Anything You Say: An Enemies to Lovers Standalone Romance

by Chloe Finch

  Her smoking hot little body, buzzing with desire, was all his. He wanted to take everything from her. Tear her apart until there was nothing left. Not here though. Not like this. For all he knew someone would show up at the door for a meeting any second. And he wanted to make it last. Savor it. If he fucked her now, it’d be over in ten minutes. Instead, he was going to take his time until she felt like she’d die if she didn’t have his cock inside her.

  He should have stopped then. Sent her back to the training room with the other fellows. But he didn’t, not yet at least. Not without taking a little more from her. He reached a hand down under her skirt and slipped a finger in her underwear. She let out a sound that was halfway between a moan and a gasp and braced herself against him, holding on to his arms like they were all that was keeping her upright. She was soaking wet. Ready for him. She would have totally let him fuck her right there on the conference table, he was certain of it. The thought made him rock hard. He found her clit and stroked it with a finger. She moaned. If anyone was in the hall, there’s no doubt they would have heard her. He didn’t care.

  He trailed his finger down and slipped it inside her. Fuck, she was so tight. He finger fucked her hard, like he was going to lift her up from the pussy. He shifted his hand so he could get his thumb on her clit with his fingers inside her. She moaned softly into his mouth.

  He was so hard it felt like his cock was going to explode.

  Her head arched and he pulled his hand back, willing himself to stop before he took it too far. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of coming.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “What if I don’t want to?” She was looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes full of desire.

  He was tempted to say screw it and take her right there. Instead, he laughed darkly. “Don’t worry, I’m not done with you yet.”

  He took her chin in one hand and tipped it up to meet his gaze.

  “I’m going to fucking ruin you, baby.”

  “Maybe I want to be ruined.”

  He still had one arm wrapped around her like an anaconda, squeezing her up against his chest. Before he let her go, he leaned down and bit her neck like a fucking vampire. He wanted to leave his mark on her. Make her hurt. She gasped but didn’t stop him. When he pulled back, there was a big purple hickey on her neck. He admired his work, then finally, reluctantly, released her waist.

  She straightened her skirt and cleared her throat.

  “You won’t tell the fellows, will you?”

  “Go, Gracie,” he growled.

  She looked like she was going to say something else, but she didn’t. She just nodded once and left the conference room, rubbing her neck. She didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Grace

  Friday morning, Grace expected work to feel different. It didn’t seem possible the universe hadn’t changed in some concrete way. Yet when she got to work—a half hour early, as usual—it was more shocking how normal everything was. She took her regular seat at the back of the training room as usual. The other fellows trickled in, and she flipped through her notes, feeling phony about it even though it was the same thing she did every day. It seemed like they must be able to tell, must be able to see something different about her, something in her posture that gave her away.

  She was jumpy waiting for Zach’s arrival. After she left the conference room the day before she had been flushed, positive someone would notice, but no one said a thing. She had to wear the collar popped on her blazer like a preppy soccer mom the rest of the day to hide the hickey. Zach never returned to the training room; she didn’t see him the rest of the day. It was hard to relax, trying to process everything that had happened. One minute he had been making her feel terrible, the next he was making her more turned on than she’d been in her life.

  Trusting her emotions was what had led to GiveAnalytics’ downfall, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again. Emotions were fickle, slippery. Facts were facts. And the facts were that Zach hated her before, and now had a legitimate reason to. He got beaten up because of her. Badly, from the looks of it. She couldn’t get the image of that bruise on his throat out of her head.

  At quarter of nine, June was the first mentor to arrive, breezing in and setting her laptop bag on the front table. The door opened again, and Grace couldn’t help but look to see who it was. She wasn’t sure what to do with her face. Couldn’t remember what a neutral expression felt like. It was just Jessica. She gave a little wave, and Grace forced herself to smile.

  By nine, Zach still hadn’t arrived. Maybe he wasn’t coming in today either. It made sense if he didn’t want to answer questions about what happened to him. It was simultaneously disappointing and a massive relief. Brad was also missing, and June kicked things off without addressing where the other two mentors were.

  She was talking about their assignments for the day—something about mock prospect calls—and Grace didn’t even hear the door. What she did hear was someone loudly whispering behind her, and when she turned around to glare at them, she was shocked to see Brad and Zach engrossed in an animated conversation at the back of the room.

  Ridiculous as it was, she’d spent so much of the last day obsessing over him, it felt like a celebrity sighting. More importantly, even with the quick glance, his face looked even worse than she remembered. The black eye had deepened in color, close to the color of his eggplant suit. His hands were covered in scrapes, the pinkie still looking swollen and painful. He looked like he’d gotten his ass kicked. What on earth would he tell people?

  She’d already decided to play it cool and not acknowledge him any more than usual, but it turned out she didn’t have to. The next time she turned around, he was gone.

  * * *

  Grace lingered at her cube at the end of the day, getting ahead on a few things that weren’t due yet. At least, that was what she told herself. The real reason was to see if she could catch another glimpse of Zach. It was completely deranged, especially since he was nowhere to be seen all day. Still, there she was, organizing her inbox and glancing up every few minutes, hoping to see him walking down the hall.

  At six, Jessica stopped by on her way out the door.

  “What are you still doing here?” She said.

  There was no way she was telling her about Zach. Jessica was too honest. She’d tell her she was an idiot with no self-respect and should stay as far away from him as possible. And she’d be right. That was what a sane person would do. Not hang around her cube after hours on the off chance he would come back to work.

  “Just getting ahead on a few things for next week,” Grace said.

  “It’s Friday, dude,” Jessica said.

  “Have to work hard if you’re going to get ahead,” she said, quoting Joe ironically. It was one of his favorite phrases along with this isn’t a forty-hour-a-week gig.

  “That’s what Monday through Thursday are for,” Jessica said. “I don’t know how you do it. Unless it’s Adderall. Then I want the phone number of your doctor.”

  Grace laughed. “Do you have a show this weekend?”

  “Hell yeah, we do. In a warehouse in Brooklyn. It’s going to be lit. You want to come?”

  Jessica was in a feminist punk band, and Grace had been meaning to go to one of her shows, but each venue sounded sketchier than the next, and just hearing Jessica describe them made Grace break out in a cold sweat. Like when a girl broke her arm in the mosh pit, and one of the people who pushed her turned out to be an EMT and splinted her arm using a cardboard box and duct tape from behind the bar. Jessica had recounted the story like it was a charming anecdote about how nice the people at her shows were.

  Jessica’s other life as a hardcore musician didn’t seem to jibe with her salon-fresh look and Long Island accent, but the more Grace got to know her, the more logical it became. So she liked expensive handbags and taking molly on a rooftop with anarchists at three in the morning, what was wrong with that? Jessica brushed off the insane
things that happened at the shows the same way she dealt with the bros at work. No big deal, honey.

  “Sorry,” Grace said. “Don’t think I’ll be able to this time.”

  “It’s all good, my girl. Get the hell out of here though,” Jessica said.

  By seven Grace was down to half-heartedly clicking in and out of files without really doing much of anything. The sun was sitting low in the sky, and she was beginning to feel the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Earlier it seemed light-hearted and a little silly—stick around and get some extra work done, and hey, if Zach stops by even better. Now, after two hours of sitting here while the office got progressively quieter and emptier, it felt stupid and obsessive.

  She started slowly packing up her things. There was a seven-thirty train she could catch home. Maybe she’d call one of her friends from high school on the train to get her mind off things.

  An office door shut somewhere nearby and then suddenly Zach was striding across the room towards her. She felt like she got caught spying on someone.

  “What are you still doing here?” He said. The question everyone wanted to know, apparently. Coming from Zach, it was accusatory.

  “I was just leaving,” she said.

  She’d been waiting for this moment all day. Agonizing over it. Once it was here, she hadn’t the faintest clue what to say to him.

  “How are you feeling?” She asked, gesturing toward her own face in a way that hopefully wasn’t offensive.

  “I don’t need your pity, thanks,” he said. She flinched and the bottom fell out of the fantasy. Nothing between them had changed. It was foolish to think otherwise.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

  “What did you mean it like, then?”

  “I just meant—I hope everything is okay with you and your brother and everything.” As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back. Why was she saying this stuff? She wanted to subtly let him know that she’d been thinking about yesterday, not remind him of the fact that she’d screwed up his life.

  He stepped close to her, until she was eye level with his collarbone. He smelled distractingly good. She had the urge to bury her head in his chest.

  “I have everything under control,” he said. “Always have, always will. And you don’t need to concern yourself with it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like that, you know.” She rambled when she was nervous. Even when she knew she was doing it, she just couldn’t stop. “I was thinking, I could help you. I could—”

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and tilted her head back, forcing her to look at him. The move was half terrifying, half turn-on.

  “Please just shut up,” he said quietly. He was inches from her face.

  She couldn’t stop rambling. “I just—” He cut her off by kissing her. Yesterday in the conference room came rushing back. Whatever she was going to say was lost. He was rough, kissing her aggressively like it was punishment as much as pleasure. All she could think was that she wanted more. She was hungry for it. She wanted him to bring her to the dark places he went. It scared her, but she liked it when he was rough.

  “Be at my office at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow,” He said.

  “But tomorrow is Saturday,” she said hazily.

  “It’s not a request.” Then as fast as it happened, it was over and he was stalking away toward his office. She was left breathless and confused, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  Chapter Five

  Grace

  Saturday morning Grace was lying in bed trying to decide if she was going to meet up with Zach or not. The rational decision would be not to. It was obvious nothing good could come of it. The practical thing would have been to go to HR the moment he started singling her out. And if Jessica was right about HR, an employment lawyer after that. It was bullying before, and now it was technically sexual harassment. He was her superior even. He’d probably get fired. Deserved it, honestly. And maybe she’d get a nice, big settlement check from Sterling. Even as she was thinking it, she knew there was no way she would go that route.

  Making decisions used to be easy for her. Her dad had taught her as a kid that, when given the choice between two options, there was always a correct one. All you had to do was weigh the likely consequences, then discard personal bias and choose the one with the better outcome. For years it seemed to work. She graduated high school second in her class, got into three Ivy League colleges, and founded GiveAnalytics following this rationale. Then she tripped up and thought she was making the right decisions, but it turned out she was wrong. That was the problem with the method. When you thought you knew all the possible outcomes, one you never even considered came screaming toward you out of left field.

  Now she was considering making an objectively wrong decision. Meeting up with Zach was definitely the wrong choice. And yet…The irrational part of her brain couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’m not done with you yet. It sent chills up her spine. She had never been as turned on in her life as with Zach. Couldn’t stop replaying the kiss. She was dying to fall back into his arms, consequences be damned.

  Knowing herself, she’d agonize over it for a while and then make the logical decision and not go. Just in case, she put her favorite lingerie on anyways, a gauzy set that looked like a wisp of black smoke in the drawer and cost more than she earned in a day as a fellow.

  When GiveAnalytics was on the rise and it felt like she was unstoppable, Grace was invited to the Glamour Women of the Year Awards. She was seated next to high-end lingerie legend Lily Knight. Lily was the embodiment of elegance. She was a tiny little lady with a sleek gray bob and a face as sharp as a hawk. She wore a plain, periwinkle sheath with a silk scarf like a waterfall over her shoulders and sat stock straight in her chair the entire ceremony. Grace couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Over the years, the sexy ads for the lingerie brand had occasionally caused controversy, and Lily had done a handful of interviews defending them. Before meeting Lily, Grace had vaguely thought of the brand as anti-feminist, if she thought about lingerie at all. She already subscribed to the idea that clothing makes the strongest first impression. It was why she invested in a wardrobe of expensive professional clothes that made her look like a boss. But lingerie? It seemed like something cooked up by a marketing company. Why spend gobs of money on something so impractical, just so men thought you looked good half-naked?

  When the conversation at the table swung around to Lily’s company, Grace confessed to not understanding why someone would buy lingerie at all.

  “It’s about self-respect. Dresses, blouses, pants—you wear those to send a message to the world about who you are. Do you agree?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Do you think about what underwear you choose when you get dressed?”

  “Not really,” Grace admitted. “Mostly just if it will show through my clothes.”

  Lilly pointed a ring-encrusted hand at Grace’s chest. “What you wear underneath your clothes, that’s a message about how you feel about yourself. Do you wear shabby, worn-out cotton panties? Or do you wear beautiful, well-made things that let you explore your femininity and maybe even your fantasies? That’s what lingerie is. A promise to yourself. There’s power in that. And it has absolutely nothing to do with sex. Or men.”

  It was enough to convince Grace to toss out all her old underclothes and drop serious cash on a whole new lingerie wardrobe the next day. Ever since, she’d put as much thought into what she was wearing under her outfit each day as the outfit itself.

  And since there was a chance she might meet up with Zach today, why not go all out? Over the delicate black mesh, she slipped on a black miniskirt and a top chosen strategically for its low neckline.

  Downstairs, her parents were in the kitchen. Smooth jazz pulsed from the under-cabinet speaker as her dad wiped down the big granite counter in his bathrobe, humming along to the music. With his back to her, she could see the shiny bald spot on the back of his head.
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  “Going somewhere?” Her mom asked brightly. She was sitting at the table reading the newspaper, a half-empty coffee mug next to her.

  Since the company folded, Grace’s parents had been falsely cheerful around her all the time. Lately, her mom especially had been fixated on finding her new friends. She wouldn’t be surprised if her parents were seeing a therapist without her for ideas of how to encourage and nurture her in the wake of GiveAnalytics’ failure. It all had the tendency to put her in a bad mood.

  “I’m going into the city,” she said. She hadn’t decided for sure if she was going to meet up with Zach, but she knew she wasn’t staying there.

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” her mom said. “I hope it’s for something fun.”

  “It’s for work.” She was compelled to counteract their cheerfulness. It didn’t used to be like this. She used to get along with her parents great. Better than all her friends did with their parents. Lately though, she felt like a teenager, wanting the opposite of whatever they wanted for her.

  “Oh,” her mom said. “Well, maybe you could do something fun afterward.”

  “Grace,” her dad said. He looked tired. “Don’t kill yourself working so hard. You know we’ll be just fine no matter what.”

  “I know,” Grace said, chastened. “This program is just intense.”

  “Do you want some coffee before you go?” Her mom asked. “Dad just made a fresh pot.”

  “Sure.” She considered it penance for being annoyed with them. She sat down across from her mom and poured them each a fresh cup from the carafe. Her dad brought over the milk.

  “Thanks,” Grace mumbled. She was such an ungrateful brat; she didn’t deserve their kindness. She splashed milk in her cup.

  “Are you holding up okay with the program?” Her mom asked.