he reached around me to grab one and stuck it in my yogurt cup for me.

  “You’re also cocky.” This time when I grinned up at him, his eyes twinkled as though grinning back, even though his lips remained straight and even.

  I stared at those lips, wanting them. He was already so near, his hand resting on the counter behind me, and who cared that I had yogurt in one hand and coffee in another? I only needed my mouth to reach up for a kiss.

  I took a step in toward him, but he blinked and abruptly backed up.

  “Look.” He scratched the back of his neck, evading my eyes. “I have some work I need to attend to.”

  …and there it was. The brush-off.

  Disappointment fell through me like an elevator with cut cables.

  “I’ll take a quick shower and get out of your hair.” At least he’d been more polite about the way he’d asked for space this time. He’d made progress there. It just hurt that he still needed space.

  I set my mug and untouched yogurt on the counter and, with my back to him, babbled on awkwardly. “I have stuff to do today anyway. I have to review the ROI on the social media campaigns for last month, and I’m behind on my opportunity analysis reports. I should really get started as soon as possible if I expect to put a dent in those.”

  “No need to rush out. At least finish your coffee first.” His inflection portrayed nothing but poise.

  I nodded and took a sip from my mug. He’d turned back to his tablet, so I could watch him as he drank his own coffee and flipped through the pages of the online Wall Street Journal. As though today was life as usual. As though everything was normal. Was this really still no big deal to him? Were we really in just a physical relationship? Did last night mean nothing more than every other time we’d been together?

  After several heavy minutes of silence, he turned his head slightly in my direction. “Weston still has you doing the long-form OARs?”

  He wanted to talk about work then. Fine.

  “Yes. They’re time-consuming and the bane of my existence.” I hated the several-page analysis that Weston required monthly for every account that I worked, but I’d do a million of them if it meant the uneasiness between Donovan and me would disappear. “If they were helpful, that would be one thing, but mostly they just reiterate information from month to month.”

  He nodded once. “Agreed. When you report to me, I’ll reduce the requirement to semi-annually.” He flipped another page on his tablet.

  My brow furrowed and alarm bells rang in my ears. “I’m going to report to you?”

  With his back still to me, he explained. “We have lax fraternization rules, but even so, you can’t report to Weston once you’re dating him.”

  I almost dropped my coffee mug. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He turned to face me. “No, I’m not,” he said gruffly.

  Of course he wasn’t kidding. Donovan wasn’t the type to kid and everything about his tone and body language said he was serious.

  “Weston and I discussed it before you started working for Reach. We decided to wait until you were officially dating to make the assignment transfer, but it will be necessary.”

  I set my mug down and ran my hand across my forehead. “Wait…what?”

  “When you start seeing Weston,” he said slowly, patronizingly, “you will report to me instead of him.”

  There was something familiar about this. When I’d first arrived, Donovan had joked about me reporting to someone else, but the conversation had gotten dismissed. This was what it was about. They’d made arrangements in case Weston and I decided to see each other seriously.

  God, that was a lifetime ago.

  And Donovan thought it was still a possible scenario?

  “No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically, which was suddenly pounding as heavily as my heart. “No.”

  “No?” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the island behind him.

  “No!” I was vehement this time. “Never mind that we’d have serious conflicts with you as my supervisor.” Okay, sometimes I found his power games hot, but that wasn’t the point. “I am not dating Weston.”

  “Not now, you’re not. This is after he’s annulled his marriage that we’re talking about.”

  I threw my hands up. “I am not dating Weston! Not now. Not ever. How can you even think that I would…?” I trailed off, realizing that I might have never fully clarified this.

  Shit. Had
Donovan been thinking I was still hung up on Weston all this time?

  “Okay.” I exhaled, trying to remain calm. “I said I was going to go after him, but I’m not. I’m not interested in him. He is not the guy I’m interested in.” I couldn’t make it any more clear without saying it outright.

  Donovan thought about it then shrugged. “That’s a shame.” He grabbed his coffee mug and carried it over to the sink where he dumped out the remains. “You two seemed right for each other.”

  “We are not even a little bit right for each other!” I blared. Besides, I’m seeing you!

  Calmly, he filled the mug with hot water from the faucet. “I wasn’t aware your feelings had changed.”

  He was being such an incredibly hurtful ass. I wanted so much to grab the mug and throw the hot water in his face. “My feelings haven’t changed, and you know goddamn well they haven’t. I never had the feelings in the first place. You were the one who pushed me to him, and that was only because you were trying so hard to push me away from you.”

  He shut the faucet off and turned to me, his stare confrontational. “What was that?”

  His icy tone and the cold way he looked into me sent a chill down my spine.

  I folded my arms across my chest, willing to stand my ground but not sure I was brave enough to say it again. “You know what I said.”

  He took a step toward me, his eyes narrow. “Are you under an impression that something else is going on between us other than what is?”

  My hands felt suddenly clammy, and my throat had a lump in it the size of a tennis ball. It was my chance. My opportunity to tell him things had changed. This was a relationship. This was more than Just Sex. Not just for me—for him too, I was almost sure of it. He hadn’t slept with anyone else since he’d been with me. Wasn’t that what a relationship was?

  But I could tell how this would go. I could feel it in the energy vibrating off his body. As soon as I admitted it to him, he would either have to embrace me or end things, and there was no way he was embracing me. Humiliation was the only thing to be gained by that admission.

  So, jutting my chin forward, I gave him the easiest answer for both of us. “Nope. There is no ‘us’. That’s the right impression, isn’t it?”

  He held his offense posture a moment longer. “It is.”

  “Then we’re good.” My hands were shaky as I turned back to my coffee and my yogurt, but my appetite was gone. “I’m actually not hungry. And I’m just going to shower at home. You can get back to whatever it is that your life is.”

  Five minutes later I was changed. Thankfully my coat covered the tear in my dress. But even with my hair thrown up in a knot and my coat wrapped tightly around me, I would be making a very obvious walk of shame through his lobby.

  Though we weren’t really speaking, he saw me to the door. “My driver is waiting for you downstairs,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  He stayed at his door and watched from across the hall, so when I got in the elevator and turned around, my eyes locked on his. The last thing I saw before the elevator doors closed between us was his expression wrinkle with regret.

  I just couldn’t tell if he regretted letting me leave or that he’d ever let me in in the first place.

  Thirty

  I threw myself into work the rest of the day. Getting caught up on Weston’s lengthy, redundant opportunity analysis reports was an excuse to ignore thinking about Donovan.

  Even with my mind busy, I couldn’t stop from feeling. And my feelings were like a swarm of bumblebees buzzing inside of me. I felt so much for him. So much about him. And all of it stung when I examined it too closely.

  Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this.

  When I’d first let Donovan into my bed, I hadn’t thought it would be more than a one-night stand. I hadn’t realized that I’d fall so hard, so quickly. I hadn’t imagined that he might show feelings for me and that every time he turned cold afterward, I’d be shattered.

  It was better not examining any of it. If I did, I’d have to make a decision about what to do. So, instead, I kept my head in my laptop and focused on revenue pipelines and investment costs.

  By Sunday afternoon, I’d knocked out a significant amount of work and had managed to distract myself from random crying jags with a marathon of Community playing on the TV in the background. My Chinese delivery had just arrived, and I was about to sit back and enjoy my Kung Pao chicken when my phone alerted me that I had a text.

  I want dessert. When can I pick you up?

  The bees took flight in my belly, fluttering in that way that made me want to respond with Now as fast as I could type it. But their stingers were out, needling along my ribs and heart and everywhere, everywhere, wounding me with even the thought of being in Donovan’s presence while having to pretend that he didn’t mean as much to me as he did. How could I lie beneath him, how could I be naked in front of him, how could I let him move inside me and not fall even deeper than I already had?

  But what was my other option? I wasn’t ready to end things with him either. That likely made me a masochist, something Donovan probably already knew about me, but it wasn’t a label I could live with for long. I was too strong. Too ambitious. Too willing to go after what I wanted.

  Which meant that eventually I’d have to confront this.

  Just.

  I wasn’t ready yet.

  Without responding, I turned my phone on silent and tossed it on my coffee table. He’d blown me off for an entire week. I could ignore him for at least one night.

  Four hours later, I emerged from a shower to the sound of pounding on my door.

  I already knew who it was. A hot rush swept through me while goose bumps pebbled along my skin.

  He’d shown up at my apartment!

  Fuck. He’d shown up at my apartment.

  With a sigh, I wrapped my plain, fluffy terrycloth bathrobe around me and headed to answer it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked when, as suspected, I found Donovan on the other side of the door.

  He was wearing tan khaki pants, a dark gray pullover, and a scowl that made my heart race and my toes curl with trepidation. “You didn’t answer my texts.”

  “Texts” as in plural. He must have sent more.

  This was the part of my plan that I hadn’t thought through. He’d already proven my secretary wasn’t a barrier. I should have expected this.

  I leaned my face against the doorjamb. “It’s not fair that I can’t avoid you as efficiently as you can avoid me. I’m pretty sure your doorman would never let me up without your clearance.”

  His jaw ticked. “You’re avoiding me?”

  Obviously not anymore.

  Resigned, I opened the door wide enough for him to enter. “Come on in.”

  As he had last time he’d shown up at my apartment, he walked in as if he owned the place, which, of course, he did. Openly he surveyed the workspace I’d made for myself on the couch, my leftover Chinese still sitting next to my open laptop.

  I closed the door and made my way over to the coffee table to pick up my phone, which I hadn’t looked at since I’d silenced it earlier. There were a total of seven texts from him.

  I hated how that made me feel special somehow.

  “Why are you avoiding me?” he asked, reminding me that he was here in the flesh.

  “If I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn’t be avoiding you.” I threw the phone down and headed to the kitchen to pour a glass of merlot. I’d had one earlier, but the buzz had worn off, and I definitely needed something now.

  Donovan leaned against the back of my couch and watched me, shaking his head when I offered him a glass of his own.

  “Well, I’m here,” he said, hands curled into the sofa, “and I’m not leaving until you explain. Or until I’ve emptied my cock down your throat. The choice is yours.”

  My knees buckled at the sight of his devilish grin. I quickly threw back half my glass to help steady my resolve. �
��I cannot have sex with you, Donovan.”

  He seemed about to argue until I shot him a glare from hell.

  “Fine. Sex is off the table,” he conceded. “For now.”

  Thank god he’d agreed to that. Because I was already wavering. I felt warm everywhere, from my shower, from the merlot, from the way he looked at me—like he wanted to nibble every inch of my skin.

  God, how I wanted to feel those nibbles turn into bites…

  No, I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think at all with him in my house. I needed him to leave.

  “I’m not talking about this with you, Donovan. You don’t want to talk about this with me either. I promise you don’t.” With my glass in hand, I stormed past him and gestured toward the door. “So you might as well just go.”

  He didn’t move except to tilt his head in my direction. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  Except, I could know that. I was sure of it.

  “Donovan…” I pled.

  “Talk, Sabrina. Talk or I’ll find a way to make you talk, I swear to god.” Both his tone and expression were serious. The kind of serious that scared the shit out of me and made my pussy clench and drip.

  I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to say this.

  But it came hurling out of me like bad food that had sat in my stomach too long. “How can you be sleeping with only me and say we aren’t in a relationship?”

  “What?”

  I circled around in front of the sofa and started pacing. “You aren’t fucking anyone else. And I’m not fucking anyone else.”

  He turned around so he was facing me. “Do you want me to fuck other women?”

  “No.” I stopped mid-step, panic bubbling in my chest. “Do you want to fuck other women?”

  His face told me nothing. “Not at the moment.”

  That was a relief, at least. “Then how can you say we aren’t in a relationship? We’ve stopped using condoms.”

  He shook his head slightly as though he thought the conversation was ridiculous.

  Then, meeting my eyes, he came around the couch toward me. “We’re in a sexual relationship, then. Are you happier with that definition?” He grabbed the glass from my hand and took a swallow. “It’s just semantics, Sabrina.” He held the wine toward me, but I ignored it.