by Amelia Wilde
One minute.
I pick up the pace.
Faster.
Harder.
Faster.
At the perfect moment, when I see that she’s about to explode on my fingertips, I take them off her clit and shove three of them back into her opening.
Cate cries out into her hand as the waves of her orgasm crash over her, my fingers getting the brunt of her pleasure, spasms of pure heat.
Time’s up.
Before I pull her upright, I lean down and slide her panties to her ankles, then tap one shoe, signaling that she should step out of them.
She does.
When she’s standing I help her straighten her skirt. Her face is pink, her breathing heavy. Her eyes go from my face to the red panties in my hand.
“Time’s up, Ms. Schaffer.”
“Are you going to—”
“Give you your panties back? No.”
A smile quirks the corners of her mouth.
I knew she’d enjoy herself.
“I’ll see you here tomorrow at five.”
Cate heads for the door, and I beat her there, unlocking it. She steps through, and turns back.
“Yes, Mr. Hunter.”
18
Cate
I’m not back to Sandra’s office yet when the walls start to close in around me.
My muscles are relaxed—it’s been forever since I got off by anything other than my own hand—but the warm, bubbly pleasure it gave me melts away ten feet outside Jax’s door.
This is dangerous.
Jax’s office isn’t soundproof. It’s impossible to see through the doors, but anyone standing outside would have been able to hear exactly what was going on. And Sandra would have no qualms about coming to interrupt one of our meetings.
What the hell was I thinking?
This is guaranteed to get me fired. Fired. How’s that going to look if I apply for other jobs? How’s that going to keep me from being forced out of my career before I’m ready?
It’s not.
And no matter what he says, no matter how he acts, Jax doesn’t care about me.
The truth is that this is a game. This is an agreement. It’s something on the side to occupy the next month, and I was an idiot to agree to it. I cannot, cannot, let myself be overtaken by how much I want him.
Because I want more than sex, more than orgasming all over his hand while he bends me over his desk. It kills me to admit that the moment I saw Jax I started to picture him as my someday person. The person that I’ll have someday, when my career is stable, when my savings are on track, when I can finally let go a little bit.
He’s never going to be that man.
I thought I could play on his level. I said yes to his proposal on an impulse, in the heat of the moment, and now I see how shortsighted it was.
One meeting. A single meeting, and I’m torn in two.
Part of me wants to run back down the hall and throw myself into his arms, kiss his neck, nip his collarbone with my teeth, lower myself onto his cock and take him for a ride.
Most of me is sick with the risk I’ve taken.
And it is all my risk. What happens for Jax if he’s caught with me in his office? Nothing. He’s a billionaire, with homes and cars and enough money to hush the whole thing up, if he wanted. His image wouldn’t be tarnished at all. But me? I’ve been working myself to the bone every single day for a year—more than a year, if you count the time I spent as an editorial assistant at Basiqué right out of college—to get where I am today.
I clapped my hands over my mouth without realizing it, and people in the hallway are starting to take notice.
Kirk sidesteps me with a gaggle of assistants and does a double-take at my face, which must be a sickly shade of white.
“Cate?” he says, reaching out for my arm. “Are you feeling all right?”
Instantly I pull my hands away from my mouth and smile at him. Over the past year, I’ve become a master of deception. If I’m tired or irritated, I don’t let it show. I’m certainly not going to let this slip to Kirk, not in the middle of the hallway, probably not ever. “Thanks, Kirk,” I say, brushing his arm away as kindly as I can. “I had an idea come at me from a new angle. Does that ever happen to you?”
He considers me, his eyes filled with concern, and his jaw works like he’s trying to think of the right thing to say. “Of course it does,” he agrees, and then, with his assistants shifting uneasily around him, he says, “Take it easy, all right?”
“Will do!” I call brightly after his retreating back.
Enough of this.
It’s time to get my shit together. I can’t afford to slip up like this.
That night, I stay at Basiqué until ten o’clock. It’s dark when I call down to Mark to bring around the car.
Every time my attention wandered away from my computer screen, it led me straight to images of my dad’s face when he told my sister and me that his job as a schoolteacher was finished. We’d both been surprised. He loved teaching. His favorite joke was that he’d work until he was 80, and then he’d volunteer in the school library.
Sitting in his recliner across the living room from us, his face had crumpled, and he’d wiped tears away from the corners of his eyes. “After thirty years, they decided I wasn’t working hard enough.”
His words still ring in my ears.
Which is why I can’t believe I agreed to such depraved hanky-panky with the billionaire who is ultimately my boss without a second thought. There are other ways to relax.
Yes. More sessions with Carl are in order. The only way out of this is to put in more effort on every front. If I do that, I won’t have the time or energy to think of Jax, much less meet him for illicit office sex for the next four weeks.
I pull out my phone and send my trainer a text begging him for four days a week instead of three—Fridays off. His reply comes in quickly.
You’re joking! :)
No, completely serious. Are you available?
You sure you can handle that many sessions a week? You seem spread pretty thin already.
His choice of words makes me bite my lip, color rushing to my cheeks. Spread out for Jax, more like it. How I must have looked in that position…it’s embarrassing. And I will never, ever admit how wet it made me, how much I already want more.
I can’t. I won’t. It’s not an option.
God. I am terrible.
I can handle it. Are you telling me you can’t?
It feels good to slip into easy banter with Carl.
His next reply:
See you tomorrow morning. Be ready!
19
Jax
Five o’clock on Tuesday comes and goes, the minutes dragging by.
There is no knock on my door.
I pull out a portfolio and flip it open to some contracts I need to sign.
It’s worthless. Inside of a minute, my eyes are sliding off the words on the page and back to the door.
Where the hell is she?
By 5:15, I’m done. Done.
Closing my portfolio with a snap that echoes in the space where Cate is supposed to be, I stand up from behind my desk and pace over to the windows, looking out at the city below. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Control.
Remaining in control is how I built my fortune from the ground up, no thanks to my worthless father. And I don’t mean the fact that I will never get an inheritance from him—I couldn’t care less about his money. He was a piss-poor example of what it meant to be a man who fulfilled his responsibilities the way he should have.
If Cate wanted to back out—and she gave me no sign of wanting to do that yesterday, after I made her come all over my hand, bent over the desk like a high-fashion sex slave—it’s not like she doesn’t know where to find me. She has two phone numbers she can reach me at.
I keep an office in this building to be near her, for God’s sake.
And she has hers.
That’s the first
place I need to look.
At first it means nothing to me that there’s no one in the hallway. It is 5:00, and business hours are, by most conventions, over.
Everything makes sense when I reach the double glass doors.
The doors are locked up tight, and all the lights inside Sarzó’s office suite are off.
They’re both gone, and I’m guessing it’s not because Sarzó took the evening off and sent Cate home.
If she’s not here, I have no reason to be. The meeting is one thing. I also have no intention of hunting down the remaining staff members in the office and grilling them on how their work went today. What a colossal waste of my time, which is infinitely more valuable than any of them can possibly imagine.
On the way back to my office I dial down to Peter to have him pull the car around, and by the time I’ve disconnected the call, I’ve also abandoned the idea of going back for the portfolio. That shit can wait until later.
I’m waiting for the elevator doors to close when someone shoves an arm carrying an overstuffed briefcase between the doors, forcing them open.
“I’m sorry,” says the guy, stepping in as soon as there’s enough space between the doors. He tucks the briefcase under his arm and moves to the opposite corner as the doors slide shut.
As we begin to descend, I look at him from the corner of my eye. He can’t stand still, tapping his foot against the ground, and he has a look in his eyes that reminds me of Cate, to a lesser degree.
He’s under pressure from Sarzó. It’s not quite as intense.
This guy is no one to me. He’s not a business partner. He’s not even a potential business partner, and I don’t tend to spend my energy on getting to know people when it won’t benefit me. It might make me a complete prick but when you’re as wealthy as I am, you don’t reach out. People take advantage of you.
I don’t know what the hell comes over me. But I turn to him and extend my hand for him to shake it. “Jax Hunter.”
It’s a ridiculous breach of elevator etiquette. Elevators are like urinals. You don’t see anyone in them, and they don’t see you. You stand in your opposite corners and politely ignore one another.
He cuts his eyes toward me and his eyes widen in confusion, but then he takes my hand and gives it a solid shake. “Kirk Hawthorne. Editorial.” His forehead remains wrinkled. Clearly, he has no idea who I am. Sarzó has either kept my acquisition of the company under lock and key or Kirk’s job doesn’t change much no matter who’s underwriting Williams-Martin.
“Jax Hunter,” I repeat, wondering if he’ll realize who the hell he’s talking to. “I bought out Williams-Martin.”
Now his head whips around toward me. “You’re the one who bailed out the parent company?”
“That’s me.”
The elevator stops on the ground floor and the doors slide open. Kirk is still searching for something to say to me, and for a single instant I wonder if my life might be easier if I was a little more approachable.
No way. Don’t make me laugh.
“Well, I’m—” He fumbles for the right words, his gaze sliding toward the lobby doors. I can imagine how anxious he is to get out of here. “I’m glad you did. A lot of jobs depend on it. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hunter.” With a nod, he turns toward the exit and takes several steps away.
“You too, Kirk.” He’s reaching for the door handle when I call him back. “Hey, Kirk?”
“Yes?” he says, turning to face me. I admire him for this one thing: he doesn’t seem very fazed about meeting me.
“I went to meet with Ms. Sarzó a few minutes ago, and she was already out of the office. It doesn’t seem typical. Do you have any idea where she and her team went?” Her team. Cate. Cate is all I really care about, even if I would never admit it to Kirk.
His answer is immediate. “Los Angeles.”
What? California?
He starts to step out the door, then turns back one more time. “Cate said Sandra—Ms. Sarzó scheduled a last minute meeting with the Mulleavys.”
“When will they be back?”
“Thursday,” he says, then disappears through the doors, not looking back.
California.
All the way back to my penthouse, I try to sort out why the hell Cate didn’t call me. Send me a text. Email me the second she knew she was leaving town.
I could have stopped it somehow, could have kept her closer.
No.
I couldn’t have.
Because that would mean admitting to someone else that my need for her doesn’t stop outside the meetings.
And I refuse.
I refuse.
But my heart won’t stop pounding. I can’t wait until Thursday. Something about Cate makes it completely impossible.
I order an elaborate meal from my chef and watch shitty movies until 11:00, when I think I’ll have a better shot at getting her on the phone.
Like always, she answers on the first ring. This time, her voice is a whisper.
“Catherine Schaffer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving, Ms. Schaffer?”
She draws in a sharp breath. “I didn’t have a chance. Sandra told me we were leaving as soon as she got to the office.”
My tone is icy. “I think you know better than that, Ms. Schaffer. There’s no reason you couldn’t have informed me that you wouldn’t be making it to our meeting.”
There’s the slightest pause, and then she speaks again, her voice a little louder. She must be somewhere she can talk at a regular volume. “About those meetings…”
“You didn’t enjoy yourself?”
“I did. I did,” she says, her voice choked. “It’s too much of a risk. I wasn’t thinking carefully when I agreed.”
This is unbelievable.
No woman has ever—ever—done this to me before.
And if any ever came close, I didn’t care.
Bow out now, says the logical part of me.
Never, screams every other part.
“Think again. We have an arrangement, Ms. Schaffer. I will see you on Thursday.”
20
Cate
He can’t make me attend these meetings with him.
Can he?
No. It’s completely inappropriate. Completely outside the bounds of a professional working relationship.
And that’s why it turns me on so much.
Even though it’s such a risk—such an incredible risk—hearing his voice over the phone, telling me in no uncertain terms that I will be meeting with him on Thursday, turns my core to molten heat. I want his hands between my legs again, his hand on my back, pressing me down into the desk. I want thirty minutes where I’m not in control.
Because, Jesus, it feels so good to let go of everything for that half hour. It’s something I’ve never been able to get from exercise or drinking with girlfriends or shitty movies or anything else.
I need this from him.
I need this month.
At the end of it, he’ll go back to his regular billionaire life, with exclusive parties and personal drivers and clothes tailored perfectly to his rock-hard body. I’ll still be here.
Unless he closes Basiqué.
I don’t think that’s going to happen. Sandra is one of the best editors in the business, and Basiqué is one of the top magazines in the country. It’s Williams-Martin’s best property. There’s no way he would shut it down.
The fact is, he needs me, too.
He gave himself away a little on this phone call. A man who didn’t care—a man who was only in it for the sex, to be able to fuck me over his desk, to be able to get me off for the hell of it—would have let it go when I told him it was too risky to continue.
He didn’t.
The flight home from Los Angeles crawls by. I’m sitting in coach, which is a small blessing, because Sandra sits in first class and leaves me to my own devices.
My head throbs from lack of sleep. Sandra scheduled two days of back-to-back meetings
with Rodarte for a new feature, then booked an early flight back to New York City. Once we land, it’ll be a full day in the office before my next meeting with Jax.
With a racing heart, I throw myself into the tasks of the day. While we were on the way to the airport for the flight out, Sandra had me reshuffle her schedule for the week to accommodate the last-minute trip. It’s a decision I still don’t understand, to be totally honest. She could have sent any number of people to meet with the people at Rodarte in her place—including me—but I know better than to question her. If she wants to take meetings in person, that’s up to her. Regardless, it makes Thursday afternoon a logistical nightmare. The meeting rooms are crowded with people waiting for approvals on everything from layouts to new pieces for photo shoots. I guide them into the office one by one so Sandra can oversee her empire.
When 5:00 comes, there’s a miraculous break in the steady stream of meetings.
After I’ve ushered a pair of designers back out into the hallway, Sandra slips off her reading glasses and places them in her desk.
“Coat and purse, Catherine.”
I gather her lightweight summer coat—it’s too hot to wear it, but she folds it over her arm nonetheless—from the closet and bring it to her.
“I’ll be at a dinner with Theodore for the next couple of hours. When I return, have the mockups waiting for me.”
“Of course, Sandra. Have a lovely time.”
“Yes.”
She’s already heading for the door, not giving me a second glance.
I shouldn’t go down to meet with Jax.
It’s the wrong choice, and I know it.
I go anyway.
There are still a couple of people lingering in the meeting room. One woman, with a tape measure hanging around her neck, looks up hopefully when she sees me, then goes back to tapping her foot on the floor. She’s probably hoping to get an approval from Sandra. She’ll be waiting a while.