Inviting Robert to my home. Our conversation. My bedroom. His tie.
I blush slightly and turn to hide my face in his neck, feeling bashful and not liking it a bit.
Robert’s amused chuckle vibrates his body against mine, and I shake my head in faux disgruntlement before asking, “Why are you up so early?”
“I need to go home and change my clothes before coming to the office. I didn’t want to leave without telling you,” he replies, his mouth sifting through my tangled morning hair.
I keep my face in his neck as I yawn and furrow my fingers in his chest hair. “Hmm.”
“I’ll see you at the office at eight.” Robert’s simple statement comes out more like a command, but I’m feeling too sated to take issue with it right now.
“Where else would I be?” I ask quizzically, a hint of sarcasm peeking in.
He tugs my hair lightly in rebuke before kissing me softly. “I’ll see you soon,” he repeats, and it sounds like he’s reassuring himself.
I keep my eyes closed, but I can sense him watching me for long moments before he finally sighs, kisses me again, and then detangles our bodies.
Lying back on the bed, I watch through half-closed eyes as he picks up his pants and pads to the bathroom, coming out a few minutes later to put on his shirt and jacket.
When he bends down to kiss me again, I welcome his touch, feeling out of sorts.
Is this normal, I wonder? This need to make him stay. Do all women become this clingy after their first experience with a man?
Or is it just because it’s Robert who inspires these feelings in me, I ruminate as my arms lift and lock around his neck, prolonging our kiss. I feel his lips curve against mine, and I lick at his bottom one before releasing him.
He straightens and drops a kiss on my forehead then turns and heads out of the bedroom. A few moments later, I hear the front door of my apartment click shut. I roll over on the bed, thinking to steal a few more minutes of sleep.
Spotting a black material on the edge of the mattress, I reach out and grab it. Before I even touch it, I know what it is.
Robert left his tie in my room.
I laugh, bringing it to my nose, and fall asleep with his scent in my lungs.
* * * *
At 7:55 AM, I’m walking in the front doors of Marshall Corporation with a cup of coffee clutched tightly in my hand and my head filled with fury.
After getting dressed and preparing to leave my apartment this morning, I discovered Robert had stolen the spare key to my home from my keyring.
The whole walk to the office, I’ve been practicing what I’ll say to him. How I’ll demand my key back. And how I’ll refuse any attempts from his side to distract me.
This is too much. He’s gone too far this time.
While I’m reciting the words in my head, I step into the elevator and a hand shoots out to stop the doors from closing.
I look up and see Joe, our company mailman, step into the cab with a bunch of envelopes in his hands. He smiles when he sees me.
“Hi, Sarah. How’re you?” he greets cheerfully.
I know Joe from working in the accounting department before I was moved to the position of Robert’s secretary. He’s a middle-aged man with kind, brown eyes and a sweet disposition. Having worked with Marshall Corp. for four years now, he knows everyone in this building and is good friends with almost all of them.
My smile is genuine as I return his greeting. “Hey, Joe. I’m doing well. How’s everything going with you?”
“Eh, can’t complain.” He shrugs a shoulder, easygoing as always.
Raising the envelopes in his hands, he gestures to the big pile he’s holding. “I was just going up to the top floor to drop these off.”
“Oh, can I hold some of those for you?” I extend my free hand in his direction just as we reach the executive floor of the building and the elevator comes to a stop.
Joe doesn’t get a chance to reply as the elevator doors slide open to reveal an extremely agitated Robert standing there. His jaw is clenched tight and his gaze drops to my still-extended hand in Joe’s direction.
Leaning into the elevator, Robert’s hand comes out and swipes my wrist in an unrelenting hold as, with his other hand, he snatches the mail from Joe’s hands and drags me out of the space.
“Don’t touch my woman,” Robert barks at Joe over his shoulder as he pulls me behind him and starts marching with long, jerky strides in the direction of his office.
I look back and see Joe standing motionless in the open elevator, a stupefied expression on his face and his empty hands spread out in front of him.
My view is blocked by Robert’s office door as he slams it closed then takes my coffee cup out of my hands, dropping it and the stack of mail on the clean surface of his desk.
My eyes snag on that desk in confusion, then it hits me.
“Your desk is clean,” I blurt out in surprise.
But Robert is in no mood for small talk. He takes my elbows in his hands and pulls me up against him. He’s breathing rapidly, and his eyes are intense brown orbs of anger.
“What was that fucker saying to you?” he grinds out.
One hand releases me to swipe a hand through his hair, messing up the neatly arranged strands.
“I’ll have him fucking fired for this.” His eyes move beyond me to the closed office door as if he’s actually contemplating the outcome.
Alarm washes over me, and I place my palm on Robert’s shirt-covered chest through his open suit jacket. “What? Hold on there. What’re you talking about?”
Robert’s jaw snaps shut, and he glares at me but refuses to say another word.
I recognize the stubbornness in his expression because I have seen it in the boardroom frequently. Every time there’s a meeting and things don’t go his way, he’s never willing to bend down. He’s an excellent negotiator and manages to always maintain his calm in heated situations. That’s probably the reason James, the CEO of the company, gave him the position of head of the IT department.
Of course, the other reason is James is obsessed with his wife and will do anything to make her happy, including promoting her best friend to an enviable position in the company.
Smiling internally at the thought, I move out of Robert’s arms, albeit with a bit of struggle on my part. But I can be just as stubborn as him, and I manage to extricate myself from his tight hold before walking toward his desk.
“Why is your desk so clean all of a sudden?” I ask him, turning to lean against it.
Robert turns and crosses his arm, still looking a smidgen agitated with the events of the morning.
A thrill of excitement shoots up my spine at his display of jealousy and possessiveness, and I realize with a start that I’m enjoying myself.
I’m enjoying sparring with Robert, my boss of six months and lover of one night.
“I don’t need to mess it up to catch your attention anymore,” he explains with a nonchalant shrug. “You’re mine now.”
He takes a determined step in my direction, as if to prove his point.
I know if we touch, I’ll forget what I planned to do today. I’ll forget everything.
So I quickly turn and speed walk around his desk to sit down in my usual chair at a right angle to his. His computer is turned on and what I see on the screen has me jumping up from my seat in outrage.
“You have a camera feed of the lobby downstairs?”
My incredulous tone doesn’t faze him in the slightest, and he simply dips his head in acknowledgement.
The implications of this hit me a moment later. “You were watching the entrance, waiting for me. That’s how you knew I was arriving in the elevator.”
Mention of the elevator snaps his spine straight, and I can see the tension visibly returning to his shoulders.
“You are not firing Joe,” I say firmly.
His response is a barely perceptible nod before he resumes walking toward me. “Why the hell were you late this mo
rning, Sarah?” he inquires silkily.
With the chair at my back, I have nowhere to move, except if I walk around the desk to the other side of it. But I refuse to retreat at his approach and give him the upper-hand.
“I was actually five minutes early,” I correct him with a touch of superiority in my tone.
He stops an inch away from me, the toes of his black, polished shoes touching my red, one-inch heels. He’s so close I can feel his heated breath caress my lips as he says, “You always come in at 7:50, ten minutes before time.” Hands sliding into my hair and loosening my tight ponytail, he demands, “So, let me ask you again. Why were you late today?”
I stand my ground, looking up at the restrained anger and lingering jealousy in his gaze. “I stopped to get coffee for myself.” I turn my head and look pointedly at the abandoned cup sitting on the edge of his desk. “Which is probably cold now, so thanks for that.”
My smart comment only succeeds in inflaming Robert further, and his head descends, his mouth smashing against mine, his lips almost bruising in their force.
I kiss him back just as violently, transferring into his mouth all the feelings I’ve had since he left my home this morning. After giving me pleasure beyond my dreams and then being responsible for the best sleep of my life in his arms.
Robert groans and bends me back further until I’m forced to hold onto his forearms to keep my balance as he keeps kissing me. “Fuck, wildcat. You drive me crazy for you.”
His lips trail down my neck, and one hand comes up to undo the buttons of my shirt. It would be so easy to get lost in the fog of lust surrounding me, but something keeps prickling the back of my mind.
I moan out a protest and step back.
Robert’s chest is heaving, and his lips are swollen red. I’m afraid to check my own appearance right now. To distract myself, I bring up my mental to-do list for the day, and that is when I remember—my apartment key.
The practice I was doing for this confrontation all morning evaporates from my brain like water droplets off a hot pan lid.
Bringing my hands to the front of my shirt, I start buttoning it up as I say briskly, “My key, Robert. Give it back.”
He doesn’t even pretend to deny he took it. Instead, he completely ignores the request and makes one of his own. “Tell me what that man was saying to you in the elevator.”
I roll my eyes in exasperation. “Are we still on that?”
Reaching up, I take out my ponytail band and shake my hair down before tying it up again. When I look back at Robert, he’s watching with an enthralled expression on his face, and it gives me an answering twinge in my heart.
“We were just making polite conversation,” I tell him. “You must know Joe. He works as the mailman for our company.”
“Don’t say his name,” Robert grinds out, then mutters to himself in a low voice, “I knew I should have gotten a camera for the elevator too.”
Before I can address that audacious statement, he steps forward and swipes a hand through my ponytail before taking his seat and opening a file on his computer.
“Let’s get to work, wildcat. We can’t tarry all day.”
I don’t know whether to scream at him or kiss him again. So I do neither.
Taking my own seat, I pull out my iPad and begin taking notes as he dictates what he wants to get done for the day.
It isn’t until I’m walking home from work with Robert at my side that it strikes me—he never returned my key.
Chapter 8
Sarah
A week passes by and we develop a routine together. Robert insists on walking me home every night from work, and every night, I invite him in.
Not that I need to. He still has his own key to my apartment, which he uses whenever it suits him.
Over the past week, more and more of his clothes and personal items have started appearing in my home. At least three of his suits hang in my closet, and when I first saw them there, I was beside myself at his alpha-handedness.
But he explained he didn’t want to leave me early in the morning to go change clothes at his house, and since he has spent the last five nights with me, sleeping in my bed, it made sense.
Spending the past week with Robert, I’ve become closer to him than I ever imagined being with anyone in my life. We return to my apartment each night after work and have dinner together.
Sometimes, we cook a simple meal in my kitchen, moving around each other as if we’ve been doing it our whole lives. Other times, we order take-out from restaurants and snuggle on the couch, my blanket wrapped around me with my feet in his lap.
We also experiment. A lot.
Most times Robert binds my hands with his tie. When he can sense my mind is wandering away, he wastes no time in using it to control me.
And anticipating the pleasure that follows, I never complain.
Today is Friday, and I’m nervous because Robert and I have never spent a whole weekend together. Even though we’ve done a lot of things—my face heats as I recall how he tied my hands behind me last night so my back was arched and my ass was raised as he devoured me with his mouth—we still haven’t gone all the way.
I’m grateful for that. I’m not sure if I’m ready to take that giant step forward with him yet. I know, in my heart, our first time together will be with each other, but I still feel like something is holding me back.
Robert pulls on my hand as we step out of the elevator at the end of the day. He can always sense when I’ve retreated into my head.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asks as we make our way to the front doors of the building, our fingers intertwined.
A few people stop and look, but most have gotten used to seeing us together. Robert has trouble keeping his hands off me, no matter where we are, so it’s not like we could have kept it a secret.
“I was just trying to figure out our plans for the weekend,” I reply to him.
“Overthinking again?” he teases as we step onto the sidewalk. The hand not holding mine smooths down the length of his red and blue tie in a very deliberate motion as he offers, “I could help with that.”
My body heats, and I’m about to reply when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a tall, broad-shouldered man cross the street to stand in front of our path. I turn to look at him and my throat closes up, denial and fear churning in my chest and making it hard to breathe.
I stop short, forcing Robert to halt with me, a few feet away from the man standing there and staring at us.
“Sarah, what’s wrong?” Robert’s voice is full of concern, but I can’t bring myself to respond.
He follows my line of sight, and when he sees the man standing there, his whole body stiffens and his fingers loosen their hold on mine as he reaches up and wraps his arm around my shoulders, crushing my body into his side.
“Who the fuck is that?” he thunders.
Robert’s protective hold on me and his strong body pressed closely to mine ground me as we both watch the man walk forward to close the distance between us.
“Michael,” I greet in a strangled voice, my emotions getting the better of me.
Robert tenses further at me knowing the man’s name, and I wrap my arm around his waist, trying to reassure him. He angles his body so he’s slightly in front of me and clutches me tighter to him but remains silent.
“Sarah,” Michael says in a monotone voice. “Your father wants to see you. He says you’re to come to dinner at the house this Sunday at eight PM.”
I tense at this, my past colliding with my present. I thought I was finally free of my father. How wrong I was. My eyes close as moisture threatens behind my lids, and I take a few slow breaths to center myself.
“Don’t fucking take another step toward her,” Robert whispers in a dangerously low tone that sends shivers down my spine. “Or I’ll fucking end you where you stand.”
I immediately open my eyes to see Michael has stopped a small distance away from us, his eyes wide and indecision marring
his features. Michael’s built like a Mack truck, and he isn’t intimidated by anyone, which is one of the reasons my father keeps him on as a bodyguard.
But right now, Robert’s fury is radiating off him in waves, and it makes it clear to anyone watching that he’ll do whatever it takes to protect me. His eyes blaze fire at Michael and his other hand is clenched tightly into a fist.
I have a feeling if I wasn’t holding onto Robert right now, Michael would be getting ground to dust on the pavement. The thought bolsters me and gives me some much needed courage. Robert’s here with me, and I can lean on him for strength. I’m not alone anymore.
Sliding my hand from his waist into the back pocket of his suit pants, I give a light squeeze and feel Robert’s body jerk. He turns incredulous eyes my way, and I can’t help the small giggle that bursts free, clearing my throat of its previous constriction.
A ghost from the past, or what I believed was my past, might have fazed me a little at first, but I refuse to cower and bow down to anyone. I’ve come a long way from that scared, little girl I used to be. I’ve fought and clawed my way to this life, and I won’t surrender my freedom and my independence for anyone.
With Robert at my side, I feel invincible. His eyes soften slightly at my smile, and he must see the resolve in my expression because he backs up, stepping behind me and wrapping both arms around my waist.
For a moment, I’m completely floored by his actions. He’s giving me the space to confront Michael by stepping behind me and letting me control how this situation will progress.
I know how hard it is for him to do this by the tension in his forearms as they wrap around my middle and practically strangle the breath from my body. I can feel his muscles tense and ready, his body alert for the slightest sign of danger.
But he’s still doing this, giving me the power to decide. His trust in me humbles me to the core, and I’ve never loved him more.
My breath freezes.
Love? Do I love Robert? How is that possible when we’ve only been officially together for a week?
Tied to Him (Alphamen in Suits Book 3) Page 5