by Bec Linder
What I saw there undid me.
Longing, lust—everything that I felt, reflected back at me and magnified by my own desire. He was a dear friend, someone I respected and liked, and he was also a man. After tonight, I would never be able to ignore this rough, primal energy running just below the unruffled surface of his skin.
“This isn’t your first time, is it?” he asked, a little mocking smile on his face.
He was a jerk, and I couldn’t get enough. “Are you asking me if I’m a virgin? You think I was saving myself for marriage?”
“Some people do,” he said. The green was almost gone from his eyes, crowded out by his blown pupils.
“Not me,” I said. His cock was already nudging at my entrance. “I’m too impatient. I couldn’t wait.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “because I don’t think I could stand to be careful with you tonight.” And that was all the warning I got before he drove home in one thrust.
I cried out and arched against him, overcome. It felt so good and right to be filled by him, to have the weight of his body pressing me into the bed. He let go of my braids and dropped his head to rest his forehead against mine, releasing a long groan and twitching his hips against me.
“Christ, Sadie,” he said.
We moved together in a timeless rhythm. Without words, without thought, our bodies knew exactly what to do. It was both easy and terrifyingly complicated: a simple pleasure, but weighted with meaning because of who I was with and the messy tangle of feelings I hadn’t even begun to pick apart.
I hadn’t lied to Elliott. I was no bashful virgin. I’d had years of good sex with Ben, warm, familiar, thoroughly satisfying sex, but it was never anything like this. Elliott was turning me inside out.
God. Ben had only been dead for a year, and here I was, already in another man’s bed and having the time of my life.
Till death do us part, indeed.
I turned my face aside, afraid Elliott would see something in my expression that would make him stop. I didn’t want him to stop. It was just—strange, being with someone new. Moving on with my life. Living.
Then he moved his hips again and I couldn’t think anymore.
It didn’t take very long. It couldn’t, not with me so worked up from his teasing. Everything was heat and sweat and the feeling of the muscles of his back moving beneath my hands. I felt my legs tense in their familiar way, quivering with the strain of pleasure. He sat up on his knees and tugged my hips onto his lap, my ass resting against his thighs, and on his next thrust, something about the new angle made me moan so loudly that a dim, distant part of my brain worried that the neighbors might hear. He grinned, victorious, and drove in quick and deep, hitting that spot that made me feel like I was about to liquefy.
It was so good.
“I think you’re about to come for me,” he said, and I shook my head, not really denying it, but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of coming on command. But he just smirked at me and rolled his hips again, and my orgasm hit me out of nowhere.
The intensity of it bowled me over. I shuddered and wailed, nails digging into Elliott’s back, and he didn’t stop moving in me the whole time, not even when I begged him to, not until I was a limp puddle on the mattress.
Then he flipped me over and fucked me fast and hard until he came with a low groan.
NINETEEN
Elliott
I lay on top of Sadie until I caught my breath, and then I pulled away from her and staggered into the bathroom to clean up.
After I disposed of the condom, I stared at myself in the mirror while I washed my hands. I looked the same as I always did. There was no sign that I had become a predatory, morally bankrupt lecher who exploited vulnerable women.
Sadie wasn’t my girlfriend. She wasn’t even my no-strings-attached fuck-buddy. She was a beautiful, heartbroken woman who was still mourning her dead fiancé, and I had just taken advantage of her loneliness to get my rocks off.
Truly, not my finest hour.
It wasn’t that I had forced her. I didn’t have to worry about that, at least. She had been a visibly, vocally willing and eager participant. But I had taken advantage of the situation nonetheless, and maybe there was some subconscious part of her that felt she couldn’t tell me no.
I exhaled and ran my wet hands through my hair, slicking the messy strands back into place. Cool and collected. Button it all down. No room for nerves. No time for anxiety. Pretend they’re all naked. My old elocution teacher’s advice ran through my head, the mantras he had drummed into me still useful after all these years.
I needed to apologize to Sadie, and tell her that it couldn’t happen again.
I went back into the main room, bracing myself against the sight of a languid, post-coital Sadie and the unpleasant conversation that would ensue. But Sadie was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, leaning down to lace up her boots; and she looked up as the bathroom door opened, her face an expressionless mask, and said, “I should probably go.”
I stopped dead, deflated like a popped balloon. How easily she took the wind out of my sails. I said, “Look, this was great, but—”
“It was a mistake,” she said. “It was unprofessional. We work together, and I just think—this has the potential to get really messy, so. Let’s just focus on getting ready for the conference.”
All of which was more or less exactly what I’d been planning to say to her, but her words still pricked my ego. No man liked to hear himself described as a mistake. “Right,” I said. “I agree. I’ll see you tomorrow at work, then.”
“Yeah,” she said, and stood up, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder. “See you.”
When she was gone, I stood at the window for a long time, staring out into the night. After a while, a light snow began to fall, tiny flakes drifting toward the street. I went to sleep, then, and didn’t remember any of my dreams.
I woke at dawn and went to the office. It was Wednesday. The conference started in three days. We were ready—almost ready—so close to being ready that my to-do list had dwindled to a single page. We would be ready.
I had registered to give a short talk in one of the panel sessions, and I spent the morning writing an outline and assembling the slides for my presentation. I still had little fondness for public speaking, but I could do a passable job, and it was important for me to get my face out there. Recognition, visibility—all of those industry buzzwords. I would do whatever it took to get the company off the ground. Dance naked on stage. Sing, literally, for my supper.
And then I would just have to hope that an investor took pity on me.
I had tried to play it cool at Regan and Carter’s the night before, but the Boston investors backing out had set me reeling. I couldn’t understand what had made them change their minds, and I was afraid word would get around somehow and mark me as tarnished goods. Or my father would find out, and leave me a gloating message about how he’d known all along that I wouldn’t be able to make it in the real world.
As if I hadn’t spent the last decade confronting every harsh, messy, terrible, life-changing facet of human existence. In my father’s world, none of that counted. Only money mattered.
I was sitting there brooding when Sadie arrived, and I quickly turned back to my computer and moved some text around to pretend that I was doing something useful.
She set her things down at her desk and gave me a look like she knew exactly what I was up to. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
Everything as usual, then. Right. I could pretend it was a normal day at work, and that I hadn’t sucked on her nipples last night while she writhed beneath me and moaned. I cleared my throat. “Have you finalized the paper goods?”
She nodded. “I did that last night. They’re uploaded to the server.”
“I’ll send everything to the printer today, then,” I said. She wore a blue dress that looked soft to the touch and hugged her curves in a way that was entirely too appealing. �
��What about the banners for the booth?”
“Still working on it,” she said. “I’ll finish those today.”
“Great,” I said. “We’re getting there.” I was proud of myself: an entire, coherent conversation about work and nothing else. No innuendo, no subtle undercurrents. It was foolish of me to be pleased, maybe. We were both adults. It wasn’t like we would succumb to animal passion, strip off our clothes, and fuck on the office floor.
Come to think of it, that didn’t sound like a bad idea.
We worked. I finished my slides, wrote my speech, and wandered around the office muttering to myself and periodically glancing at my cue cards. I made a second pot of coffee and drank a cup, then another. I looked out the window. I sent a few emails.
Sadie, intent on her computer, didn’t look at me once.
The feeling I’d had the night before, staring at myself in the mirror while Sadie lay in my bed on the other side of the door—it was panic, and guilt. I didn’t want her to think poorly of me. I didn’t want to think poorly of myself; I didn’t want to be the sort of man who used his power and position to take sexual advantage of women.
I was having second thoughts, now, watching Sadie ignore me.
Sex with her was only a mistake because of our circumstances. If she wasn’t my employee—well, if she wasn’t my employee, I would have asked her out to dinner weeks ago, and would be doing my absolute best to make sure she never looked at another man for the rest of her life. She was exactly my type: brash, confident, but with a quiet watchfulness that hinted there was more to her than met the eye.
And the sex was, quite frankly, exceptionally good.
Irrelevant. It didn’t matter how much I liked Sadie or wanted to have sex with her again. Nothing had changed since last night. I was a grown man, not a horny adolescent, and I wouldn’t let desire overrule rationality or common sense.
No matter how tempting it was.
With a sigh, I got up to pour myself another cup of coffee.
The day passed slowly. Truth be told, there wasn’t much left to do before the conference. I ran through my speech a few times and then tried to act busy, when really I was just emailing Kris and reading the news. Finally, 5:00 rolled around and I decided that I could justify leaving. I gathered my things and put on my coat, and stood beside Sadie’s desk until she finally deigned to look up from her work.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “You should go home, too.”
“Okay,” she said. “I will, soon. I’m almost done with this.”
“Okay,” I said, and tried to think of something else to say, something meaningful but not inappropriate, that would convince her to get up and put on her coat and go home with me.
But even if I knew the right words, I couldn’t say them. I wouldn’t.
I went home, sans Sadie.
The next day, I kissed her again.
The day started innocently enough. We made polite conversation beside the coffee pot and then spent the morning working at our respective computers. She offered to go to the printer’s after lunch to pick up the things I had sent over: business cards, pamphlets, prospectuses. I forced myself to get some work done while she was out, but when she came back an hour later, I looked up from my computer as the elevator doors opened and realized I wouldn’t get anything else done that day. Or maybe even for the rest of my life.
She was beaming, luminous, carrying a large cardboard box full of papers. Her coat was open, and her hair was slightly mussed, a few braids falling out of her loose ponytail.
She was the most gorgeous creature I had ever seen, and I was fooling myself to think I could resist her.
“The stuff looks great,” she called out, coming toward me with her box and her hair and her smiling face. “Let me show you.”
I rolled my chair backwards to give her room, and she set the box on top of my desk. “They got the colors right?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Even better than the proofs. I think they used nicer paper.” She handed me a pamphlet, her eyebrows raised expectantly.
Not wanting to disappoint, I made a long, slow perusal of the glossy cover. The picture on the front was a small dark-skinned boy beaming as he clutched a glass of clean water—a tacky cliché, but Sadie had insisted it was important to play into investors’ expectations. Beneath him was the company logo, and beneath that, the words “GIVE THE GIFT OF WATER” in a streamlined sans-serif font.
I opened the pamphlet. The colors were clean and crisp, and the paper was glossy but not too glossy. It looked great, sharp and professional, and better than I had hoped. “They did a nice job,” I said. She was standing just slightly too close to me, and I could smell her perfume. It was intensely distracting.
“It gets better,” she said, and gave me a business card. “Just look at that! Lord, I sure did a nice job designing that thing.”
I laughed at her self-satisfied tone, but she wasn’t wrong. She was still grinning, excitement oozing from every pore, and I was no saint. I was just a man, and not a very good one at that.
I stood up, and took her in my arms.
“Elliott,” she said, eyes wide.
I kissed her.
She dropped the business cards she was holding, and they scattered across the floor. I had long since discarded my suit jacket over the back of my chair, and her hands clutched at my shirt, untucking a few inches of fabric from my trousers. I buried my hands in her braids, tipped her head backward, and took full advantage of my access to her soft, sweet mouth.
She made a hungry noise and pressed closer to me. Blanket permission, then, and I kissed her more deeply, imagining what I would do when I had her in my bed later, her soft skin beneath my hands, and the soft, slick heat between her thighs—
She shifted against me, twisting away.
She turned her face, breaking our kiss. “Elliott,” she said, and this time she didn’t sound so inviting.
I released her immediately and stepped back. “What’s—”
“You know we can’t do this,” she said. She tugged her dress back in place and ran one hand over her hair.
I rubbed my face, reeling from arousal and confusion. “I don’t see why not.”
“You know why not,” she said. “If we’re going to work together, we need to have a professional relationship, and this,” she gestured between us, “is not professional.”
Elliott Sloane, my father’s heir, agreed with her. He knew that screwing around with the help inevitably ended in misery, and that sexual harassment lawsuits were far more trouble than they were worth. But I didn’t want to be that man—had spent years trying not to become him—and I said, “Maybe we should consider it.”
“What, professionalism?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. Sadie’s most annoying trait was the way she deflected serious conversations with sarcasm or humor. It was clearly a defense mechanism, and I understood why she did it, but it irritated me anyway. “Not professionalism,” I said. “Us. Kissing. Sex. What are you concerned about? That the other employees will find out, and think you’re getting preferential treatment?”
She folded her arms and scowled at me, which I found far more appealing than I should have. “There’s Jim.”
“He doesn’t count,” I said, “seeing as how he’s still in Boston. What are you so afraid of, Sadie? We get along well. We have killer, mind-blowing chemistry. Why can’t we just give this a shot and see what happens?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Because I’m not ready,” she said, and raised her hands to cover her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out, and then moved her hands to cup the sides of her face and looked at me. “I’m not ready for a relationship.”
“Oh, Sadie,” I murmured. It was the one reason I couldn’t argue against—and didn’t want to, even if I thought logic might change her mind. She deserved the time she needed to grieve and move on with her life.
“We can still have sex, though,” she said. “And hang out. Go
d, I sound like an undergrad, don’t I? Hang out. Like we’re going to head to the amusement park and kiss on the ferris wheel.”
“Sadie,” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I just mean—the sex was really good, like, really good, and I’m—we can keep doing that. If you want to. Casually.”
“Are you suggesting a no-strings-attached arrangement?” I asked, amused now. “I didn’t think you were that sort of girl.”
She dropped her hands to her hips and frowned at me. “What’s that supposed to mean? Why aren’t women allowed to like sex? If a man likes sex, it’s all well and good, but women are supposed to be frigid and—why are you smirking at me like that? Are you trying to make me angry on purpose? Oh my God, you are.”
“I would never do such a thing,” I said, even though she was 100% correct. The faces that she made when she was aggravated were entirely too delightful, and I couldn’t resist teasing her to provoke a reaction.
“Fine,” she said. “I take it all back. I’m never having sex with you again. You can just spend every lonely night dreaming of what you missed out on.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” I said. Casual sex wasn’t what I wanted from her, but it was better than nothing. I would just have to be very charming and persuasive and wait for her to realize that we were perfect for each other.
But for now, I was tired of talking and could think of far more rewarding ways to spend the afternoon.
I took a step toward her, and felt a rush of anticipation as her eyes widened.
Another step and she was in my arms.
“I didn’t mean right now,” she said, and I silenced her with a kiss.
As my lips touched hers, arousal slammed into me with all the force of an avalanche. I had intended to tease her for a while and leave her wet and begging, but the feeling of her body pressed against mine was too intensely erotic to resist. I slid one hand down her back to squeeze her ass, and used my grip to crush her closer against me. My erection rubbed against her hip, and I spent a brief but intense moment wishing I were the sort of man who carried a condom around in his wallet.