by Simply BWWM
He raised his eyes from them, and looked into her dark brown eyes. His lips were parted, and his face turned in a haunted expression. His eyes were flooded with hunger, the same hunger and desire that she had seen in them when they had met at the party, when they were both so much on fire for one another. That same fire began to burn in her as she stood there before him, and a dull ache formed deep in her as her body yearned to be touched by him.
With a turn of her head, she looked away from him, turning her eyes to the wall and then the floor. “You know, I have a few other things that I’ve really got to get to,” she spoke breathlessly. “I’m just going to leave this here for Ed, and he can have a look at it. That’s really all that there is for me to show you two anyway. I’ll… I’ll see you later.”
With swift steps, she left Ed’s office, and she left Dane standing behind her, staring after her, just as much ablaze with desire as she was.
Nicole went back to her office in frustration, telling herself that it was just going to take time, and all her desires and all the fire in her, the awkwardness between them, her lust for the man who had been the best lover she had ever had was going to fade. It would be replaced with professional business history, and the night that they had shared once would be lost in the days that passed, with each day putting more and more time between them and it.
Things would be easier. There was a day that would come soon on which she would be able to work at his side and not feel the keen sting of desire and breathless need, and she hoped with everything in her that that day would come soon, because no matter when it did come, it wouldn’t come soon enough.
She worked harder than she had since she had walked through the door of the company, giving all of her attention and focus to her work, and she was so intent on it that she jumped when Tia poked her head in the door of the office.
“I’m headed home,” she said with a smile. “Don’t stay too late.”
Nicole smiled at her. “I won’t.”
Tia closed the door, and Nicole went back to her work. She was focused on it again with laser beam intensity when her door opened again, and she looked up with a smile that faded immediately when she saw that it wasn’t Tia. It was Dane.
He entered the office and closed the door behind him. She stood up out of her chair and faced him, walking around the desk to him. He had a tussled look about him; his wavy brown hair was no longer neatly combed, and it looked as if he had run his hands through it several times. His tie was no longer knotted neatly at his throat, but instead pulled loose. The top two buttons on his shirt were undone, and his sleeves were rolled up, showing his bared arms.
“What is it?” she asked, wishing that she had already been gone, but more than that she wished that she could erase away the reactions that his mere presence caused in her. Her heart began pounding in her chest, and her breath grew short.
He sighed and slid his hands halfway into his pants pockets. “I wanted to apologize,” he began, coming nearer to her until he was only a few feet away. “I don’t mean for it to be awkward between us, and I can see that it is. I wanted you to come here to Hawaii and be glad that you did. You know, enjoy your job and your work and feel good about being here every day. I wanted you to feel like this was one of the best moves you ever made. I didn’t mean for it to… to get so tangled up before you even got started.”
She bit at her lower lip and regretted it as she saw his eyes shift there and stare for a long moment before looking away. She drew in a breath. “I understand. It’s awkward for us, but we’ll get through this. We’ll get through it if we both work on making that happen.”
“I don’t know if that’s a realistic possibility.” He shook his head as he gazed into her dark eyes. “I don’t know if we can really do that.”
Nicole frowned. “Why not?”
Dane grew somehow more serious and intense. He took another step toward her, and she saw in his eyes that he looked tortured. He hesitated for a long moment and then spoke with a strained voice. “Because I don’t know if I can just pretend that the most incredible night of my life never happened and still be around the woman who shared it with me, almost every day!”
He sighed heavily in frustration, and pulling one hand from his pocket, he raked his fingers through his hair, and she saw how it had become so tousled looking.
“You! You affect me to total distraction! Everything about you does it! Your look, your clothes, your beauty, your voice, your body… all of it! The very nearness of you makes me want you!” He sounded almost as if he was in some pain just admitting it all to her.
She felt her breath catch in her throat, and her heart thudded against her even harder as her body began to burn for him, for his touch, for his skin, for the taste of him in her mouth. “It will pass!” she insisted, hearing Jeffrey’s distant voice somewhere in the far reaches of her mind.
Dane shook his head and reached his hands to her shoulders. “That’s just it, don’t you see? It isn’t passing! It’s only growing more intense with time and with every second I see you here and even worse with every second that I don’t see you here yet I know that I will see you again.”
She shook her head weakly. “Just… just ignore it,” she pleaded in a quiet voice.
Frustration flashed over his face. “I can’t ignore it! I’ve tried, and it’s only getting stronger! It’s consuming me! Don’t you feel it? You must be feeling it too!”
Nicole swallowed hard and wrestled with herself internally, with her logic, with her dedication to the job, with her desire for him, with her own morality and with her goals and standards. She wrestled with all of it and felt her grip on every bit of it slipping.
“I know exactly how difficult it is, because I do feel it too, every bit as much as you do, but I am choosing to ignore it. It’s the only choice that we have! We have to ignore it!” she insisted as she tried to look away from him and found that she couldn’t. It was as if the magnetic force between them had locked her gaze onto his.
“Well, you might be able to ignore it, but I can’t,” he vowed deeply as he pulled her to him and planted his mouth over hers, kissing her hard and slow. She only tried to pull away from him for a moment as he held her fast in his arms, crushing her soft curves to his solid form, but as his kisses burned their way through her resolve, she gave in to her overwhelming desire, and a soft sigh of surrender escaped her.
She kissed him back, and with every passing moment the sparks inside of her and between them both burst into flames of desperate need. His mouth moved from her lips down her throat as his hands canvassed her curves, and she felt flames erupting inside of her.
The dominant lover in her leaped up out of the embers of what they had shared before, and in moments her resolve had transfigured into raw desire. Her fingers raced down the front of his shirt as she unbuttoned it and yanked it off of him, along with his silken tie.
Both pieces landed on the floor of her office, and he groaned and let his head fall back just a bit as she closed her mouth over the skin on his chest.
“Please…” he begged, sliding his fingers over the back of her neck and into her long loose hair.
Nicole had his pants on the floor in moments, and she grabbed his hands and brought them to her blouse. One by one, his fingers moved down the line of buttons, opening them and exposing the breasts he had been looking at earlier. His fingertips slid over the lacy demi bra she wore, and he squeezed the soft curves in his hands, bringing his mouth to them and kissing them at the swell.
She moaned in pleasure, and pushed his hands down to the hem of her skirt. Feeling the edge of it, he slid it slowly up her legs until he could reach between her thighs and touch her, feeling the softness and heat there.
“God, I need you,” he groaned lustily as he began to stroke his fingers back and forth over her. “No one has ever turned me on as much or as fast as you do.”
It felt as though he was touching her with fire that only made her hotter and hungrier for him. She g
asped and held fast to his shoulders as he slid his fingertips inside of her, manipulating and massaging her firmly until her whole body tensed and she shuddered with her orgasm.
He moaned softly and fell to his knees, parting her legs slightly as he slid his tongue in where his fingers had just been. “I need to taste you… cum again!” he insisted as he pushed her skirt up a little higher and pressed his mouth hard against her, biting and sucking at her, driving his tongue into her and all around her.
She slid her fingers into the waves of his hair and twisted them tightly there, pulling his head to her body, and he closed his fingers tight around her ass, squeezing hard as she let her head fall back, standing over him as she cried out loud with release and came again, long and loud.
Dane looked driven as he pulled his mouth from her body and looked up at her. “I need you, I need you now,” he pleaded, and she reached her hand out to his and pulled him off of his knees to his feet. She drew him to the sofa in the corner of the office and pushed him down onto it. As he gazed up at her with ravenous hunger, she lowered herself to him, spreading her thighs over his hips and bringing her core down onto his erection. She filled herself slowly with his thickness, inch by inch, until he was in her fully, and they began to move together as one.
They cried out together softly as he entered her, their voices mingled, the intensity of their pleasure shared, and he moaned deeply as she clamped her hands down tightly over his wrists, holding them firmly above his head as he buried his face in the cleavage of her breasts, sucking at them, biting at her nipples, and thrusting himself all the way into her as she rocked her body over him, driving him into her depths.
Together they moved for a long while, tasting one another’s flesh and lips, losing themselves in their kisses and desires, and she found release as he brought her to her orgasm again and then again, and he held his own back as long as he could before he could no longer withstand the powerful passion between them, and he pushed his head back hard against the sofa and cried out, tightening his hips and pushing them up toward her, flooding her with his orgasm, and giving her one more tremendous moment of ecstasy in doing so.
When they were sated, she looked down at him and touched his face tenderly, stroking his cheek as she brought her mouth to his and kissed him softly and slowly. He wrapped his arms around her back and held her to him, kissing her deeply in return, until at last she lifted her mouth from his, and her smile faded as she planted her hands on his sculpted chest, pushing herself up off of him. He watched her as she reached for her clothes and pulled them back on.
Dane sat up on the sofa and waited, and when she was dressed, he rose from it and walked to her, standing before her nude and beautiful. She admired him and gave him a little smile. “You are a vision,” she told him again, repeating what she had first said to him at the party.
She slid her hands up his bare chest and kissed him long and slow once more, and then she let him go and walked over to her desk, picking up her purse and keys.
When she reached the door, he was still standing in the middle of her office, nude, his eyes locked on her, looking breathless and uncertain.
“This can’t happen again,” she told him quietly. “It can’t ever happen again. We cannot give in to temptation like we just did. I’m your employee, and we are both here for the business, and that’s how it has to be. All business, from now on.”
With a sad frown, she turned and walked out of her office and closed the door behind her, leaving him there staring after her.
Chapter6
Nicole drove home feeling both on top of the world and underneath it simultaneously. She knew she never should have let her emotions and desire sweep her away as she had that night, but by the same token, she had just shared another of the hottest nights of her whole life with the most beautiful lover she had ever been with. The high and the low were sharply contrasted and very confusing for her.
With her morals and her logic all in a twist, she walked into the house and sat down to dinner with Jeffrey. He had made a tropical stir fry for them with shrimp, lobster chunks, crab chunks, and a colorful and delicious blend of fruits and vegetables. He served it with crisp white wine and promised her chocolate for dessert.
As they sat down, he got a good look at her and leaned back in his chair, looking at her more intently. “What’s going on? What happened today?” he asked, knowing that it was something.
She sighed and poked her chopsticks at her food, biting at her lower lip.
“Spill it,” he said, leaning closer to her.
She raised her eyes to meet his and set her chopsticks down on the side of her plate. “There was something that happened today…” she began hesitantly, “that probably shouldn’t have.”
He lifted one brow curiously. “Probably shouldn’t have? And what was that?”
Clearing her throat, Nicole picked up her wine glass and almost spoke into it as she brought it to her lips. “I had sex with Dane in my office tonight.” She touched her wine glass to her lips and drank in a healthy swallow of it as she diverted her gaze to the window and the magnificent view beyond it.
Jeffrey’s jaw fell open. “You did what?” he asked dumbfounded.
She furrowed her brows and sighed, looking down at her plate as she set her wine glass down on the table. “Well, it’s been really tense between the two of us and awkward, and we had this… sort of impromptu meeting today. I went in to see Ed except Ed wasn’t there, and Dane was in his office, so I was going to leave, and he insisted that I stay and show him what I went there to show Ed. So, I did.
I showed him the work that I’ve been doing, but we were alone in there, and it was… so… tense and there was a lot of sexual frustration, and attraction, and desire, and heat, and I couldn’t handle it, so I left. Then, he came into my office after Tia left for the day and told me he wanted to apologize for it being so awkward between us, but the next thing I know we’re kissing and then… then I was getting dressed again.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, taking a moment to find his patience. She eyed him nervously and poked at the seafood tropical fruit and vegetable dinner he cooked, taking a big bite of it. “This is amazing, by the way. I love this. This is so good. We’ll have to make it again. You can show me how you did it.”
“Nicole,” he said evenly, opening his eyes and looking over at her. “You can’t complain about having a hard time with him at the office and then follow it by having sex with him again, especially right in your own office! You’re breaking all the rules!”
“You are a born rule breaker. It’s one of your trademarks,” she shot back weakly.
“I don’t break that rule. I never have sex or even intimate situations with anyone I do business with!” He sighed and picked up his glass of wine as he shook his head. “Honey, you need to take another stab at this. You absolutely cannot, under any circumstance, let anything like that happen with him again. You and I both forbid it.” He looked at her seriously.
“How am I going to get out of it? It’s crazy between us!” she grumbled, taking another bite and enjoying it tremendously.
Jeffrey took a good long drink of his wine and set the glass down. “You’re going to have to get serious about this. You cannot risk losing this incredible job over an affair with one of your bosses! Love and sex in the workplace rarely works out. It’s much too big a gamble. You’re headed straight for trouble, and you know it.”
She did know it, and as she took another bite of her dinner, she began to feel the pangs of regret taking hold of her.
“So, what am I going to do now that I’ve made it ten times worse?” she asked dejectedly, looking over at her best friend.
He took his own bite and swallowed it before answering her. “You tell him that it’s never going to happen again.”
“I told him that.” She felt that she had done at least one thing right, although as she had already told him that, she didn’t feel confident that it would necessarily work, because it cer
tainly didn’t work the first time.
Jeffrey nodded. “Good. That’s not all. You’ve got to figure out some ways to stop it, and I mean now. You start dating other men. You fix it so that you’re never alone around Dane, so that there’s always someone else with you two, and you focus on the third person. Find something about him, some little thing that he does or says, some behavioral characteristic that you don’t like, and when you are around him, focus on it, and let it drive you crazy and annoy the hell out of you. That will keep your mind on the negative aspects of him.”
“I’ll try.” She offered half-heartedly. She couldn’t think of anything about him that annoyed her, but then again, she reassured herself, she didn’t really know him that well. She looked over at Jeffrey then and smiled at him. “Thank you for helping me through this, it means a great deal.”