14. Salinger
14
SALINGER
I t doesn’t go away—my desire for Mandy.
All weekend, when I was working, when I was eating, when I wasn’t sleeping, when I was lifting weights, she consumed ninety percent of my brain power, leaving the rest of me on autopilot.
The problem, I decide, is that seeing her in that dress was so unexpected. She didn’t just look pretty or sexy—she looked fuckable.
Why do I care?
I don’t date or even fuck for pleasure. If I don’t have an ulterior motive, I’m not interested. And there is no ulterior motive with Mandy. There is nothing to be gained by sleeping with her.
I cannot let her dominate my thoughts anymore. This little obsession needs to be killed in its cradle.
Thankfully, the dress is waiting for me in my office Monday morning, and Mandy’s back in her standard shapeless clothes.
She had the dress dry cleaned. I know because I lifted it up to my face hoping to smell her and only got the scent of chemicals. Still, I take it back home with me that evening after another late night of me and Mandy alone in the office, her typing, me pretending to work.
When I walk into the dark penthouse, a small bag is waiting for me on the kitchen island. A note pinned to it says, “Found these in the powder room. May belong to your lady friend.”
I take the pink panties out of the bag, close my eyes, and press the fabric against my face. These have not been washed. They smell like her and something deeper. I want to feel them soaked with her juices, want to see my cum all over the pale-pink fabric. I crave it.
At least I have the willpower left to keep from jacking off into them. That would be desperate—an action for a lesser man.
My whole obsession with Mandy is absurd. I can have any woman in this city I want. Mandy should be at the bottom of the list. So why is she consuming my thoughts, distracting me, haunting me?
In the office, my to-do list is piling up, because I’m incapable of writing more than a few lines of an email before my attention drifts to Mandy on the other side of the glass wall.
Despite her ponytail and the shapeless linen, all I can see is the great tits and curvy figure under all that fabric.
Will she ask me for her underwear? She has to know she left them at my penthouse, right? Is she just going to pretend she never lost them and play dumb? What would happen if I show up at her desk with the panties, tell her how good she smells, how I crave her, how I want to bury my face between her legs and fully taste her?
“Salinger?”
Fuck.
Mandy snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Oh dear, am I interrupting your fantasy time?”
“My what?” I snarl at her. She can’t know, can she?
Alarmed, my assistant jerks her hand back. The smile falls from her lips. “I’m sorry. I just meant—”
“You meant what?” I stand so quickly my chair crashes to the floor. Stepping around the desk, I advance on her. “You thought what? You think that just because you were practically flashing your tits at me on Friday that I’m spending my time, my valuable time, thinking about you, fantasizing about you? You’re nothing to me. You don’t even cross my mind except when you fuck up and cost me money.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she whispers, shuffling backward. “But everything worked out, right?”
I sweep one arm out and send my computer monitor, the stack of files, and the glass of water on its coaster crashing off my desk.
Mandy yelps.
“Everything worked out?” I move toward her.
She presses her hands over her mouth, watches me apprehensively.
“I bet there never was another date. I bet you just orchestrated the whole thing because you wanted a chance at true love or whatever relationship bullshit you’ve been watching on TikTok. You’re so fucking pathetic.”
Mandy scurries around on the other side of the desk, keeping the barrier between her and me. “I wasn’t lying.” Her voice is trembling. “Honest, I did have someone.”
“You disgust me. Trying to sleep with your own boss because no other man wants you.”
“It’s not true.” She sounds so small and sad.
I do not care. “I should fire you just for that. Clean up this shit, then get out of my sight.”
Mandy immediately kneels down on the floor to start picking up the papers that have been soaked by the water.
Instinctively, I want to pick her up in my arms before she cuts her hand on the glass, unzip my fly and grab her hair and make her suck my cock, sit her on the couch and pet her hair, give her one of those coffees she likes. Make her smile again.
Instead, I turn on my heel and leave my office.
“Asshole,” I hear her friend say under her breath as I pass.
Even the dog looks at me like I’m a monster.
Well, I am.
And it is all because of Mandy.
Forget surviving the rest of the week—how am I going to survive the next few years working with her?