by Christa Wick
About Undeniably His
Arousal Up
Inhibition Down
What starts as an erotic interrogation when Collin Stark, Chief Executive Bad Ass of a private military company, discovers his new junior secretary omitted the last two years of undergrad and her master's degree from her resume turns into a period of intense discovery. For the fiercely dominant Collin, the plus-size beauty is the perfect submissive who has never acknowledged her true nature. For Mia James, she's fighting to keep her job and restore her sense of dignity after submitting to one mind-blowing evening in Collin's office.
But running a business that can topple governments means life can't be all bedroom games. Men like Collin are targets and so are the women around them. Sometimes, targets have to bleed -- sometimes they have to die.
Very seldom do they find enduring love.
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Undeniably His
Mia
Returning from the mail room with the day's last post, I froze in front of Janice Green's desk. In her late fifties, with a six-year history as the senior executive secretary to the CEO of Stark International, Janice exemplifies grace under pressure. Right then, however, she looked like a heavily sedated deer facing an oncoming freight train. Something was wrong, something the building wasn't buzzing about. That meant it was either a very personal problem or still restricted to the CEO's office.
We both reported to Collin Stark, the CEO and sole shareholder of the company he founded a decade ago. Looking at the building's façade and understated logo, few would suspect that the company is responsible for the safety of heads of state the world over or that Stark isn't above donning tactical gear for a hostage rescue. With so much at stake, he holds each employee to the highest standards.
Retribution for fucking up comes quickly.
Since Janice wasn't loading her personal belongings into a cardboard box with building security watching over her shoulder, the fuck-up -- if there was one -- had to be me. The new kid on the block, Stark promoted me to working below Janice in his office a month ago. All total, I had less than half a year under my belt at Stark International and had just that week finally brought my monthly student loan payments current.
I did a quick mental inventory of my projects, searching for anything I might have missed or misdirected. Nothing suggested itself. Janice only entrusted the most menial tasks to me during my training phase. If the quality of my work wasn't at issue, then there could only be one thing left.
My resume.
I started to roll my lips together, a bad habit I have when I'm nervous. My blink rate went up, too, and a flush heated my cheeks. I swallowed, trying to center my energy while telling myself I had nothing to worry about. It's not like I lied on my resume! I didn't make up any jobs, any education or inflate any grades or academic honors. I just omitted the fact I had finished my undergraduate degree and master's.
Too bad for me Stark likely would view an omission as deception. He seemed every inch the kind of man who values honesty and loyalty above all else. Fail him on one or the other and an arctic fury would be unleashed, his wrath cold, calculated, and obliterating.
I went from rolling my lips to chewing at them. I glanced to my right where polished steel doors led into Stark's inner sanctum. "What's wrong?"
Janice offered a little half shake of her head and reached for her purse. She usually worked from seven in the morning until five at night. It was exactly twenty minutes to six. She had been heading into Stark's office when I went for my last mail run.
She also had been on the secretive side all day. Now I knew why. They were discussing me.
Standing, Janice shouldered her bag and gave me a tight smile. "Mr. Stark wants to see you in his office."
"Me?" My stomach dropped, threatening to surge back up just as quickly and splatter the contents of a late lunch across Janice's tidy desk top. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Don't make him wait." Her lips pressed tightly together, the smile thinning. "Good luck, dear."
She stepped around her desk and quickly left me to my fate. Still holding the mail, I moved to the double doors, my hand up to knock when I heard the lock disengage. Stark had most of the building wired with security cameras. Only a few rooms, like his inner office, remained private. From his desk, he could monitor every camera at Stark International, as well as live feeds from operations around the world.
My stomach did another flip as I pushed against the heavy steel. I stopped just inside the doors. With Stark's attention focused on his computer screen, I had a few seconds to study his expression for clues.
He didn't appear ready to blow a gasket. Maybe I was over-reacting, letting my fertile imagination run away with me. It could be a late fax or a dropped email, something relatively small for which I could plead for mercy.
His laser-like focus directed at his work, there was no hint of mercy in the way he held himself. If he hadn't just let me into the room, I would have sworn he had no idea I was there. Of course, that was part of his game and he was a master at it. A former military interrogator assigned to special operations, he had carved out a billion dollar company at the tip of a long, sharp knife after leaving active duty after eight years in service.
Volumes on military strategies, psychological warfare and interrogation techniques crowded the wall-to-wall bookshelf behind his desk. Cleaning crews weren't allowed in the office. As the junior secretary, that task fell to me, so I had read the title of every book in his office. I even borrowed copies of a few from my neighborhood library and had just finished reading the Kubark Counterintelligence Manual last night.
I counted up all the tactics Stark had already employed -- making me wait, letting me squirm in my own skin while I imagined the worst, acting like I didn't exist. We were at Confidence Down/Fear Up if I correctly remembered my prior night's reading. If I hadn't felt sick to my stomach, I would have smiled or laughed. As it was, knowing a little about the techniques he had mastered long ago only made me worry more.
"Do you like your job, Mia?"
He still stared at his work, not me. One finger moved along his touch pad then he clicked on something. I thought I detected a slight stiffening of his jaw as I delayed answering, but I was a good twenty feet away from him and his face usually looks hard as granite, so I couldn't be sure.
When his gaze cut in my direction, I quickly answered. "Yes, Mr. Stark."
He looked away, his attention re-focusing on his work. "Then put the mail down and stand in the corner."
Was he fucking serious? Stand in the corner like a little kid caught sneaking a slice of cake or refusing to do homework? I was twenty-six, not six! That made me the same age Stark had been when he started the company.
My grip on the mail tightened, my cheeks heating as my attitude slowly moved from worried to angry.
He looked at me again, the dark blue eyes like burnished steel, their thin edges slicing at my skin. "I don't like liars, Mia. Do it now or security will help you pack your things."
I looked around the room, not sure if I was contemplating obeying him or stalling.
"The table by the couch will do."
Shit. I closed my eyes, realizing I had been looking for someplace to put the mail, lying to myself that there was no way in hell I would actually obey such a ridiculous, demeaning order.
"Now, Mia."
I put the mail down and walked to the only corner that didn't have any furnitur
e near it. As my fingers touched the cool surface of the wall, I heard the lock on his office door engage. I winced but managed to hold deep inside me all the little sounds that wanted to escape.
I heard the mechanical slide of the heavy drapes being shut. As with the building's cameras and the drapes, Stark controlled the lamps in the room from his desk. They switched off one by one until the room's illumination was no better than twilight, everything doused in shades of gray.
I waited in that near darkness for what seemed at least fifteen minutes, the room completely silent except for my breathing. Whatever work he had been doing, he stopped. Whether he watched me or not, I felt like he did.
Face turned to the corner, I grimaced at the idea of Stark studying my body. It didn't matter that he was looking for indicators of nervousness, guilt, and a dozen other things -- he had to carefully observe my body to do that. My body -- the thick hips, wide ass, plump thighs, and bountiful breasts. The heels and too snug skirt I had selected that morning only increased my self-consciousness as my shoulders twitched and my hips and thighs flexed.
The skirt and heels magnified even the smallest movement of my body, making me feel like I had ballooned to three times my size.
The sensation made me want to cry -- and curse at him! He had me right where he wanted. The discomfort inflicted on me was by my own choice. That made it all the worse. Even if he had locked the doors, I was choosing to stand in the corner in a dark room filled with silence.
Another play straight from Kubark's manual. The closing of the drapes and the slow shutting off of the lights one-by-one were his own special flourish. The man had style, even if he was fast becoming the biggest jerk among the many jerks who had passed through my life.
At last I heard the creak of his chair and the slide of a drawer. My whole body tightened. My hands, which I had placed palms flat against the wall, curled into fists and I started to shake. With Stark as patient as a panther in the jungle, five more minutes passed before I heard another sound.
His footsteps echoed loudly in the large office as he approached me. He didn't stop a respectable distance away when he reached me, either. His hips pressed against my enlarged backside, the sudden heat of his flesh making me realize my skin had grown cold.
"Don't jump, Mia."
I hadn't moved and the command confused me until his hands came up around my head and a folded band of fabric brushed against my face. I drew a sharp breath in as the blindfold tightened and his fingers worked to tie a knot. His hips pressed against my backside, my bottom molding around a hard center bulge that made my knees weak.
As frightened and worried as I was, I couldn't drop the building attraction I had felt for the man now interrogating me. That attraction had started innocently enough. As a new hire, I had memorized the company brochures while drooling a little over pictures of Collin in action, whether he was in tactical uniform or cloaked in an expensive silk suit. I hadn't stopped with Stark's own propaganda. I dug deeper, the few public details about a very private man encouraging me to dig a few more layers down. Then I landed the job in his office and saw him in the flesh five days a week. Saw the way the light from the small lamp on his desk catches his hair in the late afternoon to turn some of the black strands a burnished copper. Saw the way his t-shirt clung wet to his chest when he returned from a particularly vigorous workout, the clearly defined muscles begging to be traced.
So, yeah, worried, frightened and aroused. Probably not the trifecta of emotions he had planned.
"You left something off your resume, didn't you?"
I jerked after the minute long silence, my bottom reflexively squeezing at the still hard mass pushing against it. "Y-yes."
His hands dropped to cradle my hips. When he spoke again, his mouth was right next to my ear, his breath curling warm against my flesh. He had to lean into me to do it, the size of my ass making it impossible otherwise. Feeling the hard press of his rigid flesh between my cheeks, I squeezed again -- and wanted to die on the spot.
"A master's degree in data analytics and you take a job in the secretarial pool of a security company?"
I rested my head against the wall, the earlier tremble back and infecting my entire body. Stark circled one arm around my waist, his palm flat against my stomach to contain or control me. His other hand gripped my hip a little tighter as he cinched me to him.
"Who are you really working for?"
"You." I released the word with a sob as I realized my panties had slowly soaked through. He had me face-forward in a corner, blindfolded, my job on the line, yet I was wet, so turned on that the muscles deep inside my cunt had started to flex and roll, my ass moving with them to cup and fondle his dick.
Building crush or not, this wasn't right, wasn't anything like me.
His palm slid over the curve of my stomach, coming to a stop just above my mound. I arched slightly, my ass pressing more insistently against his groin.
My arousal was wasted on Stark. His calm voice and continued interrogation proved this was nothing more than business.
"You lied, Mia. Spies and moles lie. You're not just working for me."
"Please." I couldn't stop the wiggle of my ass and I wasn't sure what I was pleading for -- my job or his touch. Other than my own, I hadn't had a hand anywhere near that part of my body in over six months. "I'm telling the truth. I omitted it because I couldn't get hired anywhere. I had no money left…"
"You had six months to come clean, a whole month in this office." His voice hardened and he crushed me tightly between the corner walls and his body. "You sat in front of me and smiled, saying more education was on your agenda when I commented on your having only an associate's degree. You lied to my face and smiled, all lovely and innocent."
I closed my eyes, fighting tears. In the month I spent working around Stark, I learned how calculating he is with the words he employs. No matter how sincere he sounded, lovely wasn't his actual opinion, but something he thought he could manipulate me with. It worked, if only to make me hate myself a little bit more knowing how most men viewed my body -- "a grotesquerie of overlapping curves."
I bit hard at my bottom lip. I had enough shit to handle right then without my traitorous brain bringing up my last discussion with my now ex-boyfriend. I couldn't defend myself against Stark's accusation while the memory of Wilson crowing about how disgusting I was played inside my head.
"Admit it, Mia." Stark eased the hard press of his body against mine for a second, just long enough for me to relax before he increased the tension another notch. "You lied to my face."
Shame heated my skin. He wasn't wrong. I had rehearsed my interview answers for hours in front of the mirror, had practiced finding a fixed point on Stark's face close enough to his eyes without actually having to stare into his all-knowing gaze. Now I was going to pay for it. I'd be fired, but only after he had humiliated me to his satisfaction, ensuring that I was nothing more than a loser who couldn't get a job without lying and not some kind of corporate or foreign agent.
"Please." I squirmed, trying simultaneously to move away from him and press closer to his body. I knew he intended to flip my buttons, but only to terrify me into admitting everything. Instead, he was flipping every damn switch I had. Shame, fear and, more than anything, arousal coursed through me.
"I needed the job, need to keep it." I argued. "I've done well, too--"
"No shit."
It was the first time I'd heard Stark curse and I almost missed the change of tone in his voice. It had softened just the slightest fraction. Clearing his throat, he let go of me.
"Maybe you are telling the truth, Mia."
I nodded then remembered the room was almost unlit and the shadows around me had to be thick. "I am. Please let me explain it better."
I only hoped he wasn't giving me more rope with which to hang myself -- another technique in Kubark's manual. I waited through another long minute of silence while he considered my plea. When he responded, it wasn't what I expected him
to say.
"Drop your skirt."
I drew my hands close to my chest in refusal. My breathing accelerated. Aroused as I had been, I didn't want what he was suggesting, or what I thought he was suggesting. At least I didn't think I wanted it, despite the heat spreading low across my stomach and through the tips of my breasts. I also didn't want him thinking I was some weak-willed, submissive slut someone could manipulate into spying on his company by throwing the fat girl a meatbone.
"You have a very short timeframe in which to save your job, Mia." His hands found mine, his fingers wrapping around my wrists to drag them down by my hips. "I have to know I can trust you, have to bring you to a point where you're incapable of lying."
He released my hands. "Take off your skirt or leave."
Fuck. My hands crept slowly toward the back of my waist band. Finding the two hooks proved almost impossible with the way my hands shook, but I managed to unhook them at last and pinch the zipper's pull. I drew it down haltingly, the tab escaping my grasp from how tightly I held it, forcing me to find and capture it all over again. When it was unzipped at last, I pushed the skirt down my hips, my ass wiggling from how close the fabric molded itself to my body.
"Step out and spread your legs."
Stark was just a voice in the dark now, his body far enough from mine that I could no longer feel his heat. I obeyed slowly, certain my legs would give out any second. Stark hooked the side band of my panties with one finger. He followed the edge of the material down between my legs, sparking a low moan from me as the back of his finger brushed the line of my pussy.
"You could be an exceedingly clever plant, Mia." His finger pressed more insistently, the force and slow twist of its tip parting my labia so he could stroke the inner folds. "Dark ash hair, those green eyes and a body lush with curves that make my mouth water…"
The slow heat burning in my stomach flared to singe my thighs and breasts. A month of coming face to face with Stark and I had never seen the slightest hint he found me attractive. I had been as invisible to him as I was to every other male on the planet who didn't instantly curl a lip in disgust at the sight of me.