13 - Taming Grace, Part Two #2
“That would make things a lot more complicated,” he finished up for me. How did he know what I was going to say? I clasped my hands in front of me. It was strange, to think that this man who was working for me already knew so much about me. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
“What about you?” he asked, breaking the silence between us. I cocked my head at him.
“What about me?”
“Didn’t seem like the first time you’d done something like that,” he pointed out. “When we ran into each other.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” I replied, a little defensive.
I wasn’t sure why, but the thought of him viewing me as some tourist in his world annoyed me.
I was meant to be the one in charge here.
This clash of worlds was pretty confusing, the two sides of my brain competing to see who would come out on top – one half of me wanted to tell him to get back to work, one half wanted to slide into his lap and find that risky release right here in the middle of work.
“But you don’t do it a lot?”
“No,” I admitted, shaking my head. “I don’t want to risk it. Some people aren’t so discreet, and if it got out what I was doing in my spare time...people can be judgemental. Especially about women in the business.”
“So you’re saying you would do it more if you knew it could be kept on the down-low?” he wondered aloud. I shrugged.
“I guess I might,” I admitted. I didn’t see where he was going with this line of questioning until he fell silent for a moment, and I glanced up at him to see a glimmer of interest in his eyes. My jaw dropped, and I burst out laughing.
“You have to be kidding me,” I replied, shaking my head. He cocked an eyebrow.
“And why’s that?”
“I can’t just...”
“Why can’t you just?” he replied, leaning forward with interest. I fixed him with a hard stare.
“And what exactly do you get out of all of this?” I pointed out. “You really want to get involved with someone you work with? Right after you just moved here? You think that’s a good idea?”
“Not at all,” he replied, a glint in his eye. “But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be fun, right?”
“You’re crazy,” I laughed. “What happens if we got caught? I would get in so much trouble – people have to take me seriously around here if I’m going to get this place to function, and that’s not going to happen if I’m fooling around with one of my employees.”
“That’s why nobody would have to find out,” he replied. I shook my head again, even though I had to admit there was a kindling of curiosity deep inside me.
“I don’t mix work and pleasure like that,” I replied firmly. “That’s just going to make things way more confusing that they have to be.”
“Well, whatever you say,” he agreed, leaning back from the table. “Just know that the offer’s open, all right?”
“All right,” I agreed, and he ran his fingers through his hair, not taking his eyes off me, like he was giving me one more chance to go back on what I had just said.
“You have some work to be getting on with, don’t you?” I reminded him firmly. If he thought that he could get away with sliding in here and acting like he didn’t have to take care of the important stuff, he had another thing coming.
“I think I do,” he replied, and he got to his feet.
I felt the sudden urge to tell him to stay – I wasn’t ready for him to go, not quite yet, and I knew that made no sense.
I sat back in my seat and forced myself to allow him to just walk out of there.
He fixed me with one last look before he backed out the door, and closed it tight behind him – allowing me to release a breath I didn’t even realize I had been holding.
Jesus. That had been a lot to take in. More than I was capable of absorbing in one fell swoop. Every nerve-ending on my body felt as though it had been struck on fire, the burning consuming me. And all we had done was talk. Just talk! So why did I already feel this way?
I tried to turn my attention to some of the emails I had to reply to, figuring out how to arrange my meetings for the next few days so they weren’t going to get piled in on top of one another, but my mind was stuck on him, on what he had said to me.
He oozed a confidence I’d never seen in anyone before, and the part of me that was his boss felt threatened by it – but the part of me that had given myself to him that was thrilled.
He had swaggered in here like he owned the place, and I knew that should have pissed me off, but if anything, it just excited me.
The thrill of knowing what he knew about me was coming off him in waves, and in truth, I wanted him to learn more.
Hell, I was intrigued, interested to know what else there was to the depths of his dominance.
He knew more about this world than I did.
And yes, I knew that there was more to what had been indulging in that what I was doing alone – I just took the easy route, letting myself engage the only way I knew how, the only way I could get away with without it interfering with my day-to-day life.
Those stolen moments, those bitten lips, those fucks so passionate they were bordering on painful...
that was all the release I could give myself.
But here was this man, offering to help me find more. And yes, I had known from the very first moment he touched me that there was something different to him – that he understood what I wanted better than anyone else had. Maybe even including myself.
And, although he didn’t run a business like I did, he obviously understood the importance of discretion.
My company would have done stringent background checks on him, on everything that he had ever done, good or bad, and if they hadn’t been able to turn out anything questionable about his past, maybe it just wasn’t there to find.
Maybe he had done such a good job keeping it all to himself that he knew how to play these games without letting them run into his day-to-day life.
And maybe he could have shown me how I could do it too.
I couldn’t keep my eyes focused on the screen in front of me. I wanted to put him to the back of my mind, once and for all, but how could I do that? The best fuck I’d ever had was sitting just a few minutes’ walk away from me. And he wanted me. He had made that very clear. But did I want him?
The thought pulsed through my mind all day as I tried to keep myself distracted with everything else that was going on; normally, work was enough to keep me occupied no matter what was going doing in my personal life, but on this occasion it felt different.
My thoughts turned back to him, over and over again.
Could I do this? Did I want to? In my head, I had always managed to keep the two sides of me separate, convinced that they couldn’t exist in the same place and at the same time.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I needed to bring them together, once and for all, find out if they balanced each other out...
By the end of the day, when the office was clearing out, I had made my decision.
There was no way I was going to be able to get this out of my head until I had taken advantage of it.
If there was one thing I had learned for damn sure from years of business, it was that if an idea stuck around long enough, it probably meant that there was something to it.
I had worked long enough to know a good deal when I heard one.
And this? This seemed like it might just be a good deal.
I gathered my stuff at the end of the day, waiting until the building was nearly empty, and casually made my way down to the office that we had assigned Sam for as long as he was there.
If anyone saw me, they would probably assume that I was just checking in on the new guy, making sure that he was settling in all right.
They wouldn’t guess what was really happening. Would they?
I knocked on the door, and it felt weird – normally, I was the one on the receiving end of hopeful office visits, but now I was on the other side of it. The world was shifting, inch by inch, below my feet, and I was pretty sure I liked it.
“Come in,” his voice called from inside, and I pushed open the door – and found myself face-to-face with Sam, who was chatting with his secretary.
Well, chatting might have been too generous a word for it; she was twirling a stray strand of hair around her finger and beaming at him, laughing at something he’d just said flirtatiously.
I felt a flare of jealousy rise up in my chest, and I ignored it.
The woman glanced around, saw me, and ducked and hurried out of the room.
There were some upsides to being the boss, I supposed.
“Hey,” I greeted Sam, closing the door behind me. He looked up at me expectantly, his gaze tracing down my outfit – I liked the way I felt when his eyes were on me, even as I did my best to ignore it.
“Hey,” he replied. “You need something?”
“Need you to start working instead of spending all your time flirting with your secretary,” I shot back, and he chuckled.
“Trust me, I wasn’t flirting,” he assured me, cocking an eyebrow. “Why, you jealous?”
“More concerned about your output than anything else,” I replied, though I was certain he could guess what I was actually doing here.
“And that’s what you came down here to check on?” He asked me. “My output?”
“Of course,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. “What else would I be down here for?”
“I thought you might have come to take me up on the offer,” he replied, and I snorted, acting as though it was the last thing on my mind.
I wasn’t sure why I was putting this off so intently; it was what I wanted, after all, but I was just nervous about doing it.
Once I had given myself over to this, there would be no backing down, and that was the last thing I needed.
“What offer?” I replied. “You want to put that in writing for me? Keep it on record?”