by Kent, Julia
Mouth open, neck straining, she mewled a scream of unleashing, her body thrusting against his fingers, her thighs shaking as she lost control. Without missing a beat, Matt turned her around, thumb steady as it circled her hot, red nub, and he took her mouth with his, her lips tense with climax, mind on fire and body overcome with surges of heat, then chill, of riding his hand to wring every drop of ecstasy.
“Next time, I'll see your face,” he said in the dark, voice deep and low, the intensity so much she nearly came again from the sound. “Next time,” he hissed, lips taking hers, pinning her lower lip between his teeth, sucking, then using his tongue to explore her teeth, her palate, her mouth being loved by his.
Skirt around her hips, he used both hands to pin her ass to him, the weight of her release resting in his palms as she swallowed, breathing labored and sensual, his own breath.
“You can't see me now,” she answered, voice shockingly strong and bold compared to the jellied feel of her body, “but we can have our 'next time' right here.” Reaching for the front of his pants, her skirt dropped down, thighs sticky with her own juices and quivering from what Matt had just done. Lydia undid the top button of his pants, slipping the zipper down, finding him hard and aching (and commando), his control slipping as she reached down to stroke him, ready to straddle him and be fucked wild in a dark, stranded elevator.
And then the lights went on.
In her. He needed to be in her, to have his cock be the reason she bit her lip, to make those little gasps and hitches come from her mouth into his and to share in her climax, drive home through her hot, lush body, use his hands to pull those luscious curves into him. Handfuls of flesh weren't enough, soft skin and heat making him crazy in the dark, stalled elevator.
Shoving her panties in his pocket, he held her in place, forcing her to accept the pleasure of his fingers, her twitches and moans confirmation that he'd given what he had boldly intended. More, more, more his body screamed, and with swift hands he slid his palms around her waist, the faint scent of vanilla triggering something primal in him as her hand reached into his unbuttoned pants and began to stroke him.
As she unbuttoned him, released him, he reached down for her skirt to pull it back up, but then –
Lights. Hum. Buzz. Sound. Lydia's face was beneath him, though she stood, leaning against his torso, her hand suddenly stopping, head shaking slightly, eyes now wide. Seeing her touching him made his solar plexus clench, his cock jump, and she pulled back slightly, back straightening, hands carefully redoing his button and gently – achingly, tenderly – tucking him back in and zipping him carefully.
The expertise in her motions made him pause. Had she done this bef –
“Hello?” a mechanical voice said, booming into the tiny, blindingly-light elevator. Lydia pulled back and smoothed her hair, a dazed expression attesting to her condition. “The elevator malfunctioned and we're just getting systems back in order. Give us a minute and you'll be out of there.”
Fuck! Blinking furiously, Mike felt electricity shooting through him, arms needing to hold her, erection needing to drive into her, his body barely holding back what he'd been seconds from having with her. She swallowed, not making eye contact, and kept looking at the ceiling.
Puzzled, he shot her a curious look, and she looked pointedly at the ceiling while splaying her hands in a questioning gesture. Ah. Now he got it.
Cameras. She was worried about cameras. Bournham Industries didn't have security video in the elevators.
But Jonah Moore damn well might.
With a jolt, the elevator began its ascent, Lydia keeping her head down and not saying a single word, refusing to look at him when he moved closer. A quick nudge elicited nothing. Shut down, she wasn't going to give an inch.
As the elevator slowed upon arriving at their floor, Lydia stepped forward the second the doors cracked open. Without a sound she walked off, headed to the restroom. Fine. He let a much-needed grin cover his face, his fingers branded with her scent. Patting his pocket, he realized he had her panties.
A trophy. Oh, how she had responded to him, body grinding under his caresses, her need open and wanton, her willingness so evident and ripe. Those few minutes were more sensual, more sultry and arousing than all of the sex he'd had for the past year – combined.
The idea that he could have that – and so much more – with her, day in and day out, made him hard again.
Back at his desk, he pulled the thin strip of silk from his pocket. Lilac silk with a cotton center that was absolutely soaked, the aroma of her wafting up to make him smile. He slid them in a desk drawer.
Next time, he would return them to her.
Next time.
“So you gave your panties to a geek. Who are you, Molly Ringwald? Jesus Christ, Lydia, you're twenty-five years old. This isn't Sixteen Candles.” Krysta sprinkled some sweetener in her latte. Lydia had called a “Code Java” and they'd met at Starbucks downstairs.
“If I wanted a lecture, I'd call home.” Scalding coffee burned her tongue, the same flesh that had been in Matt's mouth minutes ago. Coffee drove away his taste, but it couldn't diffuse her current state of teeming, fever-pitch arousal. Even after coming – twice! – in the elevator, she wanted more.
More, more, more.
Krysta started humming, ignoring Lydia. Then the tune was clear: Aerosmith's Love in an Elevator. Lydia shot her a withering look.
“Took you long enough,” Krysta laughed. “Going down?”
“He was close,” Lydia sighed.
“Eww, eww, eww. I have to interact with him, Lydia! Don't tell me this.” Fingers in her ears, Krysta mouthed lalalalala.
Ears perked up around them. It was only 8:15 a.m. And she'd called Krysta to meet here. Loads of coworkers wove their way in and out of the brightly-lit, overly-sanitized store, ordering and walking out with white cups with green logos, drinking their morning happiness.
Her sex life didn't need to perk them up, too.
What sex life? You got fingered in an elevator by your boss, Lydia, a voice whispered in her ear.
Yeah, she replied. And it was good. Go away. She hated that voice – the Joey Stillman voice, the one that taunted and undermined and destroyed. Getting rid of it wasn't easy. She just had to be more centered than whatever creepy part of her worked to destabilize.
Sometimes that was harder. Right now? Nope. Exhilaration from her unexpected encounter fueled a very nice confidence boost. Matt found her attractive enough to respond. Respond. And give back as much as she gave.
More, actually. Lips twitching with a sly smile, she ran a slow hand through her hair, swinging her brown waves over her shoulder. A pair of green eyes locked with hers and her pulse went thready, her breath halted, the room spinning with expectation and unresolved lust.
Dave walked up behind Matt and clapped his shoulder. Krysta followed Lydia's gaze, snorting.
“Saved by the asshole,” she whispered.
“Saved?”
“Lydia, you look like you're going to fuck him on the floor right here. With a shot of mocha syrup and whipped cream.” Reaching for Lydia's face, she used her hands to force eye contact. “You are about as nakedly vulnerable as anyone can be. Just...protect yourself. Shut down a little,” she pleaded. Krysta's brown eyes showed concern and alarm.
Nodding furiously, Lydia forced herself to gulp more of her hot coffee, turning away from Matt and Dave, who were now engaged in some sort of intense conversation, Matt's eyes shifting to her twice in the few seconds she looked at him.
A sharp yank and she was on her feet. “Let's go for a walk, my dear,” Krysta crooned, an affect of hopelessness in her voice at Lydia's besottedness. She glanced at Lydia's ass. “You gave your panties to him. You're hopeless.”
“My life is more 9 to 5 than Sixteen Candles.”
“You're careening more toward The Secretary, Lyd.”
Then, in unison, they both hissed, “Anything He Wants.” A common groan.
Shit! Kr
ysta was right. Time to walk it off.
Commando.
Chapter Six
The most difficult part about this dual identity wasn’t being Matt Jones. It wasn’t being forced to wear clothing that he wouldn’t dress a scarecrow in. It wasn’t that he struggled to find a way to connect with Lydia.
It was that he still had to be Michael Bournham behind the scenes. There was still a company to run, investors to appease, a board of directors he had to crush in the race to prove them wrong.
While he was Matt Jones by day, he was burning the candle at both ends being Michael Bournham at night.
Tonight was one of those nights when he needed thirty-nine hours in a twenty-four hour period. He was in the middle of receiving a haircut and dye rinse, his hair needing to return to its original color, his contact lenses removed, so that he could attend a charity ball. He sat on the board of directors for this particular charity, one that contributed large volumes of money to autism for research in the field and he called Joanie, his assistant, to ask her to make sure that Dom had the car ready for him to pick up.
“Joanie, who am I going with to the ball tonight?”
“You’re going with Diane Powell, sir.” Joanie was new, having replaced his former assistant, Gloria, who had been more grandmotherly than his own grandmother, but who had finally decided that coddling and nurturing her own seventeen grandchildren was her life’s work. Gloria had worked for his dad and she rose up the ranks with Mike. Truth be told, he was ready for a change, and Joanie was green but smart. Tech savvy. Enough training and she'd do fine.
Joanie wouldn’t stop calling him “sir”. At twenty, she was fresh out of secretarial school but came well connected, with great references and, because she was so new and eager, she was cheap. Mike needed cheap if he was going to make the cut with the quarterly profit numbers.
“You can stop calling me ‘sir’,” he insisted.
“Oh. Um, OK, Michael.”
“It’s Mike.”
“OK, Mike. You’re going with Diane Powell. Dom is already lined up. He will pick you up at seven, he will pick Miss Powell up at 7:30 and deliver both of you to the Elysium at eight.” The sound of keys on a keyboard, rapid-fire and efficient, dotted her words.
“Thank you,” he said. “So, how are the mergers and acquisitions documents?” he asked, launching a tight formation of clipped statements that were essentially a shorthand between the two of them that she had picked up amazingly quickly. Where Gloria had seemed to be telepathic, knowing what he was going to say before the sentences even came out, Joanie still struggled. She would be there soon, and at that point he would give her a big, fat raise.
Right now, though, he was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, metaphorically speaking, when it came to the corporation. He had restricted his own jet use. They didn’t actually own their own private jet – he just rented one. Other cutbacks had been necessary to get him to this point. He was starting to question those now that he was in the trenches. The impact of what looked good on paper but didn't work in the real world hit him as he worked on the lower floors of his building. None of it was major, though. Employees could suffer scratchier toilet paper or lower quality pencils.
But he was starting to have a conscience. A corporate conscience – the two words contradictory – about how he had handled bonus structures and promotions, his failure to fill empty positions and the blended workload on a number of people who had taken over for empty spots without compensation. The amount of complaining that took place around the water cooler, literally, was a revelation. It was also jarring because it made him wonder, back in his salad days, was he a complainer? Did he talk about the things he didn’t like and bitch about his financial problems the way that all of these people seemed to?
In his world now, if he had a conversation with someone it was either pleasant small talk designed to kill time at a non-business event or business – or heavy breathing and moans in bed. Conversation had fallen into those three basic camps and, aside from the occasional phone call with his mom (which didn’t fall into any of those categories, thank God), he couldn’t fathom standing around and talking for twenty to thirty minutes about nothing but things he didn’t like about his life. If he didn’t like something, he changed it.
It really was that simple.
As Matt Jones, he had made the mistake on day two of saying exactly that. The cold, perplexed stares aimed at him in the coffee room forced him to add, with a jocularity he didn’t feel, “Then again, that’s easier said than done.”
Folks had loosened up.
His disconnect made him question whether it was him or them. Numbers weren’t in his favor. There were so many more of them, who seemed so helpless in their own lives, so powerless, so willing to concede that what they didn’t like was a reality they couldn’t change and so the only empowerment they possessed was to complain about it. A language of its own, with linguistic twists and turns that were so foreign to him and yet, these people seemed to be native speakers.
Not Lydia. He’d noticed that she would gripe here and there and then retreat, off to work. Something inside her was self-feeding, and his respect for that almost – almost – matched his attraction for her.
Almost.
“So, Gloria, is my – uhh. Sorry, Joanie.”
“It’s okay, sir, you can call me Gloria. I understand. You worked with her for years.”
“I didn’t work with her for that long, Joanie. I worked with her for four years. She was my father’s secretary before that.”
“Oh...oh. Umm, OK. That’s fine,” Joanie said, the pitch of her voice changing. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, gooseflesh spreading over his shoulders and upper arms. That was a turn on a dime. Why had sweet Joanie just – oh. Now he got it. “Not that you’re a secretary by any stretch, Joanie. You have far more widespread administrative skills than – and I would never...” He fumbled. “You’re an executive assistant and so was Gloria. She evolved with the job and so will you.”
He heard a whoosh of a held in breath. “Thank you, sir. Uh...Mike. Thank you, Mike.”
“You’re welcome, Joanie. Is my tux ready?” On to safer territory.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else that I need to know about this charity event?”
“Yes.”
“And what is that?”
“Your friend Jeremy called and said that he would be attending.”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes, Jeremy.”
“Jeremy is attending?”
“Yes, Sir. Yes, Mike. Yes.”
“Is he taking a date?”
“He didn’t say.” Finding an assistant who could really meet whatever business, personal, professional needs he had – of course, keeping it within ethical and decency bounds – was something that his father had always warned him would be harder than he ever imagined. He thought of Lydia and her feeling of underutilization and underappreciation and it led his mind to Dave.
“Joanie, could you pull the HR file for a guy named David Crawford? He’s my director of communications. I’d like to check out everything that might be in his personnel file. Just have it delivered to my office, or, uh...”
“If it doesn’t violate confidentiality, I can scan it for you and send it to you as a PDF and you can read it on your smart phone. I added the PDF reader app for you.”
“Yes, I noticed that earlier looking at a different PDF. Thank you.” And that’s why Joanie was something more than a secretary; she took the initiative. Gloria had been fabulous about taking care of whatever was put in front of her and taking care of him emotionally, especially ushering him through his father's death. Yet Joanie had promise and initiative and so did Lydia. He wanted to make sure he didn’t crush either.
“I will get that to you, Sir...Mike. Is that something you need before the charity ball?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“No. Go home, Joa
nie.”
“I will, uh – Mike.” Click.
Why would Jeremy go to an autism fundraiser ball? It’s not that Jeremy wasn’t involved in philanthropic institutions – they both had been since they made their money, but Jeremy wasn’t the type. This would be a room filled with over-Botoxed women and portly men who made more money than God but had no one to spend it with. To spend it on, certainly – but not to spend it with.
He expected this to be a three drink, rubbery steak, polite golf clapping two hours and Diane...she would be arm dressing. Tux candy, just someone he would take because she was “high society” and his face would get in the newspaper and – who knew? Maybe it would bolster Bournham Industries.
Whatever appeal dating women like Diane had held for him had died. Matt Jones had seen to it that – that part of his life held no appeal and Lydia had hammered the nails in that coffin.
Ironically, what he really wanted to do was what Jeremy did. He suddenly had a vision of himself hiking the Appalachian Trail, hanging out on a hammock on a beach in Thailand, going on a three month sailboat cruise through the Fiji Islands and the South Pacific.
Living.
None of that had ever mattered to him, even when Jeremy had begged and pleaded for him to join in the pleasure of roaming, itinerant and free. Tasting the local flavor – literally, when it came to Jeremy – wasn't on his bucket list. At best, he had spent a few summers camping and hiking and having fun, and those now held greater appeal than they had even a week ago. It must just be the stress talking, the craziness of having so few weeks left to meet the target goals for profit expansion, to get his stock orders and to walk away from Bournham Industries as a billionaire. That was the clincher.
In order to win, he had to lose. This would be a battle with the board of directors. If he lost, he retained control of his company. If he won, he sold it in a private sale to...well, he wasn’t sure to whom, but he ceded control. Or the IPO went through and Bournham became public.
Control wasn't his for this event – the next three hours would be spent in blinding, blistering, boring, blustering social pain. He dulled his ears and dulled his eyes and thanked his hairdresser for making him look like Mike again. Michael Bournham would be on the press stage, blinded by flashes and video cameras and more, and he had to pretend to like it.