by Miranda Lee
Rachel had never thought Isabel’s wardrobe at all conservative. Just classy.
‘You can have them, if you like,’ Isabel offered.
‘What? All of them?’
‘Everything I left behind. Provided you wear them, of course. That’s the deal. You have to wear them. To work as well. It’s time you bit the bullet and threw out those dreary black suits. I’m sure your boss could cope. It’s not as though any of my old outfits are provocative. You can even have the shoes to go with them. We’re the same shoe size.’
‘Yes, I know. But are you sure, Isabel?’ she asked, amazed by her friend’s generosity.
‘Positive. Actually, there’s nothing in that place that you can’t have. Take the lot. Handbags. Jewellery. Make-up. Beauty products. Whatever you can find. I won’t be needing any of it.’
‘You can’t mean that, Isabel. You used to spend a small fortune on all your accessories. As for cosmetics and skin products, both bathrooms here are chock-full of them.’
‘And I don’t need any of it. Look, I brought everything I really like with me, and that includes my best jewellery. The stuff I left behind is just costume jewellery, bought to go with the clothes I’ve just given you. You’re welcome to whatever you can find. If you don’t use them they’ll only go to waste. I have a new look now, from top to toe. Speaking of new looks, I’ve also bought some great maternity clothes for when I begin to sprout. Oh, I can’t wait to get home and show everything to you.’
‘So when exactly will you be home?’
‘Next Saturday week. The flight gets in around midday. I’ll ring you when we arrive home at Rafe’s place and you can come over that evening for dinner.’
‘But you won’t want to cook after travelling.’
‘Who said anything about cooking? We’ll order something in. Is that all right by you?’
‘Perfect.’ There was no worry that she’d be spending any time with Justin on a Saturday. That was one of the many stipulations he’d made during their marathon afternoon of sex and sin. He wasn’t offering her a real relationship. He didn’t think it was fair to her to build her hopes up in that regard. Meeting each other’s sexual needs was what they were doing. But dating was out. So was going to each other’s places. Sex was to be confined to the office, but not till after five in future. Today was an exception.
She’d agreed to stay behind after work for a while every day till they were both satisfied. She’d agreed that he would not take her out to dinner afterwards, or take her home. She’d agreed that they wouldn’t see each other at weekends.
In hindsight, Rachel could see she would have agreed to anything at the time.
But she knew, deep down in her heart, that she was skating on thin ice where Justin was concerned. She had underestimated the extent of his broken heart, and the darkness that had invaded his shattered soul. If Eric had hurt her, Justin could very well destroy her. But she felt helpless against the power of her need to have him make love to her as he had today. Primitively. Erotically. Endlessly.
There was nothing she wouldn’t agree to to continue their sexual relationship.
‘Uh-oh, I’d better go, Rach. The lord and master is stirring. Now, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do till I get home,’ Isabel said happily, and hung up.
‘No worries there,’ Rachel muttered ruefully as she replaced the phone in its cradle. ‘Whatever you’re doing with Rafe, I’m doing one hell of a lot more with Justin. Much, much more.’
An image flashed into her mind of her straddled over Justin’s lap, her back glued to his chest, her arms wound up around his neck. They were seated on his office chair, their naked bodies fused and beaded with sweat, despite the air-conditioning. He was making a pretext of showing her how his programs worked whilst he idly played with her breasts. If he’d expected her to learn anything, he was sadly mistaken. All she’d learned was that she was rapidly becoming addicted to his brand of sex, and rapidly becoming obsessed with him.
If Isabel thought Rafe’s body was great, then she hadn’t seen Justin’s. She quivered just thinking about how he felt, all over. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. And whatever else he wanted her to do.
And he’d wanted her to do everything today. There wasn’t an inch of his beautiful male flesh that hadn’t enjoyed the avid attentions of her mouth, or her hands. She’d been shameless. Utterly shameless.
Yet shame wasn’t her overriding emotion when she thought of the woman she became in his arms. The memory evoked the most intoxicating excitement. Her heart thundered and a wave of heat flushed her skin.
There was no way she could voluntarily give up having sex with Justin. No way she could quit now and get another job. She was his, till he decided otherwise. His to admire and desire. His to have and, yes, to hold.
But never to marry, she reminded herself.
Her heart twisted at this last thought. But that didn’t stop her racing down to Isabel’s walk-in wardrobe and seeing what was there for her to wear for Justin tomorrow. Something classy but sexy, she wanted, her eyes scanning the long rows filled with outfits, most of them suits in pastel shades. She pulled out a pale blue silk trouser suit, then put it back. Trousers did not appeal. She needed something with a skirt, either long and floaty, or short and tight. Something that would draw Justin’s eye and recharge his hormones. She wanted him well and truly fired up by five. She wanted him as desperate for her as she already was for him.
A cream linen suit caught her eye, matched with a mustard-gold camisole. The jacket still had long sleeves but that didn’t matter yet. Sydney’s weather was still overcast and cool.
She laid it across the bed then rummaged around till she found matching cream shoes and bag. The jewellery box on the dressing table revealed a pearl choker with matching earrings. Not real pearls, of course, but still classy-looking. This time she would put her hair up in a more severe fashion, showing her throat and ears. To compensate, she would wear more make-up, paying particular attention to her eyes and mouth. Rachel knew she had nice eyes. And Justin seemed fascinated with her mouth.
Oh, and she would wear perfume. One of the expensive French fragrances Isabel had always favoured. Rachel had already noticed several not quite empty bottles in the wall cupboard above the main vanity unit. She would experiment with a new one each day and find out which one Justin seemed to like the most, then go and buy herself a bottle.
Stripping down to her underwear, she tried on the cream linen suit, pleased to see that it fitted very well, a surprise, considering she was considerably slimmer around the hips and waist than Isabel. Perhaps Isabel had bought it last year when she’d been dieting. The cami was much too tight around the bust, however, so Rachel took it off, discarded her bra and tried it on again.
With her full breasts settled lower on her chest the top felt less tight, but, as Rachel walked over to check her reflection in the cheval mirror on the back of the wardrobe door, the satin rubbing over her naked nipples had them puckering into pebble-like peaks. She winced at the sight of their provocative outline, which screamed her lack of underwear, plus her constant arousal. Would she dare wear it like this? And would she dare take off her jacket?
Oh, yes, she accepted as another wave of heat flooded her body.
She dared.
She would dare anything after today!
CHAPTER TWELVE
JUSTIN glanced up at the office wall clock for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Almost five. His pulse quickened at the thought that soon he could abandon any pretence of working and do what he’d been desperately wanting to do all day: have sex with Rachel.
Just the thought of it sent his blood racing through his body.
But then another less happy thought intruded. It was Friday again. For the next two days he would not see Rachel at all; could not thrill to the exquisite anticipation of knowing that at the end of the day she would let him remove all her clothes to draw her naked and trembling into his arms.
Last weekend had been
almost unendurable without her. This weekend would probably be worse. Justin resolved to keep her with him later than usual tonight. She wouldn’t mind. She enjoyed what they were doing just as much as he did, a fact that soothed his conscience somewhat. If he ever thought that what they were doing together was hurting her in any sense he would have to stop.
But could he stop, even if his conscience demanded it? That was the question. He had difficulty at the moment doing without her for two days. The prospect of never having sex with Rachel again was an idea he didn’t want to address.
Another glance at the clock showed it was finally five o’clock.
His heartbeat took off.
It was time.
Rachel’s head snapped up from her computer with a gasp when Justin wrenched open his office door right on the dot of five. She’d been pretending to herself that she hadn’t noticed the time, pretending to be working.
But that was all it was. Pretence. She lived for this moment every day. It was what she dressed for. And undressed for. It was why each afternoon at four-thirty she rose to lock the outside door, then go to the ladies’ room to make preparations for just this moment. For the last half-hour she’d been sitting there with her panties stuffed in her top drawer and no underwear of any kind covering her bare buttocks and upper thighs. Stay-up stockings had long replaced her pantyhose. She also rarely wore a bra these days, having quickly grown addicted to the feel of silk linings against her bare skin, plus the aphrodisiacal effect of knowing she was naked underneath her clothes.
Their eyes locked across the room and her surroundings slowly began to recede. Suddenly there was only him, and the way he was looking at her.
‘Get yourself in here, Rachel,’ he ordered, his impatience echoed in the tightness of his neck muscles.
Her legs felt like lead as she levered herself up from her desk and walked, like some programmed robot, into his office. Yet inside she was anything but a cold-blooded machine. She was all heat and hyped-up nerve-endings. Her head was spinning like a top and her heart was pounding behind her chest wall.
The speed with which he yanked up her skirt then hoisted her up onto his desk punched all the breath from Rachel’s body. He was between her legs in a flash, unzipping his trousers and freeing his rather angry-looking erection. Her body was ripe and ready for him, needing no foreplay. His hands grasped her hips, his fingertips digging into her skin as he scooped her bottom to the very edge of the desk and drove into her to the hilt. With a grunt of satisfaction he set up a powerful pumping action, his eyes grimacing shut, his lips drawing back over gritted teeth. Rachel leant back and braced herself by gripping the back edge of the desk, but even so her bottom slid back and forth across the smoothly polished desk-top.
Something—possibly the fact he hadn’t even kissed her first—got to Rachel, and suddenly she wanted him to stop.
The trouble was…her body didn’t want him to stop. It had a mind of its own. Frantic for release, it was. And ruthlessly determined in its quest, pushing aside any gathering qualms and ignoring the danger warnings. Her libido remained recklessly separated from her heart as pre-climactic sensations began to build and the need to come became all-consuming.
Her belly tightened. As did her thighs. Her bottom. Her insides. He groaned in response to her involuntary squeezing and then they were both splintering apart, their cries of erotic ecstasy echoing in the stillness of the room. His back arched back as he shuddered into her whilst she gripped the edge of the desk so hard her fingers went white.
But the spasms of pleasure passed, as they always did, and this time Rachel came back down to earth with a terrible thud.
The reality of what they were doing together could no longer be denied. It was beneath her, carrying on like this. So why was she settling for such an arrangement? Why?
The reason was obvious, she accepted with considerable anguish. The reason had always been obvious, if she’d looked for it. The reason was at this moment still inside her body, his arms wound tightly around her waist, his head resting between her sweat-slicked breasts.
It was then that she started to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I THOUGHT you said you were never going to take me out to dinner,’ she said with curiosity—and something else—in her voice. Was it hope?
Rachel’s unexpectedly breaking down into tears after the episode on the desk had jolted Justin out of his selfish desires, and made him take a long, hard look at what he’d been doing. He wasn’t a complete fool, or a bastard, even if he’d been acting like one. It didn’t take him long to realise that a woman of Rachel’s standards and sensitivity couldn’t indulge her sexual self indefinitely without her emotions—and her conscience—eventually becoming involved. She claimed she was all right, and that she often cried after she came.
But she never had before.
She’d said through her sobs that she didn’t want him to stop, but to continue in the face of her distress was something he simply could not do. He hadn’t sunk that low.
So he’d comforted her as best he could, then announced that he was starving and couldn’t possibly go on till they’d eaten, adding that he didn’t want any of the take-away muck they sometimes had delivered to the office. He wanted a decent meal. And decent wine.
Despite a momentary look of surprise, she hadn’t made any protest, so he’d booked a table in a nearby restaurant whilst she’d made whatever repairs needed to be made after sex, and retrieved her panties from where she always put them in her top drawer. Fifteen minutes later, here they were, sitting opposite each other at a candlelit table, with Rachel finally giving voice to what was a very fair question over his changing the rules of their arrangement.
He stared across the table at her and thought how lovely she looked in the soft candlelight. The simple mauve dress she was wearing was very classy and elegant. There again, all the clothes she wore to work these days were classy and elegant.
‘So I did,’ he said quietly. ‘But things change, Rachel. I thought it was time we talked.’
Was that panic in her eyes? Or fear? Fear of what, for pity’s sake? Of his stopping the sex? Or changing the rules?
Maybe she hadn’t been lying to him when she said she was all right. Maybe she liked things the way they were. Maybe she’d become as addicted to his body as he was to hers.
Such thinking threw him. He didn’t want her feeling nothing but lust for him. He wanted… He wanted… What did he want, damn it?
He wants to call it quits, Rachel was thinking.
Oh, God, she couldn’t bear it if he did that. Which was perverse, considering. It should be her telling him that, yes, things had changed, and that she wanted out. Out of his office and out of his life.
But she stayed silent and waited for him to say what he had to say, nausea swirling in her stomach at the thought he might not want her any more.
‘We really can’t go on like this, Rachel,’ he said, and a great black pit opened up inside her.
‘Why’s that?’ she said, struggling to sound calm and reasonable whilst her world was disintegrating.
He sighed. ‘Look, it’s been fantastic. I grant you that. Every man’s fantasy come true. But I can see things are in danger of becoming…complicated.’
‘In what way? I’ve done everything you asked.’
He stared at her. ‘Yes, you certainly have. Just excuse me for a moment whilst I order the wine.’
She sat there numbly, with Justin and the wine waiter’s voices nothing but distant murmurs. Her mind was going round and round and so was her stomach. What was she going to do when he told her it was over? How would she survive?
‘Rachel…’
‘What?’ She blinked, then made an effort to gather herself.
‘The waiter’s gone.’
‘Oh. Yes. So he has.’
‘The thing is, Rachel, I don’t want to continue with what we’ve been doing.’
She nodded, her mouth as dry as a desert. ‘Yes, I rather
gathered that.’ Her voice sounded dead. Hollow.
‘I want to try something a little more…normal.’
Her head snapped back, her eyes rounding.
‘I know I said I didn’t want a real relationship with you, and I meant it at the time. And, to a degree, that still holds true. Love and marriage are not on my agenda, so I won’t pretend I am offering you any hope of that. But I do want you in my life, Rachel, not just as my PA and not just for the sex. I want to go out with you and, yes, go home with you sometimes. My weekends are terribly lonely. Last weekend was…intolerable.’
‘Mine too,’ she agreed readily, her spirits lifting with what he was suggesting.
‘So I was thinking, if you’d like, that we could try that kind of a relationship.’
She struggled not to cry.
‘I…I’d like that very much,’ she managed, and found a smile from somewhere.
He smiled back. ‘I can’t promise not to ravage you occasionally in the office.’
‘I won’t mind.’
He laughed. ‘You’re not supposed to say that.’
‘What am I supposed to say?’
‘No might be a good start.’
‘You’re not much good with no.’
‘It’s not my favourite word, I confess. Not where you’re concerned. But it really isn’t right, you know, doing it on my desk. I’m finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on my work.’
‘Poor Justin,’ she said.
‘You don’t sound all that sympathetic.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Would you believe I’ve actually been feeling quite guilty?’
‘Not guilty enough to stop, though,’ she pointed out with a wry little smile.
He smiled back. ‘No. Not nearly that guilty.’
The arrival of the wine gave Rachel a few moments to hug her happiness to herself. Justin might not be offering her the world, but being his special lady friend was a big improvement on the role of secret sex slave.