André

by Jayce Ellis

  More’s the pity. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a tool, but no. André would’ve kept it professional regardless. Me, though? Now that I was over my initial stupefaction? Now all I could see was him writhing under me like he had before, his body twitching under my touch and that hole squeezing my fingers in a vise grip. Shit. I wanted nothing more than for him to come on to me. My brain, clearly still in full-on ho mode, twisted that thought and pushed memories of coming on each other, me because he was just that good and him because he wanted to see his come on me. I needed more.

  “What about after the internship ends?” I blurted out.

  André raised a brow. “What about it?” His voice held nothing. No curiosity. No anticipation. Nothing. I ain’t like it.

  “What if we want to see each other then?”

  “I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?”

  I paused before answering, taking the time to drink him in. That smooth skin, that goatee with just a hint of stubble that felt like fire licking across my body, that mouth that had sought out every inch of me, taking and relinquishing control in turn.

  When I got back to his eyes, they’d gone dark on me. That same look when I’d told him what I wanted to do to him.

  I leaned forward. “Nah, boss, that ship is still in port. It’s just waiting for all the passengers to climb on board.”

  André let out a noisy breath but didn’t say anything else, and after a few moments, I left the room. My dick was stone and I had another six hours of work to get through. If all three weeks were like this, I was in trouble.

  Chapter Seven

  André

  I called Harold at 5:31. He answered the phone laughing. “Things went that well with Mr. Thompson, huh?”

  “What the hell’d you get me into?” I had to talk to someone who got this guy, whose opinion matched the professional veneer I needed to adopt to handle this. Because Marcus had gone from a glacier to a goddamn inferno in an hour’s time, and I didn’t trust it. Or my reaction to it.

  “Marcus is the coldest motherfucker I’ve seen. He knows exactly what he wants. Or what he thinks he wants.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You got plans tonight?”

  “Not if that’s a prelude to you inviting me to Stan’s.”

  I laughed. Stan’s was where me and Harold kicked it, got away from the rigmarole of corporate life and could be around our people. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been there since leaving Clarymore.

  “Meet there in thirty?” I asked.

  “Twenty. Don’t be late.”

  He clicked off and I gathered my stuff. Surprisingly, Fiona hadn’t stopped by to hand me my ass again after this morning’s performance, but it’d been quiet since. I poked my head into Marcus’s office. He wasn’t there, but his messenger bag sat on the floor, a can of Red Bull on the desk next to his tablet. I debated sticking around, just to tell him I had no expectations of him working after hours, but Harold would be waiting and Stan’s wouldn’t seat him until I showed. I’d mention it in the morning.

  The walk to the basement restaurant was quick, the weather pleasantly comfortable, and I jogged down the stairs to the entrance. Harold was at the bar and held up a glass when he saw me. The maître d’ waited until Harold’d gathered his belongings, walked us to a table and disappeared.

  “That kinda day, huh?” I said, pointing to his drink.

  He grinned, took another sip, and got nestled into the booth. “Let’s not worry about my day. Tell me about your intern.”

  I didn’t start until my drink came and we’d ordered a plate of wings to share. “What’s Marcus’s deal? He’s clearly sharp as shit, but he hadn’t even reviewed the proposal.” Now that we were here, I had to be careful about what I said. He didn’t need to know about Marcus wilding out this morning. If I told him, he’d have questions I had no intention of answering.

  But Harold was already shaking his head. “I don’t believe you. Marcus not being at a hundred ten percent? Impossible, unless something’s going on. His preparedness makes some of the advisors look like rookies.”

  “Bet they love that,” I muttered, my mind a whirl. He hadn’t known who I was, so it couldn’t be the prospect of working with me that made him show up unprepared. I didn’t know him well enough to assume otherwise, but Harold wasn’t the kind to blow shit up someone’s ass. Maybe I just needed to scrap this whole day and start over tomorrow.

  “I’ll confess,” Harold said, and I winced, because I’d tuned out, “I did ask that Marcus be placed with you when the Penningtons chose you as a finalist.”

  Now that caught my attention, and reminded me what he’d said on the phone. “Why? And what’d you mean about what he thinks he wants?”

  Harold took another sip and had a bite of his wings before he answered. “Like I said, Marcus is a cold motherfucker. He was crystal clear when he interviewed that he’s interested in international corporate finance and wasn’t here to mess around. Reminded me of you, actually, except you like people. He doesn’t.” I huffed. Harold grinned and continued. “But he was so focused, so sure, and his transcript shows he’s done the bare minimum in other areas. Required and core courses, and that’s all. So my goal for him has been to forcibly expand his horizons.”

  I’d noticed that too. “You think he’s lying about what he wants?”

  “No.” Harold shook his head. “That’s not it. He needs the exposure, because he’d excel at anything, but I don’t think he gives himself a lot of leeway. Perfection or bust type of guy.”

  “So why me?” I asked again. The Marcus I met today absolutely matched Harold’s description. Neither of them matched the man I’d met Friday, and sure, I knew folks had office personas. I certainly had when I was at Clarymore. But he had some Jekyll/Hyde stuff going on, and I needed to know what Harold expected from me.

  “Like I said, he’s you. He’s a surlier version of you. And I need you to put on that André charm that made you tops in the recruiting class and show him how to do it.”

  “My being tops didn’t keep me my job.” Damn, that sounded bitter.

  “Your being tops made you a target.” Harold paused and stared at me, and I tried not to fidget under his gaze. “If you’d fought for the job I would’ve fought for you, but you wanted out. Not that way,” he clarified, “but it was the excuse you were lookin’ for to leave.”

  “That why you didn’t try to convince me to stay?” There was a hesitation in my voice I hated. Harold had been on my side, but personally. To the other partners, he’d remained silent, and I’d always wondered why he hadn’t spoken up.

  “It was your way out,” was all he said.

  I nodded and picked at the fries I rarely paid attention to. Yes, I’d been unhappy at Clarymore, and had thought more than once about opening my own firm. I’d had a ten-year plan in mind, though, not the five I’d actually spent.

  Harold was right. Phil’s deception had made for an easy choice, but when the chips fell and the partners all went in one direction, I’d looked to Harold for guidance. For support, and it hadn’t come. Not in public. So I’d cut my losses and run. Would I have stayed if he’d openly encouraged it?

  “Look, André,” he said, and I jerked my attention back to him. “You went MIA after the mess with Phil. You acted like you were blackballed when you weren’t. You didn’t use the contacts you had, and you’ve let yourself needlessly suffer.” Harold pulled out his wallet and a card, then scribbled on the back. “Next week, Thursday, networking happy hour. Be there. Bring Marcus. He’s made no contacts and we go nowhere fast without them.” He threw a few twenties down and stood. “Gotta get home. I’ll see you then?”

  A question that wasn’t. He patted my shoulder and walked out. I paid the rest of the tab so the server could turn the table over and left.

  This whole thing had gotten overcomplicated, and it was on
ly day one. Somehow I had to navigate this project, Marcus, Pop’s birthday party—which meant a lost weekend—and more expectations I needed to juggle.

  I’d already broken my no-drinking rule coming out here tonight. Another when I got home wasn’t going to kill me. I walked past my office building and looked up. Some offices still had the lights on. I had no earthly clue which window was mine, but I hoped like hell Marcus wasn’t one of them as I made my way home.

  Marcus

  I could confidently say I’d never had the urge to fuck my superior before. But every time I walked past André’s office, I wanted to bend him over and take what I was pretty damn sure we were both craving. It was fucking with my head enough that Jake noticed, and Jake ain’t notice shit he didn’t want to.

  “Man, what’s gotten into you? I ask you a question, it takes you three times as long to answer. Your head’s all up in the clouds. What’s going on?”

  I’d lived with Jake now for six whole weeks. We saw each other nights, some Saturdays, and Sunday night. That was it. Until then I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years, when his family had moved to DC. Under the circumstances, he was disgustingly perceptive. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but I didn’t like being the subject of scrutiny. I busied myself with seasoning the ground beef for the burgers I had a hankering for, with cinnamon sweet potato fries for him and parmesan truffle fries for me.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than worry about what I’m doing?” I finally asked.

  He laughed, completely unfazed. “Sure, but the way you’re all up in your head over there? The way you can’t hold a conversation? Oh no, I want to know what the deal is.”

  And he wouldn’t shut up until I told him. “It’s this new assignment.”

  “That’s right.” Jake sat back and crossed his arms. “I totally forgot about that. Probably because you weren’t bitching about it the way I expected,” he continued, an eyebrow raised. “So what’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing, honestly. It hasn’t been as awful an experience as I predicted.”

  Another lie. The only problem with working for André was that he insisted on being purely professional. I tried to follow his lead, but it was hard when he walked in wearing those slim-cut type slacks that made his ass pop, and acted like I was just supposed to deal. It was a goddamn nightmare.

  Beyond that, I had the nerve to enjoy the project. Once I’d gotten through the documentation and proposal, I knew André was a top-notch advisor. He gave my ideas serious weight, we game-planned together, and he let me do my own thing. It felt like a partnership more than anything, and I relished it. And spending time with him.

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Jake said, interrupting my mental wanderings. “I ask you a question, you answer, but then you disappear and I have to wait for you to return to Planet Earth. So what’s really going on?”

  “I fucked him.” Can’t say I meant to admit that, but it was out there now.

  Jake cocked his head, a perplexed frown on his face. “Say what now? Say that one more ’gin, because I’m certain I misheard you.”

  I chuckled, but the sound was harsh. “No, pretty sure you got it right.”

  “Marcus. Marcus Thompson. You mean to tell me that you slept—by which we mean you engaged in coital relations—with your boss? Your superior?” He paused, then snickered. “Did he make you clutch the sheets after?”

  See, this was why I hated that Boomerang shit. I grabbed a potato and started peeling. “Does it help that it happened before I knew who he was?”

  “It sure as fuck does. Totally changes the game. Okay, let me recalibrate, and we can go forward.” Jake turned his head this way and that, then nodded, like he’d come to some internal resolution. “When did you have time to fuck anyone? You never leave the house.”

  Jake with the important questions. “I did last Friday.”

  I waited. Jake narrowed his eyes in concentration, probably struggling to remember what we’d done, since he’d been busy with his own plans, and I saw the moment when recognition dawned. “Park. You hooked up with someone at Park.”

  “I did. Total happenstance, trying to buy the man a drink.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, like when I ran into that cat and he dropped—oh shit,” he said, cutting himself off. “Him? Tell me that’s not your boss.”

  “That’s not my boss.”

  “You lyin’ motherfucker.”

  Now I laughed, relief coursing through me that I didn’t have to spell it out. “Yeah,” I said, running my hand over my face. “That’s André Ellison, of Ellison Financial.”

  “Goddamn. What’s that been like?”

  “After I jumped in his face like I had no goddamn sense? Fine. Except...” I had no idea how to finish that.

  Jake did. “You still want to fuck him.”

  Bingo. And I wanted to actually fuck him this time. I didn’t miss the way André responded to me, the way his shoulders softened and his eyes went pliant every time I got near. I’d forced myself to ignore the way I was inextricably drawn to him, but I couldn’t help but want him. Want to know what it was like to actually fit myself into him, feel him clench underneath me, to bite the back of his shoulder and lick the nape of his neck.

  And yeah, I was getting hard thinking about it, something Jake didn’t miss, and wanted no part of. “Ayee! Yo yo yo, put that thing away. I don’t need to see that shit.”

  “Oh, so you not hungry then?” I asked him with a snort.

  His eyes narrowed. “I ain’t say all that.”

  I laughed, and Jake grew serious again. “Okay, so that explains a bit about why you been acting so weird recently. But for real, how’s the project?”

  Hadn’t he already asked that? Yes, and I’d gone off on a tangent about fucking my boss instead. Jake was right: my mind was everywhere.

  I sucked in a deep breath to focus, then confessed that I’d actually been enjoying it. He nodded along as I spoke, the small grin on his face growing wider the longer I talked. It should’ve been my cue to shut up, because I knew what he’d say, but my mouth wouldn’t stop until I got it all out. When I finished, Jake was leaning back in his chair, absolutely beaming.

  “You sure you don’t want to work in a smaller place? I know I already said it, but you don’t ever talk like this about the corporate clients the way you did about Abernathy and now Pennington. All you do is bitch about how they don’t listen to anyone and think their shit doesn’t stink.”

  Those were facts, both about my complaining and about how larger clients behaved.

  “I just—” I sighed, cutting the words off midstream, then started again. “I just don’t know if one good client is enough to sustain me. It’s great that this case is one that has a lot going on, something I can really get my feet wet on. But everyone isn’t going to be like that, and I don’t want to commit myself to a career based on outliers. Every client deserves our best efforts. If I think the case is boring, am I going to give them that?”

  Jake shrugged. “Legitimate question, and I get your point. But still, Marc, you can’t say it’s as clear-cut as you been trying to pretend for all these years.”

  Can’t say I was willing to go that far yet.

  “Just don’t dismiss it outright. It may not be what you think you want, but I’ve never seen a large client give you a fraction that much joy, regardless of how complex the case might be.”

  Damn Jake and his good points. I grunted in acknowledgment and he smiled. “All right all right all right, I’ll leave you be. How long ’til them fries ready?”

  I should have known his focus wouldn’t stay on me for long, and I was glad for it. He hadn’t asked anything I hadn’t wondered myself, but I could ignore my own questions. It was harder to ignore Jake’s, and now that they were stuck in my head, they wouldn’t leave anytime soon.

  Chapter Ei
ght

  André

  I’d never been big on eating in my office, preferring to sit in Farragut Square and eat while the pigeons terrified passersby. I hadn’t wanted to leave since Marcus showed up, my excuse being that I had to stick around in case he needed anything. But now I was restless and antsy, and that didn’t bode well for me. I got up and knocked on his door.

  “Yeah,” he called out, and I stepped inside.

  “Hey,” I said. “I was going out for a bite to eat. You want something?’’

  Marcus shook his head. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  Great. Fine. Time for me to go. But I didn’t move and Marcus didn’t stop looking at me. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Was there something else you needed?”

  “Come with me,” I blurted out.

  He was silent for a few seconds, then, “Why?”

  I sighed. “I’d planned to make it a habit. Show my intern, whoever they were, that they weren’t expected to stay cooped up inside all day.”

  Marcus made a soft noise, then set the pen he was holding down to lean back in his chair. “So why haven’t you invited me before now?”

  “I was trying to give you some time.” Us some time. Me some time.

  At that, Marcus at least had the graciousness to look mildly chagrined. Then that smile grew wider and more sultry and, yeah, that was the other reason I’d kept quiet. Because he’d talked about after the internship and I didn’t want to think about waiting three weeks to get my hands on him.

  “You’re sure you’re cool with it?” he asked, suddenly back to business.

  “Of course. Come on, let’s get out of here.” He nodded, and I waited while he got his stuff together. I preceded him down the narrow hallway, conscious of his eyes on me the entire time. I’d been tempted to turn around, but I was already on shaky ground from that smile of his. I tried to grin and wave at Fiona as we passed, but was pretty sure I failed miserably. And would probably have to hear about it whenever I saw her at the complex.