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She moaned and spread her legs wide for him, wanting to welcome his exploration. She lay on her back on the couch with him sitting beside her. She writhed as he explored her, then showed him her hungry eyes again as she rose and moved to undo his pants, wetting her lips with her tongue. She rubbed her breasts against his leg as she brought out his hard cock and ran her own fingers over it, enjoying knowing that it was hard from wanting her. Then she moved more into his lap and took him in her mouth, wanting to set him on fire, to let him know that her desire was physical and powerful.
She sucked him and rolled her eyes up so that she could watch his face, measure his passion. It wasn’t enough to excite him. She wanted to overwhelm him, to make him equate her with physical desire. For now that was important. He was big and hard, more than she could accommodate in her mouth. He pushed her back and she released him.
He needed her.
He lifted her and carried her to the bed, chuckling darkly as she fell back against the pillows, her eyes flashing with lust, trained on his face. Her fingers met behind her head as she lifted her neck and opened her legs to him. Calling to him, a silent, sexy song, it was the most god damn incredible thing he’d ever seen. Julio’s cock bounced in anticipation, but he couldn’t go in yet, if he did he wouldn’t be able to stop fucking her until he came.
As he stroked himself, making her weight, the sweet torture of anticipation sending a wave of electricity between them, his lids narrowed as he savored the look in her eyes, as she waited.
“Julio, fuck me.”
So, he did.
# # #
Afterward, as they lay together on the bed, Willa planned her next moves. Sex with Julio had been better than she’d expected, not that it mattered. She found sex an enjoyable exercise and a useful tool. Emotionally, beyond the passion of the moment, it meant little to her. It mystified her that other people attached so much significance to the act. It was incomprehensible that after fucking one particular person they expected to find the world had changed.
Julio was obviously that way. She’d seen the change in him when he’d returned from Switzerland. That had been the warning sign, the cautionary note that had her reach out to Tina and ensure that she nipped this relationship in the bud. But that left a void, and now she had filled it. She would be there for him, satisfying his sexual hungers. She’d begun the shift in their relationship, but as long as his thoughts turned to Lissa, the woman was a danger that needed to be dealt with.
She had to be careful about how Julio found out about Lissa’s pregnancy. For now, she’d held that back from him. There was no risk to her. If he found out, she’d already established that she hadn’t known why Lissa was in the hospital.
The news of the children had given her a moment of concern. Julio was a conventionally honorable man. If Lissa was carrying his child, he might feel an urge to be noble, to run to her side and claim his heir. There was, however, another way to play those same cards. Willa might use the information as a way of creating a wedge that she could drive between them and permanently sever the tenuous connection, the memory of love, between them, at least from Julio’s point of view, and that was all she cared about. That would require perfect timing, and she’d been waiting for… She hadn’t been sure what she was waiting for, but this morning, lying naked in Julio’s bed, she felt that she now had the lever she’d needed to make sure that when the avalanche of emotions happened, she could direct its flow.
It all came back to sex. They’d made love, and that cemented the relationship. She intended to play that cool, not be clingy or act like she was a schoolgirl. Willa Gruber was not a romantic heroine, but a strong woman, and she would let him know that she was there for him, that he could have her when he wanted her, make him feel that he satisfied her sexually, but that nothing else had changed.
That was a lie, of course. Much had changed. She was a step closer to her goal. She had aroused his passion, let him come inside her. No matter how you looked at relationships, those things altered the way people saw each other—she’d staked a claim on him that was real despite her never uttering adoring phrases or saying “I love you.”
As she lay beside him, running her hands over his muscular chest, she sensed a bit of remorse in him. Perhaps he regretted that he’d have to acknowledge her personal claim, but that would pass. It might even be him recalling that other woman. She’d do whatever it took to supplant those memories. It angered her that after fucking her, he could still feel something for the American woman, that he’d recall her after their night together. It was time to drag out the biggest guns in her arsenal, but she needed to pace herself, not make it seem like she’d been holding things back from him.
She thought about seducing him, distracting him, making him think she needed him, but he sat up and looked at her. “We better get moving. We have a full day ahead of us,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” she said. It would be a mistake to let her professionalism slip now. She needed to reassure him that having Willa as his lover didn’t mean losing Willa as his assistant. Keeping him focused on her while worming her way further into his business and personal lives was the challenge.
She called room service and ordered a large breakfast of eggs Benedict, juice, and coffee. When they finished, he went to shower. Willa slipped on one of his tee shirts and went to the couch. Her briefcase was still on the coffee table, and she got out her laptop and flipped it on. She found the email from the investigator and copied it into a new email, editing out the parts about the rehab rumor. The investigator had been thorough and mentioned that Tina Peters was the source of it. Julio didn’t need to know that, just as he didn’t need to know that the information about Lissa’s pregnancy came in the same email. She created a new one with just the information the man had gotten from the hospital and sent it down to the hotel’s business office. Then she picked up the house phone and called the concierge.
“This is Mr. Torres’s assistant. I just sent a file to your server. Please print it out and bring it to his suite immediately.”
When Julio came out of the shower, she went into the bathroom to take hers, enjoying the steamy warmth and his smells enveloping her. Things were moving along well, and she stood under the hot water and let herself speculate over the way he’d take the news. His reaction would determine her course of action. Letting him know meant she was walking a bit of a tightrope, and that made her feel more aroused than the night with Julio.
# # #
Seeing the smile on Tina’s face was a big tip-off. It was a smug, superior, self-satisfied look that broadcast all manner of sinister intentions. The fact that she made no attempt to hide the look told Lissa that something nasty was afoot.
Lissa had already made up her mind to confront her, to sit her down and talk through what she su
spected and what she knew. Then Tina’s reaction would tell her what she needed to do. She’d just discovered that Tina had broken off with several of her small clients. Keeping her on, where she interacted with clients and had access to privileged information, was certainly a bad idea. Rather than letting things fester and giving Tina a chance to do more damage, she wanted to take matters in hand.
“Can you come into my office?” she asked.
Tina grinned at her. “Sure. As a matter of fact, I wanted to have a talk myself.”
When she’d shut the door and they were sitting, facing each other, Tina was the first to speak. “I’m giving notice.”
That wasn’t the start to the conversation Lissa had expected. “Really?”
She nodded. “It’s really getting impossible to continue the way we are. You and I have different ways of working, perhaps even different goals.”
“But it’s my company.”
“Yes it is. The thing is that while you were in the hospital, I got a taste of what’s possible when I get to do things my own way. Going back to being your number two isn’t going to work for me.”
“I noticed that. You certainly didn’t even attempt to do things the way I asked you to do them.”
She waved her hand. “I kept the business going. Okay, I dumped some of the smaller clients without telling you. But we never should have taken them on in the first place—they aren’t doing anything that will be noticed, and the cash flow they generate means they are hardly worth the effort.”
“That might be a reasonable analysis if it were your company and not mine. I asked you to work along with those clients because I believe in them. It’s a matter of growing the company. As they get big, the returns will be worth what we’ve invested.”
Tina waved her hand in dismissal. “That assumes they keep us on and don’t go over to a competitor. Hell, Lissa, they weren’t even interesting people. But our disagreement is exactly the problem—just the tip of the iceberg. You run a stodgy, functional business, with no élan, no class. You emphasize the grunt work and not the creative aspect.”
