Chapter 16 - Ash #4
I snatched the papers she'd gathered from her hands and stepped into her space. "Is that what you're doing? You're toying with me?"
She shook her head, keeping an indifferent gaze on the junk pile. "No, I'm reminding you I'm able to get myself from point A to point B without incident, without the aid of anyone's car service, and without any male prerogative to guide my way."
I dropped my hands to her waist, tucked a finger under her skirt. "Tell me you'll do it, love."
"You want me to agree because it will make you feel better about something that isn't a real concern because this city is generally safe, and even if I did get lost on the subway, I'd find my way back eventually.
However, you've invented this concern because it gives you a handy place to store the emotions you don't know how to name," she said.
"Zelda," I protested because it was the only thing I could say.
"Is it possible that making you feel better will also succeed in making me feel small and powerless? Because I have to tell you, I just climbed out of that box and the process was grueling. You're not going to put me back in there only to unbox me when you want a bad bitch in bed."
"For fuck's sake, Zelda, no. That's not what I meant."
She flattened her hands on my chest, pushed up on her toes, and delivered a quick kiss to my lips. "What did I tell you about your buttons?"
Turning to collect the papers from wherever I'd thrown them, Zelda shot me an obscene wink.
I had to press my fist to my mouth to keep from growling when she bent over to retrieve a file from the floor because that skirt was awful but it was also torture.
The fabric hugged her backside, outlining the twin globes and enough of her panty line to make me dizzy with want.
Actually fucking dizzy before ten in the morning.
The fist was of no use because I growled anyway.
My hands were itching to touch her, to ruck up that skirt and palm her where she was warm and wet, to press my shaft inside her while her knuckles went white clutching my desk.
I balled my hands as she reordered the papers and straightened, smoothed her skirt.
I shook them out as she tucked her hair over her ears.
Balled them all over again because she was here in my office—and my bed—and something had changed.
Something significant, something big enough to alter everything because it'd never before crossed my mind to have sex in my office.
Now I wasn't positive I'd survive the day if I didn't.
And goddamn, the swell of…I didn't know what it was but my chest was tight and full and I was about to burst.
"If you're going to hover until I capitulate to your improbably patriarchal request, you should know that's a terrible use of a billable hour.
" She gathered an armload of my junk collection and headed toward the door.
"Why don't you just shoot irritated glares in my direction every few minutes while you make headway on wrapping up that audit?
" When I didn't reply because I was fantasizing about tasting her through her panties, she stopped, glanced over her shoulder at me.
"Do you need some cookies? Would that help? "
I needed tits flat on my desk and her cunt clenching around my cock while I teased her ass and I also needed to know she'd make it home without incident but yeah, cookies would do. As good a substitute as any. That was why I beckoned her toward me. "Bring me your phone again."
She shifted the files to her other arm. "Dare I ask what now, boss?"
"I want to enable contactless payment under my corporate card. If you're fetching cookies for me, I want to expense them."
Instead of arguing, Zelda drew the phone from her pocket and held it up. "Will this make you happy?"
Leaning across the desk, I plucked the device from her fingers and set to keying in the information. "I don't know about happy but since I know you're not going to come over and get that skirt out of my way—"
"You know you're a sex monster, right?"
I glanced up from the phone. "Meaning…what, exactly?"
"Meaning you're a dirty, filthy sex monster," she replied. "And you secretly eat cookies in the morning."
"Can you clarify for me whether this is an issue for you or a glowing review following a night you'll never forget?"
"I like how your ego has no limits," Zelda mused. "It's really endearing."
Since I was a dirty, filthy sex monster, I dropped down into my desk chair and made an unmistakable gesture toward my fly. "Come over here and say that to me."
We stared at each other longer than any two people should stare at each other.
It was heated and intense, and a million things passed in the moments between blinks.
And then—finally—she set down the papers, the phone, and she rounded my desk, straddled my lap, laced her arms around my neck.
It seemed she had no issue with me being a sex monster despite the pejorative nature of that label.
And, fuck, I'd be the best sex monster she'd ever had. The best, the only one she ever wanted.
"You are full of feelings today, aren't you, Ashville?"
I touched my lips to the smooth line of her jaw. "Yeah."
"Don't know what to do with any of them, do you?"
I kissed my way down her neck as far as her filmy blouse's collar would allow. "Not really, no."
She took my face in her hands and she drew half-moons from my cheekbones to my lips.
And then she gifted me a slow, sweet kiss that turned everything else off.
It didn't alleviate my desire to rip that skirt up the back or bite her clit through her panties but it picked up the pieces of my frantic need and put them away in a manageable order.
When she broke the kiss, she leaned back, her fingers pressed to my lips.
"I'm going to get you some cookies now. When I come back, you're going to work on that audit and I'm going to make sense of all the little fires around here.
Then you're going to Abe & Louie's and I'm going back to the apartment on my own, and I won't be informing you about my mode of transportation because I'll tolerate only this much"—she held her hand up beside her shoulder—"insanity from you.
Not an inch more. When you return from your meeting, you're welcome to be a filthy, filthy sex monster all you want.
I'll look forward to it." She granted me a brief kiss before sliding off my lap.
"Now tell me. What kind of cookies do you want, boss? "
This dinner meeting was running three bottles of Malbec too long.
Not that I'd enjoyed much of the heady red.
Why would I when I could nod and laugh along with my clients while waiting for an opening to step away and check my phone for an update from Zelda confirming she'd arrived home without incident?
Or better yet, why imbibe when I could replay the strangled sob I'd forced from her lips when I'd pushed inside her last night? Why, indeed.
Her message landed shortly after the appetizer plates were cleared, a one-word note of "home" accompanied by a photo of her outside my building.
I'd thought about telling her she wasn't home until she was behind the closed doors of the apartment, that god-awful shirt in the trash and her feet bare while she lounged on the sofa in my boxer shorts, but I had to get through this evening without my dick throbbing.
I replied with a stiff "thank you" and made a note to scrub my calendar of dinner meetings wherever possible.
While I wasn't one to cram my weeknights with these gatherings, I'd never understood why some of my clients were in such a rush to get home.
I could give a pass to the ones with small kids but when it came to the dual income, no kids crowd, I didn't get it.
Didn't those people have enough time with their partners?
Couldn't they manage an evening apart without sighing into their gin and tonics?
Why did anyone need to sprint home for a couple of minutes with their partner when there were deals to be made and hours to bill?
I'd never been able to make sense of it.
Until tonight.
I understood it all and that understanding came with a dose of resentment for know-nothing fools such as myself who insisted on finalizing agreements after hours.
I didn't want to be here, didn't want to do this. Nothing mattered besides getting back home where I could set down my troubles and simply be with her. And inside her.
Though it wasn't all about the sex. The sex was a fine bonus but it was everything else, all the pieces of her I'd discovered and claimed as my own. Plus all the pieces I'd yet to collect, the ones I didn't know but required nonetheless.
As soon as the business conversation gave way to the well-traveled paths of golf handicaps and vacation destinations, I excused myself to settle the bill—another bottle of Malbec tossed on for good measure—and made my exit.
I didn't need to be here for the rest of this.
Not when it was the same pointless chatter that always populated the tail end of these gatherings.
Sports, industry gossip, political grousing.
I hadn't noticed the rigid three-point waltz of it before but now that I saw, there was no missing it.
While waiting on the curb for the car service to arrive, I snapped a photo of the receipt and uploaded it to the Ferryman Brothers' expense file.
I could've walked back to my place and on any other night, I would have.
Get in some steps, burn off the wine, think through tomorrow's work.
It was time well spent. Yet I didn't give a single fuck about tomorrow because I had a strange, beautiful woman at home and tomorrow would arrive whether I worried over it or not.