Eight #2
We walked how we always did—his hand on the back of my neck, gently steering, making sure, since I was an idiot after all, that I knew where I was going.
He hated firing people. It took a lot out of him, but it became necessary because his expectations were too high.
And people could never say, You expect too much for what you pay, because the man paid his assistant a small fortune.
So, it was good that he had lunch with me because he needed to decompress and eat good food and not have to worry for even a second what he sounded like or didn’t or that his eyes were narrowed to slits because he was furious.
I explained about Hayes Fisher and his brother, David, and Cristo Liron, and how I was sorry that I hadn’t listened to him, but when had I ever? And why in the hell did he think I was going to suddenly start now?
“Jory—”
“Drink your soup.”
And he took direction like he never did and sipped his soup while he gave me instructions.
“You have to look like you belong there when you come to the office tomorrow.”
Meaning I had to look pretty. “I know.”
“Are you going to put an ad in the paper?”
“No, I’m gonna call around first and see who knows somebody. And you don’t need two assistants. You need one, plus a typist that your assistant will manage.”
“I fired my typist last week.”
“For crissakes, Dane.”
“She said she needed more.”
“More what?”
“More from me. She said that she could make me happy.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “So, what she really needed were some good antipsychotic drugs and therapy.”
“Indeed.”
“Huh.”
He cleared his throat.
“It’s because you’re so alluring.”
He rolled his eyes. “My wife needs to know I have good people around me, not people who want to take her place in my life.”
“You’ve always insisted on not letting me hire someone. I mean, you let me weed through applications with you, but you never let me sit in when you hired someone.”
“Well, now I’m going to try to let you find the right person.”
“Alert the media; he agrees with me.”
The eye rolling was not lost on me.
“In the meantime, I’ll come home with you tonight and tell Aja I’m gonna be there until you find someone.”
His smile was the one hardly anyone but me and Aja and a few close friends ever saw. It was the real Dane—stripped down, vulnerable, with the soft eyes and the curl of his lip that made your stomach twist with the trust of seeing it.
“Don’t worry.”
“I’m not anymore. My only unease is over you.”
“Why?”
“Let’s talk about Cristo Liron.”
I couldn’t even say it didn’t concern him because I had basically made it his business with my earlier confession.
I didn’t get home until after nine, having put in the rest of my day with Dane, sorting through files and appointments to get a handle on his office again.
They had moved the copy room for whatever reason, which was fine, walking was good for me, but the main issue was figuring out his schedule, which made no sense, as well as the myriad of tasks that went into being his assistant.
I’d sent him home before me, bowing out of dinner with him and Aja, letting him give her the news that I was stepping in, for the interim, as his assistant.
As I walked toward my apartment, I saw the Rolls-Royce Phantom from the previous evening. Alaric was inside the car, and when I waved, he lifted his hand from the steering wheel as Hayes Fisher got out.
“Hi,” I greeted him.
“Jory, I’ve been calling you all day.”
And I knew he had, but I had ignored it.
“What the hell was that all about last night?”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, moving closer, hands in the pockets of my peacoat.
“I just … the way I figure things out, they kind of just hit me, you know? I get blindsided, and when that happens, I just dig out. It’s a bad habit, but see, I had no idea you were interested in me until last night.
I really thought you just wanted to hang out. ”
“I do.”
I shook my head. “You don’t. You wanna come upstairs and get in my bed. I’m slow, but not stupid.”
He took a settling breath. “Just come get a drink with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk to you and I know you won’t let me come up.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” I assured him. “Sex is a dead issue.”
“Then come hang out with my friends and me. We were planning on going to a club tonight. Doesn’t dancing sound like fun?”
“You dance?”
“Of course I—why are you squinting at me?” He was indignant. “I can dance.”
But he didn’t even have good music in his crappy house.
“Jory, just … c’mon. Let’s start over. I need friends, all right? God, do I.”
“You could buy some.”
“That’s a really shitty thing to say.”
And it was.
“Sorry.”
“Please get in the car.”
I got in the car.
The club was a techno wonderland of light and sound. The dance floor was huge, but the crowd was still crushed together in sweaty, hungry heat, and I could feel the throb of the music inside my skin.
There was no way to talk; it was too loud.
So, I met Hayes’s friends with handshakes and hugs before he pulled me after him into the press of bodies.
On the dance floor, we were basically shoved together as we swayed from side to side with everyone else.
When he put his hands on my hips, I shook my head and started back through the press of skin to the table.
I did not expect to be grabbed and swung around.
“What are you doing?” Hayes yelled at me.
“I need to go,” I told him. It was another stupid decision on my part. “This doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like friends.”
“Jory,” he began.
I turned, and when I did, I was suddenly face-to-face with Cristo Liron.
“I thought you didn’t date?” he said, and even as loud as he had to yell the accusation, I still heard how low and icy and filled with venom it was.
I flipped him off, stepped around him, and headed toward the coat room, but he grabbed my arm and yanked me back hard.
“No one blows me off.”
Power had to be exerted so I could free myself from his grip, and when I did, I shoved my way through the dancers until I was at the edge of the floor.
Moving fast, I made it to the coat room.
The girl I had left my jacket with earlier was still wading through the stack.
My peacoat had not even been hung up yet, and so I saved her the hassle of finding a hanger.
Instead of going out the front, I headed for the back to leave.
There were rooms that needed to be passed, and it was dark, barely lit, and the smell and the sounds let me know what was going on even if the lighting did not.
There were lots of guys on their knees, many being fucked against walls—noisy and messy and loud.
I was moving fast, feeling frantic, and when I became aware that someone was behind me, I sped up.
But it was too late.
Grabbed hard, stuffed through a door into a tiny room, I was whirled around and thrown up against a wall. I prepared to defend myself.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you,” he rasped, the whispered words sounding like a roar to me.
I froze, my breath catching as half his face came out of the darkness, slate-blue eyes glinting in the low light, blazing with fury.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, going out to a—”
“Sam,” I breathed his name, lunging at him, arms around his neck, pressing into him as tight as I could, my body heating instantly with the contact.
The man was massive, covered in hard muscle, and I wanted to touch all of him as fast as I could.
His big, strong hands were on my ass, lifting me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, writhing, grinding, and pushing my groin into his abdomen.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his voice harsh, angry, even as he tugged at my belt.
I whimpered as I was manhandled—the jingle of my buckle, the pull on the button, then zipper—and then I felt the air on my leaking cock.
“Fuckin’ tell me!”
“You know me,” I answered breathlessly. “Put me against the wall. Please.”
“Fuck no,” he snarled before he tilted my chin up and sealed his hot mouth to mine.
Oh God, kissing Sam Kage. Had I missed anything more? Ever? I devoured his mouth, sucking, licking, biting, and even in my own frenzy, I realized that I was being kissed back with equal passion, equal need.
I was aware of a sound like foil, and then slippery fingers slid between my cheeks, parting them as a slick coolness grazed my entrance.
Lube. He had lube for me, and my heart stopped as I whimpered with happiness.
Spit would have worked for me. It hardly mattered, but for whatever reason, Sam Kage was carrying around lube. Sam was …
I stiffened suddenly, involuntarily, as my mind raced with the implications of that.
“You idiot. I had it for you. Who the fuck else?” he scolded me.
Best part about being married was, your husband could read your mind.
I went boneless in his arms, and when my jeans and underwear were roughly shucked off, leaving me naked from the waist down, I begged him to hurry.
I was lifted, slammed back into the wall, and held there as I felt the first press of the head of his engorged shaft at my entrance.
“Sam,” I cried out, trying to push down, trying to impale myself on the thick, velvety length of him that I knew so well.
“I wanna hear it.”