I felt a hot blush creeping across my face and chest. I just stared at him, until he looked up and met my eyes.
“That soon?” he said, with a wicked grin.
“Shut up,” I muttered, as he pushed my skirt farther up my thighs. “Why don’t you put that mouth to good use?”
“Watch that sass, Ms. Wainright,” he growled, his fingers digging sharply into my legs. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
My mouth quirked. “Are you really not aware of the effect you have on women?”
He shook his head, chuckling. “Stop making excuses for yourself, you…wanton…” he was sinking to his knees, slowly, and my breath caught in my throat. “…wicked…girl.” He sank his teeth into my inner thigh. I shrieked.
“There,” he said, smiling up at me. “Now everyone will know what we’re doing in here.”
“I don’t think we have anything to prove anymore,” I said, breathlessly. “Especially not once…oh, my God, Daniel, you…your…” My fingers were clutching the edge of the desk so hard it hurt, but I couldn’t help it; something about this angle was so deliciously, toe-curlingly good that I absolutely couldn’t control my reactions. I let out a low groan, my body quivering and shaking in stark contrast to his small movements and gentle ministrations.
The thought occurred to me: if he’d done this to me on that first day, what felt like so long ago - I would have married him for free.
I came laughing.
He stood up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, which had come unrolled at some point. “I didn’t realize you found this so amusing,” he said, unzipping.
“I don’t,” I managed to say, circling an arm around his waist and pulling him close again. “Sorry. I just…it’s hard to explain.”
“So many things about you are hard to explain,” he whispered, grasping my ass firmly and scooting me further over to edge of the desk, until he was nudging at my entrance. “I like it that way.”
I made a soft noise, pushing my h*ps forward to meet him halfway. I never got tired of the way his face changed in that moment, the way his eyes would suddenly soften and unfocus a little bit, like every time, every single time, he forgot how good it felt.
“Ms. Wainwright,” he whispered in my ear, moving slowly inside me. “What a surprising turn of events this has taken.”
I swallowed, tilting my head back. “You know I can’t…I just can’t resist you.” I moaned. “Mr…Mr. Thorne.”
His movements grew sharper and faster, and I could feel myself start to slide along the desk. I locked my ankles around him, doing my best to keep up until he stilled, quivering, his breathing harsh and heavy in my ear.
We stayed like that for a few minutes, until he finally pulled away, kissing me gently on the lips.
He went around to the other side of his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a wad of tissues, half of which he handed to me. “Want to stay for lunch?” he asked, with an indulgent smile.
“Sure,” I said. “It would be nice to relax a little bit before I have to do the walk of shame back through those halls.”
“Shame? What on earth do you have to be ashamed about?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing.”
“So what brings you into town?” he asked, re-buttoning his sleeves. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”
“I was at the gallery. Tried to convince Curtis he should open another one, but I think he’s opposed.” I tugged my skirt back down to an acceptable level. “I offered to, you know, invest in it or something but I think it still feels like a handout to him. And more than that, I think he feels like he’s lost touch with the art industry. You know, the whole community. He doesn’t like the idea of coming to terms with that, so I guess it’s easier to just quietly fade away.”
“What, do you want me to try and talk him out of it?” Daniel was re-tucking his shirt. “I know even less about the art industry than he does, I doubt that would be very persuasive.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just makes me sad. It feels like he’s giving up.”
“There is such a thing as a graceful surrender,” said Daniel. “Speaking of which, it’s my cheat day. How does Italian sound for lunch?”
“Ugh, you and your cheat days.” I smiled, settling down in the chair opposite his desk. “I don’t think it would hurt you to eat pasta more than once a week. You’re skin and bones.” It wasn’t true, of course. Although even in well-tailored suits, he did look quite thin. Outside of them, though, his muscles hardly looked underfed.
Daniel grinned. “I’ll take that under consideration,” he said, picking up his phone. “Alice, can you order the usual from Gentile’s, plus a fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken?” He eyed me, and I nodded approvingly. “Thanks very much.”
Ten
The morning of my next meeting with Walter, I woke up with a knot in my stomach.
I didn’t know why I was so nervous. I could deal with him. I knew I could. It was just that he was insufferable, and I was very tired, and all I wanted was for him to just wake up and realize what an ass he was being.
“You feeling all right?” Daniel asked as he gathered up his briefcase and jacket, watching me lift spoonfuls of yogurt and drop them back into the container. He had an important shareholder’s meeting today that was going to take up the whole afternoon, and I knew he was in a hurry to go in and get some work done before then.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You know, you can call Walter and cancel.”
I stirred my yogurt halfheartedly. I didn’t like it when he called his dad “Walter,” but I couldn’t really blame him for not wanting to call the guy “dad.”
“I’m not going to cancel,” I insisted. “I need something to do with my time.”
“Don’t forget there’s leftover alfredo in the fridge,” he called over his shoulder, heading for the door. “You should eat that soon. Especially considering…just make sure to heat it thoroughly.”
“Okay?” I looked at him questioningly.
“You know,” he said, waving his hand vaguely. “Microbes and…food poisoning, or whatever. You have to be careful, in your state.”
I had to chuckle a little. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Just - make sure to heat it up, would you?”
“Fine, fine, I will,” I said. I had no intention of eating food ever again, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you too.”
The door clicked shut. I wandered over to the living room and flopped down on the sofa. I had about an hour before Walter was supposed to arrive, and just wanted to rest my eyes for a minute.
The buzzing of the door shook me into full awareness. I shook my head, sitting up. What the hell was going on?
I groped for my phone. Shit. I’d slept for the whole hour, and then some.
“Just a minute,” I yelled, jumping to my feet. “Sorry, I’m running a little behind.”
I ran upstairs and quickly stepped into some halfway decent clothes, then ran back down and threw the door open, breathless.
Walter looked a little amused. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be, I just lost track of time. Come in.”
We settled down in our usual spots, and just as I uncapped my pen, he started to talk.
“Last time, you asked me if I ever noticed that Danny was different,” he said. “I said I didn’t really. But that’s not true. I just remembered something.”
“Great,” I said. “Tell me all about it.”
“For his birthday, one time, we managed to get him one of those, you know, one of those video game things.” He was making a series of vague gestures with his hands. “Nintendos.”
“Sure,” I said.
“It was secondhand, from my boss’s son. I don’t generally accept charity, but he was ranting and raving about how he’d just got it, what seemed like yesterday, and already his kid was turning up his nose and wanted something new. He was going to buy the new one, of course, but he just hated the idea of throwing out a perfectly good Nintendo. He asked me if I’d have a use for it, and of course I played it off, but it occurred to me that it would be an awfully nice present for Danny without having to worry about how we were going to pay for it. I said sure, maybe, my kid likes taking things apart and putting them back together again. I bet he’d have fun with it.”
Walter smiled. “And it was true, he did. But this - I mean, clearly, this was something special, for us. I had to sneak it home and hide it up in the little overhead space where he couldn’t reach unless he stood up on my shoulders. It was still a few months to his birthday, but me and Laura were thrilled. We put a little extra money on the credit cards because we knew his birthday was taken care of.
“Well his birthday comes around, and little Danny nearly blows a blood vessel he’s so excited over it. My boss gave me all the games, too, because his kid didn’t have any use for those anymore either. Pretty great birthday, I think. Of course he was always plugging it into my TV whenever I wanted to watch my shows, but hey. Whatever keeps the kid happy, right?
“Then one day I go into the living room and I notice it’s gone. It’s been sitting in front of the TV forever and I’m always almost tripping on it, so it’s pretty noticeable. Why would it be gone? You can’t play it without the TV, which I know because Danny and I have had some pretty heated arguments about it. So I head over to the kids’ room to see if I can figure out what’s going on. And what do you think I see when I get in there?”
He paused, and looked at me. I shook my head.
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“The little bastard really did take it apart! He’s got little bits and pieces strewn all over his bedspread. Screwdrivers, little needle-nose pliers, he’s got my whole toolbox unpacked and he’s just performing surgery on this thing. This two hundred dollar toy.” He was getting angry just thinking about it. “And that’s in early ‘90s dollars, okay, don’t forget.”
“But you didn’t pay for it,” I said, quietly.
“That’s not the point!” Walter was starting to get agitated, then he seemed to shake it off and laugh a little. “Anyway, whatever, so I’m ridiculously pissed off, as you can imagine. I start yelling at him to explain himself, what the hell does he think he’s doing. He wants to know how it works. Of course he starts crying, because he realizes he’s done something bad. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking. Like I wasn’t going to catch him? Like I wouldn’t notice that stupid hunk of plastic missing from the living room?” He laughed again, but it sounded forced. “He pulls out this…this business newspaper or something, which, where the hell did he even get that, you know? He pulls it out and she shows me some statistic in there about their sales.