“Bruce, there’s something—”
“If this is the part where you admit you’re a Russian spy sent to kill me,” he said, cutting me off. “Save it. I don’t care. Not right now.”
I tried to will myself to say it anyway. I really tried, but every time he kissed me or felt hungrily at me with those big hands of his, I was torn back into his dream world, the strange place where it didn’t seem to matter that I had bills to pay and the only way they were getting paid was if I could betray Bruce. All that mattered here was what felt good and what was natural. And God, I’d never understood the meaning of natural until his hands were on me and my mouth was against his. There was nothing more natural in the world than taking more, craving more.
He picked me up, still stealing kisses even as he hauled me with my legs wrapped around his waist to the table overlooking the indoor gardens in the courtyard below. My skirt was bunched up around my waist and, to my horror, I realized I was wearing what had to be the least sexy pair of panties I owned. They were a kind of unflattering grass green with pulled threads in the fabric. Worst of all, they were a little big on me and had the definite granny panty factor going for them.
To my relief, Bruce, Mr. Control and Mr. Calm, decided to go full barbarian. Without taking his lips from mine, he reached down, took the waistband of my panties in his fist, and pulled. They didn’t snap off, they ripped off.
I gasped into his mouth and gripped the back of his neck, digging my fingernails into his skin.
“Hope you didn’t like those,” he grunted, and I thought I almost sensed surprise in his voice, like he wasn’t expecting to feel so out of control. It comforted me a little to think I wasn’t the only one who felt pulled along by some invisible but overpowering current.
“They were my favorites,” I lied. “I’m going to sue you now.”
“I understand now,” he said, gently forcing me to lay my back down on the table with my legs spread around him. “You were after my money this whole time. This was all an elaborate setup to get me to tear off your panties and land me in court.”
I licked my lips, too turned on to fully dive into the act of teasing him. “That’s right,” I said breathily. “Putting your banana in my mouth was just the first step in a long, complicated dance you didn’t know you were part of. I’m actually a mastermind, not a clutz.”
He chuckled, but the arousal in his system wiped the amusement from his face in an instant, as if he could only momentarily distract himself from what was in front of him. From me. “You almost had me going until you tried to claim you weren’t a clutz.”
“Damn,” I said. “My cover is blown, I guess.”
He stole the breath straight out of my lungs when he reached for his tie and stripped it free in one smooth motion. His eyes never left mine, and God did they hold all the dirty promises eyes could possibly hold. He knew his slow, unhurried pace was torture for me as I laid there helplessly exposed before him, but he showed no mercy.
He undid each button with deliberate movements that seemed to take forever.
One button. The top of his tanned chest and a hint of his clavicle.
Two buttons. A deep crease running between his pecs and a hint of the raised muscle of his chest.
Three buttons. The distinct line where his pecs end and the first pair of perfectly defined abs.
He never made it to four, because I lost my patience. I sat myself up, grabbed both sides of his shirt, and spread it wide. I didn’t care if I popped buttons in the process. He had destroyed my panties, after all. Forget the fact that his shirt probably cost a hundred dollars and my panties were a bargain bin steal—that wasn’t the point.
He made a sound somewhere between a growl and a grunt as the shirt tore free and I got a front-row seat to the kind of body you normally only saw on big screens or in fashion magazines. "Well, there goes your legal grounds, intern," he said.
“Fuck the money. I just want you.”
I didn’t have to wonder if my words had any effect on him, because he stripped out of his pants and tore off the rest of my clothes in what felt like milliseconds. In an instant, we were both completely bare. I might’ve felt self-conscious, but the way his eyes were drinking me in left no room for doubt. He liked what he saw.
I knew some girls looked at porn, but I’d always felt weird about it. Consequently, I’d only seen one guy naked before, and it was safe to say, I hadn’t fully understood that the guy I had been with must’ve been on the very small side. That, or Bruce was fortunate. Very fortunate.
I expected him to try to slide himself in right away, but instead he knelt down in front of the table. I half-sat and had to fight the urge to press my legs together. It was one thing to be naked in front of him, it was another to have his face just inches from my most intimate places. He didn’t give me time to worry about it though, because when his lips met my inner thigh, all my worries melted away in a rush of white-hot pleasure.
I leaned back on my elbows, not wanting to lay completely flat because the sight of him doing his work was too hot to close my eyes or look away.
“You don’t have to…” I was barely speaking above a whisper, and I didn’t know why I was trying to talk him out of it when every cell in my body was screaming for him to keep going.
He met my eyes as he slowly ran the flat of his tongue from my inner thigh to my pussy. My mouth shot open in a silent gasp and my body tensed. I was left gasping from just a few seconds of the intimate contact, and absolutely famished for more.
“You want me to stop, then?” he asked with a cocky grin.
“Don’t you dare.”
He buried his face between my legs and went to work on me like I was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. I gripped his hair, the table, his shoulders, and whatever else I could get a hold of.
He used his lips, the tip of his tongue, the base of his tongue, and his fingers. They all worked together in a kind of choreography that felt designed to melt me from the inside out. A kind of pressure like I’d never felt before was building inside me, and it felt so strong I was almost afraid to feel the climax I knew was rapidly approaching.
I came when he slid three fingers into me and flicked my clit with his tongue, all while he looked up at me with those impossibly sexy eyes of his. It was too much. I flattened myself against the table and I couldn’t hold in the sounds any longer. Before, I’d been biting back the loudest of the moans threatening to escape from me, but now they all came free. I gasped, I writhed, and I eventually sat up to look at the man who was now upgraded from Sex Robot to Sex Magician, because there was nothing robotic about what just happened, and the way that slick tongue of his had made me instantly forget all the ways he had tried to piss me off over the past week was nothing short of magic.
My eyes wandered down his body to his erect cock, and I raised an eyebrow at him. And then the phone rang.
I expected him to ignore it, but Bruce glanced at his cell, which was sitting on the corner of the table, where he must’ve stripped it from his pocket before dropping his pants. He seemed to recognize the number on the ID and he actually snatched the phone up.
“What is it?” he asked.
I tried not to let my disappointment show. Until now, I’d felt like the only thing in the world that mattered to him. It was a good feeling. An amazing feeling. Then one simple act managed to undermine it all. I sat up and gathered my blouse, which was sitting beside me on the table, and held it in my lap, positioning my arms to cover my breasts as much as I could. He hadn’t sent me away, but I immediately felt strange and silly for being naked, even as he stood there looking like a statue carved by a Greek master sculptor, completely naked and completely erect.
There was a pause while the person on the other line spoke. Bruce’s eyes shifted to me in a way that wasn’t entirely kind. It was the kind of way I thought you’d look at someone you were worried was eavesdropping.
“I can go,” I said quickly.
Bruce h
esitated. He looked at the phone again, eyebrows drawing down as he listened to whatever was being said. “Raincheck?” he asked.
My stomach felt like it dropped straight through me. I was mortified, embarrassed, and more than a little pissed off to be thrown out because of a phone call. Obviously, this didn't mean much to him, even if I had been busy trying to turn it into something significant in my own head. I didn't want him to see my disappointment. If he knew how much his dismissal stung, he'd know how much I had been willing to give up for him. At least this way I could pretend it was casual for me, too.
I got up as nonchalantly as I could and slid back into my bra, blouse, and skirt. I even snatched up the torn remains of my panties and tucked them into my purse before giving him a tight-lipped smile and leaving.
I could still feel where I was wet between my legs from his kisses and his tongue. I could feel the numb tingle in my lips where we’d kissed each other raw. But now, it all felt like just another taunt. Another teasing reminder by him that he owned me and I was nothing but a toy for him to cruelly bat around until he got bored.
I was suddenly glad I hadn’t confessed the real reason for my internship, after all. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a hit to my conscious when I found dirt on him and exposed it.
10
Bruce
I told Natasha to take the day off, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when she was waiting in front of my apartment in the company car. She had her hair pulled up into a business-like bun, which almost made her look professional.
I leaned in the passenger window and reached to rub something purple and sticky from the corner of her mouth. I licked my finger and grinned. “Toast with jelly for breakfast?” I asked.
She cleared her throat while she rubbed at the spot. “I don’t know how that got there. I must’ve bumped into someone’s breakfast on my way out this morning.”
“Of course.” I pulled open the door and got in. “That’s the most likely explanation, by a long shot. So, mind telling me why you aren’t taking the day off like I asked?”
She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and stared at the road. “Because I’m not going to let what happened last night in the office make things awkward. Whatever that was… it happened, and it doesn’t matter how it happened. I’m still your intern and I’m going to do my job.”
“Even if your job is putting up with my shit until you quit out of sheer frustration?”
She relaxed her grip on the wheel a little and grinned. “And how is that different than any other job?”
“Well, I’m not paying you, for starters.”
“There is that,” she admitted. “But internships are the new slavery. If you’re under thirty and you want a job, you’ve got to be lucky or talented out of your mind to avoid them.”
“Don’t forget the forty and over crowd,” I added. “They don’t get hired either because they’re more expensive than you young slaves, or we just assume they don’t know how to work email.”
She thought about that for a second. “I guess you picked just about the only way to make it in the world, didn’t you? Become your own boss and make your own rules.”
“Until you meet somebody who refuses to play by them,” I said. I let my eyes linger on her long enough for her to understand my meaning.
She looked down, chewing her lip in a way that was quickly becoming my kryptonite. “Natasha… I’m sorry about last night.”
She shook her head, quickly straightening and staring back at the road again. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s what it was. Sex is just sex, anyway, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though it had felt like it was going to be a whole lot more than sex. It had felt like I was about to throw away all the precautions I’d been taking with my heart for the last two years, like I was going to dive in head first and say screw the consequences. But then I saw Valerie’s number on my phone. She only ever called when something was wrong with Caitlyn, and I knew it was a call I needed to take.
"I'll be blunt," I said. "I asked you to stay home because I'm going to see my ex-girlfriend today. She was the one who called last night."
Natasha’s face fell, but she was quick to smooth her expression back to neutral. “Okay. Where does she live?”
“Natasha,” I said. “I can get my driver to do this. You don’t have to—”
“I’m just your intern,” she said. “Right? Why should I care if I have to drive you to see your ex?”
“I’m just saying you don’t have to. You can take the day off.”
“No,” she said. She started the car and merged into traffic, and I was almost grateful that she didn’t talk for the rest of the drive.
We parked just inside the north end of Tribeca. Natasha glanced around and then gave me a curious look. “Isn’t this the part of the city where people like Leonardo Dicaprio live? Was your ex a movie star?”
“No,” I said. It wasn’t easy, but I kept the bitterness from my voice. “A waitress, actually.”
The curiosity on Natasha’s face deepened. “And she lives here?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay, you win. I’m curious. Are you going to make me beg, or do I need to resort to blackmail? Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the torn panties. Last I checked, destruction of personal property was a pretty big deal in a legal court.”
Her words immediately brought me back to last night, and I felt the rush all over again. She had tasted so goddamn good, but the farther I got from what happened, the more it felt like it was the kind of experience we couldn’t repeat. Valerie’s call had come at the worst possible moment, and it felt like some kind of warning from the universe to avoid making the same mistake again.
Even though nothing about Natasha felt the same. Still, there were multiple paths to the same destination, and every path I’d ever started with a relationship or a commitment had lead to the same dead end.
“There’s nothing to tell, really. I was stupid and thought she was into me. Turned out, she was into my bank accounts. Literally. I was the dumbass who decided we were far enough along to trust her, and once she’d taken as much as she wanted for herself, it was too late. I wasn’t going to drag her into a legal battle because it’d mean dragging her daughter along for the ride.”
“You have a daughter?” asked Natasha, who stopped walking suddenly and put her hand on my arm.
“No,” I said. “Caitlyn was Valerie’s daughter from a previous relationship. She’ll be nine next month.”
“And you let Valerie get away with robbing you to protect her daughter? Jesus,” she said to herself. “You must really care about Caitlyn.”
“She’s a good kid, but no judge in his right mind would give me any kind of visitation rights.” I chuckled, studying the ground as we walked. “To tell the truth, I think I had stopped feeling right about things with Valerie before I ever found out, but somehow I knew she’d take Caitlyn away if I ever broke things off. She was spiteful like that, and she knew how to get me where it hurt.”
“I’m sorry. Is that what the phone call was about? Does she want more money?”
I was surprised again by how perceptive Natasha was. It was easy to see the pretty face and the fit body and think she was like so many women in this city—pretty on the outside and empty on the inside. She had a way of constantly reminding me she was far more than that, though. “More or less,” I said.
“So she lives in Tribeca but she’s still begging you for money?”
“You know what? Why don’t you come inside when I go to see her. I think it’ll be easier to understand if you see for yourself.”
11
Natasha
Valerie’s apartment was massive. It was the penthouse suite in building that used to be some kind of industrial factory, which was true of most buildings in the area. At some point, a developer came along and gutted out most of the industrial buildings to turn them into what was basically the closest you coul
d get to mansion-style living in downtown New York. I cringed to imagine how much Valerie must’ve stolen from Bruce to be able to afford a place like this.
Bruce looked so put together and clean as I followed him through the lobby of her building. It was impossible to stop picturing the perfect body under his suit and the way he had grinned while he was eating me out. The memory sent a hot shiver through me.
Time had only managed to make me more confused. On the one hand, I was still offended that he sent me away in the middle of what we were doing because of a phone call. At the very least, I deserved an explanation. He had to have known how self-conscious it made me to be sent away in the middle of the act like that, as if I’d done something wrong or soured him on the idea.
The bit of explanation I got as we walked from the car was a step in the right direction, but it still didn’t feel like it was enough to put my mind at ease.
I had the piece for Hank to think about, and as the days drew on, I felt more of a desperation to get it moving in any direction. I’d originally figured just being around Bruce would be enough for something useful to leak my way, but I hadn’t heard a word. Besides, every time my personal feelings got mixed up into the equation, I questioned whether I’d even be willing to go through with writing a piece that could hurt him. If I was being honest, I knew I couldn’t, as things currently stood. But it was easier to keep going through the motions than face reality.
I didn’t have a payday coming until I finished this piece, and quitting the piece would mean quitting as Bruce’s intern. Writing the piece would mean cutting Bruce out of my life, too. I knew I wasn’t ready to do that, but the clock was ticking. My bills weren’t stopping any time soon, and before long, I was going to have to do something. But what was I supposed to do when I didn’t like any of my options?
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