Shattered

by Janet Nissenson

  “I actually don’t spend all that much time at the gym these days,” she acknowledged, taking a careful step or two away from Noah. “As you know, working twelve hour days is sort of draining, and the last thing I feel like at the end of one is going to the gym.”

  Noah shrugged. “You take all of that stuff too seriously, Angie. I’ve heard that the exam isn’t all that tough, and as smart as you are I’d be shocked if you didn’t ace it on the first try.”

  “There’s a lot more work involved than just studying for the exam, Noah,” admonished Angela. “In fact, I’ve got to finish the next training module so I’d better head back to my desk.”

  He grinned. “All work and no play makes Angie a very dull girl. We ought to go out for a drink after work tonight, maybe dinner. You like Thai food?”

  “Not especially, no. And thanks for the offer but I can’t. I’m, uh, busy tonight.”

  Noah raised a brow. “Hot date, huh? Who’s the lucky guy?”

  Angela was suddenly very anxious to end the conversation. “Uh, just someone who went to school at Stanford.”

  He brightened. “So, like, an old college friend, something like that? Maybe there’s still hope for me, huh? Why don’t we get together this weekend then?”

  She bit her bottom lip to stop herself from laughing or making some sort of sarcastic comment. Noah had more or less been hitting on her since they’d started working here, which was rather laughable considering he was a good five inches shorter than she was – in stocking feet – so with the added three inches from her shoes she towered over him rather noticeably.

  “I never plan that far ahead these days,” she told him casually. “Now, I’ve really got to get back to work.”

  “Killjoy. But I am glad to see you’re not walking funny anymore. You must have had a hell of a workout the other day.”

  ‘You have no idea, pal,’ Angela was sorely tempted to add. ‘But it was more a case of getting worked over than working out.’

  Even as she sat down somewhat gingerly on her lumpy desk chair, she couldn’t suppress the shiver than ran up and down her spine as she recalled exactly what had caused her sore muscles. And it certainly hadn’t been from running too many miles or a particularly strenuous spin class. More like way too much sex in one night.

  Nick had been insatiable, using up nearly all of the condoms he’d deposited on her bedside table. He’d pushed, pulled, bent, contorted, stretched her body into a variety of positions, some of which she hadn’t known existed, and he’d kept at her for hours. It had been close to two a.m. before he’d finally had enough, leaving her bed to get dressed, and she’d been too wrung out, too physically spent to do much more than lift her head limply from the pillow when he’d told her good night.

  “Give me your phone number,” he’d instructed, and had tapped it into his cell as she’d weakly recited the numbers. Nick had pulled the duvet up over her naked body, and then pressed a kiss to her forehead before murmuring, “And I will call you again, Angel. If you’ve been listening to the sort of gossip I imagine you’ve heard, then you’re probably figuring that this is it – another notch on Nick Manning’s bedpost, another woman he fucked and forgot. But not you, Angel. I promise. I’ll call you, okay? It might take a few days but I will call.”

  He’d let himself out and she had fallen asleep instantly, so wiped out by the multiple bouts of sex – each one more physically demanding than the last – that she couldn’t even think about moving. Her alarm had gone off far too early, and she’d groaned at the very idea of dragging herself into work after such little sleep. And then, as she’d very tentatively gotten out of bed, she’d groaned for a whole different reason – namely the soreness and stiffness of just about every muscle in her body. The bed – and her body – had reeked of sex and sweat and Nick – but she’d been reluctant to take a shower and thus wash his scent off her skin.

  The spray of the shower had caused her to wince as the hot water beat down on a dozen different assorted bruises and love bites, not to mention the bumpy red whisker burn that covered a good part of her skin. And she’d barely been able to tolerate washing her private parts, for they’d been incredibly sore and tender, her battered insides feeling like mush.

  Walking had been difficult for the past few days, her gait resembling that of an old arthritic woman, and she’d had to fob everyone off with the story about pulling a muscle during an especially strenuous workout. Which, she’d realized with a grimace, wasn’t exactly a lie.

  It was Friday afternoon, almost a full three days now since that fateful office meeting where she’d first met Nick and wound up having the sort of wild, screaming sex she’d never really believed existed. It had been much dirtier, more physical, and definitely more stimulating than any of the porn she’d watched back in high school. And as for the orgasms – so many that she’d lost the ability to count them after a time – they had been nothing, nothing like the pathetically simulated moans and groans that the actresses in the X-rated films had so obviously been faking. The way Nick had made her feel – the reactions he’d coaxed so easily from her body – well, there was just no way to fake something like that. Certainly none of her previous partners had possessed even a smidgen of his skills, had never been able to rouse the tiniest fraction of response from her. Nick had seduced her, enthralled her, and now she craved more, needed more, like a brand new junkie who’d had her first taste of smack and was immediately greedy for more.

  And despite his whispered promise to call her, Angela wasn’t permitting herself to really believe it would happen. A man like Nick – with his face and body, his wealth and power, his mind-blowing sexual expertise – could easily have any woman he wanted and as many as he could handle. So why would he want to see her again when he’d always enjoyed a wide variety of women in the past, had avoided commitment in any shape or form, and had a reputation as the ultimate love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy.

  Oh, she knew he’d found her attractive, had enjoyed her body and her fiery response to him. But she’d never considered herself especially beautiful or sexy, and she had realized first hand on Tuesday night just how sadly lacking her sexual experience really was. Was it possible that it was her inexperience that Nick was attracted to? She would admittedly be something of a novelty for him, quite a bit younger and far more impressionable than the women he usually dated. Maybe she was just a change of pace for him, someone different from the undoubtedly sophisticated and sexually adept others who’d shared his bed.

  But she had refused to set herself up for disappointment, to hope for what was extremely unlikely to occur, and hadn’t allowed herself to believe he would actually call her again. She’d kept herself busier than ever with work, throwing herself into studying and going through the training modules, and had actually been grateful when she’d been assigned the task of filling in for the sales manager’s PA’s yesterday. Filling her days with work had kept her mind off of Nick and wondering if and when he would call, had stopped her from checking her phone every fifteen minutes for a missed call or text, had helped ease the secret disappointment she’d felt as each hour and then day had passed without hearing from him.

  But while she managed to keep herself fully occupied during the day, the nights had been a very different matter. Normally she would have gone out for a run, not much caring that the days were getting shorter now and that a good part of her workout would be in the dark. But she was way too sore for running right now, Christ, could barely walk a straight line after Nick’s nonstop sexual marathon the other night. So that left her with a few hours to kill in the evenings, and it was all but impossible not to remember in bold, living Technicolor everything that had taken place in her apartment three nights ago.

  One of the pillowcases had still held a lingering trace of his scent, and she’d wrapped her arms around it each night, imagining it was his body instead. Twice she’d become so aroused while reliving Tuesday night’s torrid romp that she’d been mightily tempted to to
uch herself, to rub her fingers against her clit, to make herself come. But both times she’d stopped – and not just because her private parts were still way too sore for any sort of intimate contact. Angela knew it was because she’d never come close again, no matter who her partner might be, of climaxing that hard, of feeling so much, or of falling so hard as she’d done with Nick. He’d already ruined her for any other man, had set the bar so impossibly high that no one else would ever be able to even attempt to scale its height.

  She’d just completed the training module – an incredibly boring one about treasury investments that she’d struggled mightily to pay attention to – when her phone buzzed. Conscious of the close proximity of her co-workers, she answered it immediately, even though the caller ID was blocked.

  “Can you talk or are you surrounded by nosy-ass employees?”

  Angela almost dropped the phone as a feeling of shocked elation pulsed through her body, the sound of the amused, lazy drawl not one she’d ever expected to hear again.

  “Um, no and yes,” she murmured in hushed tones.

  Nick sighed. “That’s what I figured. I’ll need to text you in future when you’re at the office. Are you able to leave your desk for a few minutes?”

  She knew she was at least two training modules ahead of everyone else, and hadn’t taken much of a lunch break, so she didn’t feel in the least bit guilty replying readily. “Yes, not a problem.”

  “All right. There’s a little conference room on your side of the floor if I recall correctly. I’m guessing on a Friday afternoon it’s not being used so walk over there now and tell me if you can talk.”

  “Okay.” She stood and walked the short distance down the hallway to the conference room. It was dark inside and thankfully unoccupied. Once inside she shut the door but left the lights off. “I’m here now. Alone.”

  “Good. The last thing I want – or need – is for anyone in this office to overhear our conversation. Or worse – to suspect we’re seeing each other.”

  She was both puzzled and thrilled at his statement – puzzled because she wasn’t quite sure why there was such a need for secrecy, and thrilled to hear Nick imply that they would be seeing each other again.

  “Um, not that I’ve told anybody about the other night – or plan to, for that matter – but what’s the big deal? I mean, I know there can’t possibly be a rule about employees not being allowed to date each other. From what I hear, people in this place hook up with each other all the time. You almost need an organizational chart to keep track of who’s slept with who.”

  Nick’s voice was biting. “There’s no office rule, that’s true, but then I have my own set of rules, Angel. And I’ve already broken at least two of them for you already. My need for privacy is absolute, especially here at work. Nothing pisses me off more than to know people speculate behind my back about who I’m dating or banging. So that’s rule number one with me – not one single word mentioned to anyone in this place that we’ve had any involvement. Clear?”

  “Yes.” She took a seat, suddenly aware that her legs were wobbly. The undercurrent of anger in his tone was threatening to send her into panic mode, and she forced herself to take a deep breath.

  “Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll tell you why I’m calling. I want to see you. Tonight. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty, we’ll go have some dinner, and then we’ll – talk.”

  She waited briefly for him to ask if those plans were okay with her, then sighed when she realized he wasn’t actually asking her but simply telling her the way it was going to be. “I’ll be ready.”

  “And there’ll be a package waiting for you when you get home,” he told her briskly. “Wear everything you find in the box to dinner tonight but not another thing more.”

  Angela opened her mouth to protest but realized from his tone that it wouldn’t do her any good at all to argue. “O-kay,” she agreed slowly. “How, um, do I know it will fit?”

  He chuckled. “I’m a pretty good judge of that sort of thing. But in your case I actually checked all of your sizes before I left, easy enough to do since all your stuff was still just laying around. Size ten shoes, the skirt was a four, your bra size is a 34B. I couldn’t find a tag on that piece of dental floss you were wearing between your ass cheeks so I had to guess at the panty size. So if they don’t fit just leave them off.”

  She was speechless at his bold, careless manner and could only mumble, “Um, sure.”

  “See you at seven-thirty, Angel. Be sure you’re ready.”

  And then, abruptly, the call ended and she found herself staring dumbly at her phone. It was almost five minutes later before she could stimulate enough functioning brain cells to propel herself back to her desk.

  It was a good thing, she thought about half an hour later, that she was so far ahead in her training program. Because there was no possible way she was going to get one damned thing more done today.

  ***

  Angela stared at the garments she’d laid out on her bed in mingled alarm and admiration. Everything in the exact right size – even the panties Nick had had to guess at – and everything of the finest quality from the very top designers. Angela knew that if Julia was here right now she’d be squealing in delight over everything, while her twin Lauren would be shaking her head in dismay and saying something caustic along the lines of “you’re actually going to let a guy dress you up like some sort of sex toy?”

  But while the outfit laid out in front of her certainly shrieked sexy siren, it was also classy and sophisticated, and were certainly the nicest things she’d ever been given to wear.

  The black jersey dress looked conservative from the front, with its long, tight-fitting sleeves and boat neck, discounting, of course, the short, narrow hem. But the low, plunging back instantly transformed the dress from demure to daring. It would be impossible to wear a bra with such a dress, and she wasn’t in the least surprised to discover that particular item of clothing had not been included in the box. In fact, the only article of lingerie was a pair of sheer black lace Agent Provocateur panties that to her mind were nearly as skimpy as the thong that Nick had professed a dislike for. But she knew from shopping trips with Julia that this single pair of undies had likely cost over a hundred dollars – the same price she would have normally been able to buy a dozen pair for.

  Angela typically shied away from very high heels – her nearly six feet of height already cause for extreme self-consciousness. But Nick would still have a few inches on her, even when she donned the black suede Prada sandals with their sexy ankle strap and the buckle detail across the forefoot.

  There were three other items in the box that had been delivered from Barneys – a small black Fendi clutch, a gorgeous pair of gold and diamond drop earrings, and a tube of Nars lipstick in a vivid crimson shade.

  Angela wished Julia was here instead of back in Manhattan where she’d moved after college. Her fashionista friend would be able to add up in her pretty little head in a few seconds how much all of this stuff had cost. But Angela had a fairly good idea herself, and was aghast at how much Nick had casually dropped on an outfit for her to wear out to dinner.

  As she stripped off her work clothes and headed for the shower, Angela tried – really tried – to feel some level of annoyance or anger or another suitable emotion at the very high handed way Nick was arranging everything. After not hearing a word from him for days, he had called without warning and informed – not asked – her that they were having dinner tonight. It was the same – worse, actually – with the dress and shoes. And even a lipstick, for God’s sake, she thought wildly as she began to wash her hair. She’d never worn red on her lips before, had always considered her mouth too wide and full for such a bold shade. She wondered a little defiantly what Nick would do if she wore a different color. He was strong-willed enough, she feared, that he’d make her wipe it off and reapply the lipstick he’d sent.

  She waited until practically the last minute before a
ctually applying the lipstick. Everything else was done – the dress that bared her entire back and most of her legs had been pulled and tugged into place; the sexy stilettos were buckled around her bare ankles – no stockings tonight, apparently. She’d fastened the earrings into her pierced lobes, stuffed a few necessities into her new clutch. Her long, straight hair shone with the application of clear glaze she’d applied, and the rest of her makeup had been artfully applied.

  The lipstick was her one holdout, and she kept glancing back and forth between the sultry fire-engine red and the more subtle berry shade she normally favored. Should she acquiesce to one more of Nick’s demands, or defy him by wearing the color she preferred?

  It was the buzzing of the outside doorbell that jerked her out of her contemplation, and even as she was depressing the buzzer to admit Nick into the building she was hastily slicking the red gloss over her mouth before dropping the tube into her clutch.

  Angela took a deep breath before rather slowly opening the door, and then gasped as Nick’s intimidatingly huge body filled the door frame. He looked – like the devil, she thought helplessly. Like the sexiest, most tempting, and most irresistible devil one could ever conjure up. He wore another superbly tailored suit – this one of solid black – paired with a dark gray shirt and a black and gray striped tie. With his raven hair, dark eyes, and deeply tanned skin, the almost satanic image he projected made her feel like swooning.

  And from the wide, knowing smile on his face, he apparently liked what he saw, too – his sharp gaze taking in every detail about her appearance, from the top of her silky head down the long, long length of her legs to those fuck-me stilettos on her feet.

  “I knew that you’d look like this,” he told her confidently. His long fingers gripped her chin, tilting her head from one side to the other. “That dress could have been made for you, those shoes are practically screaming sex, and that mouth of yours – I think I’ll nearly always want you in red lipstick when we’re together.”