by Corgan, Sky
“I thought it was, until we went upstairs afterward. I mean, he's handsome and exciting and dominant. Sexy.”
“But?” He knows there's a but. There's always a but when it comes to things like this.
“But then he said some really rude things and pretty much sent me packing. We didn't speak much after that until today, when he called me into his office, and I was sure he was going to fire me. I didn't want to give him the pleasure, so I quit.” Again, not exactly true. I only quit because I felt like he had backed me into a corner where I had no other choice. The thought that I could have kept my job if I just hadn't opened my big mouth still eats at me.
“It sounds like you're better off now that it's over.”
“I suppose I am. It's just hard knowing I lost my job over something so stupid.”
“It's not stupid.” He shakes his head. “There's a reason people say you should never get involved with someone you work with. Rarely does it not make things awkward. The fact that he was your boss put even more pressure on your situation. I'm sorry that he was an asshole to you.”
“Me too.” I smile weakly. “Lesson learned.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Fennel.” My name sails across the house in an annoyed, clipped tone. I barely have time to blink myself awake before I feel the pounding of footsteps moving across the house.
What time is it? I turn and look at my clock just as my mother opens my bedroom door. It's nine in the morning, and considering that my mother knows I quit my job the day before, you'd figure she'd let me sleep in. It's not like we ever do anything this early in the morning anyway.
“Some guy is at the door asking for you.” She gestures down the hall with her thumb. “I told him you were still asleep, but he won't go away. Says he's your boss and that he needs to talk to you.”
“I don't have a boss.” I pull my pillow over my face and groan before my brain switches to the realization that Trent is standing in front of my house.
“Do you want me to be nasty to him?” A short laugh escapes her lips. Nothing would make my mother happier than barking at Trent until he ran away. Being cruel to people and things that annoy her is one of my mother's favorite pastimes.
“No, I'll handle it,” I say out of curiosity more than anything else. What is he doing here? We said our peace to each other. Well, I said my peace to him. Now, I just want him out of my life.
As soon as my mother closes my bedroom door, I roll out of bed and throw on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt before stomping out of my bedroom to the front door. I feel like a small child throwing a hissy fit. He disturbed my life and my sleep, and I'm not really ready to deal with him. My hair isn't brushed, I have horrible morning breath, and I just don't give a shit—about him, about anything, right now.
“What do you want?” I grumble as I open the front door.
He looks me up and down before his eyes fix on my face, and he smiles. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“So talk.” If I could pierce through him with my gaze right now, he'd be bleeding to death. For the first time since I started working for him, his good-looks aren't getting to me. Bitterness is the only thing I feel for him, from what he did to my emotions and my life.
He looks past me into the house. My mother is sitting in her arm chair, drinking coffee, most likely watching us with interest. I know he sees her. “I'd like to talk to you in private,” his voice is low.
“And I'd like a pony. We don't always get what we want. You're fine right where you are.” It gives me great pleasure to talk to him like this. It's the only pleasure I'll ever have from him again. There's no way I would let him inside my house, allow him to get me alone. Knowing that we're being watched will keep him at bay from saying anything that might sway me to feel things I shouldn't.
“The things I want to discuss are rather personal.” He shifts his weight.
“If you want to discuss personal things, then you should get a shrink.” I want to add that he needs one, but I don't want to let on that there was more between us than meets the eye. While I told my mother that I quit because someone at the office was making me feel uncomfortable, I didn't tell her that it was him. She knows nothing about my relationship with Trent, and as long as Gary doesn't blab the details to her, hopefully she never will.
“Would you just come outside?”
I'm testing his patience. The thought that he can't be in control of this situation makes me happy. It's nice that the ball is in my court for once.
“Say your peace and go. You woke me up, and I'm not in the best of moods.” I cross my arms over my chest to show him I mean business. He's got approximately one minute to say what he came to say before I slam the door in his face.
“I wanted to apologize,” he whispers, glancing into the house again.
“Well, now you've done it. Goodbye, Mister Stevens.” I step inside to close the door, but he puts his palm out to stop me.
“Fennel, wait.” He looks almost panicked.
I narrow my eyes at him as I open the door a bit wider. “You said what you came to say, now leave.”
“That's not all I wanted to say.” He shakes his head, keeping his hand on the door. “Come outside with me for a minute. Please.”
I turn back to my mother. She's staring at us with such an intensity that it's even making me feel uncomfortable. It doesn't matter though. I've learned my lesson. I know better than to be alone with him. If I go outside, the tables will turn. Who knows what could happen then.
“No,” I decide finally, returning my attention to Trent. “You've got five minutes to say what you came to say, then I want you off of my property.”
“Do you really hate me so much?” The corner of his mouth quirks into an infuriating smirk, as if he's actually amused by the way I'm acting.
“I don't hate you, Trent.” Just severely dislike you. “But I will do you bodily harm if you don't leave next time I tell you to.” Starting with a swift kick to the danglers.
“Fair enough.” He straightens, taking his hand off the door and regaining poise. It pisses me off how he looks so perfect all the time. Today, he's wearing a pair of khakis and a light rose-colored polo. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I'd say he's going to play golf after this.
“Now, what do you want?” I lean against the door frame, blocking my mother's view.
“I wanted to apologize and ask you to come back to work for me.” His expression is completely earnest. This is the facade—the business side of him.
The sad thing is that for a split second, I consider his proposal. But then I realize there's no way we can go back to the way things were before we messed around. Maybe he can, but not me. The thought of what happened at his house would haunt me forever, and the sick longing for it to happen again would follow. And if it did happen, he'd mentally torture me more than he physically has. I can't keep going through this.
“Not interested.” My gaze falls to his feet, and a tremor of regret races through me. Letting him go was easy the first time, when I was so filled with rage that all that I could think about was getting away from him. Now he's on my doorstep, asking me to come back. It feels like a weird breakup. Except it's not a breakup. He's not here asking for my affection. He's here asking me to work for him again. There aren't any emotions attached to it for him other than guilt.
“Please, Fennel. You're a good employee. I'm so sorry about what happened between us. I want to make it right.”
He sounds so sincere that it's actually pulling at my heartstrings. I can feel my resistance breaking down, but I know I can't allow that to happen. If he wasn't as handsome as he is, would it be easier for me to say no? Thinking that my resolve hinges on his looks makes me feel weak. I'm not weak though. I can't be weak. Being weak is what got me into this mess. I'm not falling for that pretty face or those gorgeous green eyes anymore.
I glance back at my mother a final time before stepping outside and closing the door behind myself. When I turn around to face Trent
, it feels like he's gotten closer—the wolf getting ready to pounce on the prey. I'm not some helpless rabbit, but if I need to retreat to my hole, then I will.
For as much as I want to be strong enough to look him directly in the eyes, I can't. His eyes hold so much power. Instead, I stare at his chest, taking a step forward to show him that I'm not afraid—that he doesn't intimidate me. My fingers move to trace the collar of his shirt. “I can't work for you because I have feelings for you. Don't think I'm saying that to flatter you. They're not good feelings. Not like they were.
“You hurt me, Trent. Badly. Not just physically, but emotionally. I can't work for you because I can't stand the thought of seeing you everyday and not having you. And I can't stand the thought of having you physically and not having you emotionally. I don't want to work for you.” I shake my head. “I don't want anything to do with you.”
I'm back inside the house before he has a chance to retort. If I was alone, I might have pressed myself against the door and prayed that he'd knock again and beg for me to reconsider. As it is, I just don't want to be under the watchful eyes of my mother. She knows something strange is going on, and I'm not in the mood to explain. It's too early for that. And it's too late to fix this.
***
“How's the job going?” Terry crushes up some crispy wonton strips over her egg drop soup. We're doing Chinese food today. It's a nice change from our super fattening Mexican food diet, and it's also cheaper. The place that we're at right now, you can get a pile of food about the size of your head for only five dollars. And it's so good.
“What job?” I grunt bitterly.
Her hands fall to the table, and she gives me a look of complete disbelief and disappointment. “You quit already?”
I know this entire conversation is leading up to an I-told-you-so. I might as well get it over with. “You were right. Working with Trent was a bad idea. We messed around, it got to my head, and I couldn't handle it.”
She picks up her spoon and dips it into her soup, trying to drown the wonton fragments. “The whirlwind workplace romance never works out.”
“It was more like a whirlwind seduce and destroy.” My mind flits back to all the sexual encounters I've had with Trent, each one bizarre in its own right.
“Sounds kinky.” She smirks at me before taking a bite of her soup.
“Oh, it was kinky beyond my wildest dreams.” My eyes widen for effect.
“Do tell. When you texted me to let me know you messed around, you didn't give me any details,” her tone is pure amused curiosity.
“Texting takes too long.” I scrunch up my nose.
Terry and I rarely call each other on the weekdays, and if we're not hanging out on the weekends, she's usually too busy for a chat, either getting her nails or hair done, or shopping with her mother. Sometimes, I think the two of them are better friends than her and I are.
“So, tell me all about it. Did he bang you on his desk?” she lets out a short giggle.
“Almost.” I cock my head to the side, remembering how it felt to have Trent's face between my legs. Just thinking of how crude we probably looked sends a blush to my cheeks. And that stupid deer head above his desk staring down at me. I'll never forget it.
“Details. Details. It's not fun if I have to drag it out of you.” She frowns at me between bites.
“Well.” I lean forward and whisper so that no one else in the very open restaurant can hear us. “He ate me out on his desk in his office.”
“Kinky!” she practically squeals.
“And then we went to his house and he...well, we kinda...”
“Fucked?” Terry bobs her head as if it shouldn't be that difficult of a word for me to say. I curse like a sailor on the best of days. She should know that if I'm struggling to say something, it's not because I'm embarrassed about it.
“He tied me up in his basement.” I stab at my lo mein and twirl my fork in it.
Her mouth falls agape for a moment as she stares across the table at me, though she quickly recovers. “Kinky. Did you like it?”
“Yes and no. He has this weird pain fetish. He says he only gets off to doing stuff like that. I think he's a Dom.”
“A Dom?” She pushes her soup aside and starts focusing on the moo goo gai pan she ordered. I'm a bit shocked that she doesn't know what a Dom is, with all the focus on BDSM lately in the literary world. Then again, she doesn't like to read, so I'm not sure why I'm so surprised.
“A Dom is a person who likes to be in control. In the BDSM lifestyle, they take on submissives and do scenes with them, which typically involve sadistic acts to gain pleasure. Submissives are the target of these sadistic acts, but they like it, because they're into masochism. So it's kind of like a symbiotic relationship of mutualism between the two.”
“That was way too technical for me.” Her eyes flare, unimpressed by my explanation. “So basically, you're saying he took you down into his basement, beat you, and had sex with you.”
“No quite.” I shift uncomfortably. Talking about this in public makes me uneasy. Now I'm kind of wishing we would have eaten at a restaurant that had booths, so I'd feel like we had at least a smidgeon of privacy. “He did things to me.”
“What kind of things?” She takes a break from eating to sip the glass of soda in front of her.
“Well, he spanked me. And he used these nipple clamps on me that hurt like the dickens. And I think he flogged me at one point.” I scrunch up my face as I try to recall everything that happened. “And he about choked me to death with his cock.”
“Sounds like happy fun times,” she says, and I can't tell if she's being sarcastic or not.
“I liked some of it. A lot of it, actually. It was new and exciting and fun. But I didn't feel fulfilled emotionally, if that makes sense. I mean, the sex was good, for what it was. I was completely bound the entire time, so I didn't have to do anything. Just lay there.” I can still remember the feel of the cold padding beneath my chest and knees. The way I got to relax as he pounded into me. It felt like heaven for a while. Then I realized I'd never be able to touch him. Not get to see his face when he came. For as much as I'd been longing for the sexual encounter with him, I felt cheated somehow.
“Sounds perfect. Does he have a brother? Preferably one that isn't into beating women. I'm not much into pain.” She smirks at me before taking a huge bite of her egg roll. It seems like she's moving across her plate at a healthy pace, and I'm barely eating, too busy talking and lost in thought.
“It was bizarre. He never let me touch him. Not when we were in the hotel room. Not when we were in his office making out. Not when I was in his basement. Not once did he let me put my hands on him. Not the way I needed to.” I wrap my hand around my glass of water and feel the iciness beneath my fingertips. It reminds me of how Trent acted after we had sex, like I was just some random fuck to him that didn't mean anything—like he'd never have to see me again.
“Touching is overrated. Fucking is where it's at.” She points her fork at me before stabbing at a piece of chicken on her plate.
“It felt like more than fucking to me. I really liked him.” I'm almost ashamed to confess it. There was something about Trent that drew me to him beyond his good looks. Something about his kindness, the way he genuinely seemed like he wanted to help me before we started messing around, and everything went to shit.
“So what exactly happened between the two of you?” Terry quirks an eyebrow at me.
I sigh deeply, deflating against my chair. “He told me not to get involved with him. Warned me that I'd get hurt. After we had sex in his basement, I thought that was what he had been talking about, his BDSM fetish. It turns out, it wasn't. He said some pretty shitty things to me, and it made me realize I had just been used.” Is that even right? I'm the one who pursued him for sex. How can he use me if I'm the one who wanted it? Still, it feels that way.
“What did he say to you?” She grins in interest.
“To take the walk of shame.
” I scowl.
“Ohhh,” she hisses. “You should have nut-punted him.”
“I should have, but I didn't.” At the time, I wasn't sure what to do. It wasn't like him to say something like that at all, especially when he had just been so affectionate with me.
“So what did you say back?” She returns her attention to her food.
“I told him that sleeping with him must be shameful if he was telling me that.” It was the only retort I could come up with at the time.
“And what did he say?” She looks up at me before taking a drink of her soda.
“He said that maybe it is.” I furrow my brows, thinking about how peculiar the statement was.
“Sounds like the guy is messed up, or just a hoebag. It's hard to tell when they're arrogant like that.”
“I'm honestly not sure either, but I'm leaning towards him just being messed up. As far as anyone at the office knows, he doesn't date. And the way he goes from professional to aggressive, from caring to asshole, so quickly is just bizarre. Plus, he did warn me not to go with him. That's not something the typical hoebag would do.” I rotate my glass in my hand.
“You're over-thinking things. You always over-think things,” she repeats for good measure. “It was probably just sex. It usually is with guys as good-looking as you claim that he is.”
“I don't think so.” I shake my head. “I quit because things were awkward with us after that. But yesterday he showed up at my house apologizing and asking me to come back to work for him.” I can still hardly believe that happened. It was so weird to see him there on my doorstep. For the briefest of moments, it made me think that he might actually care. That's too much to hope for though.
“Wait. Back up.” She sets her fork down and looks at me. “He showed up at your house yesterday?”
“Yeah,” I draw out the word to show my own surprise. “Totally unexpected.”
“You're going back, right? It obviously means he wants to fuck again.”