Maybe it should have bothered me that he was spending so much money on me. But I love presents. Shamelessly, and without reservation. I used my apartment key to break through the tape on the box as Holli came to stand beside me. She picked up the note. In a dementedly cheerful sing- song, she said, "Someone's got a sugar daddy."
"Oh, shut up." I was grinning like an idiot as I pulled out a black box with a picture of a makeup bag, brushes and product arrayed around it.
"What new job?" Holli asked, looking up from the note, her brow creased in confusion.
I was equally confused. I had no idea what the hell Neil had sent me. Makeup? Was this some kind of test for the beauty department? And then my eyes fell on the product description on the box.
"Oh my god," Holli giggled. "Are those sex toys?"
I opened the lid and pulled out a facsimile powder brush with thick, rubbery bristles. The base twisted open for a battery. I couldn't believe how something so funny could also be so sweet, and so sexy.
"Yup." I laughed as I held it out to her. "Vibrators, the lot of them. Oh, no, wait..." I dug through the box. "No, there is also naughty stuff to put on your junk to make it tingle."
"I need somebody to make my junk tingle," Holli sighed, carefully dropping the brush into the box. "Tell me about this new job!"
That took some of the wind out of my sails. Despite the promotion, I felt more success in my sex life than my working life at the moment. In fact, I wasn't entirely comfortable telling Holli the truth about my new job, now that she was already as excited for me as if I had gotten it on my own. "Neil offered me assistant beauty editor."
"That's fantastic!" Holli caught me up in a celebratory hug that was almost too enthusiastic for my weary bones. “When were you going to tell me?”
Laughing, I stepped back. "It's not a big deal, it's kind of a consolation prize for being left behind by Gabriella. She put me on a candidate list, and Neil doesn't feel right keeping me on as an assistant when we've slept together. So don't get too excited."
Holli's expression fell at my evident disappointment. She held out her arms and hugged me. "Oh, Soph. That probably means Gabriella was going to give you the job, anyway. If she had stayed. And Neil is smart enough to see that." Leave it to Holli to put a positive spin on what felt like a falsely gotten gain. In a last ditch effort to cheer me, she snapped her fingers and her jaw dropped. "We should have a party to celebrate!"
Holli lived for parties. She once bought hats and streamers to decorate for the couch's birthday, just to have an excuse for cake. But we hadn't had a get together in a while now, and with my entire life in upheaval, it would probably feel good to blow off a little steam with friends.
"Fine," I conceded. "But hold off until next Friday, at least. And don't invite a bunch of people from Porteras."
"Fine. Non-work friends only." She frowned. "God, you don't seem happy about this promotion like, at all."
She'd caught me. I sighed guiltily. "I just feel like maybe Neil gave me the job because... you know."
Holli knew better than to try and push that off with platitudes. She was an optimist, but not to the point that she believed she could bend reality with her positivity. "Well, you'll have to just work extra hard to prove yourself. But just to yourself; you don't have to prove anything to Neil. Remember, no one else knows you've slept with him. As far as everyone in your office is concerned, you're just getting promoted, without all that other stuff attached.
"You know you can do this job, Sophie." She gripped my shoulders and gave a firm squeeze. "You know you're right for this, no matter what someone else might think about how you got the job.”
It's ridiculous how easily a hug from your best friend can make your self-doubt vanish.
* * * *
It being Friday night, Holli had a party to go to. She invited me, but I declined.
"Abstaining in favor of staying home with your new toys?" she correctly observed as she put on her earrings in the mirror by the front door.
Sometimes, I'm utterly blown away by Holli's beauty. It's a very bizarre thing, to live with a model. She looks like a normal person ninety percent of the time, but when she gets dressed up to go out, it's like the pages of a magazine come to life in the living room. She was rocking a short, sequined, navy tube dress with a low scooping back and long sleeves. Pointed black pumps with tons of toe cleavage and a five-inch heel added to her already willowy height.
"You look amazing," I said, with the same earnest appreciation I'd had for Cinderella's looks when I was four.
"Thanks!" Holli smiled at her reflection and turned, making finger guns at me. "You sure I can't tempt you?"
I shook my head. "I have new sex toys and dirty books. There's nowhere else I want to be tonight."
That was a lie, I reflected as she locked the door behind her. I'd rather be underneath Neil in his big bed at the W.
I retrieved the package of sex toys and took it with me to my bedroom. I took out each of the items one by one, smiling with slight embarrassment. I'd never had a man buy me something so intimate before, and it made me all giggly and naughty feeling. And oddly touched. Vibrators disguised as makeup were really the perfect gift for when you're casually fucking an assistant beauty editor. He’d put thought into this.
I took a battery from my nightstand and slid it into the lipstick. I turned it on and it buzzed to surprisingly strong life in my palm. There were two other vibes, a mascara wand with an obscenely bulbous tip, and the powder brush, as well as several "compacts" holding cooling, warming, and sensitizing gels.
Lunch with Neil had keyed me up enough that the vibrations from the subway had almost set me off during my evening commute. The books and his scandalous messages typed in them? Hadn't helped. I stripped out of my clothes and dimmed my bedside lamp. In the low, golden glow, I lay propped against my pillows and pressed the vibe against my clit, sighing in relief at the direct stimulation.
The note typed in the e-reader came back to my mind. Neil had jerked off thinking about spanking me? The idea that we'd both been fantasizing about each other for six years was a heady one. Was he as addicted to me as I was to him? There hadn't been a single time in six years that I'd masturbated without thinking about him. Even when I'd been fucking someone else, and yes, shamefully, even when it was someone I cared about, he would frequently slip into my mind at the crucial moment. More often than not, it had been his voice in my memories that tipped me over the precipice, and my deepest fear had been that I would shout his name as I climaxed.
I rubbed the vibe in slow circles around my clit, my fingers closing over one hard nipple and tugging. I imagined Neil lying in his bed at the W, his massive cock in his fist, wanting me, thinking of me, remembering the way I'd screamed and writhed in his lap as he'd spanked my ass. I thought of the way he'd looked when he'd walked through the door to find me fingering myself for him. I wished he could see me now, getting myself off with his present.
My eyes flew open. He could see me. If I took a picture.
I set the vibe aside, my clit aching as I sprinted from the room, through the empty living room, to where my digital camera hung in its bag on the coat rack. I was so not doing this with my phone, at the risk of sending it to Facebook or something by accident.
I raced back to my bed and lay back. Before I picked up the lipstick vibe, though, I reached for the sensitizing cream in the compact. It didn't feel unlike lipgloss as I tested its slip between my thumb, index, and middle fingers. I slicked it over my clit, rubbing it in, savoring the sound of the cream - and my own cream - moving beneath my fingers.
My hands shook as I turned on the vibrator and nestled the length of red plastic between my labia. I drew my knees up so that my feet rested flat against the bed, and moved my pelvis in small, careful circles. I wanted more contact, wanted to come, but I wanted to wait.
I wanted him to see.
I leaned my forearm against my knee, so the camera wouldn't shake. Then, slowly, I drew my hand
down my body, my breath speeding until I was panting, my fingers spreading my labia on either side of the vibrator. I gasped and twisted my hips, too aware of the tingling, hot sensation as my most sensitive area absorbed the salve. My pulse pounded in my pleasantly swollen flesh, as if every molecule in my body were rushing directly to the source of my pleasure. The stimulation of the powerful vibration was nearly too much. I pushed the tip harder against me and curled my toes, my entire body going still in the gripping shocks that radiated from my clit as my release shot through me. My legs shook, I shouted, "Oh, fuck!" and snapped the photo.
I laid there for a long time, the camera in one hand, the vibrator in the other, still running. It was its cheerful buzz that forced me to sit up and finally turn it off. Pushing sweat-damp hair back from my face, I slid the button on the back of my camera to display the last picture taken.
When I saw the photo of my labia spread obscenely around the shaft of the sex toy, I almost lost my nerve. My clit was nearly as red as the bright plastic pressed against it, and my skin and pubic hair glistened with the greasy sheen of the cream. Two fingers in a v pulled back my folds, and they were wet and shiny, as well.
I couldn't give that photo to him, surely. I would die of shame if anyone ever saw it. I was close to deleting it when I imagined his reaction. That stilled my thumb over the button.
Neil wanted me. I didn't need any further proof than what he'd already given me. We'd been lovers for six years - although all but two nights of those years had been spent apart, and without me knowing his real name. We'd been given the most serendipitous chance to indulge ourselves in each other all over again. I had to take the full experience.
The only problem was getting the photo to him. He was spending time with his daughter; I didn't want to spring this on him via cell phone during that. I considered email, but that seemed a bit risky, and I didn't know if he'd open it on the company server, which could lead to some embarrassing complications.
I looked to the iPad sitting on my dresser, and a truly evil thought occurred to me.
I had never looked so forward to the end of the weekend in my life.
Chapter Nine
After a weekend of restless nights, I was more than ready to see Neil again. I was on high alert from the moment my eyes opened on Monday morning. I showered, dressed, and commuted on total autopilot, the words of the manuals I had poured over flickering through my mind. Neil’s trick with the sushi on Friday seemed to have flipped the switch on my libido to full power, and he was the only person capable of returning me to factory settings. Believe me, I’d tried, over and over, with the toys he’d sent me. But no matter how many times I’d come, I was still miserably turned on.
I spotted him as I came up the steps from the subway station across the street from the office. He stood beside his Maybach in the early morning light, smiling in a way I'd never seen before. He opened the rear passenger door, and I saw the reason for his kind expression.
A woman my age stepped out of the car. It was Emma; I had no doubt. My heart stuck in my chest. She was an earthy sort of pretty, her blonde hair falling in a messy bob below her newsboy cap, and she wore a distressed denim jacket that was just a little too big for her. She looked so cool and kind of like a rock star, and at the same time very much like someone's daughter as she reached up for an easy hug from her father.
I felt like a voyeur. This was a part of Neil's life he hadn't invited me into. Even though I'd innocently witnessed the tender scene, I felt like I was intentionally snooping. I kept my head down and hoped he wouldn't notice me as I crossed the street and charged up the wide steps.
I couldn't help but overhear him ask, "You'll call me when you land?"
I heard her reply, in an accent that almost matched her father's, "Yes, of course. But I'm not flying the plane. You needn't worry about me, I'll be on Valium in the back."
The rest of the conversation was left behind me when I slipped through the revolving glass door and into the building’s lobby. I gave my pass to the security guard at the desk and kept moving. It was while I stood, waiting for the elevator, that I became acutely aware of Neil's scent, and his presence behind me. I had memorized his cologne without realizing it, had learned the pitch of his breathing.
My head reeled. Were these things I'd just picked up on in the last five days? If so, what the hell was wrong with me? Or were they something I'd clung to since that night six years ago, fine tuning in my subconscious this entire time? And if that were the case, what the hell was even more wrong with me?
"Good morning, Ms. Scaife," he said evenly, and I turned my head. He was closer than I had expected him to be, and about to be closer when the doors opened and we stepped in to the elevator together.
"Morning," I managed to return as we stood shoulder to shoulder with staff from Porteras and a few people from other businesses in the building. "Did you have a nice weekend?" he asked benignly, his gaze fixed on the numbers over the doors. We stopped once and three people got off, leaving four of us. Unfortunately, the other two were both from Porteras, and they were listening to every word of our conversation. Not because I was so fascinating. I wasn't so egotistical to think their eavesdropping had anything to do with me. They were listening because Neil was their new boss, and they were trying to get a handle on his character.
Neil had to keep up his part, too, pretending not to notice them. Which is why I felt a sliver of pity for him when I responded with a chipper, "I did. I just lay in bed and read, all weekend long."
I saw a faint flush creep just above his collar. I suppressed a smirk.
When we got to the office, Deja was waiting outside, holding a studded leather satchel in lieu of a briefcase. She beamed at us. "Reporting for duty."
"Good morning, Ms. Williams," Neil greeted her.
"You can call me Deja, I'm not too formal." She shook his hand, and then mine, making a finger gun at me as she searched for my name. "Sophia, right?"
"Sophie. Very close."
Inside, I took Neil's coat before I hung up my own, and showed Deja which hanger to use. "I'm running late. Again." I whispered to her. "I usually never am, but it's been a hell of a week, with the takeover."
"Big change from Auto Watch?” she asked.
I paused. I wasn't sure what she was asking. "Excuse me?"
"You know, where you guys worked before the Porteras sale?" She seemed to get that I wasn't getting it, and we both stood locked in a moment of confusion before a realization visibly hit her. "Didn't you come here with Mr. Elwood? From his car magazine?"
"Oh!" I shook my head, relieved that our miscommunication was over. "No. No, I used to be Gabriella Winters's assistant here. I've only been working for Neil for like five days." I quickly amended, "Mr. Elwood. I mean."
The morning got tied up showing Deja around the office, introducing her to people, running over how the phones and interoffice messenger system worked. As I went through my tasks for the day, I painstakingly explained the Porteras procedures to her. Not once did she stop me or tell me she knew what she was doing and didn't need my help, which was a nice change from some of the people who'd served - briefly - as second assistant to Gabriella. Deja was serious about doing a good job, and she wasn't interested in proving that she was better than me. I liked her more every minute.
At eleven-thirty, Rudy breezed into the office and announced that it was extremely urgent that he see Neil. While Rudy introduced himself to Deja and gave her the third degree on her background, I went to Neil's door and knocked. I could have called him; it would have been easier, but all day long I'd been desperate to get a moment alone with him. I'd left the iPad on his desk, but people had been in and out of meetings with him all morning. I had no idea if he'd had a chance to look at the surprise new wallpaper image.
"Come in," he called, and I got my answer almost immediately when I stepped inside.
"Close the door," he said gruffly, rising from his chair and coming toward me. I did as I was told and p
opped the lock. When I turned, he was already at my side.
"If things are too intense, or you're uncomfortable, you can say 'red' to stop completely, 'yellow' to dial things back a bit." He whispered beside my ear, so Deja and Rudy wouldn't hear beyond the door. "Like a traffic light," he clarified. “Do you understand?”
“I do,” I said breathless, leaning into him.
He dragged me from the door - with a firm grip on both my wrists – to the desk. With a hand clamped on the back of my neck, he bent me over and jerked up my black leather pencil skirt. I wore textured black tights beneath it, and he gripped the crotch of them as he leaned low over my back.
I raised my head just bit and blew a strand of hair out of my mouth. "What does green mean, then?"
I felt his lips curve into a smile against my ear. "It would mean 'proceed.' Just like a traffic light, as I said."
His fingers were twisting the fabric of my tights, and my body was hyper aware of the hard edge of the desk grinding into the fronts of my thighs.
I wriggled a little in his hold and said, "Green."
Faster than I could anticipate his movement, he ripped the crotch of my tights, found my panties and pushed them aside. When he encountered my wet, willing flesh, he jammed two fingers in roughly, and a strangled sob escaped me.
Calmly, he reached for the phone and dialed the desk outside. "Deja? Tell Rudy I'll meet him at the car... No, it's not urgent. ‘Urgent’ is code, he just wants to go for a drink. Tell him I'm on to him, and I'll be down in five minutes. I have to go over my schedule for the rest of the week with Sophie, I won’t have time later... No, not now. You stay by the phone, Sophie can show you when we’re finished."
I listened to whole exchange, the air crushed out of me by the desk, my pulse in my ears - and other parts - almost drowning out the sound of their conversation. His fingers stayed still in me, as deep as they would go, until I was fairly certain I'd taken in his knuckles, too. White-hot sparks of mingled pleasure and pain surged through me. I thought I might come from the pressure alone, and wondered how reasonably quiet I could stay if that happened.
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