Chapter 12
Troy
I watched Monica walk out of my office to write up a few email drafts I had assigned her. She was wearing those damn black pumps again. The ones that made her smooth legs look like they were ten feet long underneath another fitted skirt. I swore she wore them to torture me. Everything was to torture me. The skirts. The peek of cleavage. The stain on her lips. The hair pulled back to reveal the nape of her neck where my lips once were.
I knew it was cocky to think it was all for me, but the way she looked at me today—the way our eyes met and she didn’t back down from the intensity I knew burned between my forest of pupils—it couldn’t all be for nothing.
I let my eyes linger longer than they needed to before going back to the screen on my computer, Monica’s smart words still gnawing on my brain. She had a bite to her. A sarcasm that no one had challenged me with in a while, and it made her even more enticing. It made her mouth even more fuckable knowing she could hold her own and call me on my shit.
Focus, Troy, I told myself.
That was what I kept telling myself for the next two weeks as we spent just about every hour of every workday together. When we weren’t working together, she was right across from my office in plain sight. I thought with time I would get bored of this feeling, but it kept growing inside of me. Persistent. Irksome. Damn irresistible.
I watched her now, sitting at her desk as she took an incoming phone call. She held her pen up to her lips and I remembered how they felt around me. It was impossible not to grow hard at the memory. She listened intently, her brown eyes dancing as she brought the pen away from her pillowy lips and began jotting down a message on a pink post-it.
To distract myself, I opened my calendar and looked at the carefully color-blocked schedule I had for the day to see what Monica would be joining me for. Meetings on top of meetings, plus an 8 p.m. meeting with an investor in Australia. I realized it would be our first late night together in the office.
I wondered if I could sneak in a dinner together. Her accompanying me wouldn’t be out of the norm. All of my previous assistants may as well have been my third arm with how much time we spent together. That was the nature of the job. I didn’t want it to look any different with Monica, especially under the suspicious eye of Kathy.
More so, I just wanted to find a corner booth and order a bottle of wine to calm the nerves that bubbled inside of me.
I typed Monica a quick message on my computer and sent it to her, trying not to make it obvious that I was watching her from the corner of my eye for her reaction to me throwing dinner together into today’s schedule. I heard the message bell on her computer ding, bringing her brown eyes to the screen. It read…
Today’s agenda
10 AM meeting in conference room
11 AM phone meeting
12 PM lunch
2 PM shareholders meeting
6 PM business dinner at Ocean Club
8 PM phone meeting with overseas client
She seemed to smirk as she typed out a response. A moment later, my own notification bell dinged. I couldn’t help but smile as I read her message.
You do know I have access to your calendar, don’t you?
I looked up and saw her watching me. She looked pleased with herself. It was a confidence I hadn’t seen from her since the night she asked me “…your place or mine?” The memory of it made something churn inside of me. I gave her a single nod and went back to looking busy on my computer, when really I was trying to block the memories of her breasts in my mouth or the way her legs wrapped around me, pulling me deeper.
She hadn’t objected to the dinner.
A few minutes before 10 o’clock, she joined me outside my office and we strolled down to the conference room at the other end of the hall. I told her about the potential investor and everything I had read up on him, from dating history to life growing up to previous investments.
“How do you know all of this? You seem to know everything about every single client we meet with,” she said, raising a brow between taking notes.
“You have to do your research with these types of things. You have to know their past and present. What makes them tick. What gets them going. It’s the only way you’ll earn their trust, and once you have that, you have to know what gets them excited. Investing is not only about making smart moves, it’s about acting on feeling.”
She bit her lip as she soaked in what I was saying, unsure of it all. It took all I had in me not to act on feeling.
“That.” I pointed to her mouth.
“What?” she asked, her brows drawing together.
“I thought I told you not to do that.”
It sounded like such an asshole demand, but it was for her own good. For my own good.
She pressed her lips together tightly and went back to writing notes on the yellow pad of paper in her hands, but I saw the corner of her mouth pull slightly into a smile. I couldn’t afford to be distracted in front of a possible new client. I also hated the idea of another man lusting after that perfect mouth, which was coated in a blush pink gloss today.
The meeting went well. We signed the client. He was a younger guy who unexpectedly came into money after his uncle passed away. It was a sad story, but it led him to me and I was all the more richer for it. Monica played her part of assistant well, listening and taking notes. It was important for her to see how these things worked. She also showed a sympathy I couldn’t when the guy talked about his uncle passing. He ate it right up, but I saw how his eyes wandered to the edge of her blouse. He didn’t look all that sad anymore.
“You did good in there,” I said as we walked back toward my office.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“I think you distracted him enough for him to throw in a couple more hundred grand.”
“Is that what I am? A distraction?”
“You might be sometimes. Not purposefully. Don’t take offense to it. I just don’t think men can help it when you’re around.”
I swore I saw her cheeks flush.
“You were smart, too. Professional. Thank you.” I wanted her to know she wasn’t just a pretty thing to look at, as I was coming to find out.
The rest of the day dragged on. Knowing there was dinner and time alone dangled like a carrot at the end of the day. When dinner did finally come, I got my usual corner booth in the restaurant, and Monica sat as far away from me as possible. There was a palpable tension between us in the black leather U-shaped booth. I watched as she intently looked at the menu, as if she was studying for an exam.
“The lobster is good,” I suggested.
“Mmm,” she said, not looking up from her menu.
“Are you up for wine?”
“We are still on the clock,” she said, finally meeting my gaze with a shake of her head.
I shrugged and gave her an innocent smile. “We deserve it. It was a long day.”
I watched something come over the doubt in her gaze. “Fine.” She rolled her eyes.
I waved over the waiter, not wanting to miss this chance, and ordered a bottle of white wine and two orders of surf and turf. When the food came out sizzling on two large plates, we were already a bottle deep. I guessed I wasn’t the only one with nerves.
Monica giggled as she tried to pry the meat from the gigantic lobster tail in front of her.
“Are you drunk?” I asked with a smirk.
“Never,” she answered, unable to hide her smile.
“I could have you fired for that.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do without me.” She leaned in with a challenging stare.
This was the closest we had been and I had to hold myself back from grabbing her and kissing her. She must have sensed it because she pulled away and popped a bite of lobster in her mouth.
“Mmmm,” she said, her eyes closing as she tasted the buttery bite on her tongue.
Fuck. I had heard that sound before. Did she even know what she did to me?
I reached over and finished the last sip of wine in my glass, trying to fight the heated flush that now ran through me. Dinner had been a bad idea. Wine had been a bad idea. My inhibitions were low. So fucking low.
After dinner, we decided to walk back to the office, feeling full from the savory lobster and steak and tipsy from the chardonnay. The sun had already set, leaving us in a purple haze of darkness and city lights. We kept the talk small and tried to keep a distance between us, but every now and then she would sway closer, her arm brushing against mine. It was probably because of the wine.
Back at the building, the elevator doors opened, revealing an empty office. Everyone had gone home for the night, including Kathy, much to my satisfaction. I hated feeling like I was being babysat, especially in front of Monica.
I led Monica down the dim, quiet hallway to my office where she gathered up files for the meeting as I settled in at my desk. I picked up the phone and dialed the long number for my client overseas, placing it on speakerphone. It was almost lunchtime there, and he sounded eager to get the meeting done so he could go on break. We quickly went through his investments, which had made him a shitload of money, leaving him with next to nothing to change in his portfolio. It was a successful call that ended leaving Monica and me alone in my office with nothing else to do for the night. I wasn’t ready for it to end.
“Well,” she said hesitantly from her seat across from me. “I guess that’s it for the day.”
I noticed she didn’t get up yet, but instead remained seated in the warm glow of my desk lamp, playing with the hem of her skirt. My eyes immediately were drawn to her fingertips trailing the smoothness of her thighs against the tweed fabric.
“Another successful one in the books,” I said, not breaking her intent gaze. The crackling embers between us were now a full-fledged flame, and there was no possible way she didn’t feel it too. I had to be closer to her.
I stood from my desk and walked around to where she slowly stood, looking toward the door, unsure if she should go or stay. She looked back toward me as I slid my hand across the shiny surface of my desk, brushing against the ballpoint pen that sat dangerously close to the edge and now fell to the marble floor.
She did exactly as I hoped and bent over to retrieve it and I followed suit, also knocking a stack of papers over. Our hands brushed against each other and it sent a current through me that would make it impossible not to have her tonight. Her eyes slowly met mine as we stood up, clutching a few stray papers between the both of us, leaving the majority of the pile at our feet. She was just inches from me as I wrapped my hand around her lower back and pulled her in, closing the gap between us.