Rapid Pulse: A Limited Edition Spicy Romance Collection

by Gina Kincade

  Copyright@Liz Gavin 2017

  Edited by Kover to Kover

  Cover by Dokeshi’s Book Services

  Carol Sullivan built a reputation as a cut-throat NYSE genius. Her opponents called her a witch. In fact, Carol was an alpha female in a profession dominated by unforgiving males. She kept her demons locked and her secrets hidden. Until a certain dark-haired assistant tempted her into breaking all her rules.

  Mark Aikens graduated at the top of his MBA class, his rowing team undefeated. He grabbed a chance to intern at Horizon Inc. without hesitation. Working directly with the lady boss was a no-brainer. When her authoritative stance threatened to undo him, he knew he was in trouble.

  Will a passionate one-night stand be enough for them? Can an office fling get a happily ever after?

  Chapter One

  2007

  “Fuck!” A loud bang bounced off the walls as the office manager’s fist connected with the polished mahogany table top. “That’s unacceptable.”

  Mark looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows to avoid eye contact with the other team members and got caught up in the bird’s-eye view of lower Manhattan in the early afternoon. Exquisite.

  He cringed as Rob Strong banged on the table again and his stare flew back to the fifty-year-old man chairing the staff meeting. Eyes popping out as his anger skyrocketed, dark circles around his eyes denouncing sleep deprivation, Rob was a serious candidate for a stroke or heart attack. Not exactly a rare specimen in the stock market business, but one that was recently spreading like a deadly contagious disease.

  “Look around you. Foreclosure signs everywhere. The real estate market is going down fast and banks will follow suit. It’s already happening. How long you all think it’ll be until it gets to us? Think, people! We need to hold on to our current clients, no matter what. If we were real smart, we should be going out there and trying to get new clients.” Sarcasm dripped from each word as he enunciated them. Rob paused and looked each member of his team in the eye before concluding. “But, no! Keeping clients is too easy, I suppose. You guys did one better. You lost the Feldman account.” Spit bubbled on the corner of his mouth as Rob spewed the words. At least Mark hoped it was spit, instead of foam. Horizon Inc. didn’t need a medical emergency on top of everything else that was going on in the office.

  It struck Mark as odd that his mind would focus on minor details such as his boss’s frothy saliva or the way the sun glinted off the Brooklyn Bridge in a time like that. On the other hand, his peculiar thinking process would also allow him to think way outside the box and come up with strategies that, despite unorthodox, had proved to be effective time and again. That had gotten Mark a highly coveted internship with Horizon Inc. three years ago, when he was barely starting his MBA at Harvard. That unique mind of his had put him on a fast track for a permanent position in the firm and he was very close to landing it. Last thing he needed right now was for the financial market to implode.

  Rob’s high-pitched voice brought Mark back to the matter at hand. “What the fuck, guys? Shit is hitting the fan and all you do is sit here and gawk at me? I want ideas, actions.”

  “All due respect, sir. How were we supposed to know the situation was that bad, when even the federal government was stimulating subprime loans?”

  “A very strong clue in and of itself, don’t you think?” The manager shouted at the poor sap who had been in the firm for a couple of weeks and didn’t know better than to speak up in a volatile meeting such as that. “Anyway, I’m not looking for excuses, I want solutions. Ms. Sullivan is going to join us in a moment and we’ve got squat to show for as it is. You think she’ll be thrilled? Think again. I mean, you do know her, right?”

  A contagious frisson spread around the room and Mark was not immune to it. The CEO and founder of Horizon Inc., Carol Sullivan, was nicknamed Wicked Witch of Wall Street for good reasons. She was a stock market high-roller whose opponents, and even a few colleagues, would frequently describe as cut-throat.

  As if on cue, the door opened and Ms. Sullivan marched into the meeting room, personal assistant right on her heels carrying a pile of folders haphazardly stacked up in her arms. Mark felt sorry for Julie, the assistant, who sported a pair of suspicious looking tracks down her cheeks. Combined with a red nose and puffy eyes, the marks suggested a recent bout of crying. So recent, Julie didn’t have time to cover them up before following her boss inside a room packed full of her co-workers, leaving everyone’s imagination to fill in the blanks and work out her reasons for crying. Safest bets comprised anger, frustration and self-doubt. If he were a gambler, he would put his money on the last one.

  Mark’s blood boiled at the unfairness of the situation. Nobody had the right to make another person cry, especially not in the work place, certainly not if one was the other person’s boss. His defiant gaze met Ms. Sullivan’s and his world tilted when he found himself on the receiving end of a once-over as he had never experienced before. He caught sight of a glint of appreciation in her brown eyes, but her no-nonsense expression, complemented by the stern-looking tight bun that tamed her red curls, prevented him from believing his eyes. His treacherous body didn’t get the message as it reacted to her self-confidence. The submissive in him connected to Ms. Sullivan’s authoritative presence in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. Probably never, if he were to be honest. Gone was the sympathy he just felt for Julie, substituted by envy. A person had a chance to work close to a dynamo such as Carol, he or she should hang on to it and never let go.

  Although that wasn’t the first time he crossed paths with Ms. Sullivan, after all they had been working in the same office for three years, it was the first time her blatantly dominant gaze was directed straight at him. Mark felt his knees go weak at the possibilities, but gave himself a mental slap on the forehead. He’d better wake up from that impossible daydream. Financial genius, lady boss on one hand. Stockbroker rookie, entry-level office staff, on the other. Not gonna happen, dude.

  Whatever that spark in Ms. Sullivan’s eyes was, she hosed it down by the time she spoke. Arctic waters would be much warmer than her tone as she addressed the room. “Times are bleak now, but they’ll get worse. Believe me. People are beginning to panic and their natural reaction will be to withdraw from the stock market because they believe they’re cutting their losses. That’s the obvious scenario. What should we do to avoid getting caught in the whirlpool of sewage that’s about to flood Wall Street?”

  Voices raised all at once in a cacophony of suggestions and complaints. Without losing her poise, Ms. Sullivan listened to each member’s input, agreed with the ones that had merit and rebutted the ones that didn’t, succinctly stating why. Every single person in that room felt appreciated. Mark was positive they felt like they contributed to the team effort, to the company’s future. Oddly enough, his guts told him Ms. Sullivan might even take into consideration the ideas tossed around during their meeting, but she would end up doing only whatever the hell she wanted to do.

  During those couple of hours, Mark witnessed first-hand why Carol Sullivan gained the respect of the testosterone-driven high finances market in which she had been reigning for the last decade. Some might find her ruthless, but she had a sharp, quick mind and knowledge of her trade to rival everyone else’s. He learned more from her in that meeting than from most of his prestigious professors in grad school. He was in awe. In fact, he was so star-struck that it took him a moment to realize she was talking to him.

  “Beg your pardon. What did you just say?”

  “Don’t make me regret my decision, Mr. Aikens,” she scolded him, a dry laugh complementing the wry response. “I’ve just fired my assistant and need an interim while Human Resources recruits someone to fill the position on a permanent basis. Are you up for the temporary assignment?”

  He stared back at her as words deserted him. Was he? Aside from the fact that her assistant resembled a train wreck throughout the entire staff meeting, there was that small issue with the ann
oying pull he felt in his lower body each time his eyes met Ms. Sullivan’s.

  “You came across as shrewd in this meeting, but I could be wrong. It happens, you know. It’s rare, but it does happen,” she stated in a tone that was close to playful. Mark couldn’t believe his ears. “I won’t bite your head off, if you say no.” This time there was no mistaking the amusement in her voice or the playful glint that made her brown eyes sparkle.

  “I’d love to work with you, Ms. Sullivan. Thanks for the opportunity. When do I start?”

  “Five minutes ago,” she replied over her shoulder, on her way out.

  He turned to Julie to ask for her input on how to deal with that information, but the young woman was scurrying after her ex-boss.

  “Great. Just great,” he muttered under his breath as he threw his hands in the air and followed the women.

  NOTHING IN HIS ACADEMIC training or professional experience prepared Mark for the challenge that being Carol Sullivan’s personal assistant entailed. One week into his new job and he was already questioning the wisdom in his decision of taking the position. He never backed down from a challenge. He was on the fucking rowing team in Harvard, when he went there. He thrived under pressure. That was not the issue. Despite Carol’s reputation, she wasn’t a mean boss. She had a quick mind that some people might have problems following. Mark possessed a privileged intellect, so keeping up with his new boss wasn’t hard for him. That was also not the issue.

  The constant push and pull of his attraction to his boss was the issue. It distracted him to the point he lost his train of thoughts. He underperformed the most ordinary tasks on a daily basis. Three out of five lunch orders he placed that week had to be returned because they were wrong. Granted, he caught the mistakes before Carol received the food, but he had to explain to her why lunch was going to take another half-hour to arrive. Each time. Saying she didn’t enjoy the delays was understating her reactions. However, she was never unfair, it was his fault she would go hungry for thirty more minutes.

  On other occasions, he felt like she was coming on to him, which would be awesome had she not been his boss. He was terrified of reciprocating what he thought was an advance on her part just to find out he misread her signals. He chose to do nothing, but the sexual tension was gradually undoing him. He was well aware she was out of his league. He was reminded of that every time her personal line blinked and he found himself talking to another Forbes 500 CEO. Or owner, for that matter. These men weren’t Horizon Inc.’s clients. It didn’t matter that she turned most of them down. It just made it clearer how demanding she was about dating, exactly as demanding as in every other aspect of her life. He didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of attracting Carol’s interest on a personal level.

  Nevertheless, since he started working close to Carol Sullivan, the quintessential alpha female, his inner submissive had gone berserk. So much so that his mind would run away from him with silly visions when he should be taking notes at meetings. Or ordering her lunch, for that matter. Instead, he kept conjuring up images of leather-clad long legs sauntering towards him before red-painted nails scraped his chest. Or delicate fingers clasping a pair of silver handcuffs on his wrists and tying him to the headboard of a king-size bed. And those were the less kinky ideas that came to him during the day, while he was supposed to be focusing on work. The night visions were much more risqué. They took his breath away, along with his sleep. Last time he slept so little was during finals when he was going to grad school.

  He would give his right arm for a chance to taste her, to check his fantasies against reality to see if she would live up to his expectations. As he lay in bed late at night, concentrating hard, he could almost feel her soft skin brushing against his as she crawled up his body and straddled his face. In his mind’s eye, she would hover over him, tempting his senses with her dripping sex, before squatting down until his lips touched her curls. If she gave him half a chance, he’d eat her pussy like it was his last meal on earth, until her legs gave out from under her from sheer pleasure. In real life, though, instead of wishing to hear Carol’s voice commanding him to suck her harder, he should be listening to her actual order of meal. Maybe then he wouldn’t be surprised to find the wrong food inside delivery bags.

  He needed to pull his act together and stop acting like a hormone-filled teenager. At twenty-five, those days were far behind him. The intercom buzzed and Carol’s sultry voice wrapped around him like a wool blanket on a winter night, while his cock stiffened and his dress pants grew uncomfortably tight. So much for getting a grip. “We’re pulling an all-nighter tonight. Make arrangements for dinner, pull up next week’s calendar and come to my office.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Considering Mark and Carol were the only people left in the office, it didn’t take much for him to understand what she meant by ‘we’. How could he focus on work through a whole fucking night, when his thoughts went straight to the dungeon at the commanding inflection in her voice? Every. Damn. Time. He was so screwed.

  “This is going to be a hell of a long night,” he groaned, squirmed in his chair and logged onto a nearby restaurant’s website to order dinner. For two.

  Chapter Two

  After turning off the intercom, Carol stood up to stretch her stiff back and limbs. Tension and long working hours did that to her. She approached the panoramic windows of her corner office and let the sweeping views of the harbor, the bridge and Brooklyn’s skyline do the trick. They took her breath away and her mind off problems. At least for a little while.

  Her native Boston would always hold a special place in her heart, but Carol loved her chosen hometown with a passion. There was no other city like New York. Maybe London would be a worthy contender, but she wouldn’t trade the Big Apple for any other city in the world.

  Today, the calming effects of watching the sky change colors at sunset didn’t last long. As the summer sky turned a darker shade of blue, it reminded her of a certain pair of eyes. Apparently, they had become a fixture in her dreams lately, both when she was asleep and awake. More than the mesmerizing indigo hue, the feelings in them were getting to her and slowly undermining some of her lifelong beliefs. For starters, she never mixed work with pleasure. Carol lost count of the number of clients and associates who had invited her out on dates over the years. They all received the same reply from her. She didn’t date, she didn’t do long term relationships.

  Once upon a time, in a not-so-far away land, she believed she had found love with one Josh Peterson. It was a bit twisted, for sure, but it was the kind of sentiment she thought she could make last. Suffice it to say, she made a shrink or two very wealthy getting rid of the emotional baggage that relationship left her with. Better to play it safe.

  Even if she didn’t have issues with the idea of entrusting her happiness to third parties, she didn’t have time or energy to invest in a relationship based on feelings and emotions. Hers were kept well under control and she took care of her physical needs in the only way that gave her satisfaction - with a submissive.

  Due to widespread prejudice against her lifestyle, because people simply didn’t know enough about it to understand it, Carol kept a low profile in the dating arena and cherry-picked the men she took to social functions, which she only attended when they proved to be essential to advance her professional career. The result was the image of an ice queen the gossip columnists had pinned on her. Combined with her business success in a highly competitive macho-dominated professional field, Carol gained the unofficial title of Wicked Witch of Wall Street. She didn’t mind it. She learned to use it to her advantage.

  It gets lonely at the top, though. The thought popped up in her mind, not for the first time that day and she turned her back to the window to return to her leather chair behind the ample steel and glass desk.

  Since Mark Aikens began working directly under her, she had been toying with the notion of revisiting her policies for selecting lovers. With the global financial situatio
n deteriorating by the minute and her concerns for her own business and that of her clients, she neglected her sexual needs. That must be it. She grew tense and didn’t find time for a long sweaty session with one of her former lovers. That must be why Mark’s dark blue stare had been haunting her mind, day and night.

  She was going to take care of that in a few hours. She booked a suite in her favorite sex club down in New Orleans, after making sure Josh Peterson, her first and only Dom, wouldn’t be there. The highly secretive and deliciously naughty Club Desire was her go-to place when she craved some serious kinky action. She was looking for a nice bottom and Club Desire would give her that.

  In order to accomplish that though, she needed to spend the night working alongside the man who starred in every damn one-handed session she held with her dildo for the last week. Late at night, when sleep refused to come, she took comfort in her trustworthy rubber friend. Every time she closed her eyes, as she pressed the large rubber head against her clit, she envisioned Mark’s body writhing under hers.

  He had submissive written all over his face; it didn’t take her long to peg him for what he was. She noticed how he squirmed in his chair whenever she gave him a command. She had been a dominant for far too long to mistake a willing bottom when she saw one. She didn’t have a regular sub in New York at the moment, which meant Mark would have been a serious candidate for the position, if he worked for another company.

  She wasn’t about to fire him just so she could make him her sub.

  She would not.

  That would be wrong, no matter how much she enjoyed studying his athletic physique.

  That would be immoral, no matter how much her neglected pussy would love to find out if his potential would live up to expectations.

  No, she would not fire the man.