We both froze when we seemed to realize at the same time that he was pressing a tissue to my breast. I looked up at Bruce, who was looking at his own hand almost in confusion, but desire was clear in his features.
“If you wanted to grope me,” I said through a tight, nervous throat. “You didn’t have to spit coffee on me.”
He pulled his hand back, and for the first time since I’d met him, he actually smiled. It was a good smile. It was the kind of smile that made your heart melt and made girls fall in love. It was self-deprecating, genuine, and so, so sexy. And the way his eyes flicked up to meet mine, twinkling with what I could’ve almost called mischief was the cherry on top. “Sugar,” he said.
“Yes?” I asked.
He frowned at me, then put a hand up to cover his widening smile and laughed.
“Oh,” I blurted, “Oh, yes. Yes. I put sugar in the coffee.” I had thought he was calling me sugar, and I actually answered to it? My God.
He still wore that gorgeous smile as he looked down at me and set his coffee on the table. “So,” he said. “Is that what you’d like me to call you instead of intern? Sugar?”
A blush exploded through me. I hung my head, torn between laughing and crying. “Actually, I’d just like to know where the best place to curl up and die of embarrassment is. Know anywhere nice?”
“You could come under my desk,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he meant it as flirtation or not, but from the way he tensed after a few seconds, I thought it was unintentional. “I don’t think that would be a good idea right now. I’d get into trouble down there.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What kind of trouble could you possibly get into under my desk?”
“They say once an intern gets a taste of their boss’ banana, they never really stop craving it.” I tried to stop myself from saying it, I really did, but he had set me up far, far too perfectly for the dirty joke. I owed it to the universe to say it.
I expected him to laugh or even to act disappointed, but I only saw that same heat and intensity spark up in his eyes from when he was pressing the napkin to my breast.
He took half a step toward me, and for a crazy moment, I thought he was going to pin me to the door and kiss me. For an equally crazy second, I thought I wanted him to.
I cleared my throat and reached past him to pick up the coffee. “I’ll fix this. I’m sorry,” I said quickly and turned to half-run back to the break room.
I leaned against the wall in the break room a minute later and blew out a long, calming breath while a new pot of coffee brewed. I jumped when I thought I saw Bruce come strolling in, but something was off about him. Then it clicked. The messy hair. No tie. A few buttons undone. It was William.
“It’s the prodigal intern,” he said cheerily. “Tell me. Does my brother let you make coffee for other people, or does he want you all to himself?”
“He doesn’t own me,” I said a little more bitterly than I intended to. “I mean. I can make you a cup, if you like.”
William nodded, but the grin he wore was far too knowing for my liking. “What happened to you. Tried to take a coffee shower? With your clothes on?”
“Your brother apparently doesn’t like the taste of sugar.”
William squinted his eyes, as if he didn’t fully understand but didn’t completely care. “So,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning in the doorway. “What’s your story, anyway? Why is Bruce so interested in you?”
“Did he say something?” I asked, hating how hopeful I sounded.
William’s grin widened. “You know what, nevermind. I can see the whole picture here.” He laughed softly. “By the way, did you realize you’ve only been wearing pencil skirts since I told you my brother has a fetish for them? Naughty little intern, you.”
I blushed deeply. I couldn’t lie and say it was a coincidence. “I have a limited wardrobe.”
“Right. Well, since you’re definitely not secretly hoping to seduce my brother, I guess you wouldn’t be interested in his one glaring weakness.”
I tried so hard not to ask, but I couldn’t do it. “What is it?”
“A banana split. The guy would sell his soul for bananas and ice cream.”
I made a skeptical face. “I can’t picture him eating ice cream.”
“Well, believe it or not, he wasn’t always so uptight. A girl royally fucked him over, and his whole ‘never make the same mistake twice’ thing kind of went on the fritz. He has been pretty unbearable ever since. I’ve been waiting for him to get tired of it, but he hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.”
“I see. And you’re supplying me with his kryptonite because you’re hoping I’ll sleep with him and loosen him up? That’s sick. You realize that, right?”
“Hey, there’s nothing sick about two consenting adults having sex. And there’s nothing sick about a man’s brother wanting to do what’s best for him. Just think it over. He needs it. You’d be doing a public service for both of us.”
I made a disgusted sound. “Even if I had secretly thought about sleeping with him, which I haven’t, you just made it so weird I could never do it.”
William dismissed my concerns with a flap of his hand and that grin he wore so easily. “It’s uncomfortable when someone sees right through all your pretenses. I get it. I’ll take my coffee and get out of your hair. But just remember. Banana split. Oh, and he likes dirty talk. Remember that. Drives him wild.”
William actually winked at me after I poured his coffee.
I stared at the coffee pot for a few minutes before I mustered up the strength to go back into Bruce’s office. I didn’t appreciate William and his cocky surety that I really was interested in Bruce. I had never fully come out of the high school mindset that sex was something special. Most of the women I knew, especially being in New York, took a much more liberal approach to sex. For them, it was a fun pastime. Something to do for a night as long as the guy clearly wasn’t a creeper and was clean.
I wasn’t even sure what had triggered me to make it into something so sacred and mystical. Yeah, I’d slept with a couple guys before. Okay, one guy. But I’d seen plenty of movies and heard the war stories from friends. I had a first-hand experience with exactly how fast a man can reach orgasm and the deep, dirty shame I felt afterwards when it was over.
I met the guy who took my virginity on a dating site after my college friends had bullied me into making a profile. We went out three times, and all my friends were telling me date number three basically has an unwritten requirement to end in sex if things are going well. I had felt weird about it. So weird. The guy was cute and we got along okay, but it hadn’t felt like the right time. Still, I went through with it. All thirty seconds of it.
I broke things off shortly after because the sex felt like it highlighted all the future problems I’d have with him. It was probably an overreaction, but it was the way I felt, and intimacy had intimidated me ever since.
And then there was Bruce.
If William thought I was seriously considering trying to sleep with the man, he really wasn’t even close to understanding me. I had enough trouble imagining sex with a guy I’d been dating—a guy I was getting along with. But Bruce?
Sex with him would be… hateful? I wasn't sure. The only ways I can imagine it happening were rough and raw and intense. It wouldn't be anything like the candlelit romantic pleasure cruise I had gradually built up as my ideal sexual fantasy. And yet I couldn't help feeling a cold shiver that quickly turned into warmth every time I thought about how his arms would be like steel, how strangely good it would feel to have some kind of power over a man who seemed to have the world at his feet. I kept thinking about how strangely wonderful it would feel to grip his length and watch all the power drain out of him, transferred to me as I took the captain's seat in his life, even if it was just for a while.
I groaned out loud. Maybe William wasn’t completely wrong, but he was still crude and he was still an ass.
I shook
the thoughts from my head. I had a job to do.
I knew Bruce would be getting impatient already for his coffee. I wouldn’t put it past him to know exactly how long the walk to the break room takes and how long it takes to brew a fresh cup of coffee. He’d probably be able to tell me exactly how many seconds longer I had taken than I should’ve. He could deal with it though, and if he really cared to ask, I’d tell him I was in the bathroom.
I loitered in the break room for another minute or so until a pair of women came in.
“Don’t even ask about the Murdoch account,” said the older of the two women. She wore a rueful smile. “You’ll just remind him and we’ll all end up stuck here for the weekend until we get it sorted out.”
“Ugh,” said the other, who was helping herself to coffee. “You’re probably right.”
The woman with the coffee noticed me then. She was a few inches taller than me and looked to be in her thirties with a pretty, freckle-smeared nose and brown hair. “You’re Bruce’s new intern, right?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Word has already spread, I guess?”
She nodded. “Bruce has never made a secret of how much he hates the idea of interns, and I’ve never known him to have one, so yeah. People were naturally pretty curious when you showed up.”
She paused, and I realized she was waiting for me to explain what the real story was. I also realized she and most of the office must have their own explanation already. They thought I was sleeping with him, or that he was hoping to sleep with me. I wished I could brush off the way their assumption stung, but I couldn’t. All these people I’d never even met were so ready to assume I fell neatly into the stereotype of the young intern looking to get ahead. I guessed I shouldn’t be too surprised. It was easier to think the worst of someone you didn’t know than to bother learning the truth.
I made an effort at a polite smile and laughed a little. It seemed like the best way to diffuse the situation without having to explain the truth, which was probably too ridiculous to believe anyway. He caught me eating his banana and he hired me to punish me.
“So?” she asked. She wasn’t going to let me off easy, apparently. “Are you two… you know.”
“No, no. Definitely not.” I tried to scrunch my face up to show just how crazy that idea was. “Absolutely not.”
“Are you in a relationship, then?”
“Nope,” I said, even though I was quickly reaching the point of wanting to tell this nosy woman to shove her fifty questions up her butt and leave me alone.
The other woman who had come in with her had picked up on the conversation, and leaned in a little bit. “If Bruce Chamberson wanted me to be his intern just for sex, I wouldn’t fight it.”
The woman with the coffee laughed in surprise. “Stacy! You’re married.”
Stacy shrugged. “If Michael saw Bruce, he’d understand. Though to be honest, I think I’d have more fun with William.”
The woman nodded. “Sure. But if you wanted an actual relationship, I think Bruce would be the better bet. William would be the one if you wanted something with no strings attached. Bruce strikes me as the type who would get really possessive.” She thought about that, then crinkled her eyes and grinned. “In the sexy man-bear kind of way.”
Stacy laughed, and I started to feel like my chance to slip out of the conversation was here.
“Well, I’ve got to get back to the man-bear,” I said.
Both women laughed.
“Oh to be young again,” said Stacy as I was leaving the break room, even though she couldn’t have been more than a few years my senior.
I did my best to gather my wits on the way back to Bruce’s office. It was only my first week, and I already felt like I’d been sucked into something far more turbulent and out of my control than I expected. I could quickly feel my own emotions getting tangled into this, into what was supposed to be a job. Candace seemed to think I was crazy for not wanting to sleep with Bruce. The women in the break room clearly did. Even Bruce’s brother was pretty much telling me to sleep with him.
I was starting to think Bruce and I were the only people on the Earth who didn’t want us to sleep together. But if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t sure that was true. The look in Bruce’s eyes floated into my thoughts, and I couldn’t forget the way his touch on my breast had ignited something in me that still felt like it was raging deep down.
Getting dirt on Bruce might be the least of my challenges. It was starting to seem like I was also going to have to figure out how the hell I’d deal with my growing, confusing feelings toward him.
8
Bruce
It was such a picturesque day that it could make me sick. Birds were chirping, the grass on the golf course was green and perfectly manicured. A man-made outcropping of rocks lined the lake, which was home to a flock of ducks that occasionally dunked their heads underwater to snag a juicy bit of whatever it was ducks ate. Even the weather was nice.
I stepped out of the golf cart and looked at my caddy, who was actually wearing the hat I’d told her to wear, much to my surprise. “Five-iron, please.”
Natasha looked like she would rather bash me over the head with a golf club than hand me one. “And which one is that, master?” she asked sarcastically.
“The one with a five on it. No wonder I don’t pay you.”
She slid the club out of the bag and walked toward me with a look of pure fire in her eyes. I tried not to notice the way her hips swayed in the boyish khaki pants she wore, or the way her black polo fit her form so well and gave me a tantalizing glimpse of her cleavage. She looked absolutely ridiculous in the floppy hat I’d told her she had to wear to be my caddy, but it was admittedly a cute kind of ridiculous. The hat was the kind every guy wore back in the fifties.
I took the club from her, feeling a flicker of excitement when our fingers touched.
It was strange, with her, my desire to purge her from my life only got stronger the longer I spent with her. She’d been working for me over a week now, and I’d already lost count of how many times she had fucked up my routine. Yet at the same time, a strange, confusing part of me kind of enjoyed the challenge of bringing her in line. There might have even been a protective part of me that felt a need to save her from herself. After all, I’d seen how likely she was to fall down a flight of stairs or walk into traffic by mistake. Keeping her at my side might have been more about keeping her alive than it was about whatever this strange game we were playing was.
“Remind me again how this counts as a business event?” she asked.
“Well,” I said. “See those men over there?” I pointed to Alec and Von, who were playing the hole behind us a few hundred yards away. “Those are two Swedish entrepreneurs who are looking to launch a chain of restaurants in the U.S. Word is, their goal is to be nationwide within five years. I want them to choose Galleon, so I show up to the same golf outing as them. I give them their space, but let them see me around—by coincidence, of course. When everyone stops to grab a few drinks in the clubhouse after our round, who knows, maybe we’ll end up talking some business with them.”
“And you needed to dress me up like a clown to accomplish that?” I asked.
“To be honest? I didn’t think you’d actually wear the clothes I had Linda bring you.”
I’d seen Natasha blush plenty of times, but the red that flushed her face now might have been the first angry blush I’d seen.
I couldn’t help grinning a little, which felt strange. I’d never been the type to smile easily or find amusement in much of anything. At least not since Valerie.
“You know,” she said, words laced with anger. “Everybody in your office thinks you’re just keeping me around as a kind of sex slave. Dressing me up like this isn’t going to help dispel the rumors.”
“So what if they do? It’ll keep any of the guys in the office from thinking it’d be a good idea to hit on you.”
“What?” she asked. “No one is allowed to hi
t on me, now?”
“Unless they want to be fired, no. They had better not.”
She folded her arms over her chest, which had the incidental effect of pressing her breasts together in a distracting way. “Is that part of my punishment, then? You want to make sure I can’t even hope to meet a guy while I’m your slave?”
“No. It’s because you work for me. You’re mine. I don’t want anybody touching what’s mine. Simple as that.”
“Yours?” she asks incredulously. “And what happens if I don’t want to be a dusty trophy on your shelf?”
“Then you can quit. Until then, you are playing by my rules.”
“You’re a real bastard. You know that?” She pressed her lips together in an angry line, looked at my golf bag, and then hopped in the golf cart and sped off. I watched after her, nearly laughing out loud when she had to drive a loop and come back after a few seconds. She got out of the cart angrily, rifled through the pouch on the front of my golf bag, and snatched the keys out. “I forgot these. Okay?” she snapped, face blazing red, and then she got back in the cart and drove off.
I shook my head. The damn woman really had a way of pissing me off and intriguing me at the same time.
It was almost nine in the evening and I was still at the office. I did everything I could to keep my life to a strict schedule, but staying late for work was a surprisingly small disruption to my routine, and it was one I didn’t mind.
The difference was that Natasha was still in the office, too, meaning the entire building was empty except for cleaning staff, myself, and the intern.
I was at my desk, trying to make sure I had the last details perfectly in place for a briefing with one of our biggest clients tomorrow. My stomach was rumbling because I’d actually lost track of the dinner I’d packed. I was sure I left it in the break room fridge, but when I checked for it at my usual dinner time thirty minutes ago, it was gone.
Natasha stuck her head in the office. “You realize I’m not working out here, right? You’ve never actually given me any kind of job except to follow you around and annoy you, so I was wondering if I could go home yet.”
His Banana Page 6