Dear Grumpy Boss (Bossily Ever After #1)

10. Sasha

Ten

Sasha

I can’t breathe.

And not just because we’re running through the dark corridor like fugitives. Every few steps, Zayn stops, pushes me against the wall and kisses the hell out of me. For a man who rarely touches anyone, his kisses have their own language.

A thrill runs through me as I wonder if this new language is only for me.

Tucked into the alcove, with people blindly milling about, his kiss was soft and tender, an unspoken promise.

At the ballroom’s exit, it was biting and hard, a lesson in primal need.

In the darkness that envelops us in the corridor now, it is ragged and desperate and…demanding.

My lips tingle and my heart’s playing trampoline inside my chest. I feel punch-drunk, even though I had only one glass of champagne. This feels like a grand adventure and Zayn is the scary ride I’ve always stared at with longing.

Now, though, I’m so ready to ride him.

A giggle escapes me and he cages me against the wall and takes my mouth again, as if he needs to capture the sound. His lips are cool and I sip at them greedily. With my sight gone, the oak and cedar scent of him hits deeper.

“I love it when you laugh, Mouse,” he says, his hands stroking and cupping me everywhere. “Tell me what brought it on so I can do it again.”

We’re moving again, with me tucked up under his shoulder. His tone sneaks into my heart and coils there. I rarely ever hear him plead for anything. He usually growls and grumbles his way through life.

My face flames but I push the words out. “I…was just thinking that this is my version of extreme adventure and you’re the most thrilling ride I’ve ever encountered and how much I want to…ride you.”

His grip tightens over my waist and his gaze finds mine in the darkness. Beautiful amber eyes pin me as if I were an exotic butterfly. “Soon.”

His promise is silken and sinful.

My heart pounds in my ears, louder than the distant rumble of thunder, as we go up a flight of winding stairs. The metal banister is cool under my fingertips.

Without so much as a missed step, Zayn walks toward the fourth door in another dark corridor. The keycard beeps and glows green and he pushes the door open.

Fresh shock keeps me rooted to the spot as he closes the door behind us. The luxury suite is lit up by candles on every available surface.

It looks like a scene out of a cozy romance novel.

The large crackling fireplace casts a warm glow that flickers against the walls, creating fleeting patterns in the darkness. Beyond the open door of the terrace, the sounds of the storm are comforting, given this cocoon we’re wrapped in. The scent of rain-soaked earth and something like lavender fills the air.

As my eyes adjust to the dimness, I make out the contours of the suite—a stylish velvet sofa, a white marble coffee table gleaming beneath several platters of tiny, colorful desserts and fruits, and a champagne bucket.

And there at the center of the opposite wall is the most luxuriously decadent bed I’ve ever seen, with white sheets and a footstool to climb into it.

“Zayn,” I whisper, my skin hot despite the chilly air breezing in. “What did you do?”

His hands land on my shoulders. I close my eyes to better absorb the feeling of him framing me like this.

He gathers my hair, pulls it to the side. For one wonky breath, I feel him fisting it. My scalp prickles with a new awareness of his need. And finally, God, I’m ready to meet it. To fulfill it.

He throws my hair over my shoulder, his breaths playing with the small hairs on the nape of my neck. “I stole you away, Mouse. Everybody and everything else is taken care of. Tonight, I get to spoil you.”

The raspy slide of the zipper is louder than the stuttering beat of my heart. His fingers are cold—or my skin blazing hot—as he sneaks them under the dress and pushes it off my shoulders.

It slithers down my breasts and settles at my hips. The snap of my bra sends a shuddering shiver through me. It barely falls at our feet when his hands come around to cup my breasts.

With a rough groan, I press back into him. Already my flesh anticipates his special brand of possession.

My moan sounds erotic to my own ears as he pinches and tugs my nipples into plump, needy peaks. Stretching to my toes, I throw my hands around his neck as he strokes my shoulders, my breasts, and then my belly.

His palms are abrasive as he slides the dress off my hips. It catches at my ankles, and I stumble. Zayn catches me and on my next breath, I’m on the high bed, floating on a cool, fluffy cloud.

Hands on my knees, he watches me with that singular intensity. My heart is beating so fast that I’m surprised it’s not shooting out of my chest. I want to reach for him, but old fears and new inhibitions keep me passive.

“Is this what you want, Mouse?” he says, leaning down and pressing his palm between my breasts.

I grab his wrist with both hands. “Yes, please. I want…”

“What?”

“Whatever you want.”

A frown claims his brow. Already, I feel like I’m failing him. But how do I tell him it’s because I’ve never done this before? That I want to please him so badly that I’m tying myself in knots.

“I want to see more of you,” I say, pushing up to my elbows.

Amber eyes gleam in the darkness with a savage kind of satisfaction. So, he likes it when I ask him for stuff? I file the little detail away.

He unbuttons his shirt—his jacket lies discarded somewhere in the corridor—and pulls it out of the band of his trousers. Candlelight plays with every ridge and plateau of his defined chest and abdomen. His sparse chest hair narrows down to a thick trail on his abdomen that I want to follow with my tongue.

Holding my gaze, he unzips his trousers and pushes his black boxers down. They stay on his tapered hips as he sneaks his hand inside and pulls out his cock.

He is gloriously made, with fat veins running its thick length.

My eyes widen into saucers as he tugs from root to tip a few times. Saliva floods my mouth as if in preparation to take that thickness inside. The restless need in me coils tighter and tighter as he plays with himself, his gaze eating up my expression.

“Is this what you want, Mouse?”

“God, yes,” I say, running my hands over my thighs. I spread them—the move as instinctive as it is wanton.

His gaze lasers toward my core and he strokes faster. Pre-cum beads into a pearl at the tip. I lick my lips but he catches it and wipes it away on the bedsheet. My heart drops to my stomach.

“Touch yourself. See if you’re ready for me.”

“What?” I say with a quiver in my voice. The idea of not only baring myself to him but touching myself in front of him is…both exciting and mortifying.

“You take instructions well in the office, no? Do the same here, Mouse.”

My gaze dips to his erection and then skids back up. “I thought we’d make love. Don’t you want that?” I hate how breathy my voice is, but I can’t help it. I’m dying to feel him inside me. I want to feel his hard body pressing me down into this bed, that thick cock pinning me until I can’t breathe.

Suddenly, I realize I have all these desires and the words for them but I don’t know how to communicate them to him without betraying the fact that I love him so much.

He doesn’t laugh but his lips twitch. “Make love?” One devilish brow climbs up his forehead. “Step out of the pages of the romance novel into real life, Mouse. You wanted one forbidden night, remember? This is purely sex. Scratching an itch.”

He’s not being mean, I tell myself. Only giving me what I asked for. I should have known to be careful of what I ask him.

Before I can protest, he leans closer and taps his cock against my lace-covered core. I reach my hand out, eager to pet him. Eager to please him.

He arrests my hand midway. “You’re allowed to look, Mouse. Not touch. You haven’t earned the right to my cum either, baby girl.”

The hurt that pierces me at his declaration is stunning in its intensity. My hand falls to the sheet and I fist it. “That’s…unfair.”

He shrugs. “That’s why you should never offer up carte blanche before the opposite party spells out their terms.”

“This isn’t a business deal for me.”

“What is it then?”

My silence makes his jaw lock up tight. A muffled curse later, he’s gone.

I look up at the dark ceiling and blink back tears. For some reason that I don’t understand, he’s decided to indulge me tonight. Only to a point, apparently. But I’m so gone for him that I’m willing to take whatever he gives me.

Gathering my hair—it keeps tickling my already heated skin—I spread it around my head.

He returns just as I’m getting antsy, champagne bottle in hand. With his trousers hanging off his hips, the V of his pelvis is a treat I can’t look away from. His muscled shoulders and defined pecs gleam, but his tension is as tangible as the cool breeze coming in from outside.

What the hell does he have to be tense about?

“Sit up halfway,” he says in that gruff, grumpy voice. As if I’ve already displeased him.

And yet, something about that very tone goes straight to my needy, achy core.

I do as he commands, my breasts jiggling with the effort. His cock is at my eye level and it’s all I can do to stop myself from leaning over and licking the thick length.

One of his hands grips my shoulder and before I can blink, a splash of cold liquid hits my neck. I gasp and flinch but he doesn’t let me jerk away. We watch the liquid slither down my skin, between my breasts.

He bends down and catches it right as it dips into my belly button. Tension coils inside me. The slurp of his warm lips against the cool liquid…is indescribable.

I sink my fingers into his hair, desperate to keep his mouth on my skin, but he’s too fast for me. It doesn’t matter that I brace myself for what comes next.

My breath rushes out of me in a whoosh as the champagne hits my left nipple. Before it can drip down, Zayn’s mouth is there, catching it, licking it, licking the underside.

Afraid that he won’t welcome my touch, my hands seek the bed and grip it tight. He continues this torment over and over on each breast until I’m sticky with champagne and his licking. Stickier still at my core.

“Please, Zayn…” I say, a million wings fluttering under my skin. “Please…”

“Please what, Mouse?” he says, looking up at me, rubbing his stubble against the peak.

“Please suck them. I can’t bear it.” I grip his hair and pull. “I need it.”

“Show me how you want it.”

I cup my breast and with one hand still in his hair, I bring it to his lips. “Open,” I say, half begging and half sobbing.

He opens, clamps his lips around the bud and then suckles. I twitch and moan and writhe and just when I think I might reach that peak again, he stops.

My growl is loud and ferocious in the silence, as is his following laughter.

“I hate you,” I say, every inch of me trembling.

“Battle words, baby girl.” Fingers bracketing my throat, he pushes me back onto the bed.

His mouth leaves open kisses over my pubic line and then he clamps his teeth over my panties. The lace rips loudly. Cold, weighty glass presses against my inner thigh and it takes me a moment to understand.

I splutter incoherently when the champagne hits my folds. And then his mouth is there at the low end, catching it all. Drinking it in with wet, slurpy sounds that make my core gush.

I push onto my elbows, just in time to see him nosing up through my folds, his dark-red lips wet. He looks up and the wicked glint in his eyes floors me. This man could own me so easily, body, mind and soul. If he doesn’t already.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to taste you, Mouse?”

I shake my head, displacing little beads of sweat.

“So long,” he says, almost to himself. “Telling myself it’s wrong. Only to have you leave me?”

“Zayn, I—”

“Did you do this for me too?” he says, tracing the shape of my bare lips with a reverence that I’ve never seen in his eyes before. “All this slick for me, baby girl?”

I nod. Words are beyond me at this point. He could use me like a blow-up doll for all I care. But so far, all he’s done is pleasure me. I’m frowning at that point when he dips in and sucks my clit with his lips.

Electricity buzzes up and down my spine and I groan a guttural sound. He repeats the motion a few times and I chase his mouth with my pussy. His tongue licks down and then he thrusts the tip into my slit.

Incoherent sounds escape me as he fucks me with his tongue. But it’s the overflowing feelings in my heart that elevate this into something else. The sight of this man…my first crush, my grumpy boss, the only man I ever wanted, with his head between my thighs, it’s better than any romance novel I’ve ever read.

My orgasm is a shimmering mirage inching closer and closer. I’m crying fat tears now, desperate to finish, chasing the tail of a star.

He pulls back, his elbows digging into my fleshy thighs. Only when I register the stretch do I realize how indecently I’m splayed out. How his eyes gleam with a near manic desire. His lips are damp with my arousal and the champagne. “Shall I stop, Mouse?”

“Don’t you dare stop, Zayn! I did it all for you, okay. Today, and for four years and even before…” I swallow the words. “All I ever wanted was to please you. To gain your approval and attention.”

“That’s all I need to hear, baby girl.” He grins that rakish smile and dives back in.

I barely get used to the assault of his lips on my clit when he thrusts a finger into me. My spine straightens as if someone wedged a fork in there. It pinches a little but I’ll be damned if I say anything. There’s no place for my twisted nerves to land because his mouth is brutal on my clit.

Another finger thrusts in and he curses. “Fuck, Mouse. So wet and tight and slick…all for me. You’re going to milk me so tight and so good, aren’t you?”

I nod, his words twisting the coiled spring in my belly tighter and tighter.

He adds one more finger and the pinch is a raw, burning stretch now. How are we ever going to fit that monster cock of his into me?

I gasp in a breath but those clever fingers of his are probing some deep, delicious spot I’ve only read about.

“You have such a pretty pussy, Mouse. And it’s mine, isn’t it?”

“All yours, Zayn. All of me…is yours. Only yours,” I cry.

He halts the sucking of my clit and looks up. Possessive need blows the black of his eyes. Then he tugs the thick bundle between his teeth and I’m flying away.

The cork from the champagne bottle has nothing on how high and how far I fly. My thighs clamp his head and I’m shaking and crying and coming. And coming, because the man is relentless. He keeps licking at me as if I’m his last meal.

One orgasm rolls into another one, wrecking me, remaking me, my body nothing but a thousand fragments of pleasure.