by Sotia Lazu
“Did you lose your keys?” Lena’s sleepy voice asks from the other side.
“I don’t have them on me. Hurry up?”
She throws the door open and is already dragging her bare feet—I hate that she never wears slippers and puts those feet on the furniture—back toward the bedroom, before I get a chance to explain.
Better. I wouldn’t know where to start anyway, and I really need to pee.
“Lena, can you please pay the man?” I pop the button on my jacket, shrug it off, and hang it on the coat rack. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
She throws me a glare over her shoulder. “Now you don’t have money, either?”
The man huffs and grunts behind me. Yes, yes. I know he’s not happy with having to wait for his money, but I’m having a worse morning than he is.
“I’ll explain later,” I tell my sister.
Lena turns toward me and folds her arms over her chest. Her gaze softens as she looks me up and down. “Are you all right?”
“No. I’m going to pee myself.” I brush past her, kicking off my pumps on my way to the bathroom. “Please pay the nice man.”
I hear him say, “It’s sixteen fifty,” and then the bathroom door is closed and I have barely saved myself a major embarrassment.
Lena is leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom when I reemerge. “Were you robbed?” She’s scowling, but not at me. On my behalf.
“No. I dropped my bag.” My cheeks are burning. Am I blushing? Probably. Shit. I can never hide from Lena.
The line between her impeccably plucked eyebrows deepens. “Where?” She draws the word out, like she’s not sure she believes me.
Sigh. I’m not gonna get out of this. The sooner I deal with it, the better, and it’s not like I have any secrets from her. “I left it behind when I fled my new boss’s hotel suite.”
She kicks away from the wall and pads to the kitchen. I trail after her, to see her switch on the cappuccino maker.
“He’s Sei,” I say.
She arches an eyebrow from where she’s loading the coffee pod into the machine.
Her silence unnerves me. I’d expect her to be pelleting me with questions.
When she doesn’t, I add, “From the plane.”
“Uh huh.” She puts a mug under the nozzle, and the aroma of strong coffee wafts in the space between us.
She’d better be making that coffee for me. I need it, after this morning. When she adds three sugars, my hopes are dashed. Tap water, to cool it, cinches the deal. Only she can drink that sweet swill.
“Will you say something?” I ask. “And for the love of God, make me a cup too?”
She grabs a pod and slides it across the bench to me. “You make your own coffee. And then you can tell me how come you got a job, working for the guy who fingered you and then disappeared without bothering to ask your name.” It’s not a judgment; she’s recapping. She has this knack for breaking things down to their basic components, and she’s an expert at doing that with my life. It can be annoying, but it’s also gotten me out of some sticky situations.
Lena leaves the kitchen, and I try to put my thoughts in order, while I make myself a cup of coffee and stir a spoonful of brown sugar in it. What happened between Sei and me was a one-time thing that bares no significance to how good I’ll be at my job. Even if Sei plans to fuck me, it doesn’t mean I’m going to give him the opportunity. I’ll keep things professional between us during my training. After that, I doubt I’ll be seeing much of him anyway. It won’t be that hard to resist the guy for three puny little months, right?
“You done thinking yourself into a nervous breakdown?” Lena calls from the living room.
She knows me too well. Ugh. I make a detour to my bedroom for my flip-flops and join her on the sofa. Unsurprisingly, her feet are on the cushions.
I take a tentative sip and pretend not to notice her shaking her leg.
“Will you tell me, or do I have to hurt you?” she asks.
I lean forward to place my mug on a coaster, and she kicks me on the thigh. “Tell me.”
“Not much to say. I showed up for the interview and found him waiting for me. Sei is short for Poseidon, by the way. And his brothers are named Hermes and Hades, for fuck’s sake.”
“Okay. Putting a pin on the weird, dodekatheist vibes. How did Sei react when he saw you?”
Like the cat that swallowed the canary. “He didn’t seem half as shocked as I felt. Then again, he saw my pic on my CV before I showed up, so he had time to come to terms with it.”
Lena rubs one eye with the heel of her hand. She slips the spiral hair-tie off her wrist and pulls her hair up on a high ponytail. “And he gave you an actual interview? He didn’t make a move?”
Eh, not exactly. “Not at first. His brother was with us, so Sei was restrained. Relatively restrained. He showed up in a freaking bathrobe, of all things.”
Lena snorted. “That wasn’t sexual harassment.”
But the thing is I didn’t think so at the time, and I don’t think so now, either. “Is it harassment if you like it?”
Her groan of disappointment is one I’m familiar with. “He’s in a position of power. He can use your attraction to him against you. It’s sexual harassment.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “I didn’t really feel harassed or threatened in any way.”
“Are you sure this isn’t your way of getting back at Tassos? The guy was a jerk who didn’t deserve you. Better that you found out now, before getting hitched to his sorry ass. Doesn’t mean Sei is a step up, though.”
All true, but— “I like him, Lena. Sei, I mean.” Even if he is an asshole.
She nods. “Then date him. Don’t work for him.” She guzzles down her coffee. “Or do. It’s your circus, and these are your monkeys.”
I laugh, but it sounds hollow. Like my chest, when I think of Sei. “It’s a great job. Not worth passing over for a guy.” A sexy, enormous hunk of a guy that makes my breath catch and my heart flutter and my nether regions do other things. “I’ll go by early tomorrow morning and dazzle him so hard with my mad managerial skills, he’ll forget all about the plane.”
“We both know you’ll sleep with him.”
I pull a cushion out from behind me and throw it at her.
She barely has time to hold her mug out of the way, and gets a face full of fluff. “Your money, house keys, and car keys are at his place?”
“Yup.”
“So you’re getting a cab in the morning too?”
I bat my eyelashes. “I was hoping the world’s best little sister would drive me.”
Lena gives me her patented eye-roll. “I’ll give you money for a cab. And you’ll owe me for life.”
“It’s gonna be less than twenty euro.”
“Whatever. You’d better make it worth my while. Wanna go out for lunch?” When I don’t answer immediately, she adds, “I’ll pay.”
It’s barely noon, and I’ve had double my usual daily caffeine dosage. Why do I feel so sleepy?
I shake my head. “I’ll shower and make a sandwich. Thanks, though.” I’ll take a nap too. Who cares that I haven’t been awake long enough to be tired? I’m gonna enjoy the fuck out of my last jobless day.
The water is warm and seems to drain more of my energy. I scrub myself quickly, trying not to think of Sei when the loofah grazes my nipples or I lather between my legs. You can guess how well that works out. By the time I’m out of the shower, I don’t care about food. I wrap a towel around my head and a second around my body, and drag my flip-flops to my room. My body aches for release.
Is that ringing?
Nah. My cell is at Sei’s, and Lena’s ring tone is the theme from Game of Thrones.
But something is ringing.
“Are you gonna get it?” Lena yells from her room. Guess she didn’t go out either.
“It’s not mine,” I yell back. I pull on a pair of boy-shorts and a tank top, and fix the towel that threatens to slip from a
round my hair.
“It’s the land line. Probably Dad, to ask about the interview.”
Mom must have told him to. She always urges him to get more involved with our lives. It’s funny and only a little sad that she’s still on it when both Lena and I are well into our twenties.
“Get it, or he’ll keep calling,” she says. Her voice is right outside my door now.
Ugh. I follow the ringing to the living room, to find the cordless phone. It has to be Dad; no telemarketer would be this persistent, and everyone else would call our cells.
I find the phone under a stack of takeout menus on the coffee table, and press the button to take the call as I bring it to my ear. “Hey Dad. Sorry. I was in the shower, and your daughter”—it’s how Lena and I refer to each other when speaking to our parents, always with exaggerated disdain—“is above answering the phone.”
“I’m not your father.” Sei’s tone is low, growly, and has my nipples puckering and my pussy dripping.
Has he Pavloved me? Will this be my response every time I hear his voice?
He compounds on the effect he has on my body, by lowering his voice to a delicious drawl. “Feel free to call me Daddy, though, if it means you’ll tell me more about your shower.”
Can things get any worse?
“Your eldest is all over the place, because her new boss is hot,” says Lena over my shoulder.
They totally can.
I yip and stand. The towel falls from my head, my wet hair cool against my heated skin. God, why do I feel like I’m burning up?
“I’m hot, huh?” Sei chuckles, and the sound glides over my skin like a caress.
I want to be alone with that sound. Let it do wicked things to me. “Oh God,” I whisper.
He chuckles again. “I answer to that, too.”
Lena reaches for the phone. “What’s dad saying? Am I his favorite daughter forever?”
I twirl under her arm and climb on the couch. I’m on my feet on the couch. Like a freaking toddler.
Lena gawks at me like I’m nuts.
I push my hair back from my face and mouth, “It’s not Dad.” In what I hope is a conversational tone, I add, “I’ll take it in my room.”
Fingers crossed Sei doesn’t hear her gushy, “It’s hot-boss guy?” before I slam my bedroom door and lean against it.
“You there, Irine?” My name sounds sinister, coming from his lips.
I take a second to compose myself. This isn’t Sei, who made me come. This is Poseidon Olympios, the man who’ll be signing my paychecks now on.
“How may I help you, Mr. Olympios?” There. That sounded calm and collected. Like I’m not thinking of his lips, pressing on the spot beneath my ear.
He hums—just hums—and I need another shower, to wash off the torrent of filthy thoughts swirling in my head. “Call me Sei,” he says.
I thought you wanted me to call you Daddy.
I swallow back the retort. Calm. Collected. Hotel-manager material. Dazzling him with my mad managerial skills. “How may I help you, Sei?”
Chapter Eleven – Sei
“I wanted to confess something.” But the moment the words reach my ears, I regret them. What are the odds she’ll talk to me so breathlessly—that she’ll still think of me as hot-boss—when I tell her I knew who she was the moment I first laid eyes on her?
“I’m not your priest.” Her voice is throaty. Sexy. The voice of a woman who spent the night with me and asks if I want to join her in the shower in the morning.
Hundreds of women have kept me pleasurable company for a few hours. I don’t recall any of their names. Only a handful of them made me laugh. And I didn’t call back a single one.
Irine is different, and it’s not because she’s my destiny. I want to see more of her. I want to know her. I want that voice whispering promises in my ear, while her body welcomes me.
“I can’t stop thinking of you,” I say. “Wanted to hear your voice.”
Her silence says the same thing my instinct pointed out a heartbeat too late. This was the wrong thing to say. Is it too late to go back to the daddy thing?
“Okay.” Irine draws the word out. Carefully. Like it might bite.
Like I might bite.
I will, and she'll love it.
She groans, and the droplets of blood left operating my brain since she answered the phone flow down to my dick, to meet the rest of it. “This isn’t professional,” she says. “It’s the opposite of professional. There is no word for how not professional this is.”
“Unprofessional?” I suggest.
“You’re not funny.” But I hear the smile on her lips.
I chuckle. “Aren’t you glad you don’t work for me yet?”
She’s quiet long enough to make me jittery, and I don’t get jittery. This woman throws me off my game.
“What did you really call for?” she asks after an eternity.
I won’t tell her that, but I can tell her another truth. “I want you. I want to taste you. I want to map your body with my lips. To feel your naked skin against mine. Hear your moans. Swallow your gasps.” I want to consume her. To flow in her veins. To be one with her.
Is this need to merge with her what bonding is about?
“You scare me,” she whispers.
And she doesn’t even know the most frightening details about me. “I won’t hurt you.” Except in the most delicious ways.
Irine clears her throat. “The job—”
“Is yours regardless. This has nothing to do with whether or not I think you’ll be a good manager.” My stomach protests the deception. I have no clue if she’ll be any good in that position. I hired her so I could be close to her.
“So what do you want? Should I come back and suck your cock?”
The edge in her tone is the only thing keeping me from saying yes and sending a car for her. “I want to know what you’re wearing.” I wait for the line to go dead or for her to call me an asshole.
“A white tank top and a pair of briefs.”
I put my cell phone on speaker, leave it on the pillow beside me, and fist my cock. “Do you usually roam around half-naked?”
“No.” She snorts. “Was looking for my shorts when you called.” A pause, then— “Are you still in that bathrobe?”
“I don’t wear a robe to bed.”
“What do you wear to bed?” The question is playful. She’s relaxing into this. Good.
“Guess.” I pull on my shaft slowly. Playfully. Want this to last.
She hums. “Flannel PJs?”
I laugh. “You have a very tame imagination.”
“Oh you’d be surprised,” she deadpans. “So you’re naked?”
“Like the day I was born, only much larger. And you’re overdressed. Take off the tank top and imagine me, peeling it off your body. Can you feel my fingers ghosting up your sides?”
“No,” she says.
“Close your eyes.” It’s an order.
“Okay.”
“My palms are warm on your skin. I draw circles with my thumbs on your stomach, as I slowly bunch up your top. Now, can you feel me?”
“Yes,” she breathes.
And I can see her, sprawled on the bed beneath me. One of her hands is squeezing her breast over her top, the other holding the phone to her ear.
And this isn’t my bed.
How is this happening? I don’t have the power to blink from one place to the other yet, and I can still feel my silken sheets under my bare ass.
“Take off that top,” I say.
Her eyes fly open, and the phone slips from her grasp as she looks at me with a mix of shock and fear. “How did you get in?” she asks.
“I didn’t. I’m not here.” I crawl between her bent knees. “Close your eyes. Let me—”
“No.”
No? Have I scared her out of the fantasy?
She sits up to tug the top over her head, and locks her gaze on mine. “I want to look at you this time.”
Fuck.
I reach for her wet hair, but my fingers go right through it. My body has no substance. Have I unwittingly managed astral projection? Another power I didn’t have before Irine walked into my life.
I try again, this time focusing on manifesting my intention by projecting it to her. A strand of her hair moves before my disbelieving eyes, even though I can’t feel it between my fingers. Third time is the charm. I fist my hand in her locks and press my lips to hers. Inhale her. When I plunder her mouth with my tongue, I can taste her.
“How...?” she whispers when I pull away.
I trail my lips down her neck and nibble on her shoulder, tasting the salt on her skin over the flowery scent of her shampoo.
“Tickles.” She bucks when the scruff on my chin brushes her breast. Bucks again when I cup her flesh and squeeze.
I close my teeth over her nipple and apply the tiniest bit of pressure. Nibble on the hardened peak. Flatten my tongue against the tip. She lifts her hips from the mattress, and I press my thigh between them. I could take her now, but I want the first time I sink inside her to be real, not... whatever this is.
What the—?
I’m on my back, spread eagle, and Irine is between my legs. When did that happen?
She curls her palm around my dick and looks at me triumphantly. “My turn,” she says.
How did she do that?
I rub my eyes, and she’s above me in my four-poster bed. Her hot breath scorches me when she leans over my cock. She’s in my head as much as I’m in hers.
I’ll fight her. Regain control. I’m the Olympian here; she’s a mere mortal.
But her lips stretch so beautifully around my girth, and her mouth is hot and wet, and she sucks me. Hard. She works my shaft with both hands, trying to get as much of me in her mouth as she can, and I don’t care about control. I just want to keep feeling this.
She gags when my dick hits the back of her throat, but doesn’t give up swallowing around me. Her teeth graze my underside, and the sting adds to the pleasure.
I dig both my hands in her hair, holding her in place while I thrust my hips upward. She scrapes a nail beneath my balls. Squeezes my sack. Sucks harder.