Hard (7 page)

I look up at him, my heart pounding against my chest like a fist at
the nearness of him, at the sensation of him restraining me. “I’m
just trying to do as I was told,” I say. “You said we
were here to work.”

“I’m the boss,” he says, “You’re here
to do whatever I want whenever I want.” His mouth brushes my
neck as he speaks, making every muscle in my body weaken.

“And what do you want right now?”

“You,” he says. “To shut.” His lips skim down
my neck, across my collarbone. “The fuck up.”

“Such language,” I say. “You kiss your mother with
that mouth?”

He raises his face to mine. “I kiss everything with this
mouth.”

In the dim light, I watch as he draws his lips, slightly open but not
puckered, in exploration along the tops of my breasts raised up and
out of my tank top. His mouth moves up my arm, my shoulder. Overcome
with the need to touch his soft, thick hair as it gently tickles my
skin, I try to lift my hands from under his, but he presses his
weight more firmly on me, circling my wrists in his fingers.

His lips crush into mine, our tongues stroking against each other as
he pushes his body into me, and I can feel his hardness through his
jeans pressing against the warmth between my legs as I spread them to
either side of his.

He
catches my bottom lip between his teeth, the nip of pain sending
ripples of pleasure directly to my center. Removing one hand from
mine, he cups my breast over the thin fabric of my top, my nipple
hard between his fingertips as he caresses it, the motion so slow yet
making everything in my body feel sped up, like time-lapsed movement.

One
hand finally free, I grab his arm, feel the firmness of his bicep. I
let my hand drift to his shirt buttons, which I manage to undo—not
an easy task one-handed and completely distracted. I let my fingers
run down the hard smoothness of his chest, his bare skin bathed in
the soft streetlight.

He
takes my hand from his torso and moves it the top of my jeans. “Take
off your jeans,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Unless you want to stop.” He smirks,
and I shake my head. Stopping is the last thing on my mind right now.

He releases my other hand and I work open the button of my jeans
with impatient fingers, sliding down the zipper and pushing them to
my hips. I reach for the stiffness outlined in his jeans, rubbing my
palm against it, gliding my fingers up and down his fly as I start to
undo his button.

“Not me,” he says, removing my hand from his hard-on and
lifting me so I’m sitting on the desk. He slides off my shoes,
the high heels banging the hardwood as they drop to the floor, then
strips my jeans off me one leg at a time, kissing my thigh, my knee,
my shin. “You first.”

And with those words, all thoughts of my shift, my customers, and the
tips I was supposed to be earning drift far, far away.

He takes my hand and guides it into my panties, interweaving his
fingers with mine as we stroke into my wetness together.

“You like that, tiger?”

All I can manage is a moan. The press of his fingers intensifies.

“I like it, too,” he growls.

He pulls down the top of my tank top with his free hand, flicks my
nipple with his tongue, the tip of it against my supple skin making
my muscles contract with anticipation. My fingers work back and forth
across my clit, and I’m breathless not only at the speed of the
sensation, the almost heart-stopping goodness throbbing in my center,
but also at the thought of his knowing I’m enjoying this.

I close my eyes, shutting down my visual sense so I can take in
everything else even more—the light smell of his sweat, the
touch of his warm lips on my soft breasts, the sound of the desk as
it rattles against the floor with the movement of our bodies.

Touching myself is not something I would usually do in front of
anyone, and definitely not a guy who’s technically my boss.

But then again, nothing about what’s happening with Ryder is
usual.

“I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” I say,
finally getting to run my free hand through his hair as he moves his
mouth to the underside of my breast, then down my stomach, “if
you keep doing that.”

“Good things come,” he says, “to those who wait.”
He kneels in front of me and kisses my abdomen, my hip bone, my inner
thighs as he pushes my legs apart. Between my legs, he pulls my
panties to the side, darting his tongue across my clit and my
fingers.

Fuck
, that feels good.
It’s been too long since
anybody tasted me that way.

I moan again, helplessly, letting my head fall back,
anticipating more where that came from, a wave of orgasmic energy
starting in the background of every nerve ending and muscle fiber I
have, beginning to build on itself, like a tsunami gaining strength
in the deep ocean as it comes closer to shore.

But then Ryder pulls away, still on his knees in front of me. Soft
light from outside glows on his face, making him look like an
angel—with a devilish grin.

“Tsk tsk. I told you to wait,” he says, running his
fingers along the seams of my panties, creating little trails of heat
that feel like they’re going to melt me from the outside in.

“You’re a clit tease,” I say. At least, that’s
what I think I say. My ability to perform any regular function has
mostly been replaced with the intoxicating memory of his mouth.

“No,” he says. “I’m just in charge, aren’t
I?” He kisses the back of my wrist on the hand still in my
panties.

“No way,” I say, even though every part of my body is
pleading with me to surrender to him. And why not? I’ve already
surrendered in other ways. I’m working for him essentially for
free. I’m basically in his debt now, too. He’s already
been taking what he wants from me.

But I don’t have to make it easy to give more.

Then again, he doesn’t have to make it easy to resist. And
he’s not.

He slowly pulls my hand from my panties and then gently puts each of
my fingers in his mouth, lingering especially on the ones that I was
just using, tasting me. “Say it,” he says. “Say I’m
in charge.”

YesYesYes
, I think as his tongue, firm and agile, wraps
around my fingertips, making every part of my center pulse. But I
can’t bring myself to give him the satisfaction. Yet. “Never,”
I say.

“Say it,” he says, kissing my knees bent over the desk,
my legs dangling uselessly, tense like every other muscle, but
somehow also liquid, contracted but weak from his touch. “I
know you want more of this.” He licks my groin muscles along my
panties, first the left and then the right, long and slow, and the
nearness of his face to my wetness makes my clit feels like it’s
going to explode. “But only if you follow my rules.”

After leaving England, I promised myself that I only follow my own
rules now.

But that was before tonight. Before I met Ryder. And his tongue.

“You’re in charge,” I whisper.

“Louder,” he says, grazing my opening with his fingers,
grinning at me like someone who has a secret.

Of course, what he has is no secret. What he has is me.

“You’re in charge, you asshole,” I say.

“That’s more like it,” he says. “That’s
what I like about you, Cassie. Never afraid to speak your mind.
Though if I were such an asshole, I wouldn’t do this, now would
I?” He rolls my panties down my hips, past my knees, nuzzling
his head between my thighs, and with the tip of his tongue, he draws
circles against my slick pussy, smaller and smaller and smaller until
he is batting my clit quickly, forcefully, hungrily.

I clutch Ryder’s soft hair, my legs tensing around his head as
I get closer and closer to coming.

“Oh my God,” I pant, my nails digging into his scalp.
“Ryder. Please—”

He doesn’t let up for a second, just groans into me as he licks
and sucks even harder, and I can feel the vibrations every place that
his mouth touches. I gasp for breath, loudly, and hearing my response
he groans again, drawing it out, knowing exactly what he’s
doing to me, unrelenting, and I feel it so deep, the sweet pressure
building faster and higher, and then I’m stifling a scream—

OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod

Ryder reaches up and covers my mouth with his hand, so when I come
calling his name, biting that hand, the sound is muffled within the
quiet office.

Every muscle, every fiber, every cell release, and my insides feel
like a never-ending meteor shower, a million watts of energy. I try
to catch my breath. My whole body is limp, wrung out, spent.

What the fuck just happened?

I don’t know. But the way I feel, like I’m floating on
the surface of a deep, warm pool, I kind of want it to keep
happening.

Ryder stands and kisses the corners of my mouth, one and then the
other, and I grab ahold of his hips, pulling myself closer to him. I
untuck his shirt and bend forward to kiss the ridge of his V-muscle
as I blindly try to undo his zipper, which seems barely to be holding
up against the firmness between his legs.

“Hey, Ryde?” Jackson’s voice from outside
interrupts us, breaks the spell of Ryder’s body in my hands. A
rap on the door, the creak of its opening, a couple clacks of
Jackson’s fancy loafers on the hardwood—it all must take
just a few seconds, but it feels like it’s slow motion, like
when a monster walks into a really nice dream and you realize now
you’re in a nightmare.

It’s Jackson’s office, too, I guess, but would it kill
him to wait for a
Come in
?

“Hang on, dude, hang on,” Ryder says, pushing down his
erection as he tucks in his shirt. He throws me my jeans, and I
scramble to get them on, hopping around on one foot and then the
other in the dark, falling into a stack of boxes full of accounting
files in the corner, my post-orgasm legs not quite returned to full
strength. “Give us a sec.”

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Jackson says, swiveling his head away
from us, as it dawns on him, I imagine, that we weren’t just
doing some late-night number crunching in here. “I didn’t
know anyone else...” He trails off as he turns to leave, his
hand on the knob to pull it behind him, and still putting on one of
my shoes, I scurry out into the hallway before he shuts it, not
looking at him, not looking back at Ryder.

What the fuck did I just do with my boss?

I think about that question the rest of the night as I serve drink
specials and plates of tuna tartare like everything’s normal
and avoid Ryder like it’s part of the job.

I never do come up with a good answer.

CASSIE

What
the hell have I done?

The
thought wakes me up this morning, followed by, or maybe simultaneous
to, the memory of Ryder kissing me—and more than kissing
me—last night. I lie in bed on my back, the covers pulled up to
my chin, as though leaving just my head exposed to the world is
somehow going to attract information to my brain.

Sunlight
gleams through the curtains in my bedroom. It looks like another
beautiful summer day in the South.
I wonder what Ryder’s
doing right now?

My
hand drifts over my belly, tucks under the waistband of my pajama
pants.

No
.
I push the thought, and my hand, away. I will not fantasize about
him. I will not think about him. I will not imagine what might have
happened with him if Jackson hadn’t barged in.

Reasons
last night was a terrible idea:

For starters, Ryder is my brother’s bookie, or whatever the
word is for someone who takes debts and makes loans and kicks down
doors to get his money back. Which means any connection we have isn’t
just between us—it involves Jamie, too. And wasn’t the
whole point to untangle Jamie and me from Ryder and his world, not to
get more ensnared?

And
he’s basically my boss at the present moment, which means he
has the power to fire me at any time, which would mean Jamie’s
no closer to being out of debt, which goes right back to that other
thing about the point being to get Jamie out of this mess, not deeper
into it.

Also,
being walked in on by Jackson wasn’t exactly my idea of great
timing. Now it’s not like Ryder and I can just act as though
nothing happened, which was my plan of attack post-encounter, because
someone else knows it did.

Reasons last night was a great idea:

He’s hot and he has a tongue that can move like a butterfly and
just thinking about it makes my breath catch in my throat.

Of course, the more I try not to think about Ryder, the more clearly
my mind recalls him, every part of him in perfect focus from last
night: his chiseled chest, bare in his unbuttoned shirt, the jut of
his hips above his jeans, his big hands dragging across my body and
disappearing between my legs. I can’t fight this.

I roll into the middle of the bed and turn onto my back, letting my
fingertips graze over my t-shirt and across my breasts, lightly
teasing my nipples, creating sparks of electricity that buzz into
every part of my body. I close my eyes, recreating the darkness of
his office as I dip my fingers into my mouth, then slide them into my
panties, reliving Ryder's tongue lapping at me, consuming me. Arching
my back, I rub my clit faster and harder, imagining my wetness on
Ryder lips, the deep rumble of his moans, his hands on the inside of
my thighs, pressing my knees further apart. I can feel his eyes on
me, savoring me as I come in his mouth so hard I hear music.

Literal music, I realize. From my phone in my purse across the room
on the floor. A marimba very festively alerting me that I have a
text. I pull down my t-shirt and stretch up my arms as I put my feet
on the soft carpet, trying to come out of my mental fog to guess
who’d be texting me first thing on a Saturday. Definitely not
Jamie. My mom doesn’t text. Can’t be Ryder—he
doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who does a lot of follow up,
no matter where his face has been on your skin. Besides, if it were
him, I don’t know how I’d respond—
I let my body
get the best of me last night, but it won’t happen again
?