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by Adriana Locke

  My hands are released and I reach for him, but he pulls back. He turns back to me, a strip of bacon in the air, dripping with sticky goodness from the breakfast plate.

  Holding it over my body, the sweet liquid falls to my skin, trickling wild lines from my thighs to my neck.

  Graham looks at me with untamed, yet reverent eyes. I’m desperate for his touch. He lies along my legs, holding himself up over my abdomen. A smirk graces those delicious lips.

  “I think I’ll have my breakfast like this,” he growls. “Lie back. Eyes open. I want you to watch me lick this off of you.”

  His tongue dips into the pool of liquid in my belly button and I nearly jump from the contact. He growls and I know to stay still. I want to stay still. I don’t want this to end.

  He works his way around my stomach, following the ropes of syrup as they crisscross my body. His tongue is hot, his fingers tucking under me and squeezing my ass. I try to shimmy, to make his fingers find my opening, but he knows my game and doesn’t budge.

  Looking me in the eye, he starts a torturously slow path from my stomach up my breastbone. Then, in a flash of a movement, he sucks my left nipple.

  “Gah!” I exclaim, feeling a burst of pleasure shoot through me. My fingers run through his hair, encouraging him to suck harder, take in more.

  He sucks the sweetness from my skin and looks at me, licking his lips. Pressing on my clit, he laughs. “This is going to be a good fucking day.”

  “I hope so,” I laugh. “Now start the fucking me part.”

  “Oh no,” he says, leaning back and stripping off his briefs. “Not today.”

  “What do you mean ‘not today’?” I ask, alarmed.

  “Today, I’m enjoying you. Savoring you. Relishing the fact that I have an entire day of you all to myself.”

  “That,” I say, reaching up and pulling his face to mine, “you most certainly do.”

  Mallory

  HUMMING A TUNE, I ENTER the last data from a report Graham gave me into our system. A few simple clicks and a flourish as I hit enter and it’s complete. And so is the work day, for all intents and purposes.

  We haven’t discussed what happens in thirty minutes, when five o’clock rolls around. I don’t have yoga class tonight, but I also don’t want to assume he wants me to come over. This is new to us, especially to him, and I know he’ll need to ease into this. Hell, so do I.

  I think we were both surprised at how easily today went. We were so much better at setting our chemistry aside to get the job done than we were before this past weekend. Maybe it’s because we know where we stand and that we will have that time, time to say and do all the things that are running through our minds, when the day ends.

  Tidying up, I put together a few notes for Graham and stick them on the corner of my desk. Since I have a few minutes to spare and Graham isn’t back from a meeting with Gulica Insurance and Ford in the conference room, I pull out a file for Lincoln’s charity and get to work on it.

  I’m putting some numbers into a spreadsheet when the office door opens. I smile and turn, expecting to see Graham, when my grin falters.

  A woman is standing in the doorway. Long, jet-black hair hangs to her waist and bright pink lipstick paints her mouth. She eyes me suspiciously, and while I have no idea who she is, I instantly don’t like her. At all.

  “Can I help you?” I ask politely, turning to face her head-on.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Landry.”

  “Graham?”

  “This is his office, isn’t it?”

  I stifle a smart-ass comeback. “Yes, it is. What can I do for you?”

  She gives me a cocky grin as she takes me in. There’s no denying she sees me as some sort of competition. “You can let Graham know I’m here.”

  “Well,” I say, as sweet as sugar, “he isn’t here right now. Would you like to leave him a message?”

  “No. When will he return?”

  The door opens again and Raza walks in with her cheery smile. Once the door is closed behind her, the smile fades.

  “I’m not sure when he will be back,” I say, flashing Raza a look to stay quiet. “I’d be happy to take a message for you.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “Look,” I say, standing. “I’m not sure what it is you want, but—”

  “I’m sorry,” she interjects. “What was your name?”

  Pointing at the name plate sitting front and center on my desk, I grin. “Mallory Sims. And who might I have the pleasure of having in my office this afternoon?”

  “I’m Vanessa Shields.” As my blood runs cold, her smug grin stretches wider. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

  “Yes, I have. Aren’t you the lady that overflowed the toilet in the restroom last week?”

  Her eyes narrow. “No. That was not me.”

  “Oh. Sorry for the mix-up.” I look at Raza. “What can I do for you?”

  “I had a question about a charge to Ford’s account. Graham also said you could take a look at this note from Camilla and let me know how to proceed, but it can wait.”

  I can almost see steam rising from Vanessa’s ears.

  “Let me take care of this,” I say, nodding towards Vanessa, “and then we can discuss.”

  “I’m not leaving until I see him,” Vanessa states.

  “What do you want him for?”

  She takes a deep breath and looks towards Graham’s office. “I told him I was coming to town. We talked about having dinner. I’m free tonight and wanted to see if he has plans.”

  Her words punch me in the stomach. I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. As hard as I try not to show the cracks in my veneer, she sees them.

  “Yeah, honey,” she says. “I’m the love of Graham’s life. Get used to it.”

  I toss the pen in my hand on my desk and start around the corner of it. My eyes locked on this bitch standing in front of me, I see red. “What you are is a manipulative, filthy whore.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. I didn’t stutter.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “You’re right and you don’t know how lucky that makes you.”

  She moves her head side to side in a bitchy, snotty bob. “Was that a veiled threat?”

  “If I want to threaten you, I’ll do it in the open. Because that’s what women do. We keep things on the up-and-up, say it like it is.” I glance at Raza and then back to Vanessa again. “You know, little things, like . . . if we’re married.”

  Her face pales.

  “What you did to Graham is repulsive. You’re nothing more than a deceitful, disgusting excuse for a woman.”

  “How dare you!”

  “How dare you,” I spit. “How dare you walk in his office and pretend like you have some right to talk to him.”

  “He’ll be the judge of that.”

  “No, I’ll be the judge of that.” I march to my desk phone and hit the button for security. “George? This is Mallory. I need someone in my suite, please.”

  “I’m not leaving here until I talk to him. Get my drift?”

  “You’ll be leaving here when George gets here,” I laugh. “And I’ll ensure you never get through those doors again. Get my drift?”

  George’s partner, Marty, bursts through the door. “Ms. Sims, is there a problem?”

  “Can you escort her out of here, please?”

  “I just talked to Mr. Landry last week. He’s expecting me,” Vanessa says.

  Her words cut me to the core, even though I don’t think I believe them. Why would Graham talk to her and not tell me, especially after our conversation last night? It can’t be true. I won’t believe it.

  Marty looks at me and raises his brows. I stand taller. “Please see her out.”

  He angles himself towards Vanessa and asks her to leave. She argues with him for a moment before glaring at me. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”

  I grin. “No, Vanessa. You fucked him. He ma
kes love to me.”

  I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s enough to get to her. She starts thrashing around, yelling obscenities. Marty subdues her, guiding her out, but not before she tosses an envelope at Raza.

  Once she’s gone, the air still filled with her crazy energy, Raza and I stare at each other.

  “What was that about?” she asks.

  “Honestly?” I say, trying to block out all of Vanessa’s accusations and settle down. “I’m not sure.”

  Raza picks up the envelope and places it on my desk. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Good idea,” I mutter, trying to catch my breath as the adrenaline starts to wear off.

  I watch her go, and a few short seconds later, Graham streaks by the glass. My heart flutters as I watch him race to the door, coming to my side. I don’t know how he heard about Vanessa so fast, but by the tempo of his steps, I know he must have.

  “Did you send the fax to Gulica on Friday?” he barks before the door is even shut behind him.

  Startled at the question, one I wasn’t expecting and catching me off-guard, I stutter, “Yes, of course. I sent it before I left.”

  “They didn’t get it.” He marches to my desk and stands in front of it, fury radiating off him. “You know what that means? It means Landry Security is now on hold.”

  My eyes go wide, my heart stills in my chest as he looks at me with a mixture of anger and pity. My head spins as my mind is yanked from one thing to another so quickly, I feel sick to my stomach. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Does it look like I’m kidding? Everything we’ve worked on for months now is in jeopardy because we don’t have insurance. We can’t move forward on anything, and when we do get things in line, our premiums won’t be locked in. They’ll likely be three times higher than they would’ve last week. Damn it!”

  “Graham, I’m sorry,” I rush, jumping to my feet. “Let me find the confirmation sheet from the fax.”

  He slams a paper in front of me, shaking my pencil holder. “Here it is. It clearly says ‘line busy/no answer’. Did you bother checking it?”

  “I thought I did,” I whisper. I have no idea how I missed that because it’s obvious. “I must’ve picked it up and just filed it.”

  “You just cost Ford’s company weeks, Mallory. Weeks. Their offer was predicated on a date—which was Friday. I made that very clear. Now we have to go back through the process of getting it inspected and approved.”

  “Graham, I’m sorry.”

  He takes a step away from me. “I should’ve done it myself.”

  Tears lick my eyes, red-hot bubbles of liquid pooling at the corners. My hand shakes as I try to steady myself. “What can I do? There must be something we can do?”

  “I’ll take care of it. You can go ahead and go.” He looks at me as he starts to walk away. “I’ll be working late.”

  “Graham, I . . .” I look down at the envelope from Vanessa and don’t know what to do. “You had someone here to see you.”

  He looks at me with a gaze of pity. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “But I need to talk to you—”

  “I have enough to deal with today, Mallory. Whatever you’re dying to talk about will have to wait.” He turns on his heel and disappears in his office.

  With tears streaming down my cheeks, pieces of my heart in limbo, I grab my bag. As I’m going out the door, Ford is coming in.

  “Hey, Mall . . . ory,” he says, then stepping back out of my way as I rush past.

  Graham

  “Fuck!” My voice booms over the sound of the door shutting. Reaching up, I tear away at the knot in my tie and instantly think of Mallory and the way she does it for me. That only angers me more.

  My eyes pull shut and I try to regulate my breathing. I suddenly know what seeing red means. Everything is pulsing so quickly through me that I’m dizzy.

  I don’t fail. I don’t make mistakes of this caliber, ones that cost thousands of dollars and weeks of time. But I trusted her to do it. I thought she understood the importance.

  “Hey.” I whirl around and see Ford standing in the doorway. He watches me warily. “What the hell just happened?”

  “About what?”

  “About what?” he repeats. “About Mallory running out of here practically bawling.”

  The look on his face tells me much more than any adjectives he uses to describe her. I’ve never seen him look at me this way, like he’s second-guessing me.

  “She was probably crying because I pointed out her fuck-up.”

  “I didn’t say she was crying, Graham. I said she was bawling.”

  Choking back a lump in my throat, I look at my brother. “I just told her I’d take care of it.”

  He shakes his head. “I have a feeling you said a little more than that.” As he walks deeper into my office, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “No one is more upset about this than I am. It’s my company, my bottom line at the end of the day. But there are worse problems to have.”

  “I don’t fail,” I say through clenched teeth. Despite my narrowed eyes, my hands shake as I place them on my desk. Her face floats through my mind, the shock written all over her features.

  “No, you don’t and you didn’t this time. But you are about to.”

  I hang my head.

  “I’ve been around the world,” he reminds me. “I’ve seen real problems, real issues, and it makes things like this seem pretty inconsequential in comparison.”

  He gives me a second to respond, but I don’t. The anger that was spilling over a few seconds ago wanes, the flames of fury doused with a dose of reality marked by Ford’s words.

  “So what? We will pay a little more for insurance and we’ll start awhile later. That’s all fixable,” he says. “As long as our family is happy and healthy, everything is fixable.”

  I raise my eyes to meet his and regret it as soon as I do. For maybe the first time ever, one of my brothers is putting me in my place. He could forego all the words and just look at me like that and his point would be well made.

  “What you just did,” he says, “may be a whole lot harder to fix.”

  As the smoke begins to clear, I see the situation with a clarity that makes me sick. “I . . . I don’t know what to do.”

  “You better fucking get a plan together, G.”

  “If I were her, I wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “If I were her, I’d tell you to go straight to hell,” he points out. “But I have a feeling she may be more forgiving than me.”

  When I don’t move, he steps closer. “Graham, if you don’t reach out to her now—not tonight, not tomorrow, now—you just might end up in the same boat as me.”

  “What boat is that?”

  “A boat with more pride than sense. It’s a lonely fucking place, brother.”

  I whip out my phone and press her name. It rings three times before I’m sure I was put to voicemail. Glancing at Ford, he winces.

  I call her again and am sent to voicemail on ring number two.

  “I’m out of my element here,” I say out loud on the verge of panic. “What do I do?”

  He stands stoically in front of me. “You have to talk to her.”

  “But she won’t talk to me.”

  “So, go to her.”

  It sounds like simple logic, an answer that should’ve been obvious. “I don’t know where she went.”

  Scurrying by my brother, I sit at her desk. Pulling open her drawer, I rifle through her things until I find her calendar. “She doesn’t have yoga tonight.”

  “She’s probably at home,” Ford offers. “Did you think of that?”

  “I . . .” I fight the calamity in my brain. “I don’t know where she lives.” His jaw drops and I groan. “We just started doing this thing. I’ve never been there.”

  “That’s an issue for another day.”

  My body tenses as the door opens and Raza walks in. She’s all smiles, hips swinging, until she sees the look on
our faces. “I’m sorry. I thought this would be a better time.”

  “Better than what?” Ford asks as I continue to rifle through Mallory’s drawer. It’s a mess, but instead of irritating me, I find it sort of comforting.

  “There was a woman in here earlier. I came in to ask about a couple of things, and she and Mallory were in a heated conversation.”

  Ford and I exchange a glance as I stand. “Who was she?” I ask.

  Raza shrugs. “I don’t know. Mallory called security.”

  My blood chills as a host of images flow through my mind at what might have happened for Mallory to call for help. “Was there a physical altercation?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. The woman was just demanding to see you and Mallory refused. She didn’t like that much.”

  “Who could it have been?” Ford asks from beside me.

  I shake my head. “No clue. What was said, Raza?”

  Her cheeks flush. “The woman said she was the love of your life. And she didn’t like Mallory’s response.”

  “Oh, fuck.” My gaze flips to Ford’s. “Vanessa.”

  “That crazy bitch,” my brother hisses.

  “Yes!” Raza cries. “That was her. Vanessa. She seemed a little crazy, to be honest. Mallory let her know, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of her and that she would never contact you through Landry as long as she worked here.”

  “She was jealous,” Ford smirks.

  “No,” Raza disagrees. “I didn’t get that at all.” She looks at me with a simple smile. “I felt like she was protecting you more than anything.”

  My breath is stolen, my heart crushing inside my body. “My God.”

  Ford and Raza exchange a few words before she leaves, none of which I’m privy to. All I can do is think of Mallory and the words I said and the pain she must be feeling.

  If I were alone, I’d scream out in rage. If I were home, I’d slam my fists in a punching bag. If I were running, I’d go so hard that my legs would give out just so I could override the shame I’m feeling now.

  “I’m going to—” I begin before my gaze rests on the corner of her desk. A white envelope bearing my name in red ink sits like a loose grenade. Swiping it up, I stick it inside my jacket pocket and look at Ford. “Her resume is in the lower left-hand corner of my desk. Text me her address.”