by Ruthie Knox
She nodded, straightened a few piles of papers on his desk, picked up an empty coffee cup, and moved as if to take it from the room.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her around, pointed at his lap with a raised eyebrow. This part he wasn’t so sure about, but if she had a secretary fantasy, it stood to reason she’d want him to be in charge.
Ah, he’d done well. Eyes lowered, she nodded. Set the coffee cup down. Reached for his zipper. The board chairman criticized the poor performance of the Asset Management Division while Cath unzipped his trousers and pushed his shorts aside. From very far away, he heard Winston saying something pompous that made the others laugh as she wrapped her lips around his cock and drew him into her mouth. She was too short to kneel in front of his chair comfortably, so she bent at the waist, her arse in the air, legs spread, one hand braced on the seat and the other wrapped around him. Nev groaned, running his fingers down the length of her body.
This was utterly mad. Risky and irresponsible. So bloody hot, he could hardly stand it.
He couldn’t be happier that he’d refused to take the call in the same room as Winston.
He and Cath knew their way around each other by now, and she was hitting all the right spots, using the right pressure, the right suction to drive him out of his mind. Her head bobbed up and down between his legs, her arse wiggling enticingly, and he had to tear his eyes away and look for some sort of distraction, anything, because he couldn’t take much more of this, not if he was going to keep from coming in her mouth.
The mere thought made his balls draw tight, and for a long moment he fought for control. It’s her fantasy, you selfish git. Don’t ruin it for her.
“Turn round,” he said in a rough voice. She slowly straightened, swirling her tongue in a parting flourish, and smiled before she showed her back to him.
“Spread your legs.” The skirt drew tighter across her ass, the pleats opening up between her thighs. Christ, she was hot.
“Bend over.” She did, and he was lost. He’d meant to touch her, to run his hands along her thighs and use his tongue to drive her as mad as she was making him, but the sight of her bent over his desk like the world’s finest present, the lacy tops of her stockings peeking out from under her skirt—and garters, for the love of Christ—it was too good to resist. He reached between her legs. No knickers. She was slippery and wet where he stroked her, hot and swollen, and she moaned when he brushed her clit with his thumb, nearly making him lose it for the second time.
“Bloody fucking hell, Cath.” He flipped up her skirt, took hold of her hips, and plunged into her slick welcome with one hard thrust and an animal groan.
He wasn’t going to last. Two strokes, three, four, and he was about to go off. Unwilling to leave her behind, knowing she was close, he brought his hand back between her legs. “Come for me now, love. That’s an order.”
She did a brilliant job of it, clutching at the desk and biting her hand to keep quiet as her inner muscles clamped around him and milked him of every last drop in what had to be the most explosive orgasm of his life.
When she relaxed, he collapsed into his chair, bringing her along to curl up on his lap. The conference call was wrapping up, the board chair reminding the others of the date and time of the next meeting. He stroked her arm absentmindedly, his thoughts all crooked and disorganized.
She kissed the tip of his nose, an unusually tender gesture for Cath. “Your cheeks are pink. Anyone would know what we’ve been up to.”
“It’s entirely your fault. Between that skirt and those stockings, there was no hope for me.” He kissed the crown of her head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it better for you. I got carried away.”
She nestled her face against his shoulder and smiled. “No worries. That was exactly what I had in mind when I walked through the door.”
“You wanted to make me lose my head?”
“Uh-huh.” She smoothed her hand over his tie and tucked herself against his neck. “I love it when you get all beastly with your suit still on. World’s Naughtiest Banker. I wanted to make you lose your shit in your highfalutin office.”
He laughed. “You’re an evil woman. How long have you been planning my downfall?”
“A few days.”
“Any other fantasies I ought to know about?”
With a wicked smile, she said, “Plenty. But I’m not telling you about any of them.”
She pushed off his chest, and he reluctantly let her up. “Are you important enough to rate your own bathroom?” she asked, wrenching her skirt into place.
He pointed to the door of the WC, and she disappeared for a few minutes while he made himself decent. On her way back to him, she snagged the plastic bag and dropped it on his desk. “I hope you like pad thai, City. I didn’t know if it would be up to your standards.”
“You’re not staying.”
Of course she wasn’t. She’d turned up at his office—the brightest, most exciting thing to happen to him all day—and given him head at his desk. Naturally, she wouldn’t share the takeaway. That would be too intimate.
“Nope. I know how you are. One minute I’m eating in your office, and the next thing I know you’re calling it a date.”
He followed her to the door and kissed her one more time before opening it. “You’ll come by the flat later.”
“I might.”
“You will.”
“Yeah, okay, I will.” She ran a fingertip along his jawline. “But I’m not saying what time.”
Halfway down the hall, she passed Winston on his way toward Nev’s office. “Hiya, Winston. How’s it hanging?” she asked. His brother didn’t answer, but he turned around to watch her walk away, and when he met Nev’s eye there was an insolent appreciation there that made Nev want to punch him.
“Her again?” Winston asked. “Whatever do you see in that woman?”
“What do you want?”
“I spoke to Mother. She’s concerned you aren’t taking the terms of your promotion seriously.”
“Is that all?”
Winston eyed him appraisingly. “You’re strange lately. I don’t know if it’s this girl you’re shagging or something else, but you ought to snap out of it.”
“When I want your advice, I’ll ask you for it.”
Nev shut the door in his brother’s face.
Winston had come to threaten him. Fair enough. Consider him duly threatened. In a few weeks, he’d lose his job.
It was difficult just now to recall what made it worth saving. He’d never wanted to work at the bank to begin with, and though he’d put a lot of years and a lot of effort into it, he didn’t take nearly as much satisfaction from it as he did from painting.
The notion that he’d allow his family to bully him into marrying would’ve been absurd at any time, but it was even more so now. He wasn’t interested in finding someone suitable to marry. Not when he’d fallen in love with Cath.
Chapter Eleven
She loved to watch him walk up. It made waiting for him on the step outside his flat such a pleasant exercise in anticipation.
They had routines now, after three weeks of this whatevership of theirs. If she encountered Nev on the train, they walked straight back to his place together. But other nights, she’d go back to her own flat to shower, change, and eat dinner, and then she’d mosey on over at twilight. Often, he’d just be getting home, and he’d smile when he spotted her. It gave her a thrill every time.
Tonight he looked exhausted, poor guy. He worked too much. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he did all day long in that palace-office of his. His head had to be full of obscure financial stuff she didn’t have the first clue about, but he’d never so much as mentioned an interest rate when she was in earshot.
“Hi, honey. How was your day?” she asked when he drew close.
Grinning, he loosened his tie. “Did you just call me ‘honey’?”
“I was channeling Donna Reed. Imagine me with an apron tied around my waist.”
“What are you wearing under the apron?” he asked, and she smiled, remembering he was hopeless with all things pop culture.
“Never mind. It’s an American thing.”
He unlocked the building door and opened it, waving her up the stairs. Ladies first. Such a gentleman. “My day was bloody awful,” he said. “How was yours?”
“Great, actually.” After forcing her to rewrite the section on the Depression three times, Christopher had finally green-lighted adding her name to the exhibit catalog. She’d been elated all afternoon. She felt more significant, more grown up, more important than ever before. Taller, too. Like, five-foot-three. Maybe even five-four.
At the top of the steps, Nev handed her a ring with two shiny new keys on it. “That’s for you, love. I don’t like you sitting out there on the step in the dark.”
Keys. Oh, shit, keys. All the buzz washed out of her, and panic swept in to replace it. “You made me keys to your flat?”
“Yep. Try them out. You’ll want the one with the red tag on it.”
Her hand trembled as she worked the lock, but she managed it, though her brain was completely preoccupied with thinking Keys, keys, he gave you keys. Keys were a thing. A symbol. There were songs about keys. Poems about them. She wasn’t ready for keys. But here she was, unlocking the door, and what was she supposed to do, refuse to accept? They were only two pieces of metal hanging off a ring. There were limits to her assholery.
Aiming to puncture the moment’s significance, she asked, “How do you know I’m not going to paw through all your stuff when you’re not home? Steal your spare change and poke through your underwear drawer?”
“Are you?”
“Maybe.”
He smiled slightly and reached over her shoulder to push the door open. “What do you think you’ll find?”
Nothing. There wouldn’t be anything to find, because he was a good man and an open book. He’d answer any question. Give her whatever she asked him for. It made it all the more unfair, the way she protected the dragon’s eggs that were her secrets. The way she breathed fire anytime he got close to them.
“Your dead wife’s head in a box?” she suggested.
That made him laugh, which of course had been the idea. Lighten the mood. Skate away from the big, bad truth that she didn’t deserve him, because he’d gone to the trouble to make her keys, and she wouldn’t even tell him where she lived.
The worst thing was, she wanted to. Sometimes, when they were in bed together, she could feel everything she hadn’t said to him as a tight, pinched crowding at the base of her throat, and she wanted to open her mouth and blurt it all out in one rambling string of disconnected facts. Flight itineraries and hospital admissions. Tour dates and police reports. Family vacations and Christmas memories and the whole ugly story of her father’s death and her screwed-up marriage and her lost baby. She would walk him through the tattoos. Get it out and get it over with.
What stopped her was not knowing what they’d be if she did that. Because at the moment, no one could deny that whatever she and Nev had was a warped thing, twisted out of its natural shape by all the rules she’d imposed on it. Never stay the night. Never talk about the past. Never tell him anything important. Never ask him personal questions. Stick with sex, with the here-and-now, and you’ll be safe.
What if she told him all her secrets and he didn’t want to see her anymore?
It could happen, and it scared her. But not nearly as much as the alternative did. What if he found out about everything, and he took it all in stride? What would she and Nev be then? Would it flatten them out into something normal? Would they be, all of a sudden, in a relationship?
She couldn’t handle a relationship with Nev. She’d done one-night stands and one-week flings, dirty weekends and friendship with benefits, but she hadn’t done a real relationship since Jimmy, and she wasn’t going there again. Whatever it took to sustain a connection to another person, she didn’t have it. She’d never had it. She was her father’s daughter—all flash and wit, dazzle and good times. Never in it for the long haul.
That’s what the tattoos were for—to record her mistakes on her body and to remind her who she was. That’s what the rules were for, too. She’d marked out her limits so she would remember not to try to go beyond them. The tattoos were supposed to keep her safe.
But with Nev, she’d already drifted so far from safe, she couldn’t even hear New Cath’s warnings anymore. The voice of her conscience had faded, and then the semaphores got blurry and the smoke signals grew faint. She was adrift. With keys.
“Would you like a whiskey?” Nev asked.
God, yes. “Sure.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and she headed for the couch in his studio. When he reappeared, he’d lost the jacket and tie, and he had two tumblers of Scotch, neat. He slid off his shoes and dropped heavily onto the cushion beside her, handing over her drink. She turned around so they could look out the window together, her back against his chest and her head resting on his shoulder.
He took a healthy swallow, then dropped his own head onto the cushion and sighed. “That’s much better.”
It was. It always was. When their bodies touched, her mind stopped the crazy hamster-wheel shit and settled down.
They sipped in silence, listening to the noises that filtered up from the street as the room gradually darkened and the sky outside reversed itself, white-gray to gray-white. The limited transformation of an overcast London night. The whiskey lit a warm glow in her stomach, loosening all her joints, and he relaxed behind her, his breathing slowing down and deepening as one heavy hand found her thigh and made itself at home there.
This was part of their routine too. The quiet. One more thing she’d only ever found with him.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s my favorite movie.”
She was at the kitchen counter, dishing take-out noodles onto plates. Nev slid an arm around her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck. “We’re going to watch your favorite film? I really am making progress.”
She swatted at his arm playfully. “Don’t push your luck, City. I realized at work today I don’t even know your last name.”
He moved his hand down her stomach and between her thighs, making it difficult for her to operate the spoon, both because his arm was kind of in the way and because, well, yum. “My surname? It’s Chamberlain.”
He started doing something with his thumb that made her drop the spoon and suck in a breath, but then her animal brain got distracted by the hysterical shouting of her thinking brain, and she turned in his arms, pushing him back with both hands on his chest.
“What is it?” His eyes were heavy-lidded and hot, as though he’d been thinking about doing her on the countertop. Which he probably had.
“Your name is Neville Chamberlain? Like the prime minister?”
Some of the heat drained out of his gaze, and he sighed. “Yes.”
“Crikey,” she said with a grin. “You’re not related, are you?”
“Very distantly, on my mother’s side. But the name is actually my father’s doing. He’s a history buff.”
Neville Chamberlain. He hadn’t exactly won the name lottery, had he? Her name was no picnic, but at least it didn’t twin her to a prime minister best remembered for miscalculating about Hitler.
Except it had such a nice ring to it. Nev Chamberlain. Her guy. And he was wearing such a hangdog expression, as though he’d been through this conversation a thousand times and hated every one.
She decided to take the high road. “He’s my favorite prime minister,” she told him, giving his chest a pat before wrapping her arms around his waist.
“You’re taking the piss.”
“No, I’m not, I swear. He gets a bad rap for the whole appeasement thing. It always makes me sad to think of him coming back from Munich after meeting with Hitler. He must have been so proud of himself. He’d stood up to the dictator, and they�
��d negotiated, and then he got to come home and tell the people, ‘It will be peace for our time.’ ”
She said this with a little flourish, waving one arm in the air. She’d always liked that line. “Can you imagine what it was like? The country must have gone nuts, everybody totally psyched because no one wanted to have another war—not after how badly the last one had gone, and not in the middle of the freaking Depression. And then poor Neville turns out to be wrong, because Hitler was a psycho who couldn’t be trusted, and the war started pretty much the next day. He must’ve been so disappointed. But it wasn’t his fault, unless you can blame him for being too starry-eyed.”
Nev smoothed his hands down her back, shoulder blades to tailbone, then back up. She loved it when he did that. His hands were so big, it made her feel petite rather than puny. Feminine. He was trying not to smile, she could tell, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He always seemed to like it when she spouted off. “I believe that’s precisely what he’s blamed for.”
Cath shrugged. “He was just doing what everyone wanted him to do. How could he have known Hitler would turn out to be completely evil?”
At that, the smile broke loose and lit up his face. “That’s a very generous interpretation, darling. Tell me, did they teach you all this in parochial school? Because I was under the distinct impression you Yanks didn’t know anyone’s history but your own.”
He had no idea she worked with history at the V&A every day, or that her mother was from England. The gap his comment opened up between them was narrow, but a cold wind whistled through it all the same, dampening her enjoyment of the moment.
Her fault. She’d made the gap. And she was so tired of herself for doing it, so tired of all the ways her sabotage spoiled their pleasure in each other. He did dozens of things that made her happy, and sometimes she felt like she paid him back for it by shooting him repeatedly with a BB gun. One shot wasn’t going to hurt him—you couldn’t even kill a squirrel with a BB gun—but Nev didn’t deserve a hide full of holes.
Her rules were stupid. She was stupid. She was really sick of being stupid about Nev.