She flushed despite not wanting to. Only upside was she didn’t feel like smiling. She dropped her gaze.
“Ah, you are a lucky man, Mr. Talbot.”
She pursed her lips, and Nigel, as a Brit, probably not even understanding the undercurrents, said, “If you don’t feel it’s necessary to go on a plant tour at this time, Mr. Talbot, you certainly are free to make that decision, but if your attorney goes, I will have to accompany my client.”
“Lorenzo wouldn’t want you there, Nigel, any more than he’d want me there, right, Lorenzo?” Mason asked.
The other man shrugged.
“All right, that’s enough,” she said quietly, sticking to the point. They could pull their dicks out and piss to mark their territory later. “It’s premature to take a plant tour or even discuss one. I need a moment alone with my client, please, for us to, ah, finish the discussion we were having. And I assure you we will discuss purchase price if it’s merited, all right?”
Lorenzo, still smiling, sauntered out, Nigel closing the door behind him.
When they were alone again, she turned on him. “That whole exchange was getting ridiculous. Is this how you plan to conduct yourself for the duration of my employment? Because I’m not finding it very promising.”
“What about you? Is this how you plan to act?” he fired back.
“Yes. I’ve done absolutely nothing unprofessional in this meeting. You’re the one who’s practically sending up smoke signals to that sleazy guy that we’re fucking. Get a grip.”
He grabbed her arms, leaning into her. A grip all right. She had forgotten how literal he was.
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean. Tell me you’d never consider being with him, somebody like him. Or somebody like Nigel, or fuck, anybody!”
She stared at him and he loosened his hold.
Dusting her knuckles against the hollow of his cheek, she thought how beautiful he was, how real, despite all his faults, or maybe because of them. Nothing like the sleek image of a man that Lorenzo seemed to be trying so hard to project. “No, I don’t want anyone but you. That’s the truth.”
He held her face in his hands, tucked a stray hair behind her ear. They were within inches of each other, so close she could feel his breath. Almost close enough to kiss. He looked at her lips and ran one thumb softly against them. “Then whatever you do, don’t turn me away, Camilla.”
She was the one who moved closer. Her lips crushed against his, her pulse beating wildly, and her tongue sought his.
With a groan, he cupped the back of her neck, bringing her further into the kiss, yanking the clip that secured her hair so it came tumbling down around them, his other hand busy caressing her throat, and then her breasts through the silk of her blouse, each sweep of his hand setting her on fire. They moved to standing as one, and he thrust his leg between hers, as much as her skirt would allow, causing a sensation as evocative as if he’d entered her, his erection, heavy and substantial, prodding her between her legs.
“I want you,” he murmured, bending her backward toward the table as they kissed.
As hot as that simple statement made her, she had not forgotten where they were.
“I don’t think…” she tried to get out.
But through the haze of pleasure, he positioned her until the marble table was level with her bottom and then hiked up her skirt, the rasp of his hands urgent.
Oh, Jesus.
He was drugging her with long, deep kisses that felt as if they were reaching into her heart. He managed to place his hands on her everywhere at once, fondling her sensitive breasts until her nipples were aching, yanking down her panties to her thighs so she was bare to his caresses. He divested her of her suit jacket and top, the collarless stretchy cotton not much of an impediment to him, shoving it up, and pushed aside the cups of her bra to place his hot lips on one nipple, teasing with his tongue, and then the other, licking, sucking.
She groaned at the onslaught of pleasure, the rush of it so unexpected, so inappropriate. “We can’t…we shouldn’t…Mason, no.” Her voice got firmer. “Not here.”
She put a palm to his chest, pushing lightly, and it was enough to back him away, as if he finally came to himself. Straightening, he ran a hand through his hair. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
He turned his back on her, probably conjugating those Greek verbs again, as she straightened her clothes.
There was a throat clearing out in the hallway, loud enough to announce someone’s presence, and a knock on the door.
“Give us a minute,” Mason barked, and Camilla rolled her eyes.
“Let’s just get through with the meeting for now without giving Lorenzo any more hints about our relationship.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I hope that asshole sees you’re mine.”
“You certainly did your best,” she said softly.
“And I’m not buying his shitty company. Not because he wants to fuck you—”
“I doubt he even does. It’s just his style.”
“But because it’s a shitty company.”
“Okay.” She unzipped her computer case and stuffed her papers back in. “Deal’s dead then. That’ll make the meeting take considerably less time.”
She opened the door to Lorenzo’s sly smile and Nigel’s blush.
It ended up taking a bit longer than she thought it would, the other side arguing their case and lowering their price so quickly and repeatedly that she had no doubt the due diligence would have shown something even more disastrous than the financials had. But Mason behaved himself, regaining his cool and letting her deliver the “no.” They all shook hands at the end, and Nigel and Lorenzo left, whispering of alternatives before the conference door even closed on them.
She stood up and Mason followed suit.
“So I guess we should fly back to New York,” he said tentatively.
She bit her lip, shaking her head.
“I was out of line. I know I was. I’m sorry.”
“We shouldn’t have this conversation here. It’s too private. Someone might walk in.”
“Come back with me to my apartment.”
“No! I need to… I need some space to…”
He stared at her for a second and then locked the conference door. “Fine. Say it. Whatever you’re going to say. I deserve it.”
He looked so contrite that for a second she lost the words. Just lost them. The ones that were going to make all the reasonable arguments about why this wouldn’t work, the two of them attending meetings together and pretending they were not…whatever they were to each other.
She put a hand on his shoulder and took a step closer, feeling a rush of tenderness toward him as he brought it to his lips, palm up.
One gentle kiss, his warm mouth against her skin, and what had been banked earlier burst into full conflagration, as if the locked door had unleashed something wild in them.
Suddenly, there were only hungry kisses and urgent caresses. She yanked up his shirt to mold his hot flesh, and he lifted her skirt and slid her panties down until it was her naked bottom against the marble now as he pushed her down, cool and erotic. With a deft touch between her legs, he confirmed she was wet and ready. Shocking her, he brought his finger up, rubbing the moistness against her tender lips swollen from his kisses, dipping it into her mouth.
“Taste how much you want me.” He undid his pants with shaking hands, taking his cock out so the scorching heat of him pressed against her bare thigh. “Feel how much I want you.”
She moaned.
“Say you want me, Camilla,” he urged, his voice low, hoarse. “Say it.”
“I want you,” she whispered between kisses. “God, of course I want you.”
Without warning, he flipped her over, her palms bracing on the table to keep from slamming against it. “Then take me. Please, Camilla,” he muttered. “Now.”
And he shoved his cock inside her, throbbing, hard and deep, and so very right.
&n
bsp; With one hand tangled in her hair, the other clutched her hip convulsively as he moved her in rhythm to his wild thrusts, each one accompanied by a low groan, the sound and feel of him slapping against her naked bottom as he fucked her making her wetter, more desperate.
It all was so hot. Her partial nudity while he was still as good as clothed, the hoarse cries he uttered, burying himself deeper and deeper until she could hardly breathe.
She didn’t realize she was making loud, satisfied noises, until he soothed “shhh” and she tried to hold it in. But at one particularly deep thrust, he cried out so loudly, “Fuck!” that she thought surely someone would hear them.
And still he kept on, as they both panted and strained to the incredible symphony of them moving against each other.
“I want this,” he got out between his teeth, “every time I look at you…every time I touch you…oh, God…every time you smile—”
He came, shuddering against her, and the spasms of his cock pushed her to climax as well.
The cool marble against her cheek registered just as she remembered where they were.
Her panties were around her thighs, her engorged nipples against the table and her skirt hiked up as high as it would go.
“Shit.” Some paragon of feminism she was turning out to be. Could she make it through one work day without getting seduced into fucking him please?
Still panting, he pulled out of her slowly, retrieving a napkin from the sideboard and cleaning himself off before he zipped his pants.
She did the same, wiping between her legs, and straightened her clothes. The smell of sex permeated the air, and they didn’t meet each other’s eyes.
“I meant for us to talk when I locked the door,” he finally said softly. “I did. I didn’t mean for us to—”
“I know. With us, it just…happens.” He seemed to tense, zipping his briefcase, as if waiting for the “but.”
She was shaken by how quickly, how heedlessly it had happened, in a conference room, in the middle of the business day, with an entire law firm only one wooden door away. Her emotions and actions when she was with him seemed increasingly at odds with her words, with what she knew was the right thing to do for now. Her head was waging a powerful war with her heart. She needed to get a hold of herself, of both of them, no matter how much it was going to hurt.
“But for that very reason, this isn’t going to work, me staying in this job. I knew it and we just proved it. I resign, Mason. Effective immediately.”
He nodded. “This whole meeting was a trap, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“I made a jealous ass out of myself and then you kissed me and I, I lost control. Not once, but twice.”
As ridiculous as all this was, fucking on a conference room table—geez, she hoped they cleaned it pretty thoroughly at night—without protection no less, again, she liked the way he said that. He lost control. But she couldn’t let him take all the blame.
“It wasn’t a trap. And we both lost control, for the record. I wanted it. I’m not denying that. I want you.”
“Then stay with me.”
She shook her head. “I need some time alone, and I don’t want you to try to convince me otherwise this time. Okay?”
“Three days?” he suggested.
She placed a palm on his hot cheek. “Let me get myself together and we’ll see. We need time, both of us, Mason, to get some perspective.”
“How long?” he persisted.
She kissed him lightly. “As long as it takes.”
Like so much of her life now, she had to take a step back and go from there.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty-nine days. Mason could name the hours, but he didn’t want to seem obsessive. It had been almost a full month since Camilla had walked out of that London office and out of his life, and he’d been a wreck ever since.
“This is not the fucking file I wanted!” he shouted at Marcia.
Ignoring him, she continued typing on her computer.
“Are you listening to me?”
“No, I’m not.”
He stopped, shifting from foot to foot. “You just answered me, so you are, right?”
“Don’t try to blind me with your stunning intelligence, boy.”
“It’s not the right file.” He dropped the manila folder on her desk, sullen about it but at least quiet.
“Why should I give you the right file when we both know you won’t be reading it? You’ll just be staring out into space with that hangdog look on your face.”
He ignored the hangdog comment. “I was reading it. How else would I know it was the wrong one?”
“There you go, putting a poor little secretary like me in my place with your high IQ.”
“Poor little secretary, my ass,” he muttered. “Can I have the right file please?”
She stopped typing and walked over to the door to the outer hallway, picking up his jacket from the coat rack on the way, and stood there, holding it out to him. “No, you cannot have the right file. You are going to go home and turn on the TV—”
“I don’t have a TV.”
“Yes, you do. You know that mammoth dark screen in your living room? It makes pretty pictures and sounds when you use that little remote thing to turn it on. So you are going to go home and turn it on and watch some mindless sitcom or rerun or whatever and just relax. You’re driving me absolutely insane.”
He tugged her out of the doorway, then slammed it shut. “I’m driving myself insane, too.”
Collapsing on the couch in the waiting room, elbows on knees, he rested his head in his hands, registering the weight of it as pounds too heavy since he’d last seen Camilla.
“I’m sorry I ever even hired that girl,” Marcia said with an edge to her voice that approached the one she had when she discussed his mother. She sat beside him on the couch. “But I did and you just have to put it behind you, Mason.”
“She doesn’t want me.” There. He said it and was finally coming to understand, without one word from her since she had walked away from him, that it was true. And the world wasn’t going to end because of it. It was only going to be a pale imitation of what it had been in the three or so days he’d spent with her.
“If she doesn’t want you, then she’s a hell of a lot dumber than I gave her credit for being.”
“She doesn’t care about my money.”
“I’m not talking about your money!” She tipped his chin up, and he jerked it away, not looking at her.
“You are such a wonderful boy, Mason.”
He had to smile, just a little, at the “boy.” He’d always be a boy to Marcia. “I’m a nut, odd…awkward.”
“Now, that’s your mother talking.”
“That’s Camilla talking.”
She shot up from the couch. “Did that girl have the goddamn nerve to say that to you? I’m going to call her up and give her such a piece of my mind!”
He pulled her back down. “No, of course she didn’t say that. She’s… She’s wonderful.”
“Not in my book, she ’aint.”
The outer door opened and a man, dressed in neatly pressed trousers and a plaid shirt, started to enter, a roll of plans under his arm. Upon seeing the both of them sitting there, he backed out instead.
“No, that’s okay Frank,” he said. “Come on in. What do you have there?”
“I don’t want to bother you, Mr. Talbot. I was just fixing to leave this and set up an appointment with Miss White here to maybe talk to you about them, whenever you get a moment.”
“I have a moment now.” He held his hand out, but Marcia swiped the roll away before he could take it.
“No, he doesn’t,” she said. “Sorry. But I’ll check your calendar and set something up next week, how’s that?”
“Oh, fine, just fine.” The poor guy practically sprinted out.
“Give me those,” Mason said to Marcia when the door closed behind him.
“No. You can look at them tomo
rrow or whenever.”
“You didn’t need to chase him out like that.”
“See, like that. Like Frank.”
“What about him?”
“You think most folks in your position would take somebody like him in, put him in the training program, somebody who I happen to know hasn’t had an address for the last year or so, and give him a chance? Hell no!”
He shrugged. “The guy’s a natural. I bet I’m going to look at those plans and be impressed.”
“And I bet if you aren’t, you’re going to give him another chance and work with him. Don’t think I don’t know you made sure he got some help at AA.”
“You don’t have to do everything for me, Marcia. I can make a call on my own once and a while.”
“Well, don’t get used to it,” she snapped. “Anyway, I’m just trying to say you’re a good person, and if Miss High and Mighty doesn’t see it, then she isn’t.”
He rested his head against the back of the couch. “Thanks. But she is a good person. I think she just… I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“Have you called her?”
“I thought you wouldn’t discuss specifics about me and her?”
“I can discuss a phone call. So the answer is probably no, right?”
He shook his head, feeling lost and anxious as always at the thought of Camilla. And he’d thought of her a lot this past month. Kind of with every waking breath…and sleeping, too, since he dreamed about her—long, silky dreams where they touched and talked and laughed. Some where she just smiled. Even some where she actually had all her clothes on. “She asked me to give her time. Wouldn’t calling her be reneging on that? Though, fuck, I’ve picked up the phone a dozen times.”
“Which means a hundred times.”
“Hundred and fifty, tops.”
They smiled at each other.
“So you’re really going through with this tonight? The whole burrito?”
Tempting the New Boss Page 18