Читать книгу Off Limits - Clare Connelly - Страница 11
ОглавлениеI’LL SAY THIS for Jack. He knows how to do this. Late-night entertaining is clearly his forte.
His office is dimly lit and he’s switched on some kind of acoustic guitar album that’s humming low in my abdomen. The vocalist has a husky rasp and it’s doing very strange things to my equilibrium. He mixes two martinis with a maraschino cherry in each.
I arch a brow as he hands me mine. ‘I hate cherries.’
‘Interesting,’ he murmurs, his eyes hooked to mine. ‘Why?’
I stare at it and swirl the glass, sipping the alcohol and wincing as the slightly medicinal flavour assaults my back palette. ‘They’re weird. Plasticky.’
‘Not the real ones.’
‘No.’
I swallow, wondering at the way my gut is churning and my pulse is racing. I need to bring it back to business. It’s the reason I’m here with him.
‘The server in Canada can pick up the slack, but it’s going to slow things down.’
‘By how much?’
‘Just a few seconds’ lag. It’s unavoidable, given the distance.’
‘A few seconds?’ He shakes his head. ‘There’s nowhere closer?’
‘Not that can handle this amount of data.’
He throws his drink back in one motion. ‘And Wolf thinks that’s acceptable?’
He says his name with obvious derision.
‘You think he’d go to the effort of flying out here to propose it if he did?’
‘Well, he’s banging you, right?’
I can’t hide the angry intake of breath. Sure, he’s always rude. And demanding. And I’ve learned not to give a shit. I don’t expect the same courtesy from Jack Grant that most people pepper into life. But this is too far even for him...even when we’ve been flirting all night.
‘His suggestion is professional,’ I return softly. A warning lurks in my words. Does he hear it?
Apparently not. Jack is like a cat with a mouse.
‘But you are fucking him?’
‘God, Jack,’ I snap, standing up.
His eyes follow the fluidity of my movement. They’re narrowed. Assessing. He’s reading me like a book. But I’m too angry to care. Too worked up, as well. He’s halfway to being drunk, and he’s obnoxious, and since he pulled me hard against his body I’m a bit mushy.
I hide my mushiness, though. I hide it behind a veil of anger. ‘That’s none of your damned business.’
His eyes flick to mine. There’s a lazy arrogance in his features but anger palpitates off him.
‘He works for me. You work for me. If you’re fucking him I want to know.’
‘What I do in my own time, and with whom, is up to me. Until the day it starts affecting my job performance you should just butt out.’ I jut my chin, my eyes sparking with his. ‘Got it?’
He looks calm, controlled, but I know there’s an undercurrent of emotion just beneath the handsome surface. Because I know Jack. Probably better than anyone else on earth.
‘You don’t strike me as coy,’ he says.
‘Because I’m not.’
I step backwards. The wall is behind me. I brush against it, feeling cornered and unbelievably confused and turned on by this strange turn of events.
‘So answer the question.’
‘Am I fucking Wolf?’ My question emerges as a husk in the night.
‘Yeah.’ He moves forward. An infinitesimal step. ‘You know everything there is to know about me, don’t you? So why keep your secrets?’
I open my mouth to say something snappy, but shut it again. He’s right. I know a lot about him. Not the ‘everything’ he claims, but a lot.
‘You could always lock your door if you want to be more private about your love-life.’
‘Sex-life,’ he interjects swiftly, on autopilot, and I know it’s because of Lucy that he’s so emphatic on this point.
I don’t know anything about his wife. I presume she was a nice enough person—although agreeing to marry Jack does make me question both her sanity and her judgement. But maybe he was different before she died. Maybe his bastard impulses weren’t so apparent?
‘So you’re going to live out the rest of your life like this? Moving from one woman to another, never getting to know a thing about them beyond their cup size and their sexual proclivities.’
His eyes drop to my breasts and I can tell he is assessing my cup size. Crap. My nipples strain hard against the flimsy fabric of my dress—it’s too tight for a bra, and sadly I don’t really need one.
His smile is self-satisfied and I want to slap it off his face. I fight the urge to cross my arms and cover my involuntary reaction.
‘I’m trying to get to know more about you right now,’ he says.
My pulse is hammering hard in my veins. His revolving-door bedroom flashes before me in an instant. The number of mornings I’ve arrived to find him asleep after a busy night of... Best I don’t imagine that right now.
‘Are you afraid I’ll judge you?’
I open my eyes to find him right in front of me, his head bent, his body just a hair’s breadth from me. A soft moan escapes me before I can catch it.
‘You? You think you’d have any right to judge me after parading half of England through here?’
‘Not half of England,’ he murmurs, a smile shifting over his face. ‘Half of London, maybe.’
‘How do you justify it?’ I ask, feeling a dangerous pull towards a line of questioning my brain is shouting at me to back away from. ‘You think Lucy would be happy that you’re fucking your way through a smorgasbord of women just because you won’t have an actual relationship? Is there a sliding scale of monogamy that the dead expect?’
A muscle jerks in his cheek. I recognise that I’m stirring him up and still I don’t stop. I’m angry, too! He doesn’t have a monopoly on thwarted desire and pent-up frustration.
It feels good to goad him! So good!
‘You think what you do is fair to these women?’
His smile spreads slowly, but it is cold, angry. ‘I don’t hear any complaints.’
Boom! It’s the proverbial match to the fuel of my anger. I explode.
‘You boot them out before you even know their names half the time! Where, exactly, would they lodge their complaint? My God, Jack. Of all the chauvinistic, selfish, careless—’
He lifts a finger to my lips, silencing me with the touch. His eyes on mine are intent. Heat builds inside my blood, at fever pitch now.
‘You know...’ His fingers dip into my drink, fishing out the bright red orb at its base. ‘You have a tendency to be judgemental.’
My sharp intake of breath is dangerous, given his finger’s closeness to my mouth. He runs it across my lower lip and I don’t pull away. He holds up the cherry with his other hand. My eyes slip to it of their own accord.
‘Haven’t you ever discovered that you like something you thought you hated? Haven’t you ever been wrong?’
I shake my head, not really sure of the question he’s asking. He surprises me by lifting the cherry to his own lips and sucking it into his mouth. I watch for a moment, and as his finger drops from my mouth I try to say something. I’m not sure what, and I’ll never have a chance to find out. He brings his lips to mine, pressing the cherry into my mouth, rolling it around before sucking it back into his and crushing it.
The flavour is all around me and I no longer care. Because it is dwarfed by something else: the taste of him. Cherry flavour is on his tongue, evaporating in the flame of our kiss.
His lips crush mine, silencing any words, sucking them out of me, and a new heat spreads in my body. His kiss is punishment and it is possession. I cannot explain it better than that. It is a moment of clarity in which my anger seems to evaporate temporarily before it is back and I am kissing him—just as hard, with just as much fury.
My tongue lashes his and my hands are in his hair, rough, pulling at him, and I am kissing him as though I am still shouting at him with my touch.
He groans angrily and his body weight holds me to the wall, his strong legs straddling me, pinning me where I am. I think my brain is trying to tell me something, but I can hear nothing above the pounding of my heart and the rushing of my blood.
Desire is a whip, and it is lashing at my spine.
He drags his lips lower, nipping the skin of my shoulder with his teeth and teasing the racing pulse-point in my neck with his tongue. I groan, tilting my head back, knowing I need to stop this madness but accepting we are past that.
A line has been crossed. Not just crossed! Obliterated! There is newness to this. But I want to shape it, not be shaped by it. I need to be in charge—at least to some extent.
‘Why do you care?’ he asks, bringing his mouth back to mine and kissing me with enough force to hold my head hard against the wall. His hand drops to my dress, lifting the hem, and his fingers slide between my weak, shaking legs.
‘Care...?’ I mumble. What is he talking about?
He breaks the kiss but I have no space to think—not when his fingers are sliding inside me, his hand easily pushing aside the barrier of my flimsy underpants.
Oh, my God. I’m about to come. I swear, I’m this close. He swirls his finger around my wet muscles, teasing me, feeling me, and I am his. Completely.
‘Why do you care who I fuck?’
The question is a gruff, deep demand.
I blink my eyes, trying to think straight. But he moves his thumb over my clit and I shiver, trembling in every bone of my body as I feel the wave building around me.
‘I don’t,’ I snap through gritted teeth, sweat sheening my brow.
My eyes are shut, so I don’t see him dip his head forward. It is a surprise when his mouth clamps over my breast, his teeth biting down on my nipple through the silky fabric of my dress.
My stomach lurches as he drags his teeth along my nipple, pulling, making me throb with pleasure. And his finger pushes deeper, then draws out. My own wetness glides across my clit as he thumbs my nerves, and I am lost. Exploded. Gone.
Heat shoots through me, bursting me apart, and I am panting loud and hard as he moves his head to the other breast.
Shit. It’s too much. My muscles are clenching and my legs are hardly able to hold me up. I have had amazing sex, but something about this has blown all my experiences out of the water. Is it the illicitness of being with my boss?
My boss.
Jack Grant.
I groan in awareness of a moment I will undoubtedly regret, and then I groan at my weakness because I can’t stop. There is a compulsion—no. An awakening. It is an acceptance of a truth I have fought too hard and for too long.
Two years of looks, laughs, infuriating arguments and differences of opinion have been leading to this. Two years of finding him in bed and fantasising about climbing in with him. I have resisted because he is my boss and I love my job—and because he’s Jack-bloody-Grant. I have resisted acting on my deepest desires, but now I find it is impossible not to welcome his.
His hand drops to my side. His fingers dig into my flesh just enough to make me arch my back forward, but his hips rock me against the wall, crushing me with strength and passion. Hell, he’s good at this. So, so good. So much better than I imagined.
And I’ve imagined a lot.
I whimper—a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made in my life—as he brings his mouth back to mine, but the ghost of his kiss lingers on my breasts, making them painfully sensitised.
‘Now do you think women complain after they leave me?’ he asks, and he is stepping away, backwards, his eyes glinting in his handsome face as he stares at me with a confusing lack of passion.
There is colour in his cheeks and his chest is shifting hard, as is mine, with the pain of laboured breath. But his voice is steady and his eyes are cold.
His question doesn’t make sense. I lift a finger to my breasts. They’re tingling and swollen. I stare at him, unusually slow on the uptake.
‘I give them what they want. What you want.’
And he turns sharply, stalking across the room and grabbing another drink. His back is to me as he throws back the glass and swallows, but I hardly register the movement. Shock is seeping into me. Shock at what we’ve just done.
Holy hell!
Was he proving a point? I am trembling, moistness slicks my underwear, my dress bears the marks of his kiss, my mind is tumbled—and he is nothing?
Feminine pique stirs in my gut. I fantasise about slipping the dress from my body and storming across the room. About pushing him to the floor and straddling him, making him admit he wants me.
I know he does. I felt the proof of his desire hard against my stomach. But sanity is returning, and with it the realisation that we have done something very, very stupid. There is no turning back. No unwinding time. I need to salvage my pride and get the hell out of his office before I do something really stupid. Like ask him to finish the job he started.
‘I’ll email you a full report on the server’s feasibility tomorrow.’ My words are pleasingly stiff.
He grunts. ‘There she is. My cold-as-ice assistant.’
I straighten my back. I have never been his assistant and he knows it. He’s goading me. Spoiling for another fight?
I narrow my eyes. ‘Oh, I’m not cold,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’m very, very turned on.’
Perhaps my honesty surprises him. He turns his face, angling it towards me without actually looking in my direction.
‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and...blow off some steam.’
I walk out of there calmly, even though I am awash with doubt. Let him make of that what he will. If he imagines me going to Wolf... So what? If he imagines me going home to masturbate, looking at a picture of him, then let him.
I don’t know if I give a shit.
It is cold when I emerge from The Mansion, and drizzling with rain.
One of the decisions I made within six months of coming to work for Jack was to move to Hampstead, where he lives. The hours I work, I don’t want to lose any more to a lengthy commute.
The Mansion is at the end of a long lane that comes out near the Heath, and just around the corner from a happy little school is my townhouse. A Dickensian brick with a shining red door and window boxes that have been sorely neglected over the summer. I should have planted them with pansies and strawberries, as they were when I first moved in, but I’ve never got around to it.
I shoulder the door inwards and slam it closed behind me with true relief.
But then I make the mistake of shutting my eyes and there he is. Jack Grant...head bent forward...mouth moving over my breast. I curse darkly—a string of angry words that would have knocked my mother sideways if she thought I even knew such language—and stride to the mirror in my entrance way.
My breasts are covered by two dark, wet marks. I lift my fingers to them and trace their outline, shuddering at remembered sensations, desperate for more. More of him. More of this.
I groan loudly and stomp through to the kitchen.
What the hell just happened? He’s my boss. My boss! And I know what he’s like. I know how messed up he is. For two years I have kept all this swirling desire at bay. Why couldn’t I control it tonight?
I pour myself a glass of wine in the hope that it will somehow reach back through time and wipe the experience not only from my memory but also from existence. It doesn’t. Each sip reminds me of him, and the faint overtone of alcohol hits the back of my throat, making me crave him.
This is not good.
I walk more slowly through the house, up the narrow stairs—two flights. The house is tall and skinny, with one or two rooms on each of its five storeys. My office is on the first floor; my bedroom and bathroom are on the next. There are three bedrooms on the next few levels, and a roof terrace right at the top. I love it, but I am not here nearly enough.
I kick my shoes off, then flick the light on with the base of my wineglass, narrowly avoiding spilling Pinot Noir on the beige carpet. I pad over the carpet and strip off the dress as I go. I’ll give it to charity as soon as I can.
In just my still-damp underpants, I climb into bed and pull the duvet up to my chin. Wineglass in hand, I stare at the wall.
It’s not that bad, is it?
People must do this kind of thing all the time. We work together. Hell, we practically live together. Something like this was kind of inevitable.
I cringe.
It’s so not okay. Wasn’t I just congratulating myself a few days ago on the Very Important Lessons I’ve learned from watching female bosses get derided and demoted over the years? Surely the cardinal sin for any woman in the workplace is to get involved with a colleague? And definitely not a senior, super-rich, super-yummy, fuck-around kind of colleague.
Ugh!
There are only a handful of us that work at The Mansion. Jack’s two assistants, his driver, a bodyguard and me. We are all bound by a strict notion of confidentiality, and I think most of his staff are too afraid of me to get on my bad side anyway. So it’s not gossip I fear.
It’s Jack. And it’s me. It’s the respect I suspect I have sacrificed by letting this happen.
Letting it happen? My brain is outraged. My brain, after all, did try to stop it.
Sorry, I wasn’t listening. I won’t make that mistake again.
I pour the wine into my mouth, wincing at the astringent taste I really don’t enjoy. I’m tired. It’s been a long day and a weird night.
The last thing on my mind as I fall into a tortured, sensual sleep is a question about what tomorrow will bring.
* * *
He’s at his desk when I arrive the next morning, coffee steaming in front of him, dark head bent. I move past, telling myself I would never do anything as cowardly as tiptoeing even as I hold my breath until I’m past his doorframe.
‘Gemma? Get in here.’
Shit.
I squeeze my eyes shut, suck in a deep breath. I can do this. We just kissed.
You didn’t ‘just kiss’. He stuck his finger deep inside you and made you come.
Shut up, brain.
He sucked on your breasts and you fell apart at the seams.
Seriously, I’m going to lobotomise myself.
‘Gemma?’
With a silent oath, I spin on my you-can-handle-anything Jimmy Choo heel and stride into his office with my very best appearance of calm.
‘Oh, hi, Jack.’
Crap. He’s wearing the pale blue shirt that makes his eyes look like bloody gemstones. It’s unbuttoned at the neck and I can see a hint of dark hair curling above the top button.
‘I didn’t realise you were here.’
His smirk shows my lie for what it is.
‘Sit.’
I arch my brow, staying exactly where I am, ignoring the wall to my left. The wall he pressed me against while he explored me intimately. My eyes stray to the bar instead. To the cocktail he was drinking last night.
‘Sit,’ he says again, and there is something in his voice that makes my nerves twitch.
There is promise in that command. Promise and heat.
‘How are you?’ The question, softly asked, makes everything inside me tremble.
‘I’m fine,’ I snap, to counteract that response. ‘And busy. What do you need?’
His smile spreads slowly across his face. It is fire and it is flame and my brain is beginning to get very, very anxious.
‘How did you sleep?’
Does he know I dreamed of him? That in my dreams he did very, very bad things to me?
I swallow, crossing my arms over my chest as the memories nip at my heels. They are in the room with us, swirling around him, me and the things we did. I can’t give them more air.
‘Did you want something?’
He stands up, and I am frozen to the spot as he moves confidently across the room, shutting the door and clicking the lock in place.
‘I slept badly,’ he says, ignoring my question, his voice sunshine on my cool flesh.
‘Mmm...?’ I murmur, making sure no warmth conveys itself to him. ‘Maybe you should have tried a sedative?’
He strides to the chair across from his and holds it out. Shooting him a look laced with my fiercest resentment, I sit down, careful not to so much as brush against his fingertips. Fingers that have now been inside me—that have not just touched me, but have breached my barriers and found my throbbing heart.
Fingers that have undone me.
I am holding my breath again. Is that how I’m going to get over this little hurdle? Suffocate myself? Is that even possible? I’m pretty sure we have some breathing trigger in our brains, but my brain is a bit pissy with me so maybe it would conveniently forget about the button.
I push air out consciously, quietly, and he takes his seat.
‘Anyway...’ I prompt impatiently.
His smile is a flicker. Is he laughing at me? Arrogant arsehole! That’d be just like him. See? That’s the problem! I know him. I’m not one of his other women. I know that he is as bastardy as he is sexy.
‘How did you sleep?’
I blink at him, my eyes wide. ‘You’ve already asked me that.’
‘You didn’t answer.’
I expel a sigh that speaks of anger. ‘Like I always do. Seriously, Jack. My desk is covered in paper. I have to get to work.’
‘I’m your work,’ he says with a shrug.
Insolent bastard.
He leans forward, and while his face is casual there is an urgency in the flecks of gold that fill his eyes. ‘Did you see him last night?’
I want to remind him of the salient fact I pointed out the night before. It’s not his damned business. But I’m not sure I can say that with such conviction now that I’ve tasted his mouth; now that I’ve been stunned by his desire.
Can I skirt around his question?
‘You’re my work? Okay, the thing is I have the New York guys waiting on contracts, you have a meeting in a week that I have to prepare for and Athens wants your input—which means my input—on a lease agreement. And I need to—’
‘Quiet.’
God! Don’t hate me, but when he’s bossy I love it. And he’s almost always bossy.
I glare at him across his desk; it’s best if he doesn’t know that this is just about my favourite version of him.
‘You’re fucking telling me to be quiet?’ I lean forward, and we’re close now: almost touching. ‘Seriously?’
‘You’re pissed off.’
‘Damn right, I am.’
His laugh is soft. Throaty. Hot. ‘Because we didn’t finish?’
I flick my eyes shut. My cheeks are hot. ‘What do you need?’
‘Are you in a relationship with him?’
‘Who?’
‘Wolf DuChamp?’
I hide a smile. ‘So you do know his name?’
‘Now I do.’
His expression is unreadable. But deep inside me something stirs. Hope. Because isn’t there an implication there that he knows about Wolf because of me? Because he wants to know about my life?
‘So? What’s the deal?’ he asks.
‘Are you jealous?’ The words are a challenge; they escape unbidden.
His response is razor-sharp. ‘Why would I be jealous?’
Crap. A stupid challenge, apparently.
‘Forget it.’ I scrape the chair back and stand, my eyes not inviting argument. ‘Is that all?’
‘You haven’t answered me. How can it be all?’
I expel a breath angrily. ‘I like him.’ I shrug.
It’s true. Not romantically, necessarily. But he’s a nice guy. Good-looking. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already ruled out a relationship.
‘Are you fucking him?’
My expression is ice—even I can feel the chill that spreads through the office.
‘Isn’t this the question that got us into trouble last night?’
He stands up, slamming his palms against the desk, his eyes lashing me. ‘Are you fucking him?’
It’s loud. Not quite a roar, but close to it. I’m startled. This is outside the bounds of anything that’s happened between us and we both know it. Then again, I guess we’ve obliterated boundaries now. They—like me—are in a state of flux. Changeability that is unpredictable and not good.
‘Go to hell.’
I turn around and walk out of his office, but my knees are shaking and I feel really weird, as if I could cry—which, for your information, I haven’t done in years. I literally don’t cry. Not at sad movies. Not when my cat died.
But I’m shaking, and if he follows me I’ll be really lost.
He doesn’t.
I storm over to my desk. I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. Piles of paper clutter every available inch of the thing. I turn my back on them and stare over the Heath, my eyes brooding.
This is a damned nightmare, isn’t it?
My brain nods along smugly. Told you so.
