“You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m just not positive why you’d ask me that question,” she says. “Have you been trying to get ahold of me?”
I shake my head. “But Axl Rose over there happened to mention your voicemail was acting weird.” I grin, wolfishly. “You haven’t been dodging his calls, have you? Blaming technology for your own emotional hang-ups?”
She sighs that long-suffering sigh that I probably shouldn’t enjoy so much. “Actually, you exhaust me so much that I don’t have time to deal with anyone in my personal life. So yes, occasionally, I’ve been known to lie.”
“Tsk tsk, Ms. Burns. Very bad.” I shake my head at her. “What a tangled web we weave.”
“Someday, I hope to find out who hurt you,” she snaps. “I want to meet the person who turned you into a soulless husk who only survives off of sucking all the energy from everyone around you.”
Laughing, I pour myself a fresh bourbon. “I was born this way. Your problem is that you care too much. Most people don’t, you know. And the world’s not going to be any worse-off if you just relax.”
She gives me a look that could curdle milk, and disappears.
Everything I’ve said to her was something I once believed, but today, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I wish I knew why.
Now
She sighs, her forehead pressed against the window. “Is it ever going to snow this year?”
Looking up from my screen, I wonder what the hell’s gotten into her. She’s been in a strange mood ever since I got back from the trip, and I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet. She keeps asking me what happened with the board, and I keep telling her nothing, because these men work at the speed of cold molasses. The purpose of the trip was to let me know we’re still copacetic. I refuse to borrow trouble by wondering what the next overtures will be. “Snow? You know you’re not in school anymore, right?”
“It’s pretty,” she insists. “I like it. It’s the only good thing about winter.”
“You’re only saying that because you didn’t get enough snow as a kid,” I grumble. “The magic wore off for the rest of us, you know. A long time ago.”
Meg whirls around, coming over and perching on the arm of my chair. I can’t possibly focus with her that close to me, so I shut my laptop and slide my fingers along the waistband of her jeans, that little exposed bit of skin on the small of her back where her shirt rides up. She squirms a little, but mostly ignores me.
“I want our first winter together to have snow,” she says, simply. “Because I owe you.”
“Owe me what?” I frown at her, not quite following.
“A hell of a pelting,” she says. “That’s what. You and me, Risinger. Snowball fight. The first decent snowfall of the winter.”
Laughing, I pull her into my lap. She lands haphazardly with an undignified noise, and I love it.
“It’s a date,” I tell her. “You sound very confident for someone who’s barely ever touched snow.”
“I’ve touched snow,” she insists, trying to straighten herself on my lap. “And I have very good hand-eye coordination. What do you have? Nothing but an inflated ego. I’ll destroy you. It will be very cathartic.”
“I think I’d rather let you go at me with one of those terrifying floggers Ben keeps in his closet.” Our recently-acquired mutual friend is a bit of a kinkster - not that I don’t have a dominant streak, but I haven’t graduated to implements. Yet. And if Meg has any interest in flipping roles then she’s never said a word about it, so I’m pretty sure I’m only kidding. But I have been on the receiving end of a few snowballs, and it’s terribly unpleasant for something that’s supposed to be fun.
“You sound scared.” She looks up at me, eyes shining with laughter. Now she’s just draped across my lap, having given up on any semblance of dignity. “I could let you back out, for a price…but I’d really rather not.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Well, this is convenient.”
“What?”
“Don’t what me.” I pat her on the thigh, keeping my face as stern as I can manage. “Roll over.”
She giggles, but she does it, squirming a little more than necessary. My dick has a Pavlovian response to just the thought of spanking her, and the friction of her body gets me the rest of the way there.
“You sure you want to waste time on this?” she purrs. “You know what you really want to do.”
“What I really want to do is teach you a lesson,” I insist, as my cock throbs in protest. I work my hand between her stomach and my lap, popping the button on her jeans and tugging them down to expose her black panties, standing out starkly against her skin. “If you take it well, you know you’ll get a reward.”
“Mmm.” She shifts brazenly on my lap, and I groan. “Come on, sir. Just give it to me. I don’t need a warmup tonight.”
“It’s not a warmup, it’s a punishment.” I smack her once for the sake of making a point, but she’s right. I can’t wait. Having her hot and eager on my lap is too much to resist. “Which is why I’m not going to spank you tonight, because you enjoy it too much. I’ll think of something else. Later.”
She laughs, low in her throat, knowing she’s won.
“So get up. Bedroom.” I smack her again, a little harder this time. “Now.”
“No.” She slides to the floor, somehow losing the jeans on the journey, crawling on her hands and knees and presenting herself to me. “Here.”
I stare at her, gripping the arms of my chair to keep from pouncing. “You’ll get rug burn.”
“Prove it,” she whispers.
“You’re going to hate me for this later,” I mutter, hurrying down after her. I’m only human, after all.
“Bet I won’t.” She looks over her shoulder at me, biting her lip.
Skin abrasions weren’t the kind of punishment I had in mind, but she’s impossible to resist. When I finally yank her panties and aside and thrust in deep, the words that tumble from her mouth, I swear, are something like I fucking love you.
Then
I bury my fingers in her curls, tugging her head up, making her whimper. Her tits swing heavy underneath her as she braces herself on the mattress, my fingers grabbing handfuls of her gorgeous flesh.
She’s a carbon copy of my Meghan. But it’s not enough.
That’s because you don’t love her.
The thought comes unbidden like a punch to the gut. I don’t love this girl. This nameless set of hips and curves from the club. She’s beautiful, and she’s good in bed, but she doesn’t know me. She doesn’t roll her eyes at me when I throw a temper tantrum. She doesn’t remind me of my meetings, straighten my collar for me when I’m too harried to notice my clothes have gone cockeyed. She doesn’t sit ten feet away from me every day, absently tapping her foot to her favorite songs, sorting my mail, screening my calls. I might have my dick buried in this stranger, but there is no intimacy.
She can’t be my Meghan, and she never will.
I’ve never been in love before.
Quite frankly, I’m terrified.
I wish I could say that it stops me from coming inside the girl from the club, but it doesn’t. I’m only human. But when I do it, I’m not even looking at the naked body in the lush hotel bed. I’m closing my eyes, thinking of Meghan.
Smiling. Laughing. Sometimes she just relaxes a little, her whole body un-tensing slightly like she actually trusts me a tiny bit, when I say or do certain things, when I offer her a drink, when I make a joke that’s not at her expense. I both love and hate those moments.
I’m bad for her. Bad for anyone, not the least of which Miss Hips and Curves, who deserves to spend her time with a man who actually cares about her. Remembers her name, even. But I’m even worse for Meghan, my Meghan, who needs someone as strong as she is. Someone to love her, fully and completely, without reservations. Someone the complete opposite of me.
And I can’t fight the feeling that something’s growing between us, whether I like
it or not.
The trouble started when I began to write about her. Isn’t that always the way? You can’t just casually let someone become your muse; it turns into a relationship of sorts, as one-sided as it may be.
I really didn’t think I would ever write again. It’s been decades since my father first discovered my penchant for prose, dragged me by my ear to the bonfire he made with my notebooks. But that’s not really a memory that ever leaves you. It wasn’t the throbbing of my earlobe, it wasn’t the sting of his palm, it was the feeling - watching it all go up in flames, knowing that anything I did, anything at all, was meaningless. If it wasn’t for the family business, if it wasn’t furthering the image I’d need to cultivate for the rest of my life, it was useless. Worse than useless.
But after Meghan sashayed into my life, my mind started racing with words that begged to come out. They itched at my fingertips. I couldn’t sleep. When I finally gave in, I wrote for hours, forgetting to eat, hardly drinking, mouthing the next few sentences silently to myself whenever I got up to take a piss. Back at work after the weekend, I probably snapped at her even more than usual, hating her for bringing up something I thought I’d killed a long time ago.
The book was finished in a week. I talked to nearly everyone at the publishing arm of Risinger Industries, pretending it was a manuscript that had been submitted to me by a friend of a friend. I told them I thought it was pretty good, but of course, what would I know about these kinds of things. I assured them that I wanted them to be honest, that I wasn’t determined to publish the thing if it was terrible. A few of them read over it briefly, but most of them wrinkled their noses a bit at the very idea. I mean, it had been done before, right? The whole boss/secretary thing was surely over by now. Didn’t we want to be fresh and original?
So I invented a new arm of the company, in secret, just to put my book out there. The ultimate in vanity publishing. I workshopped the manuscript with other writers, invented a female pseudonym, and pushed it out into the world. I tried to forget about it. I tried to pretend I didn’t care.
Once it became a bestseller, I discovered the addictive rush, and I knew I’d never be free.
At least it was something else to focus on. Amanda, my heroine, wasn’t Meghan. She was less like Meghan than I wanted her to be, after my publicist insisted that she couldn’t have a specific body type, for “maximum audience appeal.” Personally, I thought all the women in the world who weren’t a size two might appreciate a character they could actually relate to, but whip-smart Kara supposedly knew the business better than I did.
It turned out she was wrong, about a lot of things.
Now
Her forehead briefly rests on mine, as her hips quiver under my hands.
"I know people usually say something like 'you have no idea how sexy you are,'" she breathes. "But that's not true, is it?"
I laugh softly, gripping her tighter as I hit a spot so deep she moans, throwing her head back.
“It’s not,” I tell her. “But you know…nobody's ever looked at me the way you do."
Her hair cascades down her shoulders as she dips her head back down. "And how's that?" Her voice has gone husky, and it's probably my favorite sound in the world.
“Like you can’t believe I’m real.” I grin a little as she rolls her eyes. “Like you can’t imagine anything better than spending the rest of your life with me…doing, well, this.” I punctuate my sentence with a sharp thrust, and she gasps. Even when she's on top, I like to control the rhythm, the speed. I can't help myself. I love her reactions too much, whenever I do something she's not quite expecting.
“The first part is accurate,” she whispers, leaning down just enough to kiss me. “But not necessarily in the way you mean. And the second part is…well, that’s pretty accurate.”
I smack her ass gently. “Shut up, baby girl. Or I’ll make you shut up.”
She laughs, her inner muscles clenching tight on me as she does. I groan and smack her again.
“Do your worst, sir.”
Meg is taunting me. She’s very good at that. But I’m even better at stopping her - for a little while, at least.
With a sudden movement, I push her off of me. She squeals, landing in a heap and trying halfheartedly to squirm away as I crawl on top of her, caging her in, holding her down with my body.
“Not another sound,” I tell her. “If I hear you do anything other than breathe, I’ll stop.”
Her eyes shine, as her fingers close around me, grabbing on tightly. I groan as she strokes, long and firm and with all the self-assurance of someone who’s spent the last few months learning exactly what I like. “Nice bluff, sir. You’re about ready to lose it, you think I can’t tell?”
“Stop it.” I grasp her wrist and still her hand. “Unless you want it all over your pretty skin.”
Her lips part slightly. “What makes you think I don’t?”
Every day, I swear, I fall a little more in love.
Then
I’m not lovesick, the kitchen floor just feels really comfortable right now.
I swear.
We had a conversation. I’m almost sure. She was here, earlier, yelling at me, and it was mostly white noise because I already know exactly what I’ve done wrong. No, that’s a lie. Not the part about knowing what I did wrong. The white noise part. I remember every word. I’ll never forget, no matter how hard I try.
It was all true, every word of it. Things I’ve known, things I’ve willed myself to ignore, things I’ve convinced myself weren’t true. I was careless with the only person in my life who ever really loved me. Not that she’d admit it, but she’s certainly the only person who’s ever acted like it.
I love her more than I ever thought possible, and now she’s gone. She’s gone and she’s not coming back.
This is what I wanted, right? This is why I fired her. Because I was bad for her. Because I was toxic. So why does it feel like the biggest mistake of my life?
No, that’s an understatement, even. It feels like I pressed the button to launch the warheads. It feels like I’ve gutted myself with a sword of my own making.
And the worst part? I deserve it.
If I had a chance to do it all over again, I’d change everything. I’d throw her resume in the trash and never look at it twice, I’d let her walk out of my life without a second thought.
Or not. Maybe I would tell her the truth from the beginning, that she was beautiful, and I wanted her, and try to be the kind of man she deserves. But I can’t do either one of those things now. It’s too late.
She’s not coming back.
But maybe I can make things better. Maybe it’s not too late to become the kind of man she deserves, even if my chance with her is gone. I owe her that, at least.
But for now, the kitchen floor is about all I can handle.
Now
“Anyway, I should probably get going now.” She slides out of bed, a dim shadow of curves in the darkness. She’s about to ask me where her panties ended up. I have this bad habit of tossing them in random directions, and she keeps asking, even though I never have an answer.
“Why?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. Must be the wine. Whiskey never gets me into these moods, but a few glasses…well, a few bottles of red wine and suddenly I can’t control the words that come out of my mouth.
Meg hesitates, standing there silently, so close I could almost touch her. I want to. I wish I could switch on the light and see her face, but I feel like I can’t move. I don’t dare.
“Uh…well, you know.” She glances at me, her eyes shining in the dark. “I don’t live here.”
I really hate these moments. Normally conversation between us is so easy - it always has been, really, from the beginning, even when we were sniping at each other. Maybe especially then. But every once in a while, I bump up against a topic that makes my mouth go dry, my throat close up, and my mind race with a thousand things I don’t dare say. This is one of those moments.
/> Do you want to?
She’s still just standing there. God damn it, man. Say something.
“That doesn’t mean you have to leave,” I tell her, finally.
Yeah. Great. Good job with that one.
Do I actually not know how to talk to women? It’s a horrifying prospect, but it occurs to me that maybe I’ve been coasting on my looks and my cool detachment this whole time. This particular woman, one I actually care about, makes my palms sweat. I feel like I’m in junior high. Words no longer have any meaning. If I say the wrong ones in the wrong order, I could fuck something up irrevocably, and right now it feels like I barely speak English.
I can’t really tell, but I think she’s smiling.
Maybe I’m not on such shaky ground after all.
“It does look like snow,” she says. “Maybe I’d better stay.”
I sit up a little as she gets back into bed, her skin slightly chilled from exposure to the air. We both prefer sleeping in a moderately cool room, and the temperature’s also conducive to certain other, more athletic activities.
She shivers slightly as I roll over, folding her into my embrace.
“If you want me to stay, you just have to ask,” she says, softly.
A long breath, one I hadn’t realized I was holding, escapes my lungs slowly. “Stay.”
“I am staying.” She laughs softly.
“That’s not what I meant.”
She’s silent for a long time. Outside, I can hear the soft, wet sound of snowflakes hitting the window. A gust of wind howls between the skyscrapers that loom over this street. We’re so high up, that from across the road, the building is probably swaying. But we can’t feel it. We’re steady here, together.
“I mean, stay. Really stay.” I say it softly, but there’s no way she can miss my words. “It doesn’t feel right when you’re gone.”
His Secretary: Undone and Unveiled (The Complete Series Collection) Page 28