§ Isaac§
I spanked Celeste’s perky ass as she left me, giving her a skip to her step and earning myself a disapproving glare. Feral need had me chasing her down my hallway and throwing her back onto the bed. I could live in this laughter, this woman, forever.
She fought me as I traced the outline of her thighs and dropped kisses up the supple flesh. Celeste giggled and squeezed her thighs together, catching me between. The smell of her arousal was intoxicating, her panties damp with her cum and mine. I kissed her through the fabric.
“We’ve got work to do,” she gasped through her giggles, pushing me back with her heel.
“I’m quite distracted at the moment. I’ll finish later.”
“You finished just now.” She pushed her foot against my chest. I grabbed it and draped her leg over my shoulder, dropping between her thighs, planting a kiss to her perfect lips.
“I’ve suddenly caught amnesia.”
Her hips bucked when I traced my finger up her center and bit her nipple through her shirt. “You don’t catch amnesia. Get back to work, Isaac Thompson.” She kicked me away and clamped her thighs firmly shut.
“Yes, boss.” I surrendered, watched her bolt to the bathroom and slam the door in my face.
I grabbed my phone and dialed my mum again. It was normal for us to go a week without talking. She had plenty of friends and a support system to keep her company. Worry was beginning to rim the outline of my thoughts with each passing day. I phoned Mister Graham, a neighbor across the street whose wife played cards with Mum sometimes. When he didn’t answer I left a brief voicemail to give me a call. I told him not to be alarmed, but that I was just wondering if he could check on my Mum.
Dragging my heels, I went back to work. Somewhere around midnight Celeste and I kissed over our finished project.
“I'll see you tomorrow, love.”
“Night.” Celeste stood on her toes to kiss me. My bed was uncomfortably empty and cold without her.
CHAPTER 38
Celeste
“Good morning, Isaac.” I waltzed into the office. Isaac was sitting at his desk, his hair disheveled in that sexy way it got when he was concentrating. When he looked at me, he put his hand up in a gesture that meant stop. I went cold. His expression was taut, like he’d seen a ghost.
“Someone’s here to see you in your office.”
“What? Who?” My heart started racing. I went to his desk and put our coffee down. I blanched when I looked through the glass door.
Anthony Porter.
What. The. Fuck.
“Get out.” I strode into my office.
“Celeste, I came to talk to you.” Bile rose to my throat as his outstretched hand reached for me.
My whole body started to tremble. I balled my hands into fists to steady the shaky feeling in all of my limbs. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” My mom… she had tried to warn me about Monday and I’d let my temper get the best of me. “I said I never want to see you again,” I snarled through clenched teeth.
“I’m going to give you two some privacy.” My head snapped to Isaac, who was in the doorway, phone in hand.
“No you’re not. He’s leaving.” I would have pushed him physically out of the room, but the prospect of touching him disgusted me.
Anthony took a step between Isaac and me. “Celeste, we need to talk.”
“Do not even speak my name.”
“Maybe we could just go for a walk.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“C’mon I came all the way from New York.”
“And you can go all the way back. Bye.”
“Celeste, please, just listen to me!”
The panicked, fuzzy feeling that washed over me subsided. My heart still hammering in my chest, tongue still prickly from the anxiety, I willed myself to regain composure. “As far as I care, you have nothing to say. I’m not doing this here. Actually, I’m not doing this ever.”
Isaac cut in after a tense second of silence, while Anthony’s mouth hung agape. “I can go to the interview alone, if you want.” Our eyes locked.
“Hell will freeze over before I allow Anthony Porter to get in the way of my career ever again. He’s leaving. We’re leaving.” I stalked over to Isaac’s desk and grabbed my bag. The men followed me, Isaac hanging back at a distance.
“I came to apologize,” Anthony said after an intense silence between him and Isaac that made the heartbeat pounding in my ears unbearably loud.
“Apology not accepted. Goodbye.” I flung the door open and motioned for him to leave. I could practically hear everyone in their cubicles snap back to work. Like roaches getting caught in the light. Anthony dropped to his knee and I had never been so shocked in my life. “Get up you filthy prick. Get out!” I was getting hysterical. I was losing my control. I wanted to… I wanted nothing. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, I wanted from that worm.
No. That’s a disservice to worms. They perform a very important role in the ecosystem.
Isaac came up behind me. I was trembling again. Calmly, as if not to spook the beast, he peeled my hand from the doorknob, took a hand around my waist, pulled me back into the room, and closed the door.
Anthony stood and nodded at Isaac, who threw him a disgusted look. Anthony took a step to my office door. “Hear my side of the story. Please.”
I looked at Isaac, who nudged me forward. He avoided my gaze and motioned to my office. “Go. Get closure,” was his silent advice. Yet, his body language was tense and unreadable. Everyone was looking at me for answers and I caved to the pressure
“This is going to be rich. Okay, get in my office.”
“I’ll, uh, stand guard and beat down the office gossips for you.” Isaac went to his desk and blared music from his computer.
I didn’t close the door behind me. I made the decision that I wanted Isaac to listen in, to know there was not even a molecule of longing in my being for the foul creature in my office. “So? Did you come to give me a check?”
“I made a mistake, Celeste.”
I scoffed.
“Just, be quiet and listen to me.”
Seven words were all it took for me to abandon all propriety. “Oh fuck no, you don’t tell me to be quiet anymore.”
“Okay, wrong words.” Anthony held his hands up in surrender. He spoke over me as I started to tell him to fuck off forever. “Celeste, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I cheated on you. I ended it. The night before our wedding I ended it and I’m sorry that it even happened. I don’t know why I did it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t. I see now that you’re perfect and you would have been the perfect wife. I need you to make me a better man.” Anthony’s pitiful expression, his weak, weaselly posture, let me know he’d practiced this. He’d mustered all of his toxic bullshit and wrapped it up for this delivery. He truly believed that he had me so fucked up that I would forgive him and come crawling back again. He still thought I was the weak pathetic woman he’d manipulated and emotionally abused for years.
Fury, pain, and anger burst through the wall in my throat. “You humiliated me! You will never be sorry, you can’t be. You’ll never understand what you put me through! The fact that you’re even here, proves that you have no clue, not one iota, of what you did to me.”
“I said I’m sorry. Give me another chance, baby. I came all the way here to win you back.”
I laughed in his face. It felt so good to finally be the one laughing. “What did you think? That you were going to show up in this grand gesture and I was going to what? Fall back into your arms? You’re an abusive, narcissistic piece of shit. The best thing you ever did was push me so far that I left.”
“I never abused you!” He raised his voice, indignation sharpening the edges of his tone. Kieran had taught me how to spot gaslighting and I just laughed again.
“Go to therapy, Anthony. Get out of my life. We’re done. This is the closure, there is nothi
ng left to say.”
“We’ll go to therapy together! Don’t you miss what we were?” Anthony grabbed my shoulders and shook me. He bowed his head to mine. I fought, shrieked in disgust, and backed away until my back hit my glass door.
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Isaac growled, shoving him into the center of his office.
“Bro, stay in your lane. This is between us.”
With every step Isaac took, Anthony took a step back. “She doesn’t want your apology. It’s over. Get the fuck out. And send her a check for whatever you owe her. Or don’t. I’ll foot your bill for fucking up the best thing you never had.”
Anthony’s face twisted as I saw the moment his confusion turned to realization. “Are you fucking him?”
Isaac grabbed Anthony by the collar and pulled him until their fasces were millimeters from one another. “I’m not a violent man, but I swear on my life if you don’t disappear from hers, I’ll fucking castrate you.”
“Let him go, Isaac.” I was entirely too confused by my emotional reaction to his aggression. Isaac released him and took a step back. I stalked over to my ex, words dripping with venom. I knew exactly how to hurt him. “I thought I loved you, Anthony. But after much consideration, I realized that I didn’t for a very long time. You freed me from a lifetime of misery. You’re nothing to me now besides the worst lay I’ve ever had.” I straightened his shirt for him, as I once had with stars in my eyes. “You can go home to my mother and tell her whatever you want. I’ll cut her off, too. I’m so happy I left you at the altar. My life is so much better without you.”
I held the door open and signaled for him to leave. Anthony looked me in the eyes and surrendered, stalking to the exit. I wouldn’t let him leave with any dignity. I would strip him the way he did me. “One more thing,” I put a hand to his shoulder, “The man I am seeing now, loves it when I scream his name. Actually, he begs me to say it louder. And guess what, I never have to fake it.”
“Fuck you, Celeste.”
“I bet you wish you could.” I closed the door in his face and locked it.
Isaac was all over me before I knew what was happening. I laughed maniacally as he threw me onto his couch. “I do love it when you scream my name,” he whispered into my ear, catching my earlobe between his teeth.
He caught my laugh, smiling against my lips. Then pulled away, his expression so intensely serious it wiped the smile from my face. “What’s wrong?” I asked, smoothing the worried wrinkle between his brows.
“I was scared you’d go back to him.”
I pushed him back a bit to look right in his eyes. “Never.”
“I was scared all the same,” Isaac said.
“The best thing he never had, huh?” I spanked his ass playfully.
Isaac’s expression didn’t soften to the playfulness I was used to. “He didn’t have you. This is you. Who you were before, she was just what you thought you were.”
“You’re right.”
“Celeste, I’ve fallen madly in love with you.” Isaac lowered his mouth to mine.
What?
I froze in his arms, my entire body rigid.
He didn’t mean it. Not like that.
I pushed him playfully off of me. Confusion, and a hundred other indistinguishable emotions flashed across his expression before he smiled and pulled me up. “Get your bag, we’ve got a groundbreaking story to unfold.”
I brushed off the words. He didn’t mean them.
It was the casual way of friendships to say these things.
I would convince myself that it meant nothing because I was not ready for it to mean anything. I just wanted simple sex, and so did he.
No Romeo shit. We decided that on the first night.
CHAPTER 39
Celeste
Sarah Taylor was not what I had expected from a woman who had suffered the things that were plastered all over television. She was being held in a safe house pretty far outside of London, with several government-issued trucks full of security detail that didn’t greet us as we passed them.
She sat across from me on a floral couch. Tall and stoic, with eyes that calculated every one of my movements. Isaac was patient with her as we exchanged pleasantries and she brushed off every one of our concerns for her health and safety.
The pleasantries ended and she did not permit us to record the interview. Isaac started. “Sarah, there are accusations about your connection to the Seminovik family in the Russian news about your participation in sex work. Can you tell us your side of the story?”
“Are you asking if I was trafficked? Or if I’m just a whore?”
Stunned into silence, Isaac looked to me for salvation. “Why don’t you go get us all some coffee?” I suggested.
Isaac rose without a word and left us. Kieran, who had tagged along at Michael’s request, entered to take his place. We guessed that Sarah Taylor wasn’t going to react well to a man in the room, so Isaac would have to go sit outside with the security detail and wait. Leaving us in need of a second witness—Kieran.
She introduced herself while she shut the door to the sitting room behind her. Sarah’s gaze incinerated Kieran on the spot as the cynical scrutiny raked up and down her body. Kieran held out her hand to greet Sarah, and there was a long, painfully combative silence as Sarah refused to shake it.
“Are we playing good cop bad cop now?” Sarah smirked sardonically.
As a secretary, Kieran wasn’t used to being in the field and Sarah’s abrasive nature wasn’t the easiest personality type to deal with on her first go. I had plenty of experience with victims, so we planned to have Kieran as just the legal warm body in the room. I stepped in, “We aren’t cops. Just reporters, looking to tell your story.” I looked Sarah in the eyes directly and sat back in my seat to mirror her body language. “Were you trafficked?”
“Did someone come and steal me in the middle of the night from the cradle? No. I went into sex work myself. What else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t smart. Everyone I knew in Britain knew me as a runaway junkie. In the papers, that’s what they said, you know—that I was a junkie and that I was at the age of consent when I was seen in Russia. They’re not wrong.”
“I have a feeling that you didn’t consent to any of that. You can trust me. I’m on your side.”
Sarah raised her brows and smirked at Kieran. “You on my side, too, Red?”
Kieran, flustered, looked to me and back to Sarah and just nodded.
“How did you come to know the Seminovik family?” I continued.
“I called an old friend.” Sarah shrugged and started to pick at her nails.
“Who was that?”
“Just my old plug.”
“You just happened to know one of the most powerful men in Russia?”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
I bit back a sigh. “I need to know what you say.”
“Everyone has ties to the men in power. Whether you know it or not.”
Her vague answers were starting to wear on me. “Can you tell at least tell us how you ended up at the protest? Our source says that you organized it online.”
That got her attention. Her eyes narrowed on me and her brows stitched together. I watched her jaw clench. “I’m done for today. Ask the hot one if he’s done making the coffee so we can share it before you leave.”
I glanced at the clock. thirty minutes. She’d given us barely thirty minutes and zero answers. I didn’t let any of my thoughts or disappointment show on my face or in my body language.
Isaac walked in with the coffee and sat with us. I did most of the small talk and even earned myself a real smile from the iron wall across from me, that noticeably didn’t touch the coffee.
CHAPTER 40
Isaac
“She’s not giving anything up easy. Why? What could she possibly gain from not having her story told?” Celeste was talking, but the sounds weren’t registering, not really. I was doused in the cool flames of melancholy, while she burned br
ightly next to me. I gripped the steering wheel harder.
Her mind worked in beautiful ways. So linear, and precise. She was a master in the interview. I was in awe of her ability to redirect Miss Taylor while showing a kindness that could melt glaciers.
She was so focused. How could she be so focused when she’d just kicked her ex out the door and had her lover slip over his tongue?
I shouldn’t have said it. I didn’t know what was worse, the way she tensed up or that she ignored it altogether. I was imploding just two feet from her. And she was just… working.
“I can’t wait to get back to your apartment and see what they’re saying on TV about her. Isaac, are you listening?”
“I meant what I said,” I blurted.
I could feel the wheels turning in her head until the gears all shifted into place. “It was an emotional moment.”
“Surely, you don’t think me the kind of man who falsely professes their love out of jealousy.” She sat silent for a moment. “Celeste, I have always been… more than fond of you.”
“I’m fond of you, too.” Her frigid fingers touched my hand on the stick shift.
“No. I want to be more. My friends know about you. Kieran knows. Payton suspects. It’s only a matter of time before Michael puts it together. Neither of us is seeing anyone else. I think we should make it official.”
“Public fuck buddies?”
“Is that what we are?” I snapped, a blade slicing through my chest.
I stole a glance at her and she was red all over. Not the reaction I was looking for. Her answer confirmed my fears. “No. We’re not. I mean, we were but… we’re not… We’re having fun and just enjoying our time together. We don’t have to go public or define it.”
I kept my eyes on the road. Honesty. I needed to be honest. “I want to,” I said, finally.
“I don’t. I like the way things are right now, don’t you?”
“When I told you I’d fallen for you, I meant that. And for me, it’s more than sex. Always has been.”
I still couldn’t look. I felt, with every noncommittal answer, like she was tearing a hole in the fiber of my heart at the seams, each word another stitch ripping irreparably. “It is more than sex,” her tone had a hazy edge of desperation, “I really like you. I like being around you. I like everything about you.”
See You Monday: An Office Romance (Weekday series Book 1) Page 26