Jackson: A Sexy Bastard Novel (14 page)

“Deal, baby,” Jackson mutters into my hair. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

I
t’s
three in the afternoon, and my shift is almost over. Thank God. All I want at this point is to go home, shower, and see Jackson.

Of course, he’s still so slammed with work, he probably won’t want to do anything . . . even though it’s a Friday. Chances are good that we’ll order more takeout and watch bad TV in our pajamas, just like we’ve done on our last several “date nights.” And I’d really love to say “fuck it, I’m going out without you,” but the truth is that I tried that the other week, and I just ended up back at his house in my pajamas, anyway.

I don’t know what is happening to me. I just want to be with him all the time, and if that means on his couch in front of the boob tube, that’s where I end up. But the fact of the matter is that sweatpants and Chinese takeout every Friday night do not suit me. I’m missing out on valuable time, valuable experiences. Something has to change.

The Library is so dead that I’m about to untie my apron and ask Cash if I can take off early when a group of businessmen show up. I know their type; they’re here for a “lunch” meeting, which just means a lot of boisterous laughing, some half-eaten sandwiches, and too many vodka tonics. But their kind usually tips well, so I plaster on a smile and greet them with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.

The leader of the pack eyes me up and down, his grin serpentine.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’ll be well taken care of.”

After seating them, I quickly retreat to the bar with their drink orders.

“High rollers over there, huh?” Cash comments, pulling down the bottle of Belvedere.

“Something like that.”

I glance back at the table and note that at least three of the six pairs of eyes are still following me. Men like that think they own women, especially any woman wearing an apron. It makes me want to untie mine and strangle each one of them. And then take their wallets.

“Well, it looks like my charms won’t be needed,” Cash says as he adds stirrers to each glass and sets them onto my tray. One of the men is already beckoning me back, a giant lecherous leer smeared across his face.

Three rounds of vodka tonics later, the men are well lubricated and have abandoned whatever pea-sized amount of self-restraint they possessed when they walked in.

“Her tits are a little small,” I hear one of them say as I approach their table, round four balanced on my tray. “But that ass more than compensates.”

“I’d take her, small tits or not.” The leader of the group looks right at me as he says it. Then, not bothering to lower his voice, he adds, “She’d be great on my front desk . . . staff.”

I can feel my face flushing, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking away. As I set his glass down in front of him, he winks at me.

“You lookin’ for an upgrade from this joint, sweetie?”

“No, thanks,” I reply, gritting my teeth. “I’m very happy with my current job.”

“You didn’t even ask where I work.”

“I’m guessing finance.” I move around each of the other five men, retrieving empty glasses and replacing them with full ones.

“That’s right.” The man’s meaty, pockmarked face has gone red with the alcohol, but it hasn’t lost one single speck of smugness since he walked in. He thinks he’s king of the castle. Every castle. “Right in the heart of Atlanta. Bank of America Plaza.”

“That’s nice for you.” As I retrieve the last empty glass from the table, I notice that his napkin had fallen to the floor. I’m about to kick it under the table when I notice his work ID hanging loosely out of his pocket. That’s when the idea comes to me.

Bending down to retrieve the napkin, I pretend to lose my balance and fall into his lap.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I apologize, gripping his shoulder to steady myself. With my other hand, I slip the badge into my back pocket.

“You’d think she was the one on round four,” one of the cronies jokes, and they all laugh.

As I start to turn away, the leader grips my arm. “Here.”

He presses a stiff card into my palm. “In case you change your mind.”

I look down. It’s his business card.
Martin Harris, Financial Director. 600 Peachtree St NE, Floor 55.

My plan just got so much better.

To apologize for my “clumsiness,” I comp their fourth round of drinks, and they wind up leaving me a tip so extravagant, I could have comped their entire bill and still come away on top. Even Cash, earner of wildly inappropriate tips, is taken aback when I show him.

“What did you do to those guys?” he asks, gawking at the stack of bills as I count them onto the counter. “Every time you had to go over there, you looked like you were about to spit into their drinks.”

“I was just my pleasant, charming self,” I reply, flashing him a cheeky grin and stuffing the wad into my front pocket. Then, just to reassure myself, I reach into my back pocket and finger the hard plastic card.

The tip was really just icing on the cake; even without it, the whole ordeal would have been worthwhile. Because now I have this.

Date night has been saved.

“
S
o where is
it that we’re going, exactly?” I come around the car to find Skylar taking one last swig of whiskey before she slams her door.

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Capping the slim silver flask, she lifts the hem of her dress to secure it beneath the garter belt around her thigh. Fuck that’s hot.

I have no idea what we’re doing here, parked in the middle of downtown on a Friday night. Where I should be is back at my house, going through some of the last contractor bids before my big meeting with Halford tomorrow. But Skylar is right: we haven’t done anything very interesting in a long while, so I really do owe her a night out. Plus, I haven’t seen her this excited in a while. And if all she wants is for me to put on a suit and drive her to the middle of the city, how can I deny her that?

“We are going to get back at a reasonable hour, right?” I confirm one more time. “Because my meeting tomorrow is at 8am, and—”

“Yes yes yes, I know. It’s
important
.” She smooths down her dress and carefully touches each of her pearl earrings. “We’ll be back in plenty of time for you to get your beauty sleep. So.” She faces me. “How do I look?”

“Ravishing.” I hook an arm around her waist and pull her into me. “Undeniably professional, yet unbearably sexy.”

Her navy dress is perfectly modest—the female equivalent of the “business suit and tie”—but damn, if those four inch pumps don’t make her legs look sexy as hell. I want to speed straight to my office and bend her over my big, broad, walnut desk . . . . And maybe up against the water cooler, too. With those shoes on.

“Great.” She tucks back a strand of hair and then gives my tie a little tug. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”

“You know, my office isn’t too far away.” I pull her tighter against me. “And I have a nice big desk that would look great with you—”

“Nope.” She disentangles herself and steps away from the car. “We have plans.”

Sighing, I straighten my tie and follow her out of the parking lot. “So what exactly are these plans?”

She ignores my question. “Now listen: when we get there, just follow my lead.”

That should be easy; it’s pretty much what I’ve been doing all night.

A few blocks later, we round a corner to arrive face-to-face with the Bank of America Plaza. I stop dead in my tracks.

“What are we doing
here
?”

Once again ignoring my question, Skylar digs around in her clutch and emerges with what appears to be some kind of plastic badge.

“Just trust me,” she responds, snapping the purse shut. “It’s a surprise, remember?”

I nod, feeling very uncomfortable. It’s after 10pm on a Friday night. What could Skylar possibly want inside the Bank of America headquarters?

“Are we here for a party?” I guess. “Do you have some kind of VIP invite?”

“Something like that.” She withdraws the flask and holds it out to me. “Want a swig before we get started?”

I accept it and take a pull, relishing the burn as the whiskey flows down my throat and blooms in my stomach. When I hand it back to her, she takes a quick sip before strapping it back to her thigh and straightening her dress. Then, standing tall, she raises the ID and presses it to the small black panel outside the front door. A tiny red light above the panel blinks. Then it turns green, and the locks on the glass door to our left click open.

“Bingo,” she whispers, eyes lighting up.

When the clicking stops, I pull open the door, and Skylar strides in like she owns the place. As she passes me, she presses the plastic card to my chest.

“Take this,” she says in a low voice, “and flash it to that guard as we walk past.” With her chin, she motions toward a man in a dark gray suit who is seated behind a marble counter about ten yards ahead.

“What—”

“Shh.” She presses a finger to my lips. “Don’t ask questions. Just follow.”

Heart hammering, I try not to look at the ID as I follow Skylar through the lobby. At any moment, I expect security guards to burst out from behind the pillars around the lobby, weapons trained on us. But everything remains still and silent, save for the sound of her heels clacking against the marble floor. They sound like gunshots.

Skylar heads straight for the elevator bank. The fact that she appears to know exactly where she’s going comforts me a little, although I’m still nervous as to why she hasn’t told me where we’re going—or whose ID I’m holding.

The guard says nothing when I flash him the badge, and then suddenly we’re between the elevator banks, staring at ourselves in twenty different golden-door reflections.

“Do we need to—”

Before I can finish, Skylar snatches the card and presses it against a black rectangle identical to the one that let us into the building. A bell chimes and a pair of doors at the far end of the bank glide open.

“Here we are.” She gives me a wink and then points toward the open elevator. “After you.”

O
n the ride
up to the fifty-fifth floor, I give both of us another shot of whiskey and then explain to Jackson where we are going and why. When I’m done, he simply stares at me.

The elevator continues to announce our ascent. Ding! Thirty-four. Ding! Thirty-five.

“So basically, this is nothing more than an insanely risky stunt. To . . . what, prove a point?”

“The guy was a dick,” I reply, leaning back against the cool mirrored wall. “He deserves to be taught a lesson. And don’t tell me this doesn’t have your blood racing. After all, you did say you wanted to fuck me on a desk.”

“On
my
desk.” Jackson shakes his head in wonder. “You’re nuts. You just broke us into this building to . . . ransack some guy’s office? Why didn’t you just have Cash throw him out?”

“He didn’t actually
do
anything. And we’re not just trashing his office; we’re going to make sure that everyone knows what a chauvinist pig he really is.”

Jackson sticks his hands in his pockets and gives me a worried look.

“Don’t worry,” I reassure him. “If anyone asks, I’ll say that Mr. Harris
gave
me his ID. He was so drunk, he might actually buy the story himself.”

Ding! Forty-eight. Ding! Forty-nine.

“Sky, my presentation—”

“We’ll be home in plenty of time for you to work on your big important presentation,” I tell him. “And come on. We need an adventure. When’s the last time you felt this alive?”

Jackson doesn’t respond, at first, but eventually he takes his hands out of his pockets, sighs, and nods.

“It’ll be memorable, that’s for sure.”

Ding! Fifty-five. The elevator chimes twice more, and the doors glide open. Cautiously, we peer out into the dark corridor.

“Ready?” I ask. He gives a nervous nod.

“Great.” I grab his hand and pull him forward. “Let’s do this.”

Together, we tiptoe into the hallway, moving slowly until our eyes adjust. We come to glass double-doors, push through, and arrive at row after row of cubicles. Over the cubicles, I can see that the far wall is one solid pane of glass; the lights of the city twinkle in the distance.

“Check it out,” Jackson says, ducking around cubicles to approach the window. I would join him, but I came here to do more than just admire the scenery.

Leaving him to gaze out at downtown Atlanta, I follow the perimeter of the office until I reach a series of thick, wooden doors: private offices. This is where the power lives.

The first nameplate I come to reads
James Wright
. Probably also a jerk, but not who I’m looking for. One by one, I make my way down the row of doors, reading each nameplate. All male names, of course, but no Martin. I’m about halfway down the wall when it occurs to me: the corner office. That’s the one they show in movies, where the most powerful person sits. And a financial director at a bank? He has to be the most powerful person.

Skipping the rest of the doors, I head straight to the very last office, right before the wall meets the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window. Just as I suspected, the nameplate matches the business card.
Martin Harris
. When I try the handle, it’s unlocked. The man probably believes that fear alone will keep all of his other lowly colleagues out. Clearly he’s never hired anyone like me.

Pushing my way in, I call to Jackson, “In here.”

“Did you know,” he says as he follows me inside, “that we’re not actually at the top of the building?”

“What do you mean?”

“The architect who designed this building originally intended for the top of it to be a ninety-foot obelisk—”

“That’s great, Jackson, but can we save the architectural history lesson for another time?”

His face falls, which instantly makes me feel like a jerk. He can’t help it if he’s obsessed with all this nerdy building stuff.

Kissing him in apology, I tug gently at his tie. “We’re on a mission here. You can tell me all about the crazy architecture stuff later, okay?”

“Okay.” He looks at least slightly appeased. “So what’s our ‘mission’?”

“First, we need to see if we can find anything incriminating on Martin’s computer. And if not, then we plant something.” Circling the massive desk in the center of the room, I throw myself into the enormous black leather chair and scoot it up so I’m face-to-face with his computer. The machine hums gently, and when I touch the mouse, the screen comes to life.

“It’s not going to be that easy, you know.” Jackson rounds the desk and comes up behind me, squinting at the monitor.

“What do you mean? All we have to do is click this little icon here . . . Oh.” As soon as I click the “Log On” icon, a blank password box pops up. “Do you think we can guess his password?”

“Skylar.” Jackson’s lips curl in amusement. “This is a complete stranger. Do you think you could guess
my
password?”

“Um . . . Skylar-is-awesome?”

He laughs and I turn back to the glowing computer screen.

Shit.
Now what? My whole plan had been to hunt around on his computer and, if we didn’t find any porn—which, quite frankly, would have surprised me—to download some and then email all of his female coworkers a few choice files.

Now, though, I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe I didn’t think of the password thing. But I have to do something. We can’t have come all this way for nothing. And he shouldn’t get away with treating women like that. He shouldn’t get away with treating
me
like that.

“Hey.” Jackson swivels the chair so I’m facing him. “Why don’t we just set aside this whole revenge fantasy?”

“No way. He—”

Jackson holds a finger to my lips, silencing me. At his back, the wall-to-wall window frames a sweeping view of the city: thousands of specks of light glittering in the inky darkness.

“I know the guy treated you like shit, Sky, and that’s unacceptable. But if he comes back to The Library, then we can deal with him. On our own turf.”

I don’t want to wait for him to come back and treat me like shit again. I want to do something
now
.

Ducking away from Jackson, I swivel back to the desk, grab a stack of papers, and sprinkle them across the floor. It’s not quite what I was going for, but it does feel at least a little bit satisfying: he’ll come here tomorrow, and his kingdom will be amiss. Next, I take a stapler and hurl it across the room. It makes a pleasant ‘thud’ against the wall and falls to the floor in a shower of staples.

“Skylar,” Jackson says, a warning note creeping into his voice. But I’m actually starting to feel better. I don’t want to stop now.

Standing, I grab a shiny metal letter opener and stab it into the soft cushion of the chair. Slicing the metal upward, I peel back the leather and pull out a handful of white stuffing.

“Skylar, stop.” Grabbing my wrists, Jackson pulls me against him and plucks the stuffing out of my fist. “Destroying his office isn’t going to help anything. And someone might hear.”

His body is warm and firm. My pulse is racing, and I can feel his heartbeat thudding heavily in his chest, too. Impulsively, I untuck his shirt and slip my hands beneath, feeling him stiffen at my touch.

Fear and lust—an intoxicating combination.

The next thing I know, we’re clearing off Martin Harris’ desk—and by “clearing off,” I mean the rest of the papers are flying everywhere, followed by a rain of paperclips and the thud of a paperweight. A freestanding cordless phone is the last item to clatter to the floor before my bare ass hits the smooth mahogany surface.

“I have wanted to do this all night,” Jackson grunts, hiking my skirt higher as I wrestle with the buckle of his belt. He doesn’t need to say it; I saw how he’s been looking at me.

When the buckle finally releases, he bats my hands away and kneels before me, licking up the inside of my right thigh and down my left. My legs quiver and I spread them wider. I came prepared: no underwear.

“Do that again,” I say, and he does, reaching higher with his tongue, this time batting the tip of my clit. I let out a soft moan.

“Again.”

As his tongue circles my clit, he kneads my breasts through my dress and I put my hands behind his head to pull him deeper. He thrusts with his tongue, forcing a cry out of me. The sensation is sharp, radiating all the way down to my toes.

“Fuck me. Fuck—”

“Hello?”

The lights in the outer office flick on, casting a long shadow into our room. Jackson goes rigid.

“Who’s up here?”

Oh. Shit.

We can hear footsteps approaching, and I struggle to yank down my dress as Jackson stands. I have just pulled the hem over my crotch when the door opens and the overhead lights blink on. A tall man wearing a sheriff’s uniform steps inside.

“What are you two doing up here?”

“Um.” I scramble for my purse. “I work for—”

“You don’t work for anyone, ma’am.” The officer surveys the mess on the floor with disgust.

“Here!” I finally wrench the latch on my purse open and fish out the ID badge. “You see, I have—”

“All due respect ma’am, you don’t have shit.” The cop plucks the badge from my fingers. “This ID has been invalid since 3pm this afternoon. Unfortunately for you, the system only resets at midnight, which means it did manage to get you into the building and past security downstairs. And,” he flips the badge in his hand so the name and photo come up, “I don’t think either of you go by ‘Martin Harris,’ do you.”

This whole time, Jackson has been frozen in place with his lips squeezed shut and his belt buckle hanging askew.

Say something
, I will him.
Or at least look at me.

It’s only when the officer turns toward him that I see the handcuffs.

“Sir,” he says to Jackson, “I’m going to have to ask you to—”

“No!” I cry out. “It was me. This was all my idea.”

“Sweetheart.” The cop doesn’t even look in my direction. “That’s real cute, but you’re both under arrest for trespassing on private property while under the influence. Oh and also—” he nods toward the desk chair “—vandalism.” With that, he turns Jackson by his rigid shoulders and presses his wrists together behind his back. The metallic snap of the cuffs cracks something deep inside me.

“Okay, sugar.” He swivels toward me, as my heart plummets down, down, down all fifty-five floors, straight into the pavement. “Your turn.”