BOUND: Together

by Cynthia Dane

  “God help me,” Natalie said. “You’re hot.”

  “I’m simply trying to take care of my health. I would appreciate if you didn’t objectify me so much, Ms. Chen.” I sat back on my legs, hands on my hips. Natalie grabbed a comb out of my desk and fixed my hair. Had it gotten out of place? I didn’t realize my yoga poses required more finesse.

  “Welcome to being a woman,” she said. “Being objectified, that is.”

  I motioned for her to come to me, but she shook her head.

  “I see,” I said. “None of that at work?” Commendable that she didn’t want to get bogged down in physical affection while on the clock. That was the Natalie I expected. That was the one I hired to get shit done in my office. It was why I offered her a sizable amount of money to be my executive intern.

  Then I went and slept with her, and everything changed. Now I wanted her to kiss me when we were at work. Whenever I wanted. And I wanted a kiss every single second I saw her or thought about her. Which, was to say, all the time.

  “More like if I start kissing you,” Natalie began, back turned toward me, “I probably won’t stop. It’ll be a problem.”

  I slumped onto my side, propping myself up with my arm. “Tell me more about this problem of yours. What about kissing me will make you incapable of doing wholesome work?”

  “You’re the CEO of a billion-dollar company. There’s no such thing as wholesome work around here.”

  “Unwholesome work for an unwholesome woman. I like it.”

  She loomed over me, her silky black hair tickling my cheek. “Do you want to get ready for your teleconference or not?”

  Her hair was long enough for me to wrap around my finger. Each strand was freshly trimmed. Not a single split end. Completely, utterly straight. Unlike either of us.

  I wanted her. Her perfume in my face. Her sweat on my skin. Her sweet moans filling my ears and driving me mad. We could’ve done it, too. I had a couch! All I needed was ten minutes and a willing partner. Wouldn’t be the first time I got dirty in my office, my castle of capitalism.

  When you’re down one sordid rabbit hole, you might as well go down more. It’s how my contemporaries operate. Vices. Millions of them. From drugs to sex, fast cars to properties in colonial territories. There isn’t anything money can’t buy. Want a girlfriend? Done. She might not love you, but at least she’ll fuck you. That’s all you want, right?

  My life before Natalie. That was it.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Natalie continued to straighten up the coffee table by the couch. Magazines, reports, newspapers and some of my personal artifacts cluttered it up. When I had tired of sitting at my desk around eleven in the morning, I moved to the couch to finish writing my notes about that afternoon’s conference with a Texan real estate mogul. I may have left a small mess behind. “Are you incapable of working alongside me in anything but a lascivious manner?”

  “The fact you have lascivious in your vocabulary makes you so hot.”

  She rolled her eyes, yet the giggle emanating from her the moment she turned around and showed me her ass in that tight orange dress said everything I needed to know.

  Working with Natalie was both a blessing and a curse. I could see her whenever I wanted. She was more than a mere shout away – she was at my eternal beck and call, because there is no greater, closer relationship than a businessperson and their personal assistant. We developed our own language within an hour. Natalie grew more comfortable in my presence as time wore on and I placed my call at the designated time. But it was a curse because I was always distracted by her pink lips and the effortless way she crossed her legs in that infuriatingly tight dress. I couldn’t look at her without having the most inappropriate thoughts. Not inappropriate for my girlfriend, but wildly wrong for the workplace.

  Back then, I foolishly confused boardroom bravado for pure masculinity. I hadn’t yet learned that certain women could be just as ridiculous as most of the men I knew, and they acted that way because something in their genes dictated it, not because they had a bevy of tutors to tell them how to conduct themselves. So when my conference call grew heated due to my business associate refusing to budge on a price, I took great, borderline-sadistic glee in playing up everything I had ever learned over the years. Namely, about throwing down my gauntlets and getting what I want.

  “Don’t be a shitfuck, Carl,” I barked into the speakerphone. “Take the money and unload the empty property before it goes down even more in value.”

  I perspired from the thrill I received during the call. Carl Leonard, whom Natalie kept referring to as “Mr. Longhorn” because he was quintessentially Texan, was one of the biggest sticks in my ass when it came to acquiring property around the Lone Star state. I owned and had a special interest in a renewable energy subsidiary that required tracts of land to really get going in that part of the country. Carl was sitting on them, and my research said it was depreciating in value by the year. He needed to sell to me. Now.

  But since he was an oil man, he despised the thought of my wind turbines and solar panels or whatever he thought I was up to. He would go down with his ships, even after I provided enough evidence that he was an idiot to hold onto such “useless” land. Soon, the taxes would be more than the land was worth.

  “You’re a rotten bastard, Mann,” Carl muttered into his receiver.

  “I’m about to own your land as soon as the money transfers and you sign the documents. Which my assistant is about to resend you, in case you misplaced the last batch I sent.” I signaled for Natalie to get out of her chair, where she took minutes of the whole meeting, and get started on those documents. I needed them ran to accounting as soon as possible. Preferably, before Carl changed his mind.

  “Rotten. Bastard.”

  My eyes never left Natalie’s bright orange form as she hastily pulled the files together and looked up the room for the corporate accountants. They were one floor beneath us, but the place was a maze of frosted windows and tiny brown nameplates.

  I was amped with power. It didn’t help that Natalie had bit her lip and rubbed her fingers throughout the meeting. Signs that I had come to recognize as her arousal. Watching me play bigshot with a billion dollars turned her on. I didn’t care why. Nor did I know why such a smart woman like her had a fetish for my line of work.

  Why would I know or care when I could take such good advantage of it?

  Her expressive visage glowed with an eagerness to do whatever I wanted. I was her boss. She was my intern. Half a million erotic paragraphs on the internet said this was one of the ideal situations, ripe with the promise of dreams coming true.

  And I was kicking ass.

  “That was so hot,” Natalie said when I hung up on Carl.

  Those were the words I wanted to hear, yet I couldn’t believe them. How could this mesmerizing woman understand me so well? How had the most perfect match I had yet to meet walk into my life?

  I had to keep reminding myself that she knew who I was. There was nothing for me to hide. I hoped to God that she hid nothing from me.

  “You’re ridiculous, Ms. Chen,” I said.

  “I’m serious.” Natalie checked the time before giving me her best exasperated look. Pink lips parted. Eyes glazed over in need. “We’ve got twenty minutes before you have to call Reginald & Frank in Phoenix.”

  How else could I take that but as an invitation to have my way with her? I didn’t touch her yet, though. I approached her, but I didn’t dare penetrate that protective aura that kept office decorum alive and well. “Fucking hell, Natalie,” I said, fantasizing about how I would rip that dress of her body. “What are you? Because I’m not sure you’re human.”

  “Every human has that one weird thing that turns them on. So happens that mine’s kicking boardroom ass.”

  I knew it. She had her innate kink that possibly rivaled my love for tying knots, both by themselves and around delicate wrists.

  When I rounded my desk and pulled Natalie into my a
rms, I hadn’t intended to remind her that I had something in my pants. But that was the greatest sound of acknowledgment I ever heard when she gasped right into my ear. “Twenty minutes, you said?”

  She attempted to lure me to the couch. A cat and mouse game that I could get into. “I’m riled up enough that I could be finished in five.”

  “What about me?”

  “It’s your office. You can have the other fifteen.”

  “Damn straight it’s my office.” Natalie would be on the couch – and me on top of her – within the minute. Until then, I would run through every fantasy plaguing my addled mind. Her. Me. Naked. Anywhere. Didn’t matter how or when. We would go until time ceased and the stars blinked from the night sky. “And you’re mine.”

  I meant it, too. Natalie wasn’t just my girlfriend after that. We had transcended such meaningless words.

  Chapter 39

  NATALIE

  Between racing to the penthouse dry cleaner’s on top of an unnamed skyscraper and running around half of downtown trying to find Erica’s favorite European soft drink because her hormones were going crazy (and everyone was out of stock, of course,) I found the time to stop by the hospital and visit Brooke.

  It was Thursday. That’s how busy I had been since taking her place around the office. Not that it helped that Erica and I were also busy getting our freak on every time we had a few minutes to spare. At first, she was incredulous that I actually got turned on by watching her work. When it finally dawned on her that she could use this to her advantage, it was like the most obnoxious, distracting floodgates opened and our lust was officially unleashed upon the world.

  We were only late to a meeting once. Only once!

  What can I say? There was something to be said about my lover feeling me up and then taking me whenever the mood struck us. I was usually so wound up from fantasizing that I was more than happy to let her do whatever she wanted to me. I didn’t even flinch when one of her fingers meandered to uncharted territories while the rest of them pinned my pelvis down on the couch. No one had fingered my ass before, and I may have hobbled out of that office a convert.

  Unfortunately, my fun meant I didn’t consider how bad Brooke was. I should have guessed it was exceptionally bad if she was still in the hospital a few days later. But I wasn’t prepared for the ghastly face and the tubes sticking out of her arms.

  It wasn’t only the lack of makeup that shocked me. It was the sickly complexion, greasy hair, and fuck ugly hospital gown that made me gasp upon entering her private room.

  “Well, well, well,” she croaked, unable to move more than her head. “Someone looks good in my shoes.”

  I had worn my pencil skirt and a ruffled blouse beneath my black coat. Perfectly acceptable for the office, but hardly dazzling. She must have referred to the confidence oozing from my steps. It probably helped that her phone was permanently attached to my hip.

  “Thank you. I wish I could say that you look good too.”

  “I look and feel like shit.”

  “What did you eat?”

  She chuckled. “I haven’t eaten much in the past few days, that’s for sure.”

  Poor Brooke. She could be a hardass, but she was always fair to me. The more I asked to be challenged, the more she stepped up and offered to raise my bar. “Eric sends his regards.”

  “Bet that’s not all he sends.” Brooke tried to sit up, but found her strength still lacking. I put down my bag and insisted on fluffing the pillow beneath her back. “Has the business burned to the ground yet?”

  “You’ve been reading the notes I upload, I presume. So you know the answer.”

  “Yes. Eric can function fine without me now that you’re here.”

  I didn’t know if that was a genuine statement or not. “It’s how it works out.”

  “Miss… Ch… Che… Natalie.” Yeah, even I admit that my first name rolls off the tongue more easily than my last. “I need you to do me another favor. Something that wasn’t in the records we asked you to follow.”

  I gripped the metal railing between us. It was surprisingly warm, as if her sweaty hand had been holding it for the past three days. “Yes? Does it have to do with Eric?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “In a way. It’s his mother.”

  “His mother?”

  “Every other week I go to Mercy Springs and pay her a visit. Eric doesn’t visit her except for on her birthday and around Christmas. I make sure the accounts are taken care of and that she looks okay. Considering her state… I really don’t want to skip a visit.”

  “You want me to go, don’t you?”

  “I’ll try to call them so they know to expect you instead. Tell Eric you need to step out for a couple hours to pick up some things. I do it all the time. He won’t care.”

  “Wait… he doesn’t know you go?”

  “He doesn’t know when. He doesn’t want to know. We don’t talk about her.”

  “I see.”

  “You might as well meet her, anyway. Rate things are going, she might be your mother-in-law this time next year.”

  “Come on, now…”

  “A word of warning… she isn’t all there. Don’t expect a pleasant conversation, if you have one at all. She’s also kinda racist.”

  “Kinda?” Like there was such a thing as kinda racist!

  “She’ll probably think you’re the maid.”

  “I know it’s the illness making you lack tact right now, so I won’t smack you.”

  “Just warning you.”

  “Duly noted.” I picked up my bag again. “Anything else I should know?”

  “After you tell Eric you’re stepping out, text Clyde and tell him you need to go to my usual Friday place. He’ll know what you mean. I’ll warn him too.”

  Nodding, I turned around. “I honestly hope you get better soon, Ms. Pentecost.”

  “Like hell you do. You want to keep fucking Eric in his office.”

  My body was a damned ice statue at those words. “Excuse me?”

  “You think I don’t know? You’ve been making lustful eyes at him every time you go in there. I know your type. You get off on having all that power directed at you.”

  “How the hell would you know something like that?”

  She used the last of her strength to chuckle. “Because I used to be like that, too.”

  I hurried out of the hospital and hailed a cab to take me back to the office.

  Chapter 40

  ERICA

  “I want to know as much as I can about her.” My words stalled as I lifted my weights into the air. Sherman, who diligently spotted me, somehow paid attention to my workout while also consuming every word I said. “All of it. Tell me about her family.” Family turned into a grunt as I gave one last lurch into the air. Sherman grabbed the weights and put them back where they belonged. I sat up, shaking out my sweaty arms and relishing in the workout endorphins making their way through my fit and firm form. “Tell me about her grades in high school.”

  “You jest, but I already have her school transcripts on file.” Sherman rubbed his hands together and flexed his arms. We were both in workout gear. I had forgone the office that day, choosing to instead work from home. I had few appointments in the afternoon and suggested to Sherman that we get in a solid workout in my home gym.

  I’m told my gym is bigger than most. I have no idea. I ask for certain equipment, I get it. What can I say? I like a well-rounded routine. I can’t do yoga all day.

  Sherman tossed me a bottle of ice water from a mini fridge on the side of the room. I held it to my sweaty forehead and sat on one of the mats lining the wall. “Let me guess. Straight As?”

  “Almost.” He sank down next to me. We were both sweaty pigs after spending half an hour spotting one another on the weight machines. I had half a mind to ask him to spar after we finished our break. “B in Mandarin one semester.”

  “In Mandarin?” Impossible. She was fluent, and it was her family’s second language.


  Sherman shrugged. “You know I’ve been digging. It’s difficult finding too much information about her father’s family since they’re not American. I have access to documents from when he was here, but…” He never hesitated when talking about background checks. Not even when they regarded the women I slept with. (I will never forget the slideshow presentation about Brooke’s great-uncle, who was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer in the late ‘30s. Photos. Articles. Even his handwriting as he drilled it into my head that I didn’t know what I was getting into.) “Trail goes cold once he’s back in Taiwan. The only public information I can find is what’s on his company’s website. He’s the vice president of Gold Plains Bank.”

  “I knew that.” We had gone over that already. It was one of the first things Sherman shoved into my face after I expressed interest in Natalie.

  “Gold Plains isn’t your run-of-the-mill bank.” Sherman drank some water before continuing. “It’s the second most influential bank in Taiwan. Being vice president means her father enjoys privileges even you’re used to. He’s also loaded.”

  I had assumed as much, having done some digging into Gold Plains when the mood struck me. Fascinating, wasn’t it? Natalie spoke of a comfortably middle-class childhood with her single mother, but she had this whole other side of her family that was comparable to mine – only in Taiwan. “What else do you know?”

  “He’s married and has another kid. I think one is on the way, too.”

  “Natalie never said anything about siblings…”

  “I doubt she’s ever met them.”

  There was something we almost had in common. The only reason I had solid memories of my brother is because of certain events permanently imprinted upon my mind. “She’s talked about an aunt a few times. I think she still speaks with her.”

  “Yes. She’s an office worker. Also, she’s unmarried.”