by Tessa Blake
He was very close behind her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her shoulders. If I’d known I’d be seeing him again, she thought, I might have worn something more substantial.
“Lily?” he said, his voice strained.
“Yes?” she said, barely recognizing her own voice, which had gone high and breathy. She knew she should move, even just take a step or two forward, but she was paralyzed.
He didn’t answer. Instead, whether cued by her voice, or the fact that she still hadn’t moved away from him, or just some crazy pheromone bullshit, he tilted his head forward and slanted his lips across the back of her neck.
What little of her composure was left crumbled to dust. She sagged back against him and dropped her head forward, powerless to stop him as his lips and teeth went busily to work on the most sensitive parts of her neck.
“This is crazy,” she managed.
“I know,” he said. “I don’t plan to stop.”
All the breath went out of her in a whoosh. “Me neither,” she said weakly, then cursed her stupid truth-telling tongue. Way to play hard-to-get.
Gabriel turned her to face him, looked into her eyes for a long moment, then claimed her lips in a kiss that sent shock waves all the way down to her toes. Every muscle in her body went limp, and she said nothing as he lifted her—effortlessly, and that was saying something—and carried her over to deposit her on the table in front of the console.
7
Gabriel had no idea how long the knocking had been going on. He was drowning in the scent of her, luxuriating in the feel of her under his hands. She arched and sighed as he explored her neck with his teeth and tongue, as he slipped free the buttons on her dress and trailed his fingers over the skin as it became exposed. She was smooth and soft and smelled delicious.
When was the last time he’d wanted anyone like this? He wasn’t sure he ever had. He’d dreamt of her, the night before, and woke thinking that if she didn’t come back to the club, he would have to figure out how to find her. He needed to touch her again.
And here she was.
He could barely hear the knocking over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears—but once it finally penetrated his consciousness, he lifted his head and turned to look at the door. If he’d had the power to blow it off its hinges, along with whomever was behind it, he would have.
Beneath him, Lily began to struggle to sit up, straightening her clothes. Her dress had an even dozen buttons to fasten up the front and he’d managed to get half of them open. Sighing, he resigned himself to pursuing this particular activity at a later date and started to refasten them—but not quickly enough.
The knocking stopped and the door swung open, revealing Scott and Vivienne on the other side, standing side-by-side in the doorway.
Scott’s expression might have been funny, but Gabriel could still taste Lily’s skin and was in no mood for hilarity.
“Generally, when a door is locked,” he snarled at them, “one waits to be let in.”
Lily stepped down off the console, her eyes trained on the floor in front of her, and set her last button right with trembling hands. “Um,” she said, then said no more.
Gabriel imagined she didn’t quite know what to say and he felt bad for her—but he felt worse for himself. The relief of finally being able to fill his hands with her had been profound; the rapid change in circumstance was infuriating.
“I think we need to go, Lily,” Scott said, and something in his tone set Gabriel’s teeth on edge. He didn’t sound … right. He didn’t sound like the guy Gabriel had been chatting with over floor plans. He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.
Gabriel shifted his gaze to Vivienne, who was sporting a half-smirk that would have told him everything already, if he’d been paying attention, and caught a glimpse of Pusboil, standing about three feet behind her. So that explained how Vivienne had known what was going on.
Well, he and Vivienne would be amending the imp’s contract effective immediately, to ensure any observation of Lily ceased when she was alone with Gabriel. He caught Pusboil’s eye, jerked his head in a gesture that said the imp should get out of there right now, and moved to stand between Lily and the doorway.
“Okay, folks,” he said. “Show’s over. Scott, Lily will be with you in a second. Vivienne, I’ll want to see you in my office in ten minutes.”
And he shut the door in their faces.
Turning to Lily, he took one of her hands in his and used a finger under her chin to tilt her head up.
“Don’t you let me see you staring at the ground like you’ve done something wrong—” he began.
“This was totally wrong.” She looked up, tears swimming into her eyes. “Totally wrong on a personal level, and totally unprofessional. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
“Lily—” he began, but she cut him off.
“Don’t say anything else.” She stepped away from him, pulling her hand free. “And don’t touch me.”
She darted around him, pulled open the door, and was gone.
With her gone, the room felt more than empty; it felt funereal. He had an imp to renegotiate with and his mother to yell at, so he had very little time to stop and think about what it meant that he didn’t want to be in a room if Lily wasn’t in it.
But one thing he definitely would think about: she’d responded to him without any extra-human effort on his part. He hadn’t pulled her, not even unintentionally; there had been no drain of energy, no exertion of effort. The night before, he’d made her dance with him—and yes, he’d sworn he was done with that and he wasn’t thrilled with himself for breaking his promise. But today, for whatever reason, he’d not had to coerce her at all. She’d come into his arms a willing participant.
He thought that knowing she could choose to leave, but hadn’t, had been the sweetest thing of all.
In his office, Vivienne once again occupied his chair. Pusboil reclined on the desktop, stroking its own armpit hair.
“Gabriel—”
“Shut it.” He resisted the urge to dump her ass on the floor, and took the visitor’s chair again. Now wasn’t the time to be distracted. He was furious. “What were you after, barging in on me—on us—like that?”
“Pusboil came and told me what you were up to with that little chippie—”
“Chippie? Honestly, Vivienne, what decade are you from?”
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at him. “All of them.”
He let that go, and gestured at Pusboil. “Get your compact, if you need it. We’re changing his contract.”
“I hardly think—”
“It’s not up for debate. I put up with a lot from you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have you spying on me when I’m—”
“I wasn’t spying,” she spat. “I hadn’t even considered something like this when I set up the contract.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any issue changing it.”
She pursed her lips, slanted her eyes toward Pusboil. “Fine. It’s not like it wants to watch you rutting.”
Pusboil nodded so vehemently that its ears bobbed.
“I don’t rut,” Gabriel muttered. He knew better than to disagree with her when she was like this, but the insult cut deep.
“Oh, fine, Then. Sorry. When you’re making sweet love to some total stranger on the console in the light booth. Really smooth. I’m proud to call you a son.”
Vivienne went through her blood-on-the-mirror ritual again, and Pusboil came to sit on the edge of the desk, swinging its feet.
It was a matter of moments to reword the contract to exclude what Vivienne termed “times of intimacy.” Pusboil snorted at that, but agreed and disappeared—literally—when Vivienne dismissed it.
“It watched her last night.” Vivienne leaned back and steepled her fingers together. “She was restless, it said, and kept turning on the light as though she knew it was there.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Sensitive, maybe. It happe
ns.”
“It doesn’t explain her resistance to you, though. I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” he said. “And you should know, Vivienne, that I’ll be contacting her again. I like her. I don’t plan to let you drive her away.”
“She definitely took off out of here like a bat out of— well. You know.” Vivienne smiled. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be so confident that you’ll be successful with … whatever it is you want from her.”
And that was the thing, wasn’t it? Gabriel thought about it in the limo on the way home, and had to admit to himself what he would never have admitted to Vivienne: he didn’t even know what it was he wanted from Lily.
But he was quickly becoming convinced that it wasn’t so much a matter of want as of need. And he hadn’t needed anyone, or anything, in a long time.
8
Lily seriously considered calling in sick the next morning, but the thought of lying to her boss nearly made her actually sick, so she dragged herself in to the office. Whatever Scott’s problem had been, it wasn’t her problem. She was a grown woman, and if she wanted to make out with someone she barely knew, so what?
Make out? her own sardonic voice asked inside her head. Is that what we’re calling it now, when we’re caught with some guy’s hand up our dress?
Whatever. The point was, she was a grown woman and Scott’s reaction was ridiculous. He’d literally ignored her all the way back to the office and then didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. Yes, she’d been a little unprofessional—okay, a lot unprofessional—but it was also not his place to judge her. He wasn’t her boss.
Gerald Stone, who was her boss, had left a note on her desk, though. He wanted to see her as soon as she got to work, which—she noted with a wince—was supposed to have been twenty minutes ago.
In her defense, it had been another long, hard morning. There had been another cat fight outside her window by the dawn’s early light and she’d been unable to go back to sleep again. Then she’d been waylaid in the lobby by old Mrs. LeFevre, who wanted her to know at least one of the new cats hanging around looked to be rabid, by the condition of its fur and ears, and on and on until Lily thought she might shoot either the cat or Mrs. LeFevre. Bad news for Mrs. LeFevre, since the cat was nowhere to be seen.
Still, she didn’t think being twenty minutes late was going to be a huge deal, and she was in fairly good spirits as she dropped her stuff on her desk and headed for the elevators. It wasn’t until she stepped off the elevator and saw Scott that she started to get a bad feeling.
He and Mr. Stone were standing in the doorway of Mr. Stone’s office, and Scott was clearly upset, shaking his head and saying something as he turned toward the elevator. They both looked up and saw her, and Scott froze in place for moment, looking at her a little vaguely, as if he wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there.
Oh, no, she thought. Oh, please, Scott, don’t have said anything. I thought we were friends.
Mr. Stone clapped Scott on the shoulder and Scott came down the hall toward her. She got her feet in gear and headed down the hall toward him. They passed without saying a word, and then she was standing at Mr. Stone’s office door herself.
“Ms. Randall,” he said formally, which was probably not good, since he usually called her by her first name. His tone was cold, his posture rigid.
She had a feeling she was about to be made very unhappy.
“Mr. Stone,” she said. “I got your message.”
“Come in, then,” he said, though he sort of sounded like he really wished she wouldn’t. He gestured her through the door ahead of him; she took a seat on the visitor side of the desk and waited for him to seat himself on his own side.
“Well,” he began, and said nothing more for a moment. Then, again: “Well.”
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to begin,” he said. “This is not a conversation I find myself having often.”
She said nothing.
“I guess it’s best just to get directly to the point,” he said. “Are you aware, Ms. Randall, that the contract you signed with us has a morality clause?” He opened the folder sitting beside his coffee mug, took out a sheaf of papers, and passed them across the desk.
She glanced down and saw it was a copy of her contract.
Deep breaths.
“I don’t need to see it, sir,” she said. “It was a lot to read, but I did read it and I know what I signed.”
“So, knowing what you signed, I’m sure you can see, then, that this is very problematic for us,” he said.
“I don’t, actually—” she began.
“Ms. Randall, my understanding is you were caught in some sort of intimate contact with a client, during work hours.” He looked at her sourly. “Have I misstated the situation?”
She wished so fervently that she could lie—tell him Scott had misunderstood what he saw, something, anything to stop this from happening. It would be his word against hers. But, of course, that wasn’t an option; just thinking about it made her queasy.
“No, sir,” she said, “But I think—”
“Additionally, apart from the morality clause, there are several subsections of your contract dealing with conflicts of interest, which I’m sure you can see comes into play as well.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see that. I barely know the man; I can hardly have developed a conflict of interest in such a short time.”
“One gets the impression the two of you were … getting to know one another, quite well,” he replied, and tucked her contract back into its folder.
She could feel herself flushing with equal parts embarrassment and frustration. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, she thought. If I don’t know him I’m violating the stupid morality thing, and if I do know him, it’s a conflict of interest.
“I don’t know quite what to say to that,” she said. “It seems a defense against one is an admission of the other.”
“Precisely. So.” He pulled a sheet of paper out from underneath the folder containing her contract, turned it over, and gazed at it for a moment.
Up to this point, she’d had nothing but commendations at work, and now she would have a reprimand. All because, for no reason she could see, she fell apart when this one particular guy touched her. What was wrong with her, messing up her career this way, over a guy she didn’t even know?
Mr. Stone pushed the piece of paper across the desk and handed her a pen from the jar next to his inbox. “You’ll need to read and sign that, and then I’m afraid company policy dictates someone must accompany you while you clean out your desk.”
She was so taken aback she just blinked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry—what?”
“It’s company policy,” he said smoothly. “I do understand it can be seen as insulting, and certainly I personally don’t think you would—”
“Are you saying I’m fired?” she asked, incredulous.
He looked at her like she was speaking Swahili. “What did you think I was saying?” he asked.
“I thought— I thought I would get a warning, or a reprimand of some kind,” she said. “I’ve worked here for over a year and never been in trouble for anything.”
“I’m afraid that’s not the point,” he said. “This is a serious breach of ethics and decorum. It’s all in the contract, if you’d like to review—”
“No, thank you.” She hastily scrawled her name across the bottom of the paper and stood. “As I said, I read the contract when I signed it. If you’ve nothing further to say, I think I’d like to clean out my desk now.”
He nodded stiffly, and rose, pushing a button on his intercom. “Stella, please call for Security to escort Ms. Randall to her desk and out of the building.”
9
She didn’t cry while she cleaned out her desk, and she didn’t cry when Security walked her to the 23rd street entrance and took her badge and swipe card. She didn’t cry
on the subway, sitting there with her sad little shopping bag of personal items in her lap, and she didn’t cry even when she finally reached the shelter of her apartment building.
She did groan a little as she pushed through the big glass doors into the lobby, because Mrs. LeFevre was standing there in the foyer, gathering her mail out of the mailbox. It was only the threat of imminent collapse—a collapse she did not want to have in a public place—that forced her to smile wanly at the old woman and head for the elevator, hoping against hope for a clean getaway.
It was a rookie mistake.
“Girl!” Mrs. LeFevre shrilled across the lobby, and slammed the door to her mailbox. “You are holding that elevator if it comes, eh?”
Lily sighed and hit the Up arrow. According to the lights, the elevator was on the 25th floor.
“Yes, Mrs. LeFevre,” she called back. “You’ve got time.”
The old woman made her laborious way over, planting her four-footed cane carefully with each step. She'd taken a nasty spill down here in the lobby a few months ago; since then, she'd been about as swift as a snail in molasses.
And she hadn’t exactly been speedy before.
“That elevator,” the old woman said, a little less loudly now that she was making some progress across the room. “Never seen anything slower and that’s a fact.”
Lily refrained from making any remarks about pots or kettles, and simply waited, wondering if she was going to make it to her apartment before she broke down in tears and very much fearing the answer was no.
The elevator was at the 8th floor, and Lily had started to have some actual hope she might hold it together just long enough, when Mrs. LeFevre came to a stop beside her.
The old woman looked her up and down. “You peaky, girl? How come you ain’t at work? Have—oh!” And she broke off, staring wildly over Lily’s shoulder. “Now who went and let that cat right in the building?”