Taunt Me (Rough Love Book 2) (15 page)

The following week, I set up a powwow with the upper brass at Schumacher, who’d heard about my new condo contract and were interested in collaborating on some of the finishes. I had no say in the unit finishes, but they didn’t have to know that.

The third week, I took her to Queens to see the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass. While she drank up the designs, I used my credentials to talk us into the back, where we met the museum’s curator as well as a Tiffany & Co. designer. With the woman’s assistance, Chere made an appointment to visit Tiffany’s design labs the following week.

At each of these meetings, I was careful to explain that I’d brought my intern along because she was such a prodigy, a real up-and-comer. I hinted that she’d be the
next big thing
, because everyone was looking to recruit the next big thing into their design house. I could do these favors for Chere forever. She made it easy, because she played the role of the hungry prodigy so well. The ambition was there in her voice and in her questions, and in her direct gazes.

I understood the pressure she put on herself to succeed, the drive to make something of herself as some penance for her secret, squalid beginnings. I wanted to tell her to relax. She wasn’t going to fail, because she was fucking incredible. She was going to bring beautiful things to the world, things as beautiful as her smile. I tried to make her smile sometimes to balance out the tension between us. Provocative power flowed back and forth, even without sex. Especially without sex.

She probably realized by the end of the first week that denying the pull between us made it twenty times stronger. We could not be purely sexless together. Not “one hundred percent” sexless, as she would want me to agree. We had moments of focus and concentration when thoughts of sex were pushed out by pure inspiration, but that’s all they were. Isolated moments. The rest of the time we simmered in a morass of unsated, roiling lust. I would have done anything to have her, but her walls were up hardcore.

Denial. She was subjecting me to a course of sexual denial. Someday I’d punish her for this, and she wouldn’t fucking like it.

But that day wasn’t now. It wasn’t even soon. There were weeks left in her internship, and I’d promised “one hundred percent professional,” so I watched her, day after day, without touching her. Without lingering close to her. Without pressing my face against hers and breathing in the scent of her hair. Maybe it was good for me to practice this restraint.

Ha. Restraint. There was no restraint in me. I didn’t watch her through her windows anymore, but I put her desk inside my office so I could look at her all the time. If my colleagues thought that was weird or predatory, they didn’t say anything. I told them I wanted her to be intimately involved in all my projects, to be a party to all my phone conversations, meetings, and drafting sessions, and she was. She saw everything and heard everything, and observed how I worked from brainstorming session to plans to revision.

Whenever I went to lunch, I took her with me, pointing out buildings as we walked, grilling her on aesthetics and techniques. I asked her to show me the small things, not that I didn’t notice the small things. But there was large design and small design, and Chere was a zealot for small design. She dissected bevel degrees and chisel depths for meaning. We spent an hour once going over a statue in Gramercy Park, no element unturned. I wanted to shove her up against that statue and fuck the everloving hell out of her, but I didn’t. I didn’t even take her hand.

And that was really fucking difficult for me, because the more she denied me, the more my mind fixated on making her mine, getting her to a place where she couldn’t deny me. I wanted her naked, aching, crying, orgasming, begging for more pleasure or pain. Every time I looked at her I thought of it.

But I couldn’t tell her that. I couldn’t tell her how much this denial between us made me burn. She’d leave if I did. She’d quit, disappear, even with all the help and contacts I afforded her. She needed space for now. She needed distance and time to forgive me, just as I’d needed distance and time when I left her before. For her, I could have patience. The hottest fires burned the longest, and were the most difficult to put out.

I could wait until she felt brave enough again, and I knew she would. Chere was a fighter. She’d stuck with me this long, through all her fears and misgivings. She still wanted me. I think she probably cried sometimes that she couldn’t have me.

Your choice, starshine. Not mine.

*** *** ***

Her trip to Tiffany’s design lab took place exactly one month after her internship started. She went on her own, leaving my office quiet and empty of her presence, her little shifts and sighs. After the first day she was invited back, and then invited back again, until her one-day visit stretched to a week. She called me every evening, breathless, inspired, telling me everything she’d seen and asking for more time. What was I supposed to do? I gave it to her.

She returned to the office the following Monday with stars in her eyes, and a thousand ideas to put on paper. I told her to go where her inspiration took her. She was full of excitement about diamonds and fittings, and the shape of the body.

Oh, the shape of her body...

I had plans to work on, a bridge to envision. We sat across from each other, designing our wildly disparate products. She’d been gone for a week. Now that she was back, her nearness taunted me almost more than I could bear.

“Chere,” I said abruptly, in the midst of our industrious silence. “I missed you.”

Those three words,
I missed you
, sounded so much more weighted than I meant them to. She looked up at me, alarmed.

Shit.
One hundred percent professional.
I thought I should add more words, words to take the edge off the ones I’d just spoken, but I didn’t.

“I...” She swallowed, thinking what to say. “I appreciate you giving me the time to spend at Tiffany’s. I know I’m supposed to be helping you here in the office.”

I gave a short, bitter laugh. “Helping me what? Lose my mind?”

A blush rose on her cheeks. She was wearing a necklace she’d made, so delicate, so intricate, gold and silver against her chest. She tugged at it, perhaps regretting that she’d worn such a low-cut blouse. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Don’t wreck everything.”

I wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t missed her so badly, if I wasn’t straining so hard to subdue the fantasies that preoccupied my mind. I turned back to my blueprints, trying to concentrate on lines and equations. Instead I imagined tying her up and fucking her, and hurting her. The memories were always there between us, palpable in the room. I glanced back at her, gave her one of the old stares.

“Please don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?” I pretended innocence, while I gazed at her with all the fire of my lust.

“Internships aren’t supposed to be like this,” she said, putting her face down against her desk.

“Your internship is like this because that’s what you chose,” I replied. “One hundred percent professional.” I brushed a hand over the front of my pants. She couldn’t see my raging erection from where she sat, but I wanted her to understand it was there. “I’m one hundred percent ready to fuck you right now. My cock is one hundred percent at full boil.”

She put her hands over her ears. “You promised.”

“I know I promised. I just think it’s stupid. There’s no reason we can’t work together and still assuage our hunger for each other.”

“Our
hunger for each other
?” She glared up at me, frowning. “Speak for yourself.”

I held her gaze with a warning look.
Don’t make me show you.
Because I’d do it. I’d strip off her clothes and show her how hungry she was, show her just how much she’d give up to me if I demanded it. After a moment of quivering mutiny, she looked away.

If I could have, I would have spanked the shit out of her for lying, for pretending. For denying. I would have bent her over her desk and punished her for putting both of us through this hell. I wished I had a strap, a paddle, a leather-wrapped cane, but even if I did, the blows and her cries would have been too loud in the office. Frosted glass walls only muffled so much.

Later. I’d punish my little mutineer later, at some future time when things weren’t so fucked up between us. For now, I could only punish her with her own ridiculous, blushing shame.

“Stand up,” I said. “Come here.”

“No.”

“Come the fuck over here. I’m your boss, you fucking listen to me.”

She finally stood and obeyed, cringing like she’d already been punished. Maybe I sounded uncontrolled. Frightening. I was only so tired of the divide between us, the artificial chasm of her making.
Chere, you’re my fighter. Why won’t you be brave?

“Look at me, damn you,” I insisted, taking her by the arms.

She raised her eyes to mine with a look of such conflicted desire and loathing that I almost went off in my fucking pants.

“I want you to admit it. You want me. You want this.” I took her hand and made her trace the length of my cock. I was rock hard beneath the gabardine twill. She curled her fingers around the shape of me, then tried to pull away.

“I don’t want it,” she said.

“You’re not getting wet right now? Your heart isn’t beating faster?”

I let go of her hand and grabbed her neck. She reached to balance herself against my chest, gasping, but making no other complaint.

“I can feel it,” I whispered. “I can feel your pulse racing. I can feel your breath hitch.”

“Because you’re choking me,” she rasped.

“Are you wet for me? Tell the truth.”

“No.”

I reached under her skirt. When she tried to pull away I tightened my grasp on her neck. She made a rough noise. Her hands were free. She could have fought me. She didn’t.

I ran a palm up her thigh, over silky skin to the gusset of her panties. She stared at me, swallowing against my grip. She didn’t want me to touch her horny, wet pussy, because then she’d reveal the depth of her need.

But another part of her ached for my touch. I could see it in her eyes, feel it in her body’s tension. The stubborn, hiding part of her wanted me to force her and humiliate her by driving my fingers inside her. I stopped my slow explorations just above her panty’s smooth gusset. I wanted to ravage her with my fingers, to shame her and fuck her, but I wouldn’t.

“Let’s have a little honesty,” I said instead. “You want me every day. You want me every hour, just as I want you. You fantasize about my control, my commands, my gaze on your naked skin. You want me to hurt you. You want my cock inside you, fucking you until everything else falls away.”

With every word, her gaze flickered a little. The front of prim professionalism would never hide the need inside her.

“Just admit it,” I said quietly. “To me and to yourself.”

I waited with one hand grasping her throat, and the other between her legs, not quite touching the heat of her arousal. I’d wait an hour, if she needed that much time to come clean about her feelings. In the end, it only took a minute.

“I admit it,” she said in a pained voice. “I want you. But I don’t want to want you. The thing is... We can’t. I don’t want anyone in my life right now, especially you. You have too much power to hurt me.”

Jesus Christ. My cock was so hard. She was too near. I had to let her go. My fingers opened, releasing her.

“Go to your desk then,” I said. “Go do your important work, and pretend you don’t want me every day for the rest of this internship, but know that I miss you. That I want you. That will never change.”

She flinched like I’d just slapped her.
Yes, starshine, remember when I used to slap your face? How horny you would get? How you’d bare your teeth at me and beg for more?
She scurried back to her desk, like it was some fortress that would protect her. My desk, in my office.

This isn’t your safe place, Chere. It’s only safe because I’m hanging on to my last fucking shred of control.

“I just can’t right now,” she said, staring down at her design book. “Price, I can’t. I’m sorry.” She bit her lip and went silent.

I looked back at my blueprints. Someday I’d punish her for this. Someday I’d exact revenge for all my suffering and make her beg for my touch and my cock.

She thought I had too much power to hurt her? She hadn’t seen anything yet.

My internship continued, real work and real education stirred together with constant temptation and Price’s unsettling stares. He was teaching me useful things, but the real reason I sprang out of bed every morning was to spend time in his presence. I admitted this to myself, after fruitless efforts at denying it. But I would never admit it to him.

P.T. Eriksen was a monarch in the design arena, a brilliant, admired star-chitect to whom everyone deferred. He held multiple advanced degrees, spoke multiple languages, and possessed more money and influence than I’d ever imagined. He’d hidden it from me on purpose when he was my client, and now, every day, I struggled to reconcile this capable, famous person with the man who’d shoved his cock down my throat and slapped my face.

Don’t misunderstand me. He was absolutely the commanding man I knew from those sessions, but he was also so much
more
, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. Every day, I caught myself remembering touches and grasps, low, hissed words, and the feeling of him inside me. I feared I was falling for him all over again, which scared me to death.

On the weekends, I tried to refocus, to move past my misguided obsession with my lover-turned-boss, but I only found myself eager for Monday again. I didn’t know how to explain all this conflict to Andrew. I tried. I babbled to him about the way Price looked at me, and the crazy shit he said to me. Did I think it would make more sense in the telling?

It didn’t.

“Jesus, Chere.” Andrew sprawled on my couch, a pizza box balanced on his chest. “He’s not giving up, huh? He wants to get inside you.”

I reached for another piece of pizza. “He wants this extreme sexual relationship,” I said. “Even when we’re talking about stuff like metal composition and architectural casting, the sex vibe is pouring off him. It oozes out of him. When I come home, I feel like I have to shower it off me.”