by Cat Carmine
I cross the floor towards him and he grabs me roughly, turning me so that I’m pressed up against his big mahogany desk. He kisses me, forcing his tongue into my mouth, his hands into my hair. He doesn’t go gentle and I don’t want him to. I want to be consumed by him. I want him to devour me whole.
I kiss him back. Passion courses between us. I know it’s physical but I can’t help but feel that there’s more to it than that. I feel like we’re drowning and we’re both clinging to each other for safety — or maybe to pull each other down into the darkness.
William’s hands go to my breasts, manhandling them and pinching and twisting at my nipples. I moan into his mouth. The pain of it feels so good I can hardly breathe.
He lifts me up so that I’m actually sitting on the desk, then he roughly spreads my knees and steps in between them. He spears his finger roughly into me and I gasp at the sudden shock of his touch.
“You like that?” He moves his finger in and out. “You like it when I finger you?”
“Yes,” I breathe into his mouth.
His ferocity is sending raven sparks coursing through my entire body. Sparks aren’t everything but in this moment I want to believe that sparks are enough. I pull him closer to me, grinding my hips against his hand, forcing him deeper inside of me.
Wetness pools between my legs, soaking him to the wrist.
Without warning, he forces my naked body backwards onto the desk, so fast and hard that my head clunks against the wood. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, just stands above me, unloosing his tie.
As he slips it off from around his neck, he reaches for my arms and pulls them up over his head. He uses his tie to bind them above my head, stretched high enough that they hang over the far edge of the desk.
He steps around and opens a drawer in his desk and pulls another cord of some kind. He moves to the foot of the desk and I can’t figure out what he’s doing.
Until I feel him wrap the cord around my ankle. He secures it to the leg of the desk. Then he comes around the side and does the same thing to my other leg. My knees are hooked over the side of the desk and I have only an inch or two of wiggle room. My pussy is spread, leaving me completely at his mercy.
“William,” I breathe.
“I’m going to fuck you, Claire. But first I’m going to make you beg.”
“Don’t you think I’ve begged enough?”
“There’s no such thing as enough.”
He undoes the buckle on his belt, the the top of his pants. He slides them down over rock hard thighs, and his dick springs towards me. Hard, red, yearning.
He steps between my legs and rubs the head of his dick across my pussy. His juices mingle with mine and I feel slick and ready for him. But he doesn’t do it yet. He holds his dick at my entrance and lets the head rest there.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Tell me what else you want.”
“I want you, William.”
“Tell me.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Is that so?”
“Please. Please fuck me.”
“Go on.” He’s nudging the head just inside of me now, and the pressure is exquisite, but I want nothing more than for him to ram his dick all the way inside of me and fuck me hard and strong, like the dominant man that he is.
“Oh God. Please, William. Please fuck my pussy.”
He slides in a little further, until the head is inside me, but it’s still not enough. I take in his bulging muscles, all flexed as he holds himself back, his steely grey eyes burning a hole into my soul.
“Please, William. Please fuck me, sir.”
With a groan, he slams his dick all the way inside of me. I scream out at the intensity of it. Then he slides back out slowly.
“Say it again.”
“Please fuck me, sir.”
He plows into me one more time, then again slowly withdraws. I can feel every single sensation as his dick slides through the length of me. Then the hollowness as he withdraws.
“Again.”
“Fuck me, sir. Please.”
With another grunt he slams back in. This time he doesn’t withdraw. He grips my hips and pistons his cock in and out, pounding away at me like a jackhammer. I try to grip him with my knees before I remember my legs are tied. I settle for trying to scooch down lower on the desk so that I can keep him closer, tighter.
He puts a hand on my rib cage, pressing hard to keep me from moving, and he continues to pound his dick into my wet hot pussy. I can feel wetness leaking out of me, soaking both of us. I want to reach down and touch my clit, but with my hands tied, I can’t.
William slides his hands under my ass and lifts my hips a little, just enough that the angle changes and he can get in even deeper. He’s fucking me hard now, so hard that I feel like I might break.
I look up at his face, and realize he’s gazing at me with an intensity I’ve never seen before. I realize then that I belong to him, body and soul. There’s no walking away from this. There’s only falling.
I’ll do whatever I can to please this man.
I clench my pussy muscles tighter around him. He reaches down to stroke my clit with his thumb, circling it slowly the way he knows that I like. I feel the orgasm start to rip through me, violent as an earthquake, taking over my body. I want to grab onto his shoulders or wrap my legs around him and I strain against the ties. The sensation sends me even further over the cliff and I scream his name over and over and over as I come.
William smiles down at me and his smile is so deliciously wicked that I almost come again. He holds my thighs and forces himself deeper into me, thrusting without withdrawing, keeping himself buried deep in my warm folds.
I feel his dick spasm inside me and see the look of something I can’t name cross over his face. Then he’s filling me with white hot seed.
He collapses on top of me, breathing heavily. Now it’s my turn to smile. He looks up and kisses me. Not being able to use my hands to caress him is driving me crazy, but in a good way. The tightness of the cords is keeping me excited.
William glances down at the big silver watch on his wrist.
“Shit. I have a meeting to get to.”
“Huh. Don’t you have a secretary who’s supposed to remind you of these things?”
He grins. “Yes, I believe I do. She’s obviously not very good at her job though. I think I’m going to have to punish her.”
“I think so too. Maybe you should leave her tied up and spread naked on your desk while you’re at your meeting. Maybe that will teach her.”
William’s face changes immediately. Darkness covers his features, as strange and sudden as a solar eclipse. He has never exactly exuded warmth, but now he is downright glacial.
He moves around to the top of the desk and unties my hands without a word. I sit up and rub my wrists and watch in confusion as he unties the cords that bind my ankles to his desk.
“Did I do something wrong?” I finally ask.
William glares me. “No. But apparently I did.”
“What are you talking about?” My gut is churning. I feel like I’ve fucked something up and I don’t even know what it is.
“I think you should go,” he says quietly. His tone is scarier than if he were yelling. It’s ice cold and filled with barely repressed rage.
And I have no idea why.
19
William
I don’t go to my meeting because — fuck it. I’m the boss and I don’t have to go if I don’t want to. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a petulant child. I know that sitting through a meeting with that fucking prick Larry Ogilvie would make me want to gouge my eyes out with a pen.
I still have to get out of here though, and I know just the place to go.
Claire is sitting at her desk when I come out of my office but I don’t look at her even though I can feel her soft brown eyes following me with every step I take. I’ll deal with that situation later.
I drive like a demon to the club and head to the change rooms. I keep extra clothes there so I put on shorts and a t-shirt, glad to be shedding the structure and stiffness of that suit. I make my way to the punching bag. There’s already a guy there but I elbow him out of the way.
“I need this more than you do right now,” I tell him, by way of apology. He swears at me but he stalks off, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I wail on that bag until every part of my body hurts. My shoulders, arms, biceps. My knuckles are bloody, and I’ve even cut the corner of my lip when I swung at the bag so hard it ricocheted back towards my face.
But despite the pain and the physical fatigue, my mind is still racing, turning over and over again to Claire’s words from earlier.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Could it?
Everything was so similar to the situation with Lila. Lila had fooled me into believing she’d had feelings with me — and then she’d used that against me. She’d tricked me into leaving her tied up in my office, only to be ‘discovered’ by my secretary.
That dalliance had cost me. And even though it had been a piddling amount in the grand scheme of things, it was the principle that mattered.
No one played me like a fool. No one.
But I had never felt this riled up about Lila. I had been pissed but not livid the way I am now. I never got that boiling feeling in my gut that I have right now, the kind that makes me want to throw up and punch something at the same time.
I walk over to the juice bar and get a bottle of water that claims to contain electrolytes, a hundred and eight vitamins, and the tears of elven princesses. It tastes just like regular water and does nothing to settle the acrid burn in my stomach.
I decide to call my lawyer. If Claire is involved in a lawsuit — maybe even the lawsuit from Prescott & Bailey — he may have heard something.
I shower quickly and half-assedly, then change back into my suit and go sit in my SUV. It’s quiet out here and now that I’m alone with my own thoughts I find myself getting riled up again.
I don’t know why this has got me so on edge. If she is plotting something against me, I’ll just deal with her the way I’ve dealt with all the rest of them. Bitches always take cash.
Claire wouldn’t…
The little voice inside me is quiet but I can still hear it.
Claire wouldn’t do that, it says. She’s different.
Maybe.
I dial James’ private cell and he picks up right away.
“Will! Nice to hear from you.”
“What do you know about Claire?” I demand, cutting right to the chase. I have no time for pleasantries.
“Claire?”
“Claire Hearst. My secretary.”
“Oh. Nothing. Why? Is there something I should know?”
For the first time since I finished fucking Claire several hours ago, my shoulders finally start to relax. Maybe it really was a coincidence.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing.”
“Okay, well, I’ll keep my ears open. Hey, by the way, little update for you on the Kurtz, Marsden and Park case. Looks like they’re pretty serious. They have at least one official complainant. A Kelly Diamante. Ring any bells?”
My balls just about suction up into my body. Fuck yeah, it rang a bell. I didn’t know who she was but I knew Claire knew her.
In fact, I knew Claire had just recently made plans to see her.
I’d walked by her desk the other day just as she was getting off the phone with someone. She’d called her Kelly.
Fuck.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
I was a fucking idiot.
“James, I got to go. Let me know if you hear anything else. From now on, consider this your number one fucking priority.”
“Got it, Will. Take care, okay?” James sounds concerned, but I don’t care. I hang up the phone and punch the SUV’s horn.
“Fuck!” I say into the interior of the car.
“Fuck!” I slam on the horn again and listen to it echo through the parking lot, sending a flock of pigeons sailing off into the twilight sky.
Even though it’s late, I go back to the office. I can’t wait any longer to figure this out.
Claire is long gone. Everyone is. I storm through the office like a rodeo bull unleashed. God help anyone who gets in my way right now.
When I get to my office I go straight to Claire’s desk. I have an override password that gets me into her computer. I’ve never felt the need to use it with her and I’ve tried to respect her privacy, but now I think, fuck her privacy. I scan through her emails but they’re all work related. The only personal ones are to or from me. I cringe now, to look at our flirty exchanges.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I will fucking come at you.
I don’t have Claire’s personal email information, but I open up a web browser and surf around to a couple of the more popular free email providers. Sure enough, she’s still logged in on one. There are all her personal emails, right there for me to read.
Silly naive Claire. Did you really underestimate me?
Right away I see it. An email from Kelly Diamante.
Fuck. I pound the desk with my fist.
I knew it. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it.
I click on the email. Unfortunately there’s not much there — just Kelly saying she couldn’t put anything in an email and asking for Claire to call her. I scroll down and see the multiple emails Claire had sent to her before that one came in. They were all a mix of chatty and concerned. Basically Claire checking on Kelly and wanting to know if she was okay.
I take a deep breath, trying to make sense of this. I still don’t know exactly what Claire’s role is in all of this.
I scan the rest of her emails but there isn’t anything of note. I sit back in her chair. My gut is still rolling but my breathing is somewhat back to normal. I swing around in her chair the way I’ve seen her do so many times.
Her desk is as tidy as ever. There are only a few neatly stacked papers and file folders off on the corner, and a jar of yellow tulips off to one side. I flip through the folders idly, not expecting to find anything.
Something slips out of one of folders and flutters to the ground. I reach down to pick it up.
It’s a business card. White and burgundy.
My heart stops for a second. Maybe three seconds — one for each name on the card.
Kurtz, Marsden and Park.
Fuck. Me.
20
Claire
I get to work in the morning, but barely. After lying awake until four in the morning, I finally got up and threw back a couple of shots of Vanessa’s tequila to try to help myself get to sleep. It sort of worked, but when my alarm went off at seven I felt groggy and out of it.
Of course, that’s sort of how I’ve been feeling since yesterday.
I still have no idea what happened with William. How he went from hot to cold so suddenly. I’ve gone over every single thing I did and said and I still can’t see a path from here to there. One minute he was William, with fire in his eyes, and the next minute he was a cold dead version of that.
It was fucking terrifying. He’s always been somewhat temperamental, but I had written it off as a side effect of being the head of a multi-billion dollar company. I couldn’t exactly claim to know what that was like, so I was willing to cut him a little slack on occasion.
But this was something else. My gut was already telling me that.
I could only hope that whatever it was had passed, and that today we’d be back to normal. Or maybe that he’d just tell me what was bothering him and we could talk about it like normal people, but I figured I didn’t have much chance of that happening.
I stop at Aroma and pick up William’s usual order — cappuccino with one raw sugar and a blueberry oatbran muffin. I grab my usual too, moccaccino and ginger cookie. Cookies are probably not a breakfast food but today they wil
l be. I need all the sugar and caffeine I can get.
When I come around the corner to my office, I almost drop the coffees.
William is sitting there, in the chair behind my desk. He’s still wearing the suit he was wearing yesterday and I have the crazy thought that he’s been sitting there all night.
“Got your coffee,” I say, holding up the two cups. “Muffin’s in my purse, let me just put these down.”
I set the coffees down on the desk but William’s arm shoots out explosively and sweeps them to the floor.
“I don’t want your fucking coffee.”
“What…?” I am sputtering in disbelief. My heart is thumping in and out of my chest. The coffees went off the side of the desk, so I wasn’t scalded, but there’s now coffee drenching the desk and the cream-colored carpet. I look at William with wide eyes. “What has gotten into you?”
“Tell me about the lawsuit, Claire.”
An icy cold spiral of fear twists up my spine. So that’s what this is about?
“What lawsuit?” I lick my lips. I don’t know how much I should tell him. I don’t want to lie but I don’t want to sell out Kelly either. Not when she’s obviously having such a rough time.
He flicks a business card across the desk towards me. Fuck. It’s the card Kelly gave me, for Kurtz, Marsden and Park. I thought I had thrown that stupid thing away. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“You betrayed me.”
“No, William, I…”
“Shut the fuck up. You betrayed me. Just like all the others. It was all just about the money. I should have known.” He spits the last words out bitterly.
“Betrayed you?” I spit back. I’ve gone from afraid to pissed. How dare he? “I have never — nor would I ever — betray you.”
He sneers. “Right. So it was just a coincidence that you tried to nail me the same way Lila Saunders did. And that you then just happened to have a business card for the snakes that are planning to sue me.”
I take a deep breath. “I have no idea who Lila Saunders is or what you’re talking about. And I had that business card because …” Another deep breath. “Because yes, some of the people from Prescott & Bailey are looking into filing a wrongful dismissal suit against you. But I told them I wasn’t interested in participating. In fact, I defended you.”