“Inhale away. I had a turkey panini and watched Pru choke down six pounds of kale.”
“How are the newlyweds?” he asked.
“Glowing like all the lights in Paris,” Frankie sighed and perched on the edge of his desk. “She looks great and says Chip’s eye is all healed. Is The Oak Leaf at eight good for you?”
He would rearrange whatever it took to clear his schedule. Oscar would whine about the last-minute changes, but Aiden finally had a social occasion that trumped any business.
“That’s fine,” he promised.
“There’s one more thing,” she said. Frankie was watching him closely. “Is it okay if I stay the night at your place? Since I’m already here and all—”
“I’d love that,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles. His blood was already roaring through his veins with the thought of Franchesca naked on his bed. Franchesca eating breakfast at his table. Franchesca lounging on his couch or arguing with him over something in his office.
He didn’t know what had caused this abrupt about-face, but he was grateful.
She glanced at her watch. “I should probably head out soon. I’m meeting Pru and we’re going shopping.”
Aiden reached for his wallet and stopped when Frankie pressed her stilettoed foot to his chest. It gave him a direct line of sight up her skirt. “I can buy my own dinner dress, Kilbourn.”
He didn’t know whether to be incredibly turned on with the heel pressing into his pec or annoyed that, once again, she was rejecting him. He decided it was okay to be both.
“Fuck it. Franchesca, this is the one thing I have to offer you, and when you refuse it, it cuts at me.”
“Aiden!” she gasped his name in shock and some anger if he wasn’t mistaken.
Damn it. Why did he have to open his mouth? It never paid to show someone your vulnerability.
Frankie moved her shoe and surprised him by sliding onto his lap. “You think your wallet and your cock are the only reasons I’d be with you?”
He felt his cock thicken at her words. He knew she had to feel him lengthening under her, her skirt pushed up around her hips.
“Do you think that?” she asked again. Those eyes were more blue than green here under the office lights. And they tore at pieces of his soul.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Yes.
“Then I haven’t done a very good job at being your girlfriend,” she sighed. She gripped him by the tie, and he went fully hard under her.
“New deal, Aide. I’m not doing all the taking anymore. Starting now.”
She slid off his lap, and he was still reaching for her when she shoved his chair away from the desk.
When her fingers met his belt buckle, the breath left his body, and he seized up like rigor mortis. “What… we can’t… what if…”
All thoughts and corresponding words left his brain with the last ounce of blood that plummeted to his aching cock. How could one woman make him feel this free, this terrified?
In seconds, she had his cock freed from his pants. “Are you sure your man out there will keep people out?” Frankie asked. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at his erection that she held firmly in her hand.
Aiden couldn’t even find the words to answer her, and Frankie didn’t seem to need them because she was opening her mouth and slicking her tongue over his dick from root to sensitive crown.
He crashed back against his chair and watched in fascination as she did glorious things to his dick with her mouth.
“I want to touch you,” he gritted out when she took him to the back of her throat.
“Mmm, tonight. For now, this is just for you.” Frankie focused her mouth on things much more important than words.
She was slick and hot, and the feel of bottoming out against the back of her throat nearly did him in.
In ecstasy, Aiden’s head fell back against the leather cushion of his chair. She was pumping him with her fist and using her mouth, a heady combination. He’d walked into this room frustrated and tired, and in seconds, she’d turned his entire day around.
Her tongue did something particularly insane to the tip of his dick, and he felt his balls tightening.
“Franchesca,” he hissed.
“I’ve got you, baby,” she promised, kissing his cock before resuming her attention with her mouth. She was no longer languid with her strokes. No. Frankie was hollowing her cheeks and sucking hard enough that he saw stars.
He couldn’t close his eyes though. He wanted this vision of her on her knees in front of him sucking him off. Wanted it forever.
Aiden dug his heels into the rug for traction, fearing that he’d become weightless and float away. He felt it build at the base of his spine and marveled at the witchcraft that brought him to orgasm so quickly.
Giving up all pretense, he gripped her head with both hands and let loose a guttural groan when she let him take over. Fucking her mouth with short, shallow thrusts, he lost himself in the moment. He meant to pull out. But then he was coming, jerking convulsively and pouring his release down her throat.
He went silent as the orgasm ripped through him, hollowing him out even as it filled her mouth.
Nothing. Nothing in this world could have prepared him for the sight of Franchesca at the receiving end of his cock, taking everything he gave without asking for anything in return. He shuddered and collapsed back into the chair, blood rushing in his ears.
She rose from her knees, a goddess no matter her position. She crossed the room and peered inside, finding his private bathroom. Aiden would have directed her to it, but he was a shell of a man right now. Leveled by beauty and desire.
She returned with a warm, damp washcloth and cleaned him thoroughly.
“I haven’t been a very good girlfriend. I’m hoping to improve my score,” she confessed, gently tucking him back into his underwear. “You’re a good man, Aiden. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re unbelievably patient. If I asked you for Cleveland, Ohio, you’d find a way to deliver it to me. You’re insanely generous and surprisingly sweet, and I’m sorry I haven’t been appreciative of it.”
“Gah.” It was the best he could provide verbally after having been completely decimated.
“So I’m going to do a better job, and I’m going to expect you to hold me to a higher standard.” She perched back up on his desk, and he swore he could smell her arousal. He would have fucked her. He would have given her anything she wanted just for visiting him. But she wanted to change the way things were.
Aiden managed a shaky breath and then another one, slowly feeling the life return to his body. “I have an addendum to our deal as well,” he told her.
She watched him warily.
“I’m not suggesting forever,” he began. “But I would like to table the ‘temporary’ aspect of our relationship.”
She stopped breathing, freezing in place like a rabbit in front of a predator.
Aiden reached out, shifting his chair so he was in front of her. “You’re special to me, Franchesca. And I don’t foresee a point when you won’t be.”
“Jesus,” she blew out her breath. “That must have been some BJ,” she said.
“See? That’s what I’m talking about.”
“The blow job?” she asked cheekily.
He pinched her.
“Ouch! I’m kidding,” she said.
“Forget the fact that you’re beautiful beyond belief. You’re sharp and mean when you need to be. You have no filter. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t carefully weigh every word. You’re a breath of fucking fresh air in my life.”
“Aide, you’ve got me shaking in my boots here,” she admitted.
“All in, Franchesca. You and me.”
She blew out a slow breath and stared at the ceiling. “What if we fuck it up?”
He squeezed her hips. “I won’t let you.”
She laughed. “Ass,” she said.
He saw the shimmer of tears behind her long lash
es. “I’m asking you to take me or leave me,” he told her.
“You ever have this conversation with anyone else you dated?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not even close. You and me, Frankie.”
“I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” she admitted, clutching her hand to her belly.
He saw it then, the fear, the nerves. And he made the conscious choice to push the button. “I never would have thought I’d see the day when Franchesca Marie Baranski was too scared to go after what she wanted.”
It was a manipulation, but damn it, he needed this. He needed her.
She nodded, her lips pressed tight. “Okay. All in.”
He rose, lifting her off the desk in a tight embrace.
“You won’t regret it, Franchesca.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Judging from the fingerprints on your neck, things went well with Aiden,” Pru said, eyeing Frankie as she flopped down in the salon chair next to her.
Frankie was too emotionally drained to argue. “You were right, and I was a horrible person,” she admitted, pouting in the mirror.
“When you know better, you do better,” Pru chirped from under her foils.
“We’re officially in a ‘real’ relationship, and I threw up my panini on my way out of the building.”
“You have a cast iron stomach,” Pru pointed out.
“Yeah, okay, so that part didn’t actually happen. But thanks to you, Aiden and I are,” she swallowed compulsively, “a couple.”
“I have the perfect way for you to thank me.”
“I just made it up to Aiden under his desk. What the hell do you want from me?”
Pru pointed at Frankie. “Oh, Christian! My friend here needs something done with her mop.”
A man dressed in head to toe black with a shaved head—irony of ironies—magically appeared behind her.
“Babe,” he said plucking a curl and holding it between his fingers. “We can do so much better.”
Places like this charged four-hundred dollars just for planting your ass in the chair, Frankie thought. She tried to stand, but Christian had some muscles under that tight black t-shirt.
“It’s my treat,” Pru sang out.
“You know I don’t like when you do this,” Frankie reminded her.
Christian whirled a cape around her and tightened it at her neck. “Now, what are we thinking?” he asked, holding her hair at varying lengths and glaring in the mirror as if looking for creative inspiration.
“We’re thinking a nice little trim,” Frankie said, snatching her hair out of his hand.
He grabbed another fistful. “A trim?” he scoffed examining the ends. “You have what? Eight months of damage.”
“Don’t you think she’d be gorgeous with some highlights?” Pru suggested.
“That tin foil is messing with your brain waves,” Frankie shot back.
“Don’t mind her, Christian. She’s not usually this surly. Also, she’s from Brooklyn,” Pru said.
Christian spun her chair around and caught it by the arms. They were inches apart. “I need you to trust me. I do not do bad hair days. I do not deliver subpar cuts. If I give you highlights, you will wish you would have been born with them. I will make your hair into a miracle, but I need you to trust me.”
“Do it!” Pru hissed in a stage whisper.
Frankie pointed an index finger at him. “If you fuck up my hair, months from now when you’ve forgotten all about me, when you’re complacent, I’ll wait for you in the alley, throw you into a dumpster full of human hair and perm chemicals.”
“And if I make you look like the kind of woman who doles out whiplash from second glances, you’ll come back and let me touch up your highlights,” he bargained.
She offered her hand. “Deal.”
“Her boyfriend likes it long and wavy,” Pru added helpfully.
“Oh, so I have a boyfriend now, and I need to wear my hair to please him?” Frankie shot back.
Pru and Christian rolled their eyes heavenward in the mirror.
“I’ve got this,” Pru sighed. “Look Frankie. When you’re in a relationship, you don’t live your life to please your partner. But you sure as hell don’t figure out what they like and then run in the opposite direction to maintain some semblance of independence.”
Christian shoved his fingers into her hair like he was hand washing laundry in a river, turning her head this way and that. “One of the greatest gifts to give in a relationship is something very small that costs you nothing.”
Well, it was costing Pru four-hundred dollars.
Awesome. She was getting her hair cut by a Manhattan fashionista version of the poet Pablo Neruda.
She closed her eyes and let him do his worst. Flinching at the snips of the scissors and the tugs of the comb. She couldn’t stop thinking about Aiden’s face when he found her behind his desk. He’d lit up like Times Square. As if her mere presence was a gift.
She’d been holding on to the thought, the hope that Pru had been wrong. That she and Aiden were just having fun as they’d agreed. That he wasn’t looking for more. That she wasn’t secretly hoping he’d disappear so she could be right. Would right have soothed her bruised heart if she’d succeeded in pushing him away?
She wasn’t a cruel, callous person. She wasn’t someone who crushed a person because she could. Yet, she’d been so determined to keep Aiden at a distance she’d rejected him every step of the way. And he’d stuck.
Seeing him see her? Unguarded joy. And if he was willing to be that vulnerable, the least she could do was meet him there.
After what felt like hours of fussing, she felt her chair spin around.
“Okay, open your eyes and take in my genius.”
She opened one skeptical eye, prepared to see a purple Mohawk or something equally garish. But it was her own hair. A few inches shorter, curls more defined and certainly shinier, but it was her.
“Are those caramel highlights?” she asked, turning her head.
Christian scoffed. “Caramel highlights are for amateurs. “Those are macchiato lowlights.”
She looked sleek, put together yet still herself. No longer did the static electricity of winter rule her head.
“Damn it, Christian. I really wanted to throw you in a dumpster.”
* * *
“Aiden is going to drag you somewhere dark and semi-private within five minutes of seeing you in that,” Pru guessed, poking her head into Frankie’s dressing room. For an upscale boutique, there was a surprising lack of security in the dressing room area.
Frankie turned to the side to look at her ass in the scarlet red dress. It hugged her curves, dipping low at the breasts and skimming over her waist and hips.
“It’s February. I can’t wear sleeveless,” she argued. Besides, this freaking swatch of fabric cost just under a grand. Aiden had slipped a credit card into her hand on the way out and ordered her to use it. But it felt… weird. A blow job and a credit card? They’d happened too close together. She needed to make it clear to herself that she wasn’t Vivian from Pretty Woman.
“You’ll have a coat, and I requested a table by the fireplace. You’ll probably be sweating by the end of dinner,” Pru predicted, sashaying around in a sleek black sheath.
“Why aren’t your boobs on display for the world to see?” Frankie asked, glancing down at her own overflowing cleavage.
“I’m a married woman and a B cup, babe. There isn’t much to display. And you’re insane if you don’t buy that dress.”
Frankie studied herself in the mirror, barely recognizing herself. The hair, the dress, the diamond and—God, was that platinum?—bracelet that she’d just happened to have in her bag.
“You know what we need now?” Pru asked.
“I’m hoping you’re going to say froyo, but I have a feeling it’s shoes,” Frankie sighed.
“Shoes!”
When Pru ducked back into her own fitting room, Frankie checked the price tag on the
dress again. It made her feel ill.
She pulled out her phone.
Frankie: When you gave me this credit card, what kind of budget were you thinking?
Aiden: I doubt very much that there’s anything you’d buy that would cause me to so much as blink.
Frankie looked down at the dress again. Wanna bet?
Frankie: I’d feel better if you could give me a number to stay under. I found a dress, but there are more digits than I’m used to. And Pru is chanting “shoes, shoes, shoes,” one dressing room over.
She could picture him chuckling to himself at his backwoods girlfriend panicking over pennies.
Aiden: I love seeing you treat yourself. And I love it more that I can be part of it. How about keeping it under fifty grand for today?
He had to be fucking with her. Frankie couldn’t begin to imagine a world in which fifty grand was blow money. Of course, knowing Aiden, he’d named a sum lower than usual to appease her.
Frankie: Oh, so I can’t get this seventy-five thousand dollar dress? Too bad.
She added a disappointed meme.
Aiden: Maybe if you’d send me a picture of the dress, I could make a judgment call.
His playfulness eased her tension the tiniest bit. And maybe she could give him some tension of his own.
She snapped a selfie of mainly her boobs and sent it.
Aiden: I’ve never gotten an erection in an analyst meeting before. This is interesting.
Frankie laughed. She didn’t know if he was kidding, or if he really was texting her during a meeting. Either way, she felt lighter. And if he thought fifty-grand was an acceptable level of spending, then her pretty dress and a pair of shoes wouldn’t kill either of them.
“Okay, Pru. Where are we going for shoes?”
Chapter Forty
Frankie spent more time prepping for this double date than she had her senior prom and the two weddings she’d been in combined. She had been plucked, glossed, lotioned, and smoothed and was starving to death by the time their car pulled up in front of the restaurant.
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