Chapter 10 A Better Answer #3
The hunger beneath the humor stopped my almost-smile before it reached my mouth.
Simone entered and closed the suite door herself. She placed the amendment on the desk beside my copy, aligning the corners with unnecessary precision.
"The committee controls my job," she said. "My lawyer answers to me. I can leave Blackwell tomorrow without losing the money tied to Kessler."
"Correct."
"You are still the founder, chief executive, and largest individual shareholder. You could make my life unbearable without changing one line in an employment file."
"I could."
"These safeguards reduce your power. They do not erase it."
"No document could."
She turned from the desk. "That may be the first honest sentence anyone has spoken about workplace safeguards."
"I am trying not to purchase a different answer with a reassuring lie."
Her attention held me in place. "If I leave right now, what happens?"
"You go to your room. Tomorrow we finish the covenant."
"If I kiss you and then leave?"
Every muscle in my body drew tight. "The same."
"If I sleep with you and regret it?"
The possibility cut through desire without extinguishing it. "You owe me no explanation. The committee keeps control of your employment, and I make no claim on you."
"You do not turn restraint into debt."
"Never."
She came closer, stopping with a foot of carpet between us. "Then listen carefully. If I say stop, you stop. If I move away, you let me. Until then, I want you to stop asking me to authorize every breath and use the judgment everyone in London is terrified of."
The air left my lungs slowly. "For tonight, in this room."
"For tonight, in this room."
"Tomorrow, this gives me nothing."
"Tomorrow, it gives you a disclosure obligation and an inconvenient memory. Nothing else."
"You are certain."
"I am informed," she said. "That is better."
Her palm settled against my chest, directly over the place my composure had stopped functioning. She felt the evidence beneath my shirt and looked almost offended by it.
"You hide this very well."
"It has not felt hidden."
"I am going to kiss you."
"Do it."
She rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to mine.
The first contact was careful enough to expose eleven months of restraint. Her lips were warm from the hotel, her loose hair cool where the rain had touched it, and the faint mineral scent of the night clung to her skin. She kissed me once, firmly, and stepped back.
I kept my hands at my sides.
Her breathing changed. "You did not follow me."
"You stopped."
The challenge left her expression. What replaced it was more dangerous because it contained trust.
"Good," she said.
"Come here."
The words landed between us with none of the restraint I had shown at the door.
Simone came.
I caught her at the waist, turned us, and put her against the paneled wall. One hand closed around her hip while the other slid into the damp weight of her hair and angled her mouth where I wanted it.
"Open."
Her lips parted under mine.
Coffee, mint, and the heat of her tongue destroyed the last civil distance between us.
I kissed her until her fingers stopped gripping my shirt and began pulling it from my trousers, until the silk at her back warmed beneath my palm, until the measured breaths I had taken through hostile boards and collapsing deals became useless against the small, impatient sound in her throat.
She bit my lower lip when I slowed.
"There you are," she whispered.
I tightened my hand in her hair just enough to expose the line of her throat. "Hands above your head."
Her eyes darkened. She raised them, palms flat against the paneling.
The posture was not surrender. Simone had never surrendered anything in her life. It was a choice made with her eyes open, and the knowledge drove straight through me as I kissed beneath her jaw and felt her pulse strike hard against my mouth.
My lips followed the column of her throat.
The scent at her skin was warmer there, rain giving way to clean soap and the salt of her.
I opened the first button of her blouse with my teeth grazing the hollow below it, then the second with fingers that were less steady than they had been when I signed away control of a company worth billions.
"Conrad."
My name carried warning, appetite, and satisfaction in equal measure.
"Keep your hands where I put them."
Her shoulders pressed harder to the wall. "That sounds like an order."
"It is."
The smile she gave me was slow and devastating. "Finally."
I opened another button and put my mouth on the upper curve of her breast through black lace. Her back arched from the wall. Her hands stayed in place.
The sight nearly ended me.
"Bedroom," I said.
"Another order?"
"Yes."
She lowered her arms and walked through the doors without looking back.
The lamp beside the bed threw amber light across white linen. Simone stopped at the foot of it, her blouse half open and her hair in deliberate disorder around her shoulders. She looked less vulnerable than any person I had ever seen and more dangerous than she had at the acquisition table.
"Tell me now if this is about winning," she said.
"You are not a thing I can win."
"The meeting, then. Gratitude. Adrenaline."
"This began long before today."
She watched me, searching for the smallest evasion.
I gave her none. "Take off the blouse. Leave the lace."
Her fingers moved down the remaining buttons. She drew the silk from her shoulders and let it fall to the carpet. Black lace held the soft weight of her breasts, and the skin above it was flushed from my mouth.
"You are staring," she said.
"You were instructed to leave the lace. I did not promise not to look."
"Any defense beyond contract construction?"
"None."
"Your shirt," she said. "Off."
"You are misreading the command structure."
"I am renegotiating it."
I crossed to her instead. "Then earn the amendment. Unbutton it."
Her breath caught, but her hands rose to my collar. She opened each button with maddening attention, knuckles brushing my chest, nails skimming the skin beneath. When the shirt came free, she pushed it from my shoulders and followed the cloth with her palms.
Her thumb found the white scar beneath my ribs. "Did your father turn this into a lesson too?"
"He called it evidence that horses dislike poor judgment."
"The horse had a point."
Her mouth followed her fingers.
The first kiss landed on the scar, soft enough to be a threat. The second moved to the center of my chest. By the time her tongue touched the hard plane of my stomach, I had gripped her hair and forgotten every clever answer I possessed.
She reached my belt.
I stopped her hand. "No. On the bed."
Her eyes lifted to mine. "You plan to give all the orders now?"
"I plan to use the permission you gave me."
"Then use it well."
I turned her and lowered her to the mattress. "Lie back."
The white linen folded beneath her as she obeyed. I removed her trousers, dragging the fabric slowly over the curve of her hips, down her thighs, past her knees. Her shoes struck the carpet one after the other. When only black lace remained, I put my hands on her knees.
"Open them."
She did.
The lace was already dark with want. I looked until she shifted beneath the attention, then traced one knuckle over the damp center and watched her stomach tighten.
"You enjoy making people wait," she said.
"Only when they pretend they are not impatient."
"I have never pretended that."
"Not with words."
"Do not mistake impatience for permission to treat me as fragile."
I met her eyes. "I am careful because you are not mine."
Her fingers threaded into my hair, not gentle and not uncertain. "Good answer."
I bent and pressed my mouth to her through the lace.
Her answer broke into a sharp breath. The sound warmed every inch of me more effectively than the room, more effectively than the whisky I had not poured, and I repeated the slow pressure until her hips lifted in a demand her voice had not yet made.
"Take them off," she said.
"You are giving orders again."
"Consider it performance feedback."
I hooked my fingers beneath the waistband and drew the lace down her legs. "Accepted."
Then I put my mouth on her.
The first intimate touch of my mouth stripped language from the room. I took my time, learning the pressure that tightened her hands in my hair and pulled my name from her in a voice no employee, director, or adversary had ever heard.
I had run companies through panic without raising my voice. Her hand in my hair reduced the achievement to trivia.
"Harder," she said.
I gave her harder.
Her heel pressed into my back. The rhythm stopped being an experiment and became an order of its own, set by the lift of her body, the tightening of her hand, and the rough music of my name losing its final consonant every time she tried to say it.
She twisted once beneath me, seeking more than control permitted.
I held her hips still. "Take what I give you."
Her eyes opened, bright with challenge. "Make it worth taking."
The provocation found the weak seam beneath every year of control.
I changed the pressure until her taunt broke into a cry and kept her there while control left her in increments I could feel. Her thighs began to shake. Her stomach drew tight. When the intensity made her twist beneath me, her hand pulled me closer. I held her steady at the angle she had demanded.
"Look at me," I said.
She forced her eyes open.
"Come for me."
Simone came with my name stripped bare in her throat, her body trembling beneath my hands while the sound of her pleasure struck every polished surface in the room.
I stayed with her until the tremors eased. Only then did I lift my head.
Her hair covered half the pillow. Color ran from her breasts to her throat. She looked furious, wrecked, and entirely herself.
"You look pleased," she said.
"I am deciding whether to be gracious about the performance review."
"Do not strain yourself."