Читать книгу The Deep End - AM Hartnett - Страница 6

Grace prided herself in excelling under pressure. Most of the biggest fuck-ups in the office landed at her desk, and without flinching she merely forged ahead, coming out on the other side of carnage victorious.

But, riding the elevator to the thirteenth floor the next morning, she was actually sweating.

After she’d disconnected with Taureau, after she’d gotten behind the wheel of her SUV and picked up supper, after she’d gone nose-deep into the bath, she’d been calm. She’d actually been proud of herself for performing so well at Taureau’s edicts, and grew unspeakably hot as she remembered how he’d told her to finger-fuck herself.

She crawled into bed and killed the light and replayed the entire evening for about an hour before pulling out her vibrator. That gravel voice was in her head as she rolled the tapered end around her clit, and she screamed through one climax before plunging the vibe deep and bringing forth another.

Daylight was a different matter. She opened her eyes and stared at the toy she’d left discarded on the rug by her bedside. It all came back to her in a wave, but she was far from in the mood to relive that illicit encounter in the boardroom.

I’m going to get fired today.

As she prepared her coffee, double her usual amount – she had slept deep, but not long – she found herself wondering about Taureau’s mental state. She had never believed that he was mad, like some said. Paranoid, yes, but she doubted anyone would be completely there upstairs if they’d been butchered in their own bed.

Though he had been the intruder and had instigated their pornographic game last night, by the time she hit the shower she had convinced herself that Taureau had set a trap for her, that he had eased her anxieties with that little spiel about solitude only to bully her into putting on a show, shame her with one last performance, and send the evidence to Caroway.

But he didn’t bully you into anything, did he?

And that was the worst of it. If she’d become the pawn of a crazy recluse for one night, there was no one to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position. From the first quickie in the ladies’ room with that intern to the hard fuck with her Breton-Craig man the day before, she’d screwed around at the office and she had been caught.

Even if she had enjoyed herself immensely with him, this was all on her shoulders.

That it was Taureau who had done the catching was irrelevant. She had to accept responsibility and hope that Caroway was generous enough to give her a civil referral. After all, she had been one hell of an assistant when she wasn’t on her back or on her knees for someone else.

Still, she wasn’t relishing the humiliation that was coming. The thought of sitting across from Caroway, waiting for him to get through his gratitude for her years of service and waiting for the axe to fall on her career and reputation, made her sick.

Stepping off the elevator onto the thirteenth floor, Grace held her head high. She strode between the rows of cubicles and through the glass partition separating Caroway’s office from the rest of the floor. His door was closed and she could hear his voice as she booted up her computer.

Her insides were ice as she sank down. She imagined him talking to Taureau, shaking his head as he watched scene after scene of Grace’s hook-ups.

Ten minutes passed and stretched into twenty. She couldn’t concentrate beyond the murmur coming from behind that heavy door. She scrolled through every email and, when it became clear she hadn’t retained a damn word, marked them all as unread. Then she just sat there with her hands folded in front of her and waited.

At Caroway’s sudden bark of laughter she jumped, then sat back. The tension in her limbs eased a little. He wasn’t talking to Taureau. Caroway didn’t joke with Taureau. No one joked with Taureau, she’d been told.

And so what? Now you have to just keep sweating.

She dug into her bottom drawer and pulled out her Dictaphone. There was nothing on her plate now that the Breton-Craig deal was done, but she couldn’t stand not having something to concentrate on. Transcribing minutes was as mundane as you could get, but she could put all of her attention into following the conversation that flowed into her ear.

Caroway eventually emerged from his office and chirped his morning greeting. Grace tried her best to return it, but the words came out deflated. Once his back was to her, as he made his jolly morning jaunt to his scheduled meeting, she sagged in her seat and decided that she was doing sweet fuck all that day unless he dropped something urgent on her desk.

Resigned to playing the waiting game, she opened her browser and clicked in the search bar. Her fingers paused over the keyboard as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

As she pressed down on the ‘J’ and a list of suggestions popped up, a spark of rebellion went through her. She swept her gaze around the office.

Was he watching? If she typed in the name, would he see it? Was he monitoring her computer? Was her work area important enough to monitor? Caroway’s office, obviously, but her little nook? Was there a camera hidden in the smoke detector above her office? Was her webcam wired to secretly feed back to some command central Taureau had set up for himself?

It wasn’t a crazy notion. Big Brother had nothing on Taureau’s set-up.

‘JACQUES ALAIN TAUREAU,’ she typed, and peered at the rows and rows of results that appeared in her browser.

She clicked on the first web encyclopedia page. Nothing too salacious here, but she still read through the section of his early life with interest:

Jacques Alain Taureau was born in Ottawa, Ontario.

His father, Dominic, was the son of a lobster fisherman and a schoolteacher from Mont Carmel, New Brunswick, near Shediac. Dominic worked on the lobster boats from the time he was twelve to fifteen, at which time he left home for Moncton and then Montreal. He returned a decade later with an education and began work in Saint John for a politician, and eventually won his seat as a Liberal MP. During his time in Montreal, Dominic married socialite Theresa Werner. Dominic and Theresa had one child, Jacques.

Jacques grew up in Montreal and spent his summers in Mont Carmel, spoiled by his mother and groomed by his grandfather to take over the family airline, but when he was a teen his partying ways led him to drugs and alcohol. He barely made it through university and dropped out of grad school. Famously described by his father as a ‘disappointment’ during the 1997 Federal election, Taureau frequently made headlines due to his multiple arrests, outbursts of violence, and trips to rehab. In April 1997, Taureau was arrested in in Simcoe County, north of the Greater Toronto Area, when his vehicle was pulled over for speeding. Marijuana and heroin were discovered on his person. He was sentenced to probation and required to undergo compulsory drug testing.

There was a small photo inlaid with the text: Taureau’s mugshot.

Even wrecked, he wore a panty-creaming smirk and blue bedroom eyes. Grace conjured up what little of him she had seen the previous night, but couldn’t see that arrogant smirk on the man who had ordered her to come for him.

Throughout most of the strife, Taureau was involved with Bette (Elizabeth) Laurin, whom he met his last year of high school. She and Taureau had a toxic relationship, and her drug use reportedly eclipsed even Taureau’s. Those who knew Laurin described her as volatile when she was high, and during one of Taureau’s stays in rehab she was arrested for domestic assault on Jeffrey Brown, with whom she was having a sexual relationship in Taureau’s absence. These charges were later dropped at Brown’s request.

The next section dealt exclusively with what Taureau was most famous for: the night almost sixteen years ago when Taureau woke up to Bette Laurin sitting on his chest with a knife in her hand.

Another mug shot, this one of Bette Laurin. Grace had been a teenager when the attack happened, and she had seen photos on news shows of Laurin and Taureau together. They were Barbie and Ken on cocaine. In this picture, Bette was the aftermath of a horror movie. Mascara ran down her face and her lipstick was smeared. Her blonde hair was mussed and caked with something black that Grace guessed was dried blood. The woman wore such a look of anguish that Grace felt a pang of sympathy for her.

What would she have been if she had lived a different life? During the trial, accusations of sexual abuse as a child had been used to explain the bad turns she’d taken in her life. No one had believed her, until her mother came forward and confirmed that Bette’s father had brutalised her. It wasn’t enough to garner sympathy among the jury.

As the article confirmed, Elizabeth Laurin had been sentenced to ten years. She probably would have gotten less if it wasn’t for the furore Dominic Taureau and Shane Werner had created in the media.

With the death of Shane Werner in 2004, he inherited his grandfather’s multinational aerospace and transportation company, Werner Transport, and renamed it Taureau-Werner Inc., He operates as Chief Executive Officer from his rumored home outside of Saguenay, Quebec. In 2005, he named Hugh Caroway as Executive Vice President of Taureau-Werner. Caroway acts in Taureau’s absence when necessary.

Since the attack, Taureau has lived his life out of the public eye. It is rumored that he suffers from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and extreme paranoia. Upon Laurin’s death in 2005 of breast cancer, Taureau refused comment (although Dominic Taureau claimed to speak for the entire family when he told a reporter, ‘good riddance’).

She next tried an image search. There weren’t even any photos of Taureau during the trial: apparently he had been let into the courtroom via a private entrance. The only thing she found was a sketch artist’s drawing, blurry and indistinct with only slashes of pink to represent his scars. Nothing after the trial, nothing in the last fifteen years. Nothing until he had showed himself to her the previous night.

Grace sat back and processed what she had read. Did this story really tell her anything about Taureau? That he’d been damaged by the attack? That he had preferred, and obviously still did prefer, his lovers with a streak of adventure?

She pulled open her top drawer and dug deep. She kept her emergency pack of cigarettes taped to the back panel, and for seven months she’d kept her hands off it, but what she wrapped her hand around wasn’t her cigarettes. It wasn’t a stapler or half a box of ballpoint pens.

She closed her fingers and electricity shot through her. She didn’t need to look to know her hand was wrapped around the smooth shaft of a vibrator.

Her temperature rising, she crooked her head and took a second sweep of the office.

An unfamiliar sound drew her attention to her computer screen where a small notification flashed before her eyes. No one in the office used the IM function of their email program any more. There had been too much abuse, and so it had been disabled.

She closed her drawer and moved her mouse to open the message from JAT.

OTHER DRAWER.

There it was, sitting in her tray on top of a mound of paper clips. It looked like a perfume roll-on, but the engraved writing on the cylinder read ‘Breathless Sensations Clitoral Gel.’ She’d read reviews of this stuff but had never taken it off her wish list.

Another line of text joined the first.

OFFICE.

She moved the cursor to the text area, but discovered that she couldn’t add her own message. It was symbolic of this whole thing: he could push her buttons from afar, but she was powerless to reciprocate.

Turning her screen off as she rose, Grace looked through the partition at the rest of the staff. Some bounced from cubicle to cubicle. Others typed furiously, earbuds drowning out the noise around them. No one paid her any attention as she took the vibrator and lube from her desk and slipped into Caroway’s office.

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, she heard the muffled ring of a telephone. She knew right where to look. There in the credenza, next to her emergency supplies, was an iPhone, face lit up with an incoming call from JAT.

She cradled the phone against her ear.

‘It’s not like you were going to do anything today, anyway,’ he murmured in that sinfully raspy voice.

Grace suppressed the shiver that danced along her spine. ‘You move fast. How did you get them into my desk so quickly? And this phone? You didn’t do it yourself.’

‘I have people who do that sort of thing for me. There’s a headset in with your stash. Put it on. I want your hands free.’

Digging into the credenza, she tingled as she thought of him the previous night, laid back in his chair looking at her like she was dinner. Her fingers trembled as she worked the earpiece in. She loathed wearing a headset, ever since her first job working at a call centre selling newspaper subscriptions, and preferred a crick in the neck over mobility, but, as soon as static crackled in her hear and she heard Taureau breathing, her heart beat faster at the thought of him giving those orders practically in her brain.

‘There, that’s better,’ he went on with laughter on his voice. ‘Now take your clothes off.’

She thought back to that mugshot she’d seen only moments ago, and couldn’t put that tweaked-out young man together with the voice in her head.

‘The morning meeting isn’t going to go on for ever,’ she reminded him, turning in a circle as she shimmied out of her cardigan. ‘Where do you want me to look?’

‘Don’t worry, I can see you, and the meeting will go on as long as I want it to.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I have someone in that room that makes sure it does.’

The authority in his voice was like a drug shot into her veins. She tossed the sweater onto the floor and went to work on the belt bisecting her dress. She let it fall and reached behind for her zipper. ‘Do you have a hard-on?’

‘Shush …’

There was only the sound of his breathing as she completed her disrobing. No garters and thong today. She had dressed in anticipation of getting canned. Navy bikinis and a bra to match were as wild as it got.

‘Everything,’ he said when she was down to her wedge sandals.

‘You know, I’ve never been completely stripped down in here,’ she said, and kicked her shoes under the desk.

‘I know. You seem to like getting fucked while you’re half-dressed. Go over to the conference table, and take your gifts with you.’

‘Is that what these are?’ She held up the vibrator as she strode towards the table. She tossed the lube onto the surface and placed her palm flat on the edge. ‘Do you want me like last night?’

‘No, I want you on your back to start.’

She stood on her toes and lifted her knee to the edge of the table, then stopped and looked around. ‘Why do I still have a job?’

He chuckled, so low and lovely. ‘Because you were a very good girl last night and you did exactly what I told you to.’

‘Fair enough,’ she said, out of breath.

She felt as though she was moving underwater as she climbed onto the table. Glancing around, she rolled onto her ass. The surface had never felt cooler, or perhaps it was because she was so hot.

‘I still don’t know where to look.’

‘Don’t look, just listen.’

As his words simmered in her blood, Grace leaned back on one elbow. ‘Tell me.’

‘Show me how wet you are.’

Her thighs trembled as she drew her knees apart, escalating to a hot shiver as she exposed herself to him. She slowly danced her fingers over her belly and into the waiting wet heat. As she stroked herself, the pulse of his breath picked up. She held hers, hoping to hear the sounds of clothes rustling or even a zipper, but there was only that sharp in-and-out.

‘Wet, but not wet enough,’ he murmured. ‘I think it’s about time you tried out that lube.’

Her fingers shook as she drew the lube closer. ‘I’ve always wanted to try this.’

‘Just use a little on the tip of your finger.’

She squeezed a dollop onto her finger and brought it up to her nose. ‘Minty. Must be like an Altoids kiss.’

‘A what?’

‘It’s when a man sucks a mint before going down on you. I read about it in Cosmo when I was in university and I wanted to give it a try, but my roommate beat me to the punch. She had a reaction and ended up in the hospital.’ She grinned and swept the tip of her finger around her clit. ‘I trust you spent a little more than the cost of an Altoids on this.’

‘If you could see yourself when you come, you’d agree there’s no price too high. Open up a little more for me.’

Grace drew her feet closer to her ass until there was nothing left to show. She didn’t feel any difference with the lube, not yet, but having him pull her strings once more had her dripping.

‘What would you do to me if you had me?’ she whispered. She needed to keep him talking as she rolled her finger around and around her clit.

And there in her ear, she heard it: the rustling of his clothes and the creak of his chair as he undressed, and the quick intake of his breath as he began to touch himself. She closed her eyes and summoned forth the image of his glorious, glistening cock.

‘Just like you are,’ he said, his voice shaky now, ‘spread out like that and squirming while I play with your clit.’

‘Oh, yes.’

She dropped back again, all the way down, and closed her eyes. She imagined herself from above, sprawled out like she was at that moment, but with a shadowy figure kneeling between her legs. She could almost feel his thick fingers stroking through the pink, wet heat he found.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said again, rolling the hard bud under her middle finger. ‘Yes, tell me more.’

‘You tell me,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me what you would do to please me.’

The crackle of static gave his voice an unearthly quality, once more the sorcerer prying into her thoughts. She pushed the balls of her feet against the hard surface of the table and rocked her ass in tune with her finger. She lived and breathed the fantasy behind her eyes of being slowly undone by her faceless lover.

Grace slid two fingers lower and pushed into the wetness. She didn’t go any further than the first joints. She needed to tease herself, to prolong this sweet torture as long as it suited him.

‘You want to watch me squirm. I can tell, and so you’ll make me squirm.’

‘How?’

‘I want your tongue on my clit. You know how badly I want you to lick me, to suck me, but you need me ready for you. A wet hole isn’t good enough, not for you.’ She squeezed her lids shut and quaked as she flexed her fingers at the mouth of her cunt. ‘You want me hungry.’

‘Back up to your clit,’ he said, breathless in her ear, and sucked in a quick breath as she delved a little deeper. ‘Grace, do as I say.’

His command was just as powerful as the sensation of being stretched, and she bit her lip and complied. She wondered if he had the perfect view of what he had done to her.

‘I’ll beg for something more, but you’ll just tease me.’ Two fingers on either side of her clit, she moaned as such a teasing touch sent a hot spasm though her. ‘Oh, wow, I think that stuff is really starting to work.’

‘Keep talking. You’ll beg for something.’

‘Oh, I’ll beg you, all right, but it won’t be enough. You’ll play with me, just like this, maybe using your fingers in my pussy like I just did to make me crazy.’

She shook her head, pushing up faster as the slight pinch evoked another throb. The shuffling sounds on the other end of the line became more pronounced. Though faint, she caught the squelch of flesh against flesh, his cock in his palm.

She opened her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. ‘You’ll tease me while you’re doing it. You’ll have your cock in hand, using my juices as lube, and you’ll make me watch you jerk off while you finger me.’

‘It’ll make you want it more.’

Nodding, Grace cranked her wrist and let the pleasure build and build. ‘You won’t let me have it, though. You let me know it, too. You might kneel up here by my head and let me suck your cock, but you won’t fuck me, and then you won’t even touch me any more.’

Her fingers stilled. She felt around her for the vibrator.

‘You’ll stand over me, knowing how bad I want you to do whatever you want at this point. Fuck my pussy, my mouth, my ass, but you get off on keeping me from coming. You know –’

‘How hungry you’ll be for my cock if I keep it from you a little longer.’

‘Yes, exactly, and so you show me what I can’t have.’ The vibrator in hand, she touched the button on the base of the shaft. ‘All you leave me with is this, knowing it will never be good enough.’

Engrossed completely in her fantasy, she pressed the tip of the vibe to her clit. It took only seconds for her sex to adjust to the sudden vibration, and then she turned it up almost all the way.

‘Close your eyes and keep talking. Tell me.’

He was puffing now, his authority cracking as desperation took over.

‘So close. God, you’re so close, kneeling with your cock just above my pussy.’ Pushing the vibe in, she ground down and moaned through clenched teeth. ‘You’re going to come anywhere but my pussy. Aren’t you?’

‘Because you want me to come inside you.’

‘Oh, yes.’

That perfect, throbbing energy took over. She was lost in the fantasy, in the blurry image of this man she’d never really seen, looming over her, pushing her down and keeping her there with his sheer will.

Her time to talk was over. Taureau took over, words exploding on radio waves and travelling over miles and miles to pummel her, to fuel this need that had built as she took them both into this fantasy.

‘I can see how bad you want it,’ he said, ‘You have no idea what you’re doing to me, Grace.’

‘Oh, tell me,’ she gasped, pushing up onto her toes as the surge grew closer and closer. ‘Tell me, please.’

‘Just what I’m doing to you. I want to fuck you, fuck your pussy, your mouth and your ass like you want me to. I want …’

His words became a garble of sounds just as the need for words became meaningless. She braced herself for the tsunami that was coming fast. She held her breath and the muscles in her bum went taut. It was so terrifyingly powerful she almost stopped, almost tossed the vibrator aside and wept, but there was no stopping it. She could hear him reaching his own climax, and the sound of her name gurgling in her ear spurred her on.

The shock of such a magnificent swell left her shaking inside and out. She released her grip on the vibrator and squeezed her eyes shut as it danced on the table between her legs. The starburst in her eyes blinded her, and she vainly tried to shut it out by throwing her arm over her eyes. Shaking her head as though to deny such a powerful rush of pleasure, Grace sobbed through the aftermath as the sound of Taureau fighting for breath filled her head.

‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered, forgetting that he could hear her, until his breathless chuckle brought her back to earth. She scrambled for the vibe, but couldn’t stay upright once she had turned it off. She flopped back and stared at the ceiling.

‘I can see you still throbbing,’ he said.

It was Grace’s turn to laugh. ‘You were right. That was money well spent. I haven’t come like that since I first learned what a clitoris was for.’

‘I’m sure it was more than the lube and vibrator, though you can add those to your collection in the desk. One of these days, Caroway is going to get a surprise when he goes on the hunt for something.’

She shook her floating head. ‘He won’t. He’s too important to even put sugar in his own coffee. Anything he wants, he asks me for.’

‘You are efficient.’

The quirk at the corner of her mouth was unstoppable. He wouldn’t let her forget that he had been paying attention to her office flings. As she lay there trying to steady her breath, she wondered about the fact that he’d caught her at all. Did he sit in front of a wall of computers all day and watch the goings-on at Taureau-Werner? What sort of existence did he live?

There she was, in the perfect position to learn more about a man who was all legend, and yet she didn’t probe as she pushed herself up. She was in no position to ask questions.

But she did want at least one answer.

‘I’ve been worrying all day that you were going to fire me. I need you to tell me.’ Her voice was froggy from thirst and every word scratched across her throat. She made her way to Caroway’s bar fridge. ‘Is that’s what’s going to happen if I decide not to take your orders any longer? Is that what would have happened if I had closed my desk drawer when I found your gift?’

‘Did I force you to come in here? Did I coerce you? Now? Last night?’

She wanted to say yes to save face and win the discussion, but she knew that wasn’t true. This wasn’t blackmail. This wasn’t sexual harassment or whatever you wanted to call it. He hadn’t intimidated her, had he? She didn’t pull down her panties and bend over the conference table because she felt she had to. He’d reached out to her, and she’d reached right back.

She wanted to play this game with him.

‘No,’ she said, and claimed a water bottle from the fridge. She drank half of it down, and then shook her head. ‘No, you didn’t. You never even threatened me with exposure.’

‘That would be stupid of me, wouldn’t it? I have no proof. The cameras can’t exist, and, even if they did, a little office indiscretion would pale in comparison to the scandal if you decided to hit me with a lawsuit.’

Grace returned to the table and collected the vibrator, then headed for Caroway’s bathroom. ‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘I’m sure you would have found a lawyer who would have no trouble connecting the dots.’

She laughed as she squirted a dollop of hand soap on the plastic shaft. ‘Can you see me in here?’

‘No. Bathrooms are off limits. Not out of respect for privacy, obviously, but because there are some things I prefer not to see.’

‘Have you seen Caroway’s “guests” on the weekend?’

‘You’d be surprised what I see.’ He said nothing more as she ran the water and soaped up the vibe, but spoke as soon as she cut the water. ‘Grace, your job is safe. What happened here today and last night in the boardroom has nothing to do with the other. If you walk away, there will be no repercussions for your job. I promise you.’

‘Your promise means nothing to me, not right now.’

He didn’t counter her words. As far as she could tell, he merely watched as she cleaned herself up and tidied Caroway’s office. The sound of his breathing was unnerving, but she didn’t try to remove the headpiece.

‘Leave them in the cupboard,’ he said as she picked up both the lube and the vibe. ‘Keep them close.’

‘I was thinking of taking them home with me.’

‘Maybe I should install cameras in your apartment.’ She heard the click of keys on a keyboard and grinned as he said, ‘578 Haughn Street, apartment 808. Correct?’

‘That’s not fair. You’ve already banned me from having sex here at the office. If you place restrictions at home, I might have to start going out for anonymous backseat sex to get my satisfaction.’

‘Caroway may be facing more meetings, if that’s the case, so I can send you home exhausted.’

She felt mad and giddy all at once. This was so surreal. An enigmatic lover watching her from afar, stroking her libido and filling her head with all sorts of wicked thoughts.

She sucked in a deep breath and tucked her presents in the credenza. ‘I should get back to my desk.’

‘Tomorrow is Saturday,’ he said quickly. ‘Can I convince you to come in the afternoon?’

Laughing, she stepped into her shoes. ‘And if I say no?’

‘I’ll make sure you’re here. A sudden project will come up, and Caroway will insist that you give up your weekend to give it your full attention.’

‘That’s a very dirty trick. Do you have something against Skype?’

‘I have a much better vantage point here at the office. What do you say?’

She could hear the laughter in his voice. A queer feeling hit her in the gut, the need to see it out completely. She leaned back against Caroway’s desk. ‘On one condition.’

‘Which is.’

‘I want to be able to see you again. When you come, I want to watch it happen like I did last night.’ She cocked her head and raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘You’re not the only one who likes to watch.’

‘I can arrange that.’

‘What do I do with the phone?’

‘Leave it here. I’ll have a charging dock put in there tonight.’

‘Do I call you when I’m here?’

Another low, husky laugh. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Her words came out breathlessly, laced with anticipation. She raised her hand to her ear.

‘And Grace,’ he said, catching her just as she was ready to disconnect. ‘If you want to know more than what an Internet search will tell you, I’d recommend Everly Ledger’s book Burnout.’

Her cheeks went hot and she opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

‘I would have been very surprised if you didn’t look.’

‘Of course, Mr Taureau.’

‘Jacques.’

‘Jacques.’ She felt a funny little tickle in her chest. The name sounded so strange as she pronounced it, the thrill of addressing him so informally sparking at the tip of her tongue. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’