by Claire Adams
Chapter 9
Aria
We got up to head inside and my phone buzzed. It was a text from my mother. The payment on her hospital bill had been made this morning. An immense relief spread through my body, as though I hadn’t even realized just how tense I had been this whole time. It was technically the last day to do it, so the whole time I had been here, I was somewhat antsy, even though I did not want Zayden to notice, and did a good job of that I suppose. But I could relax now and truly enjoy his company. The payment was made. I had nothing else to worry about. For now.
“Zayden.” I stopped in my tracks. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked looking from my text to his face and back.
“Because I knew you would find out soon enough,” he said shrugging. He knew exactly what I was talking about. “But I wanted you worry about it for a bit.”
“That is really messed up, you know,” I couldn’t help saying, but right after, I felt uncomfortable, like I was being ungrateful. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. Thank you for paying the bill is what I meant to say.” I reached out to hug him but he backed off this time. “Is everything okay?” I looked at him concerned.
“Yeah, I think so, but let’s talk about this inside. In my bedroom,” he said with a completely straight face.
“Sure,” I said cheerfully. “To the bedroom then, to ‘talk’,” I said playfully air-quoting the word.
“No, Aria, we really will be talking in there. At first anyway,” he added with the hint of a smile. It didn’t make any sense. He had already made the payment and I was here ready – and in all honesty yearning – to take my clothes off for him, but he wanted to talk?
When we got to his bedroom, I immediately picked the office chair across from his desk to sit on, deliberately avoiding looking at the enormous bed right in the middle of the room. I had never seen a bed quite that size. It had to be bigger than a king size. Did they even make those? He probably had it custom-made for his benefit. He was probably best friends with the president of IKEA or something.
Trying not to think about how it would feel to roll around naked in that bed, I looked at Zayden sincerely. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“The contract. You noticed how this payment was made late? As late as possible, in fact?”
“Nope,” I said trying to be teasing. “I hadn’t noticed at all. Was it late, then?”
“No, Aria, really, listen to me. I know how difficult it was for you to be constantly anxious about the payment and to not know whether I would actually pull through. You don’t ever want to experience that agony, do you?”
“Of course not.” I sighed, giving in to his mood. “But where are you going with this?”
His deep blue eyes gazed at me with so much intensity that I thought it would tear right through me. “You tried to get out of the contract at the beginning of the month. Don’t do it again.”
My heart started thumping fast because of the stern look on his face. “I’m – I’m sorry,” was all I could manage to say.
“You should be. You thought you would just cut me out and not face any consequences!” he exclaimed. “Like somehow you were just going to walk into all that money and never have to worry about it again.”
“I didn’t think any of those things,” I said, starting to get a little frustrated myself. “I was just upset, Zayden, because of how controlling you were being! And like I already told you, that is just not something I am programmed to deal with.”
“So at the hint of the slightest bit of trouble, you run? How can I trust that you won’t just randomly decide you dislike something else I do or say and try to bail again? Only to want to come running back when you realize you had no other options?”
“How can I trust that you don’t have any more wives up your sleeve?” I asked cheekily and before he could answer, quickly added, “The answer is there is no reason for me to do so, but I do. I trust you because that’s how trust works, with or without evidence.”
“This was your punishment for breaking the rules, Aria. I hope you don’t do it again.”
“My punishment?” I spat. “You need to stop patronizing me. Why can’t we just be equals, Zayden? Is it because I am a woman?”
“It’s because I am holding sixty thousand dollars over your head,” he said in a tone that made me shiver. “Not to mention, employ you – something I plan to continue to do into the far future, as I mentioned earlier. So as the slightest bit of a courtesy or gratitude or whatever it is that you feel, do me the favor of letting me act however I fucking want.”
“So you don’t care that how you act may hurt me?” I challenged him further.
“That is not what I said,” he said and sighed. “I never said I wouldn’t make an attempt to change some of my ways, but simply that you stop quitting every time something bothers you.”
“Fair enough.” I shrugged, beginning to feel drained.
It was a contract after all.
“And the contract will remain intact as long as you don’t go around breaking any of the rules. Are we clear?”
“Yes, master,” I said with a fake toothy grin. “Would you like me to curtsy now?”
“No, I would like you to take your clothes off,” he said starting to walk towards me.
It was my turn to be a tease and taunt him, and I could not be more excited for payback. “Uh, actually, let me see, I am feeling like taking a shower before bed, so I will pass on the offer.”
“You’re sleeping over, then?” He grinned, continuing to walk towards me, ignoring my “pass.”
“I thought that was obvious, since you sent all your staff home and it would be impossible for me to find a cab at this hour. Unless you feel like driving me, but you’ve had quite a bit of whiskey.”
“Aria, you just go off on so many unnecessary tangents. I want you to stay, isn’t that kind of obvious? I decorated the damn balcony for you.”
The mention of the balcony made me feel giddy. I still couldn’t believe he had done all that. It was something that usually couples – actual, real couples, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives – did for each other, not people who were dating on a legally binding contract. The fact that he had taken the effort to do it made me appreciate him more than I ever had before.
“I’m staying because I want to stay too.” I smiled at him. “But for now I just want to take a shower. I had a long and, as you know, stressful, day. I just want to relax for a little bit if that is okay with you.”
“Uh, of course,” he said looking slightly taken aback. “Go on ahead. First door to the right.”
I turned around facing the bathroom with the biggest grin on my face. Then, I very slowly slid my dress off my shoulders, then down my legs through my stilettos, revealing the sultry red corset.
“Aria,” I heard him moan. “Aria, Aria, Aria. Turn around.”
I did for a very brief moment, just long enough to let him see the full effect. The knowledge that right that second, I was giving him the biggest erection of his life made me feel powerful and incredibly sexy. I continued to walk into the bathroom, but heard his footsteps behind me.
Innocently, I went into the bathroom, which was bigger than my own room and closed the door behind me. Then I let out a huge sigh. I couldn’t believe I had just pulled that off. As I took off the lingerie – but with my shoes still on - and turned the shower on, I heard Zayden open the door. I jumped into the shower quickly and let the water run down my naked, polished body.
The glass door of the shower opened and Zayden was standing there, completely naked, with his dick pointing straight at me, rock hard.
“You are showering with those shoes on,” he groaned, like speaking was taking up way too much of his energy.
“I do that all the time.” I shrugged, as I felt myself get wet upon the sight of his naked body. How I ached for his touch again.
“Oh, do you, now? So this isn’t some kind of a ploy to tease me?” His mouth was twitching into a
half-smile, as though it wasn’t sure it was capable of joining in on the sass.
“Why would I do that?” I asked batting my eyelashes. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I,” he said, stepping into the shower with me, “am taking a shower with my girlfriend.”
Hearing him use that word broke all my restraints so I threw myself on him, meeting his lips fiercely with my own. His enormous shower head poured pleasant warm water over the both of us like summer rain, as I grabbed the back of his head as passionately as I could, and he opened my mouth with his tongue with brute force that made me ache for him. His mouth explored mine, as his hands were touching me all over my back. The kiss itself lasted forever and when he pulled away, it felt like I had just ran a marathon.
“Soap?” Zayden asked, his eyes glistening with desire. “Can I wash you?”
“You can do anything to me.”
He poured some soap into the palms of his hands and rubbed them together. Then he slowly massaged my shoulders, going downwards from there. When he reached my breasts, I almost came from the impact alone. He rubbed them in circular motions, halting to pinch my nipples every few seconds, as I let out gasps of pleasure.
After massaging my breasts, his hands skipped straight onto my legs, to my utter disappointment. He must have sensed the change in my body’s response because he pushed me against the shower wall, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I won’t be needing soap to clean your pussy, Aria.”
Then he dived face first into me, making me forget everything about the world. His tongue was moving across my clit, licking it in rhythmic motions, while the rest of his mouth was sucking on my pussy lips. When he halted the licking to slide his tongue inside me, I exploded into oblivion. With the warm water running over my body, and the mind-blowing, earth-shattering orgasm, I didn’t think I would be able to feel better than I did in that moment ever again.
It felt like it took forever to come back to my senses and when I did Zayden was glaring at me. It was my turn. I kneeled across from him and wasted no time taking all of him into my mouth.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed and closed his eyes, holding my head close.
He shoved himself deep down my throat, and even though the feeling wasn’t entirely pleasant, the look on his face as he thrust in and out was worth every moment.
He pulled away before coming, to my concern. “Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no, Aria, you did everything right,” is all he said.
He pulled me up, spun me around, and bent me over. He pushed himself inside me, leaving me elated. I braced myself against the shower wall using my hands. I moaned loudly and he took this as encouragement to move faster and deeper within me.
“Zayden,” I said his name, as with every thrust and motion, bursts of pleasure traveled through every vein in my body. All I managed was to say his name over and over again as he thrust deeper and harder. His hands gripped my hips firmly, directing my body’s movement.
“Ah,” he grunted. After a few moments we both erupted together like a volcano. The orgasm was so intense that I screamed. He slowed his pace and eventually completely stopped. I stood up and he wrapped his arms around me.
Ten minutes later—though it could have been hours, days, I would never know—we finally became coherent again and I said, “That was–”
“The best sex I have ever had,” Zayden completed.
“Me too,” I said. “Tonight was perfect.”
“You say that like it’s over.” He grinned. “I bet you are dying to find out what my bed feels like.”
“Yes I am. Let’s go.” I grinned back, feeling happier and more content than I could ever remember. “Boyfriend,” I added softly, but did not dare meet his eye when I said it.
THE BOSS #4
Chapter 1
Zayden
Her use of the word “boyfriend” made me feel all kinds of things that I had resigned into believing I was rendered forever incapable of feeling. Was that what I had become? Aria Roberts’ boyfriend? I thought back to the past few days – months even – and all the things I had willfully done for her. Maybe I was her boyfriend. Either that, or I was very, very messed up in the head.
To think that I had my entire balcony decorated for her. I didn’t even think people did such things outside of movies. Here I was, holding a naked twenty-year-old girl in the shower, after showing her what I presumed to be one of the best nights of her life.
After all that I had been through in my life, I could not quite believe how I had become so drawn to this woman. After Gina and all the things she represented, I was convinced that I had sworn off women forever. How could I not? My mother had done to my father what Gina had done to me; there was no room for me to ever consider a woman possessing any real character. I simply had never met one that wasn’t always after something else, money usually.
Oddly enough, even though I had been paying a lot of money to keep Aria around, she never struck me as somebody who would want me for my money. To think of it, I had offered to pay the hospital bills without any financial returns on her part, but she had pretty much rejected the contract without a clause that stated she would pay me back after college. How many women – people in general at that – would do that? She knew I didn’t need to be paid back, but somehow the idea that she would be taking my money for free made her so uncomfortable that it was very charming.
The closest she had come to “using” me in some sense was for my intellect and what a revitalizing change that was! She wanted to learn from me, so that she could use that knowledge to expand her own intellect and advance her own career. She hadn’t even given me a straight answer when I offered her a real job at the bank, which had really surprised me. How many college students would give an arm and a leg in order to have a guaranteed job at the end of their college careers? Yet Aria had hesitated, perhaps because she felt that she needed to do it on her own. Little did she know that she had, in fact, done exactly that.
She had impressed me greatly with her spark and intelligence – much like she would have to in order to impress any other employer for any other kind of a job – which is why I had wanted her so badly on my team.
That and she was always a pleasure to look at, but really many, many women were and I didn’t go around offering jobs unless I was attracted to their minds. Which in Aria’s case, I undoubtedly was. After all, I had made myself a promise a long time ago that I would never do many of the things I had ended up doing since Aria came into my life. The disaster that was my marriage had convinced me that I was not made for monogamy and women really only served one purpose. Never again was I supposed to see a woman after sleeping with her, let alone repeat the act. Yet with Aria, somehow, I had wanted more and more every time and been completely unable to stop myself over and over again.
No matter what she did, she blew my mind and made it impossible for me to give her whatever she needed in order to be in my presence.
I was also not supposed to date again – not in the sense of exclusivity. After Gina, the whole idea of taking someone out on dinners and pleasing them into bed while seeing nobody else had seemed so ludicrous, yet when it came to Aria I had been completely fine with having an entire clause regarding exclusivity. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been exclusive even for a day – yet Aria had compelled me to do so for over three months.
I couldn’t quite believe the effect she had on me sometimes, yet I understood where it all came from. She was intelligent far beyond her years – and far beyond most women I had met, much older and more successful – and that didn’t simply stick to her textbooks and papers. She exuded charm and wit regularly, in everyday conversations, in her sarcastic retorts to me, in almost everything she said and did.
And then there was the way she defied me. Hell, that frustrated me endlessly, so much so that sometimes I just wanted to rip my hair apart and shred the fucking contract. At the same time, it was completely enthrallin
g. Nobody stood up to me like Aria was capable of doing. Since the very first day when I proposed the contract, she had refused to take shit from me and convinced me that the best way to do it was her way, adding in her own clauses, bargaining with me. Then when I had tried to control who she spoke to, alluding to the contract, she had straight up told me off and threatened to quit even though deep down I knew that she wouldn’t actually be able to pull it off because she really needed the money for her mother’s bill. The fact that she temporarily believed that she could and demonstrated stubborn attitude was just as endearing as it was maddening.
The fact that she could exasperate me so very much and yet I was completely mesmerized her meant that I had done one more thing I had promised myself I would never do again; I had fallen in love with Aria Roberts. As soon as the thought hit my mind, I began feeling a jolt of raw excitement, combined with joy in every vein in my body. I grabbed Aria, who was getting ready to go out of the shower and into my bedroom, and shoved her back into the tub and looked deep into her eyes.
“Zayden,” she said nervously.
“No. Don’t say anything,” I said, not wanting to ruin this moment with words. Instead, I bent down towards her and kissed her gently across the mouth: more gently than I had thought I was capable of. Then I slowly parted her mouth, trying to ignore my urges to devour her, so that this moment somehow demonstrated the love I was feeling erupting inside me, without actually saying a word. Very lightly I put my tongue inside her mouth and felt her nipple begin to harden beneath my palm. Rubbing them gently, I began to explore her mouth softly, then sucked on her lower lip.
I broke off and pulled her up. “Bedroom,” was the only word I said. She nodded, her eyes glinting with the very desire I felt in my veins. As soon as we got there, I threw her into my huge bed. I leaned down to kiss her breasts from the side of the bed, which had a surprisingly strong effect on her, as she looked at me with her hand slightly shivering.