“I still don’t even understand how this wound up happening, for the record. Us, I mean.”
“Are you trying to say I’m not charming?” I asked.
Jules laughed. She hugged my arm, looking out over the water with me. “You’re no Prince Charming. No. But I’ve been around the same kind of powerful man for so long. I guess you were just so different that I couldn’t stop myself from being fascinated by you.”
“And what if I’m not as different as you think?” I asked.
“You are, though. But I still don’t understand why you are interested in me. You could have any woman you want.”
“I told myself I wouldn’t distract myself with relationships until this was all over. I didn’t realize how long that would be when I made that promise to myself. Still, I had no trouble sticking to it until you came along. I wish I could put my finger on what it was, but you defy my self-control, Jules. You’re dangerous for me because you’re the only person who can make me forget how badly I want Russ Coleton to pay.”
“Is it my bubbly personality, maybe?” she asked. She was speaking low and sexy, with her hands on the hem of her shirt as she took a few steps back. “Or maybe you only want me for my body?” She tugged her shirt off, then shimmied out of her shorts, laughing as she tossed the shorts at my face. She kicked off her shoes and socks, then started wading into the water, then plucked off her bra and slung it toward the shore. She reached under the water and produced a soaked pair of panties a moment later, which she threw to join the pile of discarded clothes at my feet.
This damn woman. I looked over my shoulder, but I knew we’d hiked quite a distance from the campsite. I set down the blackened chicken on a stick and tore off my shirt, pants, and shoes. By the time the water was at my chest, I was as naked as Jules was.
She was still smiling as she waded in the water backwards. She’d dipped her head under so her hair was wet and slicked back away from her forehead.
I swam toward her, quickly closing the distance while she tried to doggy paddle away from me. I was a fast swimmer, and I caught her almost immediately.
I put my arms around her slick body, carrying her under one arm until I could get my feet on the rocky ground of the lake. Jules struggled against me, laughing while I toted her back. I had my footing, but she had to cling to me to stay afloat if she didn’t want to have to tread water. She wrapped her legs around my waist, chewing her lip.
My already hard cock was sandwiched between us. She felt it too and gave me a taunting little wiggle of her eyebrows. She put both arms around my neck, then began slowly moving her hips up and down, stroking my cock with her pussy beneath the water.
I took two handfuls of her ass, squeezing as I kissed her. She moaned into my mouth and her movements grew more feverish. The water started to ripple out from us as she kept grinding into me. I took her by the hips and slid her downward. I pushed myself up toward her, gripping my cock with one hand and guiding it inside her.
She buried her face in the crook between my neck and shoulder, moaning softly.
I fucked her until the water was bubbling from the motion of our bodies moving against each other. When we’d finished, my back was raw from where her fingertips had dug into me, and I was pleasantly exhausted.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “I have to say I probably should’ve seen that coming, but I’ll be the first to say I didn’t.”
I grinned. “You thought you could invite me skinny dipping and not get fucked?”
“When you say it like that, it does sound unlikely.”
I kissed her, holding her close to me and enjoying the slick feeling of her bare body against mine. It was so fucking peaceful out in the water. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of crisp lakewater against our bodies and the rustle of trees in every direction. Out here, I could forget about it all. About needing revenge. About work. I could imagine simply walking away and laying it all down. Living a different kind of life.
“We should probably get back to our tent before we get too cold,” I said after a few minutes of peacefully holding her against me in the water.
“Do we have to?” Jules asked.
I grinned. “We should. We’ve got a drive ahead of us tomorrow. And I don’t want to keep you up all night.”
“Bad news,” she said. “I think that’s a bear standing on our clothes.”
“What?” I asked.
Sure enough, there was a bear devouring the chicken we’d stupidly left by our clothes.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a black bear.”
“Okay, Mr. Former Outdoorsman. In your expert opinion, should we go ask it if we can have our clothes back?”
“Black bears are generally pretty timid,” I said.
“I forbid it,” Jules said, clutching me tighter. “I’m just starting to like you. I’m not about to let you go pull a naked Steve Irwin and try to shoo that thing away.”
I laughed. “You forbid it, do you? What are you going to do to stop me, exactly?”
Jules got a look of determination on her face. She dipped her right shoulder slightly and a moment later, I felt why. I went tense as she took me around my still hard cock in a vice grip.
I groaned. “Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, oh,” Jules said, grinning wickedly. “I’ve got you by the cock, and I know where to find your balls if we need to escalate this situation.”
“Alright,” I said. I grinned, then moved my hips against her hand, forcing her to give me some semblance of a hand job.
“Don’t turn this erotic,” she warned. “I’ll jack you off and go right back to threatening to squeeze your balls. I swear I will.”
I chuckled. “We’ll just wait until it finishes, then. It’s no big deal.”
“You or the bear?” she asked.
“Either,” I said.
We waited there, half wrestling in the water until Jules followed through on her promise, except I couldn’t stop myself from sliding inside her again and fucking her from behind after a few minutes of her hand on me. It was an interesting challenge in the water, but I was able to press her ass against me and hold her head above water while I did what I wanted with her.
I spun her to face me for a kiss when I was done, but she reached right back down and took me by the balls this time.
“Wow,” I said, trying not to panic. I didn’t know if she understood the pure power of literally having a man by the balls. A single muscle impulse from her could have me bent over in nauseating pain. I looked toward the bear and my stomach sank when I saw it was sleeping and three cubs were flopping around nearby. “Bad news. Black bears are kind of aggressive when their cubs are around. And that one looks like it’s sleeping. I think that’s your underwear it’s sleeping on.”
“What do we do?” Jules asked, still gripping my balls.
“We swim to that shore over there.” I pointed. “And we sneak our naked asses back into camp. It’s probably almost midnight. Chances are they’ll all be sleeping anyway.
29
Camper Carl
I kicked my feet up by the roaring campfire we’d set up. I’d never camped in New York, but if this was the way the Yanks did it, then they could count me in next year, too. Everybody at the campsite had gathered around the big fire and all the adults were happily on our way to drunk.
The kids were over by the campsite that was weirdly set up with all brand-new gear. I tipped back my beer, looking toward their stuff. It was the strangest thing. Some guy from the local outdoorsman store came by and brought load after load of brand-new shit. Tents still in the bag, chairs, cooking utensils, and he’d even finished it all off with a few bags of groceries. I’d been expecting some kind of old incapable rich guy type. Instead, this male model guy and his bombshell of a girlfriend had showed up there.
I drained the last of my beer and shook my head. That was fuckin’ New York for ya. Bunch of weirdos and people with way too much genetic good fortune on their side.
&
nbsp; “Hey Carl, you going to dance or just sit there all night looking sleepy?”
My wife was drunkenly stumbling around, curling her fingers towards me as she rocked her shoulders back and forth.
I laughed and went to her.
There were two or three dozen of us all having a good time around the campfire. Someone was playing guitar and a few of the women were singing a surprisingly good rendition of James Taylor’s Copperline. I was impressed they knew as many of the words as they did.
I was really getting into things when the kids screamed.
The person on guitar missed a note and the three singing voices cut off abruptly. That was when we saw the model guy and his girlfriend come bursting out of the trees at full speed and fully nude.
Now, I’d be the first to tell you I was a red-blooded, heterosexual man. But I’d be lying if I said a little part of my body didn’t rise up in revolt of that fact when I saw the way that man was built. No man had any right looking that majestic when he was soaking wet, speckled with dirt, and running with his cock out.
“Don’t you look at her,” Wanda said, reaching to cover my eyes.
I only managed a quick glance at the well-crafted buns on the girl and legs that went for days before I noticed the baby bear chasing them. Then the adults screamed. A few fast-thinking guys grabbed flaming sticks and ran over to help, waving them around until the bear backed off and headed toward the tree line. That was when we saw there was a mama bear right there in the trees.
I walked up to the naked people’s tent and cleared my throat. “Uh. You two okay in there?”
30
Juliette
I should’ve been mortified. Adrian had been convinced, after all, that we’d be able to quietly sneak back to our campsite and nobody would see that we were naked. He hadn’t anticipated the cute little bear cubs spotting us as we waded out of the water and running for us. We’d had a lead on them, but we had to run for our lives to keep away. The mother bear had also loped behind, keeping an eye on her cubs.
I tried to imagine what my father would say if he knew his daughter, Juliette Coleton of the triumphantly protected virginity, had just exposed herself to a campsite full of people. I wondered if I was technically a sexual predator now, too. We’d both shouted for the kids to cover their eyes and tried to shield as much as we could with our hands, but who knew?
One of the campers crunched through the dried leaves up to our tent. “Uh. You two okay in there?” he asked.
“We’re fine!” I said.
“We could use some clothes, actually,” Adrian said. “If anyone has spares.”
“Yeah, we can arrange that,” the guy said. “God knows we don’t need you waving that thing in front of our wives again any time soon.” We heard the camper run off, presumably to gather clothes for us.
I stifled a laugh, looking at Adrian who was pressing his palm to his forehead. “This is exactly why I stay in the office.”
“Oh come on,” I whispered. “Admit it was a little fun.”
“Jumping out of a plane without a parachute would be fun until you hit the ground.”
“Totally different,” I laughed.
It was dark in our tent with only the faintest bit of orange campfire light penetrating. Adrian’s face flickered in front of mine, and I saw he was actually smiling. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in and kissing me. “You really are.”
* * *
Going back to life as usual was a slap in the face. During the trip, I’d gotten a real taste of what it’d be like to have Adrian all to myself. I thought I got to know him more in that single day than I had since meeting him, and all it did was make me crave more. I wanted to know more about him, have more time with him, and do more things with him.
Instead, I was stuck in the apartment while he worked twelve-hour days. It was the day after our trip, and he warned me he’d have to stay late tonight to catch up.
I tried to make the best of my time. I finally had some actual money in my bank account from my first paycheck. I decided to treat myself to a little shopping. I spent most of the morning updating my wardrobe with some much-needed fresh options. I treated myself to lunch at a little bistro and sort of went for a jog afterwards. The jog started out high energy because I had new shoes and a cute new exercise outfit. But after two minutes and a lot of heavy breathing, I decided to rethink it as an “active walk.”
I showered, got cleaned up, and saw I still had several hours to wait before Adrian was due back. I checked my phone for anything I could do work-wise, but he’d barely thrown me any scraps since we came here. I knew he had a new secretary, and the jealous side of me took over. Was she better at the job than me? Was she pretty?
That last thought settled into my brain like a little nugget of poison. I’d resisted asking Adrian the question, but it was eating away at me. After all, he’d fallen for one secretary, hadn’t he? Maybe the guy had a thing for women in business clothing.
I decided to look up Coleton Central’s website. I tried finding some sort of personnel roster, but it appeared Coleton Central was too exclusive and secretive to have one. The only internet presence they had was a phone number and email to set up a consultation appointment.
I dialed the number. I could just pretend I’d tried his cell phone and couldn’t get through.
“Coleton Central, this is Sasha. Can I help you?”
Sasha, I thought. I immediately pictured a vixen behind the desk with boobs so big and perky that she could run into a wall and bounce off without even scratching her nose.
“Yes,” I said, deepening my voice as much as I could. “I need to speak with Adrian White. Er, well, I need his secretary. I want to book an appointment. But I don’t want to bother Mr. White, so it’d be best if you just put me through to his secretary. Is that you? Are you his secretary? I mean.”
There was a brief pause, probably because I was ranting like a crazy woman. That, or it was the ridiculous deep voice I was using. “I can transfer you to his secretary. Please hold.”
I let out a sigh of relief. Unless I was about to get transferred to Giselle, who would sound even more vixen-like and make me imagine even bigger boobs.
“Hello?” A woman answered in a shaky grandma voice. “This is Polina, how can I help you?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said quickly. “Wrong number.”
I hung up the phone and laid down on the couch, chuckling at myself. I was an idiot. And Adrian was a much better man than I realized. I sighed and decided to behave myself while I waited for him to come back from work.
I spent most of my evening laying on the couch wondering if I was making the right choices. Adrian was almost exactly the sort of man I’d daydreamed about. Maybe my dream guy hadn’t started out as grumpy, but I was coming to see that side of Adrian wasn’t the real him. He was driven and he took care of me in a different way than my family always had.
They tried to shut me up with excess. If they threw enough shiny objects in my face, they thought I’d stop wanting more and be a good little Coleton girl. But Adrian valued me for me.
I wished I was still allowed to join him at the office, but I also understood why that was impossible. Even without Adrian’s goals, I would’ve been recognized too easily and dragged back home. My father did regularly show up at Coleton Central and dozens of men and women who knew me growing up worked there daily.
I turned over the possibility of my family’s company getting destroyed in my head for the hundredth time. Every time I thought about it, I expected to feel some sudden rush of wrongness—like I’d realize I was making a huge mistake by not warning my family. I did like my mother, even if she was far too complacent in the way my father tried to run things. But it wasn’t as if my family would go hungry if the business collapsed tomorrow.
They’d all have plenty of money and plenty of resources to get by. Destroying Coleton would just be taking away my father’s ability to keep ruining the lives of people like Adrian’s father. And that wa
s what I always came back to. No matter how many ways I looked at it, this felt like the right thing. I knew people at Coleton would lose their jobs if Adrian succeeded, but how many would lose more than that if he didn’t? It felt like a necessary price to pay.
I turned on a show and hoped to distract myself for the next few hours while I waited for Adrian. But I only made it about ten minutes before I pulled out my phone and decided to text him some suggestive emojis.
I grinned, debating between a banana emoji or the purple eggplant.
Decisions, decisions…
31
Adrian
My phone had been driving me crazy. I considered shutting the thing off, but then I knew Jules wouldn’t be able to reach me quickly if she needed me. I was still nervous about her being all alone in the apartment while I was at work. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen, exactly. The building I’d chosen had security and our place was on the forty-second floor. None of that stopped me from worrying, apparently.
I was sitting at a conference table with Noah, Travis, and my sister.
Noah squinted at me, pushing up his glasses. “You okay there, Adrian?”
I waved off his question. “I’m fine. My phone has just been narrating my texts to me all day. I haven’t had a chance to figure out how to get it to stop.”
As if happy to demonstrate, my phone chirped. After a brief delay, the text-to-speech voice kicked in. “Message, from, Davis. Cumberland. Please have it to me by tonight. Thanks. Talk Soon. End. Message.”
I gestured to my phone. “As you can see.”
Travis grinned. “I’d be fucked if that happened to my phone.”
“I don’t even want to know,” Jordan said. “So, Adrian, are you going to bring Jules to the Coleton masquerade party this weekend?”
“That seems like an unnecessary risk,” I said. “Russ Coleton is going to be there.”
The Boss(hole) Page 15