EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2016 Doris O’Connor
ISBN: 978-1-77233-944-4
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
You've got to love stories that practically write themselves, like this one did. To all my readers who love my Tuesday Teases and asked for the full story, this is it. Enjoy, and thank you for reading.
FINALLY HIS
Doris O’Connor
Copyright © 2016
Chapter One
Jolie Pierson stretched to loosen muscles cramped from being hunched over her desk for hours, and yawned. A quick glance round the deserted office confirmed what she already knew. Everyone had left, leaving just her and the boss in the building. At least she assumed he was still here. She hadn’t heard his deep voice for some time, and no telltale click of masculine fingers over his keyboard broke the stillness surrounding her.
The faint hum of the vacuum cleaner being employed by the cleaners in one of the side offices could be heard, but that was all.
Normally speaking, the stillness didn’t bother Jolie, but as she gathered the reports to her chest, ready to dump them on her supervisor’s, desk it did.
The boss didn’t go out of his way to say goodbye to her, but he did usually at least glance her way and nod, or something, when he left. As pathetic as that made her—because he showed the same courteous treatment to everyone else in the office—that brief smile lighting up his craggy features was the highlight of her day.
I really need to get out more.
Richard Tomlin was way, way out of her league. Not least because he was her boss, but … well just because. What would a highly successful business man at least ten years her senior ever see in her, after all? With his model good looks, he could have any woman he wanted, and frequently did, if the tabloids could be believed.
He regularly graced their pages with some stick thin model type on his arm, when he attended yet another charity function. Yeah, her boss would never be interested in a short, far too curvy girl like her. Jolie had long accepted her far from fashionable body, and she knew she certainly wasn’t ugly, but she could never compete with the flawless beauty of some women. Her immediate supervisor being a point in question.
Tall, thin, with platinum blonde hair, that woman never seemed to have a bad hair day. She was always immaculately dressed, and she’d made it perfectly clear from day one of Jolie’s employment that the boss was off limits.
“Don’t you get any ideas about him, girl. He never dates the women in the office, and if he did, it wouldn’t be someone like you.”
The inherent criticism behind those words, delivered with a practiced smile, which hadn’t reached the woman’s eyes, had stung. They had also ensured that Jolie had tried her utmost to stay off her boss’s radar, and thus the wrath of her supervisor. That woman had the power to make anyone’s life a misery, after all, and frequently did.
While it grated that Stephanie swanned out of the office on the dot every day, Jolie didn’t mind the work too much. At least it kept her busy and it paid the bills. And she could swoon over Richard Tomlin from afar.
Files clasped to her chest, she walked over to Stephanie’s desk and frowned at the note.
Put the files straight on Richard’s desk, and attach this note.
An irritated huff escaped Jolie. It blew an errant strand of hair into her eyes. No matter how she attempted to confine her unruly red hair—today it was in a bun—it always escaped.
Richard,
I thought you’d want them first thing, so I stayed late for you. Have a great evening tonight.
Steph
Stayed late, indeed.
Jolie grumbled under her breath, but dutifully pinned the note to the top of her files, and shouldered open the slightly ajar door to Richard’s office. The sight that greeted her made her almost drop the damn papers, because, not only was Richard Tomlin still very much in the office, he was half naked.
Oh, good God.
She must have disturbed him mid changing of his shirt, because he stood, looking out of the window, deeply in thought.
“Oh, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to…” Jolie knew she was babbling and making a complete fool of herself, but she couldn’t help staring.
It was one thing imagining what her sex-on-legs boss looked like under his clothes, but the reality… Yes, that was something else entirely. Rock hard abs rippled in movement, as
Richard Tomlin smiled and turned his attention fully toward her.
“Was there something you needed me for, Jolie?”
“No, sir.” She grimaced at her squeak of an answer, and reluctantly tore her gaze away from his muscled torso. Faint amusement showed in Richard’s blue eyes, and Jolie barely resisted the urge to fan her hot cheeks.
Damn her inherent propensity to blush at the drop of a hat. It made her such a cliché. The redhead with the pumpkin cheeks and freckles to match—if only she had also inherited the quick temper redheads were so famous for.
Sadly, that seemed to elude her. While Jolie was an expert at simmering inside, she hated making a scene, and rarely said what she thought, until now, it seemed.
Richard checked his watch and frowned.
“It’s late. You should be home already.”
“So should you.”
What possessed her to say those words she would never know, and she wanted the ground to swallow her whole, but her boss simply smiled. It deepened the blue of his eyes, and made the laughter lines around those spheres more pronounced. He really had the nicest smile, and Jolie grabbed the files to herself harder in an effort not to swoon.
“Nothing to go home for?” he asked, his voice deepening as he slowly did up the buttons on his dress shirt. Belatedly she realized that he seemed to be changing to go out. No doubt to attend another function of some sort.
“Erm, not really, sir. I won’t keep you. I just need to … that is…”
She didn’t know what else to say, considering the files she was clutching to herself, especially with that note pinned to the top, which told their own story. So, she simply walked over to the big mahogany desk, and placed them on top.
Her heart gave a painful lurch when she saw the picture on his desk. A laughing woman hung on his arm, and whoever she was clearly had to be important to him for her picture to take pride of place in his office.
Jolie made to move, and froze to the spot, when she came face to face with her boss. Or, rather face to Adam’s apple. Even with her high heels on, he still towered over her. This close to him, his spicy masculine scent enveloped her. He reached around her to detach the note, and his jaw clenched as he read it.
His eyes flashed in barely disguised anger, when he pinned Jolie further in place with the intensity of his gaze and she swallowed nervously.
“What is this?” His voice had dropped an octave, giving it a delicious growl, which meant Jolie sank down onto the edge of the desk, because her legs were in danger of giving up. Really, though, that voice. Lord, it made a woman want to drop everything and sink to her knees.
When she didn’t immediately answer him he grasped her chin to nudge her head up, and Jolie had to remind herself to carry on breathing. This close t
o him, she could see swirling emotions chase each other across the blue expanse of his eyes. They softened the longer she simply stared up at him, and the hold on her chin turned into a caress, as Richard traced the outline of her lips with his thumb.
Jolie couldn’t hide her involuntary shudder at the contact, and something hot, dark, and dangerous flashed in Richard’s eyes, something that she recognized only too well. It was the look of a man who liked what he saw. A look she only ever was at the receiving end of when she helped out at the BDSM club she occasionally attended. And none of the Doms she had scened with had ever made her feel quite so … she couldn’t even find the right word for it at this moment. She was too caught up in the flash of awareness which suddenly zinged between them. Did Richard Tomlin recognize the submissive in her, as easily as she did the Dom in him?
It would explain so much about her boss, if he was. His presence, the way folks jumped to do his bidding, and also, why he kept his private life very much under wraps.
A man of his standing couldn’t afford any sordid rumors attached to his name.
Most importantly it sure explained her unreasonable obsession with him. Jolie didn’t usually lust after men from afar, like she had done with him from the first minute she’d seen him stroll across the office with the long limbed, loose gait of a predator. His attention had been focused on a business associate, and with that single-minded determination, with which Richard seemed to do everything, he’d taken over that particular meeting, getting the man to agree to all his terms. Jolie had been in awe, sitting in the corner, taking notes of the meeting, and when Richard had finally looked across at her and smiled … yeah, she’d been a goner.
“I asked you a question, girl. I would appreciate an answer.”
His gravelly voice pulled her back to the here and now, and Jolie responded without thinking.
“Sorry, Sir, I didn’t mean any disrespect. I mean…”
Heat suffused her whole being, and she didn’t dare meet his gaze at her slip up. Especially as he grew so still, Jolie couldn’t be sure he was even breathing. After several frantic beats of her heart, Richard resumed the slow, measured move of his thumb across her bottom lip.
“Breathe, girl, and look at me.”
Jolie pulled a much needed breath into her lungs and forced herself to meet his gaze.
“That’s better, and relax. I don’t bite unless you want me to.” His voice dropped further on the last few words, and Jolie swallowed hard.
“Good to know, Sir.”
That something hot and hard flashed in his eyes again, and releasing her he stepped away slightly. The smile he gave her was positively sinful. As was the slow appraisal he gave her body. Starting at her toes, curled under in her peep toe court shoes, with the effort to not show how much his undivided attention was affecting her, he ran that gaze slowly up her legs. Richard skimmed the hemline of her dress, which ended just above her knee, took his time over her flared hips, and the rounded curve of her tummy. His grin deepened when he stopped at her breasts, and Jolie curled her hands into fists to stop the inherent urge to cover up. That would make her body’s response even more obvious to the man studying her as though he could see straight through her dress. Her nipples pebbled into hard nubs, chafing against the lacy confines of her bra. Her breasts grew heavy and her breathing labored, and her knickers grew damp, as he turned her on with just this one look.
Oh, she was in so much trouble.
When his azure eyes at long last connected with hers, they had darkened to the color of the deepest, darkest ocean, and Jolie couldn’t have looked away if her life had depended on it. The thought that this virile man might like what he saw made her feel rather lightheaded, and extremely grateful for the steady desk she was still leaning her butt cheeks on.
“I do like it when you call me Sir, little one, but the office is not the place to pursue this.”
Jolie melted inside at hearing him call her little one, even as the drone of an approaching vacuum cleaner got louder.
Richard hastily continued buttoning up his shirt, tucked it in and put more distance between them, seconds before the middle aged cleaner knocked on the door.
“Will you be long?” she asked.
“Not at all. Can you give us five minutes please, and we’ll be out of your way.”
“Sure thing, you’re the boss, after all. I’ll go for my cigarette break then.”
The cleaning lady shut the door to his office, turned off the vacuum cleaner and walked away, leaving them once again alone.
“So.” Richard ran a hand through his hair, and held up that previously abandoned note again.
“Explain this to me, Jolie, and I want the truth.”
****
Fuck, he was in so much trouble here, it wasn’t even real. This whole scenario was a harassment case in the making, especially as he was uncomfortably aware that he had been moments away from giving into the instinct to taste this delightful young woman’s lips. He’d clocked the sinfully curvy redhead before, of course. She was hard to miss, with her long flame colored curls, which she tried and always failed to contain in a tight bun for the office. Strands of it invariably escaped, not in the artful, make sure they drew attention to a woman’s cleavage way he was used to seeing on others. No, hers had a way of doing so in a haphazard way. It made a man wonder what she would look like with all that beautiful hair spread out across his pillow while the delicious curves, which that dress of hers had a devil of a job containing, were bound to his bed and his for the taking.
Richard barely swallowed a groan at the road his thoughts were traveling down, and he willed his cock to behave. Easier said than done when Jolie looked up at him like that. Hand fisted by her sides, her impressive rack strained against the confines of her conservative dress, her nipples hard little points clearly visible through the fabric, and her heart beat a far too fast visible rhythm in her neck. While Richard was used to female adoration, her unfettered, instinctive responses to him, coupled with the deep submissive streak he’d sensed in her meant his dominant side roared into full force.
He wanted her, pure and simple, but the office was indeed not the place for that discussion. Never mind the fact that he had somewhere to be, and this damn note. While he had long suspected that Stephanie De Costa was shirking her duties, this … well, this smacked of a whole new level of deceit that he wouldn’t stand from her. Not to mention the inherent exploitation of the young woman in front of him.
“I … well … that is…” She threw him an imploring glance from her naturally long eyelashes, and her fair skin heated anew under a fiery blush which made his fingers itch to find out how far down that blush went. He followed the line of freckles that graced her collarbone and disappeared into the modest neckline of her dress.
The fact that she didn’t show anything was a far bigger turn-on than any low cut outfit could have ever been, and Richard cleared his throat to get his voice to carry with any sense of authority.
“Just tell me the truth, little one. Did she make you stay late to finish these, and then make you bring them in here, so that she can pass your work off as hers?”
If that was possible her blush deepened, and Jolie looked extremely uncomfortable.
“I don’t mind at all. I mean the work needed to be done, and I … well.”
She stopped speaking when he crossed his arms and quirked an eyebrow at her in his best “’fess up, subbie, or else” pose.
Sure enough this particular subbie dropped her gaze to the floor and stopped speaking.
“I asked for the truth, little one, and look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Like a startled deer her gaze sought his, and he smiled at what he read in her green eyes. Confusion, worry, a flash of anger, and above all the need to tell him what he wanted to know. Oh yes, her submissive streak ran deep, and that meant his cock gave up all pretense at trying to behave. Her eyes widened when he discreetly adjusted himself and shrugged.
“If
it helps, I’ve had my doubts about Ms. De Costa for some time. Whatever you say to me, you can rest assured it will be in the strictest confidence, and will in no way reflect on you. Nothing that has transpired so far or will do so this evening will have any impact on you working here. I’ve heard nothing but good things about your work etiquette, after all, and this…” He gestured between them. “If we chose to explore this it will be not in work time.”
Jolie released a huff of seeming relief, and he couldn’t help the smile splitting his face in half, when she hopped off his desk, and hands on hips let rip.
“Fine, yes, off the record, I’m pissed as fuck that she was going to pass all my hard work off as hers, but what can I do? I need this job, and, besides, this is the first time she has been so blatant about it. For what it’s worth, she does a good enough job. She just likes to … delegate a bit too much, I guess.”
Jolie fell silent and bit her lip in such a way that his dick punched forward with a speed that left him a little lightheaded.
Without thinking of the consequences of his action he crossed the distance between them and pulled her lips away from imminent danger. Her eyes widened further as he crowded her against the wall with a growl.
“Stop doing that. It makes me want to kiss you.”
“Oh.”
Her breathless reply meant he dipped his head. The knock on the door brought him to his senses, and he stepped away seconds before the cleaner opened the door. Even so, the woman narrowed her eyes, and looked between him and Jolie in such a way that left him in no doubt she knew exactly what had been going on in here. Then again, the blush that stole in Jolie’s cheeks, her labored breathing, and the way she didn’t look at anything but the floor told their own story.
“Sorry to interrupt anything.”
The cleaner’s smirk dissipated when Richard glared at her.
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