Chapter 29
Samantha
I didn’t go to his office in ten minutes. Or twenty. Or forty.
I made him wait an hour.
Was it petty? Yes, it was. Was it childish? Yes, it was. Was it just a way to see if I could push his buttons the way he’d pushed mine? Definitely.
But damn it, he’d broken the rules. We’d set the game up perfectly and we’d played it without a hitch—this strange thing that satisfied both of us. We were in sync. And then he’d told me that I tasted like honey—right here in the elevator at work.
And it had made my heart beat faster and my breath come short, just like the game did.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.
I had spent all of last night thinking about how he’d left me at Shaker’s, the words he’d used. The slightly sad look in his eyes when he said them. And I realized that somewhere along the way, I’d screwed up. I’d misread him. We weren’t as in sync as I thought we were.
We’d made a strict rule never to talk about the rules of the game. That back-and-forth, chess-match aspect had made things more exciting. But it had also meant he couldn’t tell me I’d been a jerk in the usual way. So he’d done it by getting me off twice in a restaurant bathroom, then leaving.
Okay, I had to address what had happened. But I didn’t have to jump when Aidan snapped his fingers, boss or not. We’d never had that relationship before the game began. Just because he’d given me the best, most intense orgasms of my life didn’t mean that we’d have that relationship now. I was still his executive assistant, the best one at Executive Ranks. I wasn’t his minion. I would go to his office, but I would do it on my time.
So I poured a coffee at the coffee station in the middle of the office and I drank it as I sorted email, both mine and his. I fielded requests for Aidan to take meetings or speak at conferences. I took a call from the legal department. I went through the mail.
There was a piece of mail from a hospital in Chicago. Thinking it was a request for a donation, I opened the letter and skimmed it. Too late, I realized how personal it was—I couldn’t unread what I had read. I set the letter aside, along with other papers that I needed Aidan to sign. I went to his office and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Aidan was standing at his floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the city. He wasn’t wearing a jacket or tie today, just black pants and a black dress shirt that was cut perfectly to his torso and the flawless line of his waist. His hands rested casually in his pockets. He had a shadow of stubble on his jaw. I let my gaze take him in for a quick second while he wasn’t looking at me—the sinuous line of his muscled shoulders, the way his pants fit over his ass. I thought of the pilot I’d met in the bar last night, of how knowingly his mouth had worked over my pussy, and my skin went hot.
He turned and looked at me, his features stern. But I knew him now, and I could read his expression—there was amusement in his eyes. “Nice of you to show up,” he said.
I kept my chin up. “Sorry, the time you gave didn’t work for me. I had things to do.”
“I apologize for keeping you from your important work.”
He leaned his weight a little on one hip, and I thought of what he had looked like in jeans last night. I tried to keep my cool. “I went through the mail,” I said. “There’s a letter from a hospital. I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have read it. I didn’t know it was personal.”
I held out the letter, but Aidan stayed where he was, making no move to take it. “Is it about my mother?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t read all of it.”
“Read all of it now.” His voice was calm, though cooler than before. “I don’t want to read it. What do they want?”
I turned the page back around and read it. “They say, um, that in her condition she sometimes tries to wander from the grounds. They recommend moving her to a different section of the hospital where they watch the patients more closely.”
There was not a hint of reaction in his face. “And?”
I read to the bottom. “And, er, the change in care is more expensive.”
“Of course it is. Tell them that the change is fine and I approve the expense.”
I folded the letter. “I’m sorry your mother is ill.”
Pain showed in his expression for a brief moment and I watched him fight it back. I wondered how often he fought down his pain. “She’s losing her memory,” he said. “It’s happening faster than the doctors expected, and they don’t know why.”
“What about your father?” I asked.
He shook his head. “My mother left my father when Ava and I were little after he hit her one too many times.”
My stomach twisted. “I’m sorry, Aidan. I shouldn’t pry.”
“It isn’t prying. Not when you know the person.” He stepped toward me and touched the line of my jaw with his fingertip. “And I’d say we know each other pretty well, wouldn’t you?”
I suppressed the shiver his touch gave me. Did we know each other really? We’d talked plenty, but that was usually in character. I raised my gaze to his. His eyes were dark and beautiful. There was pain in their depths but there was also warmth, because he was looking at me.
Yes, I did know this man. Even when we gave each other different names, I still knew him. And he knew me, in ways that no one else did—not my sister, my parents, my coworkers, my former lovers. Aidan knew me in a way that made me know myself better.
It was terrifying.
I was no one, an anonymous child who had been left at a hospital with her sister. Because I’d had to build my identity from nothing, I thrived on being the good daughter, the good sister, the good assistant. What Aidan knew about me—the real me—fractured all of that.
“I’m not renegotiating the game,” I said.
Aidan’s finger was still on my jaw. He dropped his hand. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Turn around.”
It didn’t matter how defiant or opinionated I was; when he said that, I did it. I didn’t even think. I turned around.
His hands came to my hips. I sucked in a breath at the touch. I tried to keep it quiet, but he heard it. His fingers pressed into the fabric of my knee-length skirt, pulling it up one inch, and then another.
“Do you have any idea,” he said, his voice low and rough, “how much I want to bend you over my desk and fuck you?”
I closed my eyes as I felt the hem of my skirt drift upward. “No,” I said.
“You sound so convincing, Samantha, but we both know I could do it if I wanted. Undo the top button of your dress.”
I did it, my hands moving of their own accord. My skin was flushing hot.
“The next one,” Aidan said.
I unbuttoned the next one. Cool air brushed the skin between my breasts. The entire office was on the other side of the door—phones ringing, keyboards clicking. My pussy throbbed.
He lifted my skirt higher, then brushed his warm fingers over the outside of my thighs, tracing lines on my skin. “I would fuck you until you came,” he said calmly. “I would fuck you until I came inside you, and you’d work the rest of the day knowing my cum was inside you. If you let me, I’d fuck you until I was the only thing you thought about every morning. I’d fuck you until you craved me above anything else.”
A soft moan escaped my throat, but I cut it off. “No,” I rasped.
His fingers moved to the front of my thighs, then traced a line between them. So very, very close to my pussy in my damp panties. “You won’t let me, so I’m not going to. But you want me to, Samantha. You want me to fuck you, and you want it very badly.”
“I don’t.” Who was I fooling? I was standing in Aidan’s office, my dress unbuttoned and my skirt up, my eyes closed, dying for his hands between my legs. But I said it again. “I don’t.”
He leaned forward, his breath against my neck. I could smell him, the heady scent of him mixed with the smell of my own sex. “We don’t need the game, Samantha,” he said. “You don’t need it. You never have. You just need to let go.”
Behind my closed eyelids, I pictured that—what letting go would look like. What it would feel like. With Aidan, it would feel amazing, like I was finally myself after a lifetime of trying to be someone. Of not knowing who that woman really was.
I stood frozen and helpless, temptation washing over me. And then Aidan removed his hand. My body ached as he lowered my skirt, the fabric brushing my oversensitized legs. He circled to the front of me and gently fastened my buttons.
I opened my eyes and looked up at him. We looked like two people standing in an office, but he had just undone me completely, and we both knew it.
His expression was serious, his eyes dark. “Your move, Samantha,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”