“No need to thank me,” Kate said.
An awkward silence descended once again.
Layla said, “You must need a really interesting skill set to get a job like this. One day you’re doing administrative stuff and the next you’re shopping for Nathan’s women friends. Plus you’re on call twenty-four-seven.”
“Mr. Sinclair asks very little of me outside of office hours, so I really don’t mind the few occasions when he does,” Kate said.
“Really? Very little? I mean all the stuff he’s asked you to do for me alone, not to mention the women who came before me—that doesn’t seem like very little.”
“Actually it is.” Kate finally looked up at her. “He’s never asked me to do anything for the other women he’s dated. Not so much as buying a Christmas or birthday gift. Just you.”
Layla shook her head. Surely, Kate was kidding. She couldn’t be the only woman Nathan had ever asked Kate to shop for. She’d thought for sure all the gifts and clothes were his usual M.O.
But before she could question Kate further, Nathan buzzed into the outer office. “I’m off my call. Send her in,” he said. His voice sounded clipped.
When she walked in, she found a table already set with gourmet sandwiches, an open bottle of Perrier, and a cheese plate on one side of the office, and Nathan visibly fuming behind his desk on the other.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
Nathan just stared into space, his jaw set tight.
“Nathan?” she said, real worry creeping in as she rounded the desk to go to him.
But then the cloud passed over his face and he said, “Bad business call. Somebody I was counting on let me down.”
She stroked her hand through his soft hair. “Want to talk about it?”
He smiled, but to Layla it looked a little sad. “No, I don’t.”
Then, like a robot come to life, he stood up and began to remove her clothes with rough, jerking movements. “I need you,” he said.
Once she was naked, he swept the desk and bent her over it, working two thick fingers into her wet tunnel. “Open for me,” he said.
Layla could feel her juices coming down, as if they were at his command. The heat building up in her was in direct contrast with the cold metal of his desk, which she rubbed her pebbled nipples on as she moaned and squirmed against his demanding hand.
Behind her, he said, “You’re ready for me.”
She couldn’t tell if this was a statement or a question, but either way, she answered, “Yes, please, yes.”
This time there were no sounds of a condom being taken out and put on. She’d started taking birth control at the beginning of their two months together, so when he entered her, there was nothing but delicious skin-on-skin contact.
One hand worked her clit and the other hand held her steady while he pumped into her faster and faster until they both came. Layla moaned as load after load of his semen flooded her, his cock pulsing in her afterlight.
Afterwards, he pulled her up from the desk and turned her around in his arms, kissing her hard as their orgasms finally receded.
“How do you do that?” he asked against her lips. “Make me want you like this? It feels like I can’t get enough of you.”
She could feel him growing hard again as he said this, and her own desire reignited, despite the fact that she had just come. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GETTING cleaned up for a black tie fundraiser turned out to be serious business. Layla had to take half a day off of work because Kate had jammed her Friday with so many beauty appointments: first, she’d gotten exfoliated and buffed from head to toe, waxed just about everywhere, with a mani/pedi to top it all off. Then she’d had to rush back to the loft to meet up with Mark and Jacob, a hair and make-up team. They’d worked on her in a whirlwind of gossip, fake eyelashes, and flat irons, which culminated with them zipping her into the light blue sheath dress Kate had picked out and guiding her to the wall of full-length mirrors in the home gym portion of the loft.
At first Layla couldn’t believe the vision in the mirror was actually her. The dress hugged her curves perfectly, making her body look more like a work of art than the bag of bones she’d had to drag out of bed that morning. Though Jacob had spent an hour on her make-up, she somehow looked fresh and dewy, like she’d just thrown some lipstick on and her face was always this big-eyed and gorgeous. And her hair—in the up-do Mark had fashioned, she could have passed for a glamorous movie star from the forties. No one looking at this version of her would be able to guess she was an overworked physical therapist in real life.
“You’re miracle workers,” she said to Mark and Jacob.
They just laughed, and complimented her for being such a wonderful palette. Then Jacob spritzed her with expensive perfume and they left in a flurry of upkeep instructions and air kisses. Before she even had time to catch her breath, the car service buzzed to say the limo Kate had arranged was waiting for her downstairs.
But all the trouble was worth it for the look on Nathan’s face when she walked into the lobby of the Pittsburgh Opera. He’d been talking to another man in a tux, but walked away from the conversation without a word of explanation as soon as he spotted her, not stopping until she was in his arms, her lips crushed beneath his.
“You look good,” he said, by way of explanation when he finally released her from the kiss.
“You stole all my lipstick!” She laughed and wiped the color off his lips with her thumb. Luckily Jacob had given her an extra tube for reapplications.
He grinned. “You had it coming. Walking in here looking this good—you had to know how I would respond.” He secured an arm around her waist and guided her deeper into the party. “Let’s start doing the rounds, so we can get out of here in fifteen minutes.”
“I spent half a day getting ready for this party. We’re not going to just skip out,” she said.
“Okay, half an hour.”
“Two hours.”
“One hour. That’s my final offer.”
Layla laughed again. “Fine, Nathan.”
She thought she’d spend most of the party listening to Nathan talk business with his other associates, many of whom also served on the opera board, but to her surprise, he included her in every conversation, even going so far as to steer the dialogue back to topics she could discuss when it became too business-oriented.