“My place might be a little bigger,” he mused, rubbing his beard as he looked around.
“Might be?” I slugged his shoulder, and he laughed.
“Okay, it’s a lot bigger,” he said. “But I’d love to show it to you.”
“After we drink and dance?”
“Correct.”
“Is that a good idea?” I peered up at him, then brushed a few crumbs of bagel from his beard.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” he said. “You trust me to come up with the plans for our dates, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
“Then what’s wrong with this one?”
“We’ll have been drinking and rubbing up against each other all night,” I explained. “Then, we’ll go back to your place, which is undoubtedly a sex palace, drunk, our inhibitions lowered, and maybe we’ll do something that we’re not quite ready for.”
Dan took me in his arms. “Who’s not quite ready for it?”
When I put my arms around his neck to return his embrace, his erection pressed into me almost painfully.
“Jesus, Dan.”
“Can I help how attracted I am to you?” he asked. “Let’s just see where tonight takes us. If you feel like riding the wave, if it feels natural, we’ll just fall into it. If it’s no good, we just won’t do it. Okay? There’s no pressure, understand?”
“Okay,” I said, and kissed him. “But I have to leave for work, or I am going to be late.”
“My brother had you all night,” Dan said. “He can wait a few more minutes.”
He kissed me, and I tried not to think of what Roland having me all night would entail. I knew that it wasn’t a good idea to tell Dan about Roland’s feelings for me. I knew it instinctively. Roland had taken the knowledge that Dan and I were dating in stride, but I didn’t think Dan would be so forgiving to learn of Roland’s feelings for me. Was that something I should pay more attention to—the fact that I was hiding more things from Dan than I was from Roland?
“Thank you for breakfast,” I said, breaking the kiss. “You are a thoughtful individual.”
“You’re kicking me out, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said sweetly. “I still have a couple of things to do before I leave, and I will see you tonight.”
“Dress sexy,” he said, sighing as he gave me a last kiss on my forehead and collected his jacket at the door. “It’s a nice club.”
“I’m sure it’s a nice club,” I said, “and I’m sure I have nothing appropriate to wear.”
“What about that hot little bikini and thong number you wore at the bar?” Dan suggested, grinning.
“Alas, molding in some landfill by now,” I said, pouting. “Goodbye, old Beauty. My look tonight will be much classier than that.”
“I have to admit some disappointment,” Dan said.
“Go!” I urged, laughing. “You won’t be disappointed, but I’ll get off to a shit start of my day if I’m late. Don’t get me in a bad mood if you want a good dancer tonight.”
The day passed quickly, interactions with Roland were professional and friendly, and I practically ran out of the office at closing so I could go shopping. I might have clothes suitable for the museum and the Space Needle and the nice dinners Dan had been taking me to, but I definitely didn’t have clothes to wear for clubbing.
I ended up picking out a gorgeous black shirt, cut up each side almost to my breasts, the lack of coverage all the way up hidden with a thick fringe. The only way anyone would be able to see flashes of my skin was if I was in movement. I was pretty sure Dan would adore it. Paired with a pair of heels and some skinny jeans, I knew I would be the belle of the ball.
When Dan called for me to come downstairs when he arrived to pick me up, he watched me sashay appreciatively across the sidewalk to the car.
“You are so hot,” he said, reaching for me as I went to buckle up. “Damn! Does this go all the way up?”
“It goes up far enough,” I said. “You’ll see, out on the dance floor.”
Dan took the opportunity to explore himself, slipping a hand in to caress my bare stomach, cup a breast gently through my bra.
“This is even better than the bikini and thong,” he whispered almost worshipfully.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said, my eyes heavy lidded. “Now. You’d better drive if we’re going to go dancing. I really, really want you to see me dance in this thing. You’ll be amazed.”
It was more valet parking and more VIP treatment when we arrived at the club. I could’ve sworn that I felt the thump of the bass when we were still two blocks away, it was that loud. I recognized that this was a date that wasn’t going to require many words from either of us. It would be impossible to hear, for one.
Secondly, Dan seemed very interested in conducting all our conversations by touch.
We danced feverishly, constantly, with drinks in our hands. I soon discovered I wasn’t drinking my cocktails to get drunk; I was drinking them because I was thirsty from exertion. I tried to get us a couple waters, but Dan laughed them away.
“Don’t be weak sauce, Beauty,” he said. “Drink with me. Dance with me.”
Our energy was even more electric in the middle of a crowd, other pairs and singles and groups of people pressing up against us—a stray hand here, a bumped body there. And there were Dan’s hands, impossible to miss, their touch like a brand over my body, on my stomach, lower, squeezing, making me pant for breath.
We danced the night away until my feet ached and I could dance no more. The heels had been a mistake.
“Unless you want me to dance barefooted, I suggest we wrap this party up,” I said, hobbling over to our VIP couch.
“Time to go back to my place?” Dan asked, brightening. He had more to drink than me, and I wasn’t sure he should drive.
“Of course,” I said. “But we’re taking a cab.”
“I’m not leaving my car here.”
“Then I can’t go to your place,” I said sweetly.
***
Dan’s place was at the top of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Seattle. I was still hesitant about coming here, but at least I’d won the battle over taking the taxi.
I forgot about all of my worries when we arrived and Dan turned on all the lights.
“Holy shit,” I said, then gawked freely.
There was a waterfall all along one wall, and everything was smooth, reflective. There were seating options everywhere, large floor pillows and lush couches and chairs. The kitchen was big enough to serve a buffet, and I could only imagine what the bedroom entailed. Dan appeared to be a man who enjoyed his very expensive comforts.
“I knew it,” I said accusatorially, whirling around after I’d been gaping at my surroundings for a full five minutes. “I knew this was a sex palace.”
“Home, sweet home,” Dan said, grinning as he held his arms out. “Do you like it? I really want you to like it.”
“Like it? I love it!” It was maybe a little garish for my simpler tastes, to be sure, but it was a really, really nice house. There were floor to ceiling windows that perfectly framed the sparkling lights of the buildings around us, and I was sure we would be able to see the sea in the daylight. Maybe even Mount Rainier, the shadowy, hulking beast Dan had pointed out to me when we were at the top of the Space Needle.
“Drinks,” he said, snapping his fingers and jogging over to a full-service bar. “I could call a guy, and he could be over here in five minutes, if you want a bartender.”
“I think we can tend our own bar,” I laughed. “I don’t think we even need any more drinks. Dan, this is a beautiful place. I’m so glad you showed it to me.”
I was tired. The dancing had taken a lot out of me, and I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. Everything was catching up to me, including all the drinks I’d had at the club.
“I’ve got something else to show you.”
I turned around to see Dan right before he tangled his hand in my
hair and kissed me, hard. I fought to keep up with his insistent, aggressive tongue, but our teeth clashed almost painfully several times.
“Gently,” I said, smiling at him.
“I want you so bad,” he said, kissing me again, his hand painful in my hair, his other hand pawing at the sides of my shirt again, searching for what was underneath.
We did a slow waltz to the bed, me at war with myself and with Dan, not sure that I wanted this—even if I was turned on. I was trying to extricate myself from what was swiftly becoming a bad situation.
“Dan, wait,” I said, at the moment we fell into the soft mattress. “I don’t think…I’m still not ready.”
“Are you ever going to be ready, Beauty?” he asked. “Maybe you should just take the plunge.”
“I can’t,” I said simply. “Not until I’m sure. There are a lot of things going on with me, Dan. You knew that going in.”
“I think maybe you should just get over it,” he suggested.
I blinked a couple of times. “Get over it? Do you think it’s that easy?”
“Here’s what I think is easy.” His hand, which had never disentangled itself from my hair, yanked my head back painfully.
“Ow, Dan, what the fuck?” I complained, reaching back for his fingers.
He yanked again, and I inhaled sharply. What was he doing?
“I think you give me what I want, right now,” he said.
“Stop joking around,” I said. “It’s not funny anymore, Dan.”
“It’s not funny that I’ve been walking around with blue fucking balls for the past fucking month,” he sniped. “And it’s also not funny that you know more about my company than I do.”
I was slow—oh, so slow—to understand that this wasn’t a joke. This wasn’t a game. Dan might’ve been drunk, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
He was hurting me. He was using me. And I had walked right into it.
“So give me what I want, Beauty,” he said, his face menacingly close to mine. “Or I’ll take it.”
Chapter 13
The situation I’d found myself in was so ludicrous, so bizarre that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that it was actually happening.
Dan Shepard, the vice president of Shepard Shipments, a man who had more money than he knew what to do with, who was gorgeous and charismatic, who had shown more than a passing interest of me, was now stinking drunk and in my face, demanding something of me that I wasn’t about to give him.
How had this deteriorated so far? We’d been on a date—and having a very good time, I thought—before coming back to his place. Everything had been fine up until this point. Maybe Dan had a little too much to drink, but I could admit to being a little tipsy myself.
Until now, of course. I’d been shocked and disgusted and scared completely sober by Dan’s sudden switch.
“What’ll it be, Beauty?” he asked me, his liquor-tinged breath filling my nostrils, making me want to gag. It was hard to breathe; he had his full weight on top of me and a hand tangled in my hair, pulling painfully and making it even harder to figure out how to extricate myself from this, or if that option was even available to me.
Was there a way out of this?
I fought down a rising tide of panic and pain and hurt. There would be time for all of that later. Right now, I had to deal with the crisis at hand. I had to try and understand what was happening before I could push toward a solution.
Dan had said I’d been giving him blue balls. It was an ugly concept. I hadn’t been trying to cause him duress, but there it was. I’d asked for us to take it slow, and he’d always been pushing us along. This very morning, when he’d shown up, unannounced, to my apartment bearing breakfast and asked me out for tonight’s date, I’d expressed misgivings. There were things I just wasn’t ready to do again yet. In my grief and guilt at being the person responsible for four deaths that had included my parents and best friend, I’d tried to fill the hole inside of me with sex.
Now that I was emerging on the other side of that dark period of my life, I wanted to be sure that sex was something I wanted with a person I cared for.
Dan, however, was pushing for me to make that decision sooner rather than later.
The other thing he’d said before he forced himself on me was that he was sick of me knowing more about Shepard Shipments than he did. That struck me as strange. How could I possibly know more about the company Dan was a vice president of than he did? I was just a lowly assistant to his brother, Roland, who was the president.
In an instant, I understood. Myra, my predecessor, had alerted me to the fact that being Roland’s assistant meant a lot more than what it sounded like. Since Roland tended to lock himself away in his office, unseen, his assistant acted as his brain, eyes, ears, and mouth throughout the rest of the company. I attended meetings in his stead and reported back to him both what had transpired and what I thought about it.
It was that last little bit of analytical work that had apparently begun to endear me to Roland. He’d started relying on my opinion more and more—and the fresh eyes my relative inexperience brought to the table. That was why he’d invited me to take notes at his conference call with the heads of other companies across the globe. He’d wanted my input on the direction he was thinking of taking Shepard Shipments.
And Dan wanted the knowledge I’d gleaned from that night. He’d asked this morning, and I’d deflected. It hadn’t seemed right to divulge what had happened in Roland’s office—not the positive feedback he’d gotten from his colleagues about expanding the company into Africa and Asia ahead of Europe, and certainly not the fact that Roland had admitted to having feelings for me that went a little beyond that of boss and employee.
And definitely not the fact that I’d told him the feeling was mutual.
Dan’s foul breath brought me back to my present predicament. I was going to have to do some quick stepping to get myself out of this one. I could acquiesce to what he was asking for and then make my escape, maybe by saying I wanted to freshen up in the bathroom. Or I could just tell him to fuck off and fight for all I was worth. I thought Dan was a good person, but I’d obviously been horribly mistaken.
I’d also thought that Roland was a beast, just like the rest of the office, but I’d been mistaken in that judgment, too.
It was Dan who was the beast.
Never mind that whatever path I chose probably meant the end of my career. Whatever was about to happen, I couldn’t go back to the office in the morning and pretend like everything was all right. Nothing was all right. Dan was in the midst of forcing himself upon me, and there would be no good way to keep my job. It would never stand in court. I could hear it now…lowly assistant threw herself at rich executive, then accused him of raping her.
It didn’t look good, and it didn’t matter what the truth was.
The real truth was that, no matter what happened, I wasn’t going to come out of this unscathed.
A soft snore, then a louder one, startled me out of my planning. I carefully craned my neck sideways and peered downward to see that Dan had passed out drunk right on top of me, drooling a little onto the expensive comforter we were sprawled on top of.
If I hadn’t been just about to fight for my life, I would’ve laughed at how stupid this all was. All of that bluster and Dan was too drunk to make good on his threat.
Cautious, I wriggled a bit just to see if he’d wake up, but Dan only snorted and smacked his lips before resuming his deep sleep. That was just fine with me. I heaved and scrambled in earnest out from underneath his heavy frame until I fell off the bed itself with a heavy thump. Dazed, I just rested there a few long seconds, breathing hard, sure the disturbance was enough to wake him.
But when I peeked above the bed again, I was greeted with Dan’s sleeping face, his dark beard glistening with his own saliva. It was pathetic, really. What had I ever seen in him? Had his looks and position of power blinded me to the animal that resided within him? Perhaps
the fact that he had shown me the slightest bit of attention? Had I made myself easy to take advantage of? I’d removed myself from society after the car wreck. Had I completely lost my ability to assess other people’s intentions in the interim?
I didn’t want to stay here while I pondered the intricacies of what had just happened. I had to get out of here.
The veneer of Dan’s amazing home had worn off as I padded through it, trying to keep my footfalls quiet. Even the wall-sized indoor waterfall had taken on a menacing feeling instead of being meditative, relaxing.
I realized my hands were shaking in the elevator, but I put on a brave face down in the lobby. It was late; I was without transportation; and I needed help.
“Would you please call me a taxi?” I asked, fighting to keep a polite smile on my face as I approached the doorman.
“You’re in luck,” he said, pointing outside. “Someone just got dropped off. Here—I’ll hold it for you.”
The shaking intensified once I was in the backseat of the taxi, riding across the city, rain lashing the window and making everything blurry. It rained a lot here, something I still hadn’t gotten used to. It wasn’t as if it had never rained in Houston. On the contrary, sometimes the Texas skies simply opened up and dumped tons and tons of water on the city below, flooding yards and even streets. But here, in Seattle, the city seemed more used to the rain. It wasn’t tumultuous when the clouds overfilled with moisture. It was simply the next most natural thing to happen, and the people who lived here just became attached to their galoshes and umbrellas.
I hadn’t adapted yet. I wasn’t used to anything here.
It wasn’t until I was back in my apartment, showering in an effort to wash this night off of me, that everything sort of hit me. Dan wasn’t who I thought he was. He’d invited me over to his place with ulterior motives and bad intentions. I had almost succumbed to what he was going to force me to do. It was only through the grace of my shock and indecision—and the gallons of alcohol that Dan had downed—that had saved me from whatever he’d had in mind.
KIRKLAND: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Page 50