Fall for Him

by J.C. Valentine

  “I will, but you have to be patient. In the meantime, don’t do anything stupid.”

  Meeting his eyes, I say, “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

  Eighteen

  I’ve seriously considered calling the police and having Florence arrested for assault. It would be a real highlight to my day to see that bitch hauled away in handcuffs while the whole of the company watched on. But then I considered the ramifications.

  Not only would I be put dead center on everyone’s radar as the new woman who got her boss arrested—a woman who, for all I know, has been a model employer—it would cause questions. Questions that would place both me and Rebel under the spotlight. I have no doubt that when Florence came back she’d be more than happy to fill everyone in. Hell, she’d probably send out a newsletter.

  So, no. I’ve decided to play it smart. Give Rebel one last chance to sort out his personal life with this crazy woman before I break out the big guns and take her down at the kneecaps.

  I’m fantasizing about my methodology as I head back to my office. With everything that just happened, I’m in no state to be here anymore, but I can’t afford the loss of pay if I leave early.

  Darren is away from his desk when I arrive back on the third floor. It’s just as well. He’d definitely pick up on my sour mood and connect the dots. I already know that I’m going to have to explain that kiss between Rebel and me this morning. I dash a quick glance at the clock, noting that I have less than an hour to get my thoughts in order before I have to face him.

  The moment I enter my office heads rise and six sets of eyes land on me. Instantly, I know I’ve been the topic of recent conversation. One look at Jenna and I guess who the culprit is behind it all.

  I would expect most people to get nervous and look away, not wanting to be found out, but she’s bold. She’s looking dead in my eyes as I walk past with her chin held high and this air of arrogance surrounding her.

  The warning bells sound in my head. What is she up to? What has she told them? Whatever it is, it must be bad. Immediately, I reflect back on every moment of being at the conference table, trying to figure out what, exactly, could have been used against me.

  Other than the obvious, that I’m new to the team and lack vital experience and that one of the owners is against having me on board, I can’t see what could be so interesting. Unless that’s exactly what they find so entertaining. It’s human nature, after all, to want to see the aftermath of a tragic event.

  Well, they’re going to be sadly disappointed because I’m not going anywhere. Rebel and the rest of the men at that table made that perfectly clear.

  Secure in the knowledge that I still have a job and no one is going to push me out, I seat myself behind my desk and stare out at each of my coworkers, focusing on them one by one until they shift their gazes away and get back to their jobs.

  The only one who refuses to be intimidated is Jenna. Her eyes hold mine, narrowing to hateful slits. Can she really be that upset over the photographer? Well, if that’s the case, then too damn bad for her. I came here to do a job, and if she doesn’t like it, then tough shit. Rebel was right. I won’t get anywhere trying to save people’s feelings. She’s just going to have to learn to deal.

  In the half hour that I have left until my break, I manage to get a lot done. It’s easy to get into work when it doesn’t feel like work. Once again, I can’t help thinking of how much I enjoy my job. I should send a thank you card to Jack for giving me a chance because I never would have made it where I am now without his help. When I decided to major in liberal arts, I never considered working in an office and on computers a possibility. I’d always just envisioned myself sitting in a cold, desolate room surrounded by canvas and covered in paint splatter, getting by through the money I made pandering my paintings.

  My reality is much better than my imaginings.

  When Darren comes to collect me, he takes notice of the tension in the room. How could he not? It’s thick enough to have to swim through it. I catch a few wandering eyes as we leave the room, but I pay it no mind, telling myself that they can think whatever they want of me.

  “Who’s Cheerios did you piss in?” Darren asks as we head down the hall toward the elevators.

  “Apparently Jenna’s, but it looks like she gathered her minions to back her up.”

  “Well damn.”

  I nod, agreeing wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Damn indeed.

  ***

  “So you’re dating,” Darren muses over a cup of java. “I’m officially green with envy.”

  “You can’t be envious. You have a boyfriend.”

  “And a wonderful one at that,” Darren defends. “But you know the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and there’s nothing wrong with admiring the grass.”

  I guess he has a point. I’ve done my fair share of admiring over the years. “Okay,” I shrug lightly. “You can admire. Anything beyond that though...?” I raise my brows in mock warning.

  “Oh, please. As if you have to even worry about such a thing? Lady, you have that man wrapped around your perfectly tapered fingertip.”

  My what, now? Chuckling to myself, I lift my cup of coffee and drink deeply. “So what do you think I should do about Jenna?”

  Slicing his hand through the air, Darren gulps down his coffee before answering. “Ignore her. If she’s so upset over cutting corners and getting found out, then that’s her problem. She’s been here long enough to know better. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re right. I just hate that I’ve been here for what, a couple weeks, and already I’ve made an enemy.” Or a roomful of them, if those sidelong looks they gave me were any indication. “It just doesn’t bode well for my future. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take a job in the same building as Rebel worked, but it was too good an offer to pass up.”

  “Don’t go adopting that defeatist attitude,” Darren chides. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that not everyone in life is going to like you?”

  I drop my gaze to the cup between my hands. “My mother is dead, so no. She didn’t really get the chance, but I already know that I can’t please everyone. That’s just life.”

  “Damn, Josephine, I’m sorry.” His face scrunched up, Darren reaches across the table to pat the top of my hand. “Sometimes I really stick my foot in it. How did it happen?”

  “Brain tumor,” I tell him as memories flash in front of my eyes. I can still see my mother, thin, frail, barely a shell of the vibrant woman who taught me how to read my first book, tie my shoes, curl my hair, and so much more, lying in that hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of machines. Sometimes I wonder if that vision will ever go away or if it will haunt me forever.

  Darren clicks his tongue in empathy. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Pulling my hand back, I play off the emotions that have begun welling up. This is the last thing I want to get into, with anyone. “It was a long time ago. I’m over it.”

  He passes me a skeptical look. Apparently, I’m not very convincing, but I’m not about to acknowledge that he’s right. It will just lead back to more heavy crap, and I am so done with heavy today.

  “So, besides Jenna and the stick wedged up her ass, what are you planning to do about the big boss lady?”

  I blow out a long, heavy breath. Just thinking about Florence taxes me mentally. “I don’t even know. I wish I would have hit her back, you know? Just to even the playing field.” I keep playing that moment back, retelling it so that I come out on top. “It just kills me to think that she’s off somewhere thinking that she’s won.”

  “She hasn’t won a damn thing and she knows it. It sounds to me like your boyfriend hit below the belt. If anything, she was crushed. I know I would be if a man that beautiful told me he used me and was dropping me for another woman.”

  “So what do you think she’s doing? Off somewhere licking her wounds?” I ask him. “I just don’t see her doing that.”
<
br />   “No, and neither do I.” Shaking his head, Darren whirls the little red straw around in his cup. “If I had to guess, a woman like that? Someone who’s probably spent years clawing her way up to the top of the business ladder, playing with the good old boys, is probably plotting her revenge.”

  “Against me?” Hell, what did I ever do to her? Except steal the man she’s in love with.

  “You, Mr. Scott, the world. Someone like her probably has bigger cojones than me so I wouldn’t put anything past her. Put her in a prison cell, and I’d bet money she’d be the first person to cut a bitch.”

  “The sad thing is I can totally see that.” Finishing off my coffee, I gather my trash and stand. Pointing at him I say, “You see. The grass isn’t always greener.”

  Darren accompanies me to the trash, and we pitch our garbage inside. “Just tell me one thing,” he says, holding the door open for me. “Where are you planning to sleep tonight? Your bed or his?”

  I don’t even have to think about it. Rebel told me this morning, under no uncertain terms, that I was spending the night at his place so I can help him start packing for the move to his new apartment. “His.”

  Darren’s lips purse and one brow arches up. “Definitely greener on your side of the fence.”

  Nineteen

  “I so needed this,” I tell Rebel as I take a drink of the icy cold bottle of draft. “This,” I say, holding up a book from the stack of books I’m working to pack into a box, “I could have done without.”

  “Shut up and drink your beer,” Rebel says with a half-cocked smile.

  I scoff, feigning offence. “You know, if I wanted to be verbally abused, I could have just hooked up with one of those yuppies from the club.”

  Setting aside a plate and a giant wad of newspaper, Rebel strides over and crouches down in front of me. His dark, granite gaze holds mine, causing moist heat to coil between my legs, as he gently lifts the bottle from my fingers and sets it aside. “And instead you hooked up with this yuppie,” he drawls.

  I swallow hard, my gaze dropping to his lush, full lips. “Guess I got lucky, huh?”

  “I don’t know about lucky, but you’re about to be.” Placing his hands flat on the floor, Rebel advances, forcing me to lie back on the hard wood floor as he continues to crawl over me. When he’s settled, his heavy weight pressing down on top of mine, he grows quiet. I feel his fingers skim the side of my face, his eyes watching the movement. It’s the spot that Florence smacked me. I capture a spark of anger flare to life behind those midnight orbs, and I no longer have to guess what he’s thinking.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper.

  “I hate that she did that,” he says, his lips curling with disgust. “If I didn’t like her before, I hate her now. She went too far.”

  “She’s in love. Love makes people crazy sometimes.”

  Rebel’s eyes cut back to mine, his fierce and full of determination. “I don’t care what she is. That’s no excuse. I’ve tried to be nice to her. I’ve cut her a lot of slack, but I can see now that she’s out of control. What she did to you was the last straw.”

  He’s so earnest with his words. For the first time, I can actually feel the truth. It’s in my head as much as it’s in my heart. It creates a burning sensation in the center of my chest and then spreads out, becoming a whole-body tingle of electricity that makes my insides feel warm and full. Dawning washes over me as I stare into his obsidian gaze. This man really does love me, doesn’t he?

  “This is real, isn’t it?” I ask, my voice a mere whisper.

  Rebel’s black brows pinch together, shadowing his eyes. “What’s real?”

  “Us. This. You really want to be with me, don’t you?”

  Slowly, the lines on Rebel’s face smooth out and his hands come up to cup my face. “You’re only now realizing this?” he asks in disbelief. “How many times do I have to tell you that I want you for you to get it?”

  I shrug as best as I can with my body pinned to the floor beneath his. “One more time would be good.”

  One side of his mouth curls up in a devastatingly sexy grin that absolutely does it for me. Everything about this man gets to me. “I want you, Josephine,” he says firmly. “You. Not Florence. Not the girl from accounting. Not Mrs. Fielding down the hall. Only you.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Fielding?” I ask, somewhat alarmed. There are other women I have to worry about now?

  “She’s a seventy-two year old widow whose arthritic hands have a tendency to slip sometimes when I’m helping her into the elevator and just happen to grab a handful of my ass.”

  My mouth drops open, forming an O. “Oh, my God. No way.”

  “You act surprised. Is it really that unbelievable that a woman would want to feel my ass?”

  “No, not at all.” I shake my head emphatically. “It’s a very nice ass.”

  “Damn right it is.”

  Running my hands down his back, I feel the heat and pressure of his body begin to relax me. To ground me. “So we’re together? Like dating?”

  “Baby, we’ve never not been together.” His rough voice travels through his chest, which is touching mine, sending vibrations straight into me that travel unimpeded to my core.

  My nose scrunches. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

  “Remember when I said that I claimed you the first day I saw you? Ever since then, no matter what mountains and valleys we’ve traveled, you’ve been mine. Always have been, pussycat. That’s one thing that’s never changed.”

  God, I love when he calls me that. It used to be a simple word used for all of the dancers at Mirage, but coming from Rebel, it’s so much more. It’s a reminder of how much he owns me, commands my body and mind with a single word.

  “What about Florence? Where does she factor into all of this?” As much as I’d like to feel as if I’m the only woman in his life, I can’t help feeling like with her still hanging around, whatever Rebel and I have together is being built on quicksand.

  “She’s irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what’s right here,” Rebel says, his voice rough as he bends his head down to plant a tender kiss on my lips. “And here,” he adds, pressing his hips into mine. He lifts my shirt, exposing my stomach and then my bare breasts. Covering one straining mound, he murmurs, “And here.”

  “My boob?” I joke.

  “No, what’s buried beneath it. What you feel for me, what I know you feel for me, is something Florence only thinks she feels. She’s attached to the idea of me.”

  “How can you know that? You can’t see inside her heart.”

  “I know,” Rebel says softly as he bends his head down and nuzzles the side of my neck, “because she doesn’t really know me. There have only been three women in my life that I ever let get that close. One is my mother and the other is living somewhere on the other side of the world with a family of her own.”

  My eyes drift closed as Rebel works his way down my body, his firm, greedy lips making a tantalizing path across my sensitized skin. I don’t have to guess who the third woman is. He’s said as much to me before. I just can’t understand what makes me so different. So special. “Why me?” I groan, lifting my arms to cover my face. I scrub it with my palms in frustration. “I’m just a stripper and Florence is...she’s...”

  Stopping his ministrations, Rebel lifts his head from my stomach and peers up at me through the dark fringe of his thick, black lashes. “Co-owner to the company you work for. Yes, I know what she is, but that doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “So you don’t find her attractive?”

  “I don’t find her unattractive,” he replies. “But that’s just the surface. Anyone can dress up a façade with a little paint and some nice landscaping, but that doesn’t fix the rotting structure underneath.”

  “So you’re saying I have a good structure.” Tilting my head so I can see his face better, I run my fingers through his hair. It’s softer now that he’s let it grow out a bit, just long enough to poke out
between my fingers.

  “You, pussycat, have a fantastic structure,” he growls. Angling his face down, he nips my belly playfully. “I don’t want you worrying about her anymore. She’s nothing to me. I was never in love with her, and I never will be.”

  Staring into his eyes, I feel their intensity burn straight to the core. He doesn’t have to say the words directly for me to know what he’s saying. He loves me. I know that. I feel it. “What are we going to do about her? She’s not just going to go away.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “How—”

  “Shhh.” Pressing his finger over my lips, Rebel silences me. “No more talking tonight. For the next few hours, the only words I want to hear come out of your mouth are ‘Oh,’ ‘God,’ and ‘Rebel.’”

  Rebel sets to work peeling my clothes from my body in a painfully slow dance that leaves me aching and trembling with need by the time I’m finally naked. Cupping my mound, he releases a rough, primal growl when he finds me wet and ready for him.

  “Brace yourself, pussycat. I’m going to eat you out like it’s my fucking job.”

  Twenty

  The next morning I set to work early filling boxes. I never knew a man could collect so much crap, especially someone as seemingly organized and purposeful as Rebel. His apartment may lack in personal touches out in the open, but it’s a different story once I start opening doors and drawers.

  He’s a pack rat. In the last hour, I’ve come across piles of old papers, birthday cards, and endless keys with no obvious purpose. I know. I checked. I’m astounded to find that he is an actual human being rather than a superior, unflawed god.

  I plan to tease him mercilessly when he returns from his trip to...someplace. Rebel was already in the middle of making a business call when I rolled out of his bed this morning. I didn’t dare interrupt, and I had no inclination to ask him details about his personal business. All I do know is that whatever he was doing on that phone related to why he dashed out of here so early with a fleeting goodbye and a promise to bring back donuts.