by Unknown
I grinned as if I’d just won the lottery. This was more money than I had ever had in my life, and it had just come out of nowhere! If it weren’t for helping my little sister, I could quit my job and never see this arrogant man again. The idea was tempting. There might even be enough money for me to do both.
He led me into the kitchen, then turned to face me. “I hope you won’t decide you don’t want to work here,” he said as if reading my mind.
“You do?”
“I wouldn’t want to lose your cooking.”
I looked at him with surprise. He was always complaining about one thing or another. He’d even told me I made toast the wrong way. I worked in constant fear of upsetting him or making him angry. At times, I hadn’t even been sure my job was secure.
“You’re an excellent cook,” Ecliptic continued. “You’ve come a long way in learning how to please me.”
This day just kept getting weirder. If he told me he enjoyed my company, too, I would know I’d actually just gone off the deep end. Or if he told me I was pretty? I would have fainted then and there. Luckily, the praise stopped at my cooking. Or unluckily, I thought as I subtly surveyed Ecliptic’s gorgeous body.
I did want to please him. I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but now that he had put the thought into my mind, I realized that I would have liked to please him in any way possible. Keeping Ecliptic happy and satisfied appealed to me greatly.
He stood up, the scars on his back catching my eye again. “I’ll let you get to work,” he said. “Just one more thing. Don’t tell anyone where you found those jewels, all right? No stories about dewdrops or jewels lying in the grass. Let’s just keep that between us.”
It was just my imagination – it had to be – but I could have sworn my boss winked at me.
Ecliptic
The girl hadn’t asked where the jewels came from. That was something to be grateful for, even if she had found and taken them. What kind of person would see precious stones glimmering in the grass and simply grab them? At least she had asked if she could have them, even if it was only after she had stowed them away for herself.
Now she would go off to some jeweler and selling them, making him question how she had gotten her hands on so many at once. With flawless gemstones like that, even one or two would raise suspicions if brought to the wrong person. There were only a few jewelers I would trust not to ask questions, and it would seem too presumptuous if I were to point her toward one of them.
This whole situation was going to bring me more unwanted attention. As if I didn’t have enough problems already, I thought with a sigh. I went to my study to work, resolving to keep an eye on Rochelle through the kitchen webcam.
She would have given them back to me if I had asked. Her fear of me was great enough. That was half the reason I employed her. It pleased me much more than her cooking. I’d had high hopes for her considering her training, but it was simply impossible to find a decent chef on this side of the Atlantic. The girl had made some progress since I had employed her, but her food was often still subpar.
Aesthetic reasons had made up a large part of my hiring decision. Rochelle was a beautiful girl, and her reaction to me was even more beautiful. I enjoyed seeing the terror in her pretty, dark eyes when I snapped at her, and the way her curvaceous body tensed up when I told her something was wrong. Her desperation to keep me happy was clear. For the time that she was in my house at least, she wanted nothing more than to satisfy me.
I sank into the chair behind my desk and turned on the webcam. Rochelle’s image lit up the screen. She wasn’t working yet, I observed. Instead, she was going through the jewels in her pockets again. She chose one of the emeralds and held it up to the light. Even with the camera’s high-definition precision, her face was inscrutable.
As I continued to watch, she took another jewel and did the same thing. After a few minutes, she pulled some food out of the fridge. She paused and stared at it, then took out yet another jewel from her cargo pants. She seemed to be fascinated by them.
The events of the previous night had thrown both of us off our schedules. I should have been working, not just staring at her. As much as I wanted to, I did have other things to do.
I could have spent the whole day watching Rochelle. It was a temptation every day, in fact. She was by far the most attractive of my staff. Even in the unflattering clothes she wore, the sight of her curvy body could make me hard. Seeing her fascination with my gemstones was even more entertaining.
When Rochelle finally began to cook, I forced myself to turn off the camera. After quickly checking on my other staff, I got to work. Managing my money usually took up most of my day. Managing my kingdom took up a good amount as well.
At twelve o’clock on the dot, I arrived in the lunch room and seated myself at one end of the long table. I often had family members or business associates drop by, but I had cancelled everything for that day. After the fight the night before, I was too tired to focus.
Rochelle brought me my lunch on a platter. She set a salad plate in front of me and stood at my side for my approval. The dressing was far too lemony, but I didn’t show my dissatisfaction. Today, I needed to be nice to the girl.
“It’s okay?” she asked.
“Perfect.”
She dipped her head happily. I knew it was the first time I had said that about anything she’d made. Hopefully the compliment would swell her head enough that she wouldn’t think to ask anything more about the jewels.
The next course was moules marinières. The white wine broth the mussels were cooked in only had a few too many shallots. “Very good,” I told Rochelle.
Finally, she served me a pan-seared foie gras. This one was delicious, and my praise was completely honest. “Excellent.”
I stood up to leave, but the girl called out to me as I reached the door. “Wait,” she said. “About those jewels…”
My plan hadn’t worked. With displeasure, I turned to face her. Her eyes lingered on my body, and for a moment I wondered if I shouldn’t have gone shirtless. It was warm outside, and I was more comfortable without one. I was in my own house, so I saw no need for modesty.
Now I realized that she wasn’t just looking at the muscles that were toned by frequent late-hour flights. She had seen something on my back – perhaps some evidence from the night before.
Rochelle bit her lip before continuing. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to take them? I feel like they should be yours.”
“If you don’t want them, I will take them.”
“I do want them. I just… It’s so much.” She paused and looked at the ground.
The money was nothing to me. There was more where that came from – infinitely more. Rochelle was clearly suspicious, though, and that could be a problem. The easiest way to resolve the situation would be to simply take them back. “Give me the jewels,” I said.
She nodded again, less happily this time. “Okay.”
She poured the gemstones onto the lunch room table. They spilled across the wood, their flat backs preventing them from rolling far. Rochelle gazed at them with defeat. She was giving up much more than just a pretty sight, I reminded myself.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just…” She sighed. “I wanted to buy my little sister something for her graduation.”
I hadn’t known the girl had a sister. A vague sense of guilt ran through me until I remembered that she was just an employee, and that I didn’t have to keep up with what was going on in her life. “It’s just a graduation,” I told her.
Rochelle shook her head. “She’s been through a lot. She finally managed to break up with this abusive jerk she was dating on and off for a few years, and I wanted to give her something special to show her how proud I am of her.”
There was that guilt again. I chose an opal from the table. It was one of the less valuable stones, one that wouldn’t cause too much attention when she sold it. “Take this one,” I said.
“I insist.” I placed it in her hand and closed her fingers around it. Touching her was new for me, and my cock twitched at the feeling of her warm skin under my hands. “Consider it a gift. Buy your sister something nice.”
“That’s so kind of you,” she breathed.
I should have snapped at her for not leaving immediately, but something stopped me. The jewel was firmly clasped in her hand, which itself was still clasped in mine. I held her small fist, my own breathing growing ragged now. She stared up at me, and I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes from hers.
“And what about you?” I asked, suddenly curious. “Who have you been dating?”
Rochelle seemed to almost giggle, but she caught herself in time. “No one.”
So she was single. And yes, she was beautiful. All of my staff had to be reasonably pleasing to my eyes. I didn’t see any reason to surround myself with unattractive people. I didn’t fuck my employees, though. I didn’t fuck any human that I expected to stay around. And this moment of holding Rochelle’s hand had gone on far too long.
I yanked my hands away, feeling the loss of her warmth immediately. Rochelle shivered, too. Composing myself, I took a step towards the door.
“Sir?”
I glanced back at her, eager for this moment to pass. The fight had disrupted everything. Rochelle was already asking too many questions, and the inquisitive note in her voice told me it wasn’t over yet.
“What happened to your back?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
So I was right about her looking at me. Leaving her where she stood, I hurried to one of the bathrooms on that floor. I closed the door behind me and looked at my back in the mirror.
It was scarred all over. Short lines dotted it where the scales had been torn off. As I stretched to touch some of the scars, they felt tender and raw. I cursed quietly. How had I not noticed this until now? Anyone would be able to put two and two together.
I buzzed my butler to bring me a shirt, then told him to collect the jewels lying on the table. Unlike Rochelle, he didn’t ask any questions. Once I was back in my study, I turned on the surveillance system again.
The scales were heavy in the small bag the butler had put them in. I tossed it from one hand to the other as I looked at Rochelle on the webcam. She had a more serious look on her face now. All of her excitement had disappeared. As she prepared my dinner, she stopped for a moment and leaned against the counter. She looked straight into the camera as if she knew it was there and, provocatively, she bit her lip.
The girl was staff. I had a rule about these things: staff were for working, not for fucking. They were human, and human women were only good for sex as long as I could get rid of them afterwards. I couldn’t simply wash my hands of a woman on my staff.
Women like me didn’t exist. Not to date, anyway. The only ones I knew of were in my own family. That meant my life would continue to be as solitary as it was now. It didn’t matter to me, although sometimes I sighed when I thought about it. My only hope of something more was to find a human companion. I didn’t expect that to ever happen when humans had such an innate distrust of my kind. In any case, Rochelle shouldn’t have been tempting me – even with her exquisite looks.
I settled myself in the chair and watched as the girl went about her cooking. Surely there was no harm in just looking at an employee. My cock twitched as I looked at her pretty face and generous curves. As beautiful as she was, this couldn’t be considered inappropriate.
Rochelle sliced vegetables with a rapid hand, then paused for a moment. Her hand fluttered to her throat. She took deep breaths, and her neckline hinted at the cleavage heaving below. Finally she turned to throw the vegetables into the pot. My cock swelled still larger as I watched the motion of her round ass.
I had watched Rochelle many times before, but she had never had quite this effect on me. There was something about her that day, maybe the fear she had shown during the discussion we’d had. I loved the way she readily submitted to whatever I asked. Despite my rule, I couldn’t help but imagine how she would submit to me in the bedroom.
My cock had stiffened so much that going without relief would have been painful. As I freed my shaft and began to stroke it slowly, Rochelle bent over the oven, torturing me further. I tapped the screen frantically, zooming in on that perfect round bottom. It jutted out farther than should have been possible as she bent low.
My employees had no idea there was a camera, yet Rochelle somehow kept angling her body towards it. As she stood up, she glanced past it again and licked her lips. My groin tightened as I saw her tongue pass over those lush, red lips. She had definitely gotten my attention now.
Rochelle bent again, this time to the front. I didn’t even look at what she was grabbing. Leaning forward, I tightened my grip on my cock and homed in on the deep cleft between her breasts. She was only there for a second and then she was standing, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before delicately tossing a carrot slice between those full lips.
Blood rushed to my cock, making it even harder. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop at just looking. It wasn’t for my sake. Rochelle was clearly still thinking about the jewels she had found, and she needed a distraction to get her mind off them. This girl had me ready to break my own rule.
Yes, I would fuck her. Just once. Just to stop her from thinking about jewels and back scars and strange sounds in the night. Once, and then everything would go back to normal the next day.
I was a talented lover. No man she had ever been with could compete with my prowess. When she finished work that night, she would be thinking about the incredible sex she’d had with her employer – nothing else.
And the fact that I would get my hands on the voluptuous body under her ill-fitting clothes… sink my cock into the hot, wet opening I knew was waiting there for me…
Well, that was just a bonus.
Rochelle
It was almost a relief when Ecliptic took the jewels back from me. They weren’t supposed to be mine, and taking them felt like I was pressing my luck in some inexplicable way. Whether Ecliptic saw it that way or not, I had found them on his property, which meant they were also his property.
He had been oddly kind to me during lunchtime. Any compliments from him were rare. He had never called any of my cooking “perfect” before. The word echoed in my mind, making me smile every time. I wanted to please him more than anything.
I couldn’t concentrate properly as I tried to prepare my boss’s dinner. Even with my collection of jewels decreased to one, the bright stones still blinked in my mind. Ecliptic had to know where they had come from, but he hadn’t hinted at any possibilities. Had he thrown them from his bedroom window? That seemed the most likely, even if I couldn’t think of a reason why he would have. And then there were the sounds I had heard the night before, the ones that still couldn’t be explained.
Between all of the things that were confusing me, it was no surprise that my mind wasn’t completely on the coq-au-vin I was making. I kept pausing as I cooked, fingering my hair or biting my lip. When the intercom buzzed and Ecliptic summoned me to his study, I assumed he was going to yell at me for my behavior. The maid gave me a sympathetic smile as I passed her cleaning in the hall.
“Sit down,” Ecliptic said when I reached his study. His tone was cold, as usual, but he seemed different somehow. He fidgeted in his chair, and his fingers tapped insistently on its arm.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked, my hands twisting in my lap.
The way he was looking at me was strange, too. Like he felt something very strong, and he was trying very hard to rein that feeling in. I added the expression to the list of new and mystifying things that had happened that day. He had definitely never given me a look like that before.
“No, Rochelle,” he said.
“What would you like, then?” I asked.
Before he answered,
he made a low sound that sent little chills running through me. “I want you,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
He stood, and I suppressed a gulp. The evidence of his desire stood straight out in front of him. I covered my eyes, but not before I had noticed its extreme size. It jutted far enough out that I had to peek at it from between my fingertips to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I didn’t need to have seen other cocks to know that his was huge.
“Yes,” Ecliptic said. “I want to make love to you.”
My mouth dried up, and I licked my lips to wet them again. I had daydreamed about my boss saying those words to me many times, but I had never thought it could become reality. The differences in our status and our attractiveness were bad enough. Ecliptic was so much wealthier than me, and completely out of my league in terms of looks. On top of everything else, I was also his employee.