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He focuses more attention on my clit until my thighs start to shake. Then he backs off.
“It didn’t work.” I can’t catch my breath. “I still want to know.”
Will changes his angle, just slightly. Adjusts his hold. Adjusts the pressure on my clit. He’s doing it on purpose. He has to be. He must have figured out that I think it’s sosexywhen he does this. Even in email chains. That sounds—that sounds wrong. All those subtle shifts, and they add up to pleasure that intensifies by degrees until I’m desperate, lifting my ass so he can fuck me harder.
He grunts, sounding half-gone, and pulls me off the copy machine. Will turns me to face him and lifts me onto the copier in one motion. Before I have time to whine about how empty I am, he pushes back inside, his face pressed to my neck. He teases the tendons with his teeth. I’mbarelyon the copier. Mostly, I’m impaled, his body between me and the floor.
I turn my head and kiss him. Will curses, and then he takes my hips in his hands and tilts them, rolls them, once, twice, and pleasure peaks. All my nerves flash, bright like the copy machine and a million times better, and I ride it out while Will sucks at the pulse point by my jaw. My fingers curl into his shirt. He comes with a relieved hum, hot and pulsing inside me, and rests his head on my shoulder. His hips slow down gradually.
Then he shudders, letting out a sigh. “What’s wrong is that I’m stuck here in this giant corporate machine and it was—it was a mistake. I made a mistake.”
I have a little bit of a sex-high, I think. The first thing that escapes me is a laugh. “Was this your first one?”
Will picks his head up and glares at me, but he’s pink-cheeked and still slightly breathless. It’s just not as withering as he wants it to be. He cracks the ghost of a smile. It hits me, as the corners of his mouth fall, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen himactuallysmile. Not ever. I don’t have any idea what a big, goofy grin would look like on his face. Would he have dimples? Would he scrunch up his nose? A faint trace of vulnerability deepens the color in his eyes.
“I learned a long time ago not to run from the risks,” he says. “It’s the only way I can survive.”
I brush a fingertip over the spot on his cheek where a dimple might go, then the bridge of his nose, and then a tiny, white scar over his right eyebrow. He probably got it at one of his underground fights. They make a lot more sense in light of what he told me. Being hit meant being free. I can’t dwell on it too long, otherwise I’ll cry and my face will be a mess the rest of the day. He holds his breath for all those small touches, but he doesn’t pull away.
“You don’t run from the risks, Will. You run toward them.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?”
“It’ssafe.” He says it like he’d sayfuck.“It’s safe here.”
I acknowledge that I’m probably not the best person to give advice on what to do with a billion-dollar company. I am but a temp. Still. “That…doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”
“It is. I need the risks.”
“Will…”
“I need them,” he insists. “Without them, I’m just a monster.”
21
WILL
By lunch the next day,the announcement for Hughes Senior’s retirement party is the talk of the headquarters building. The old man is stepping down as CEO, leaving Finn in charge.
My secretary tells me first, her eyes wide. Christa’s email lands in my inbox five minutes later.
Then the invite arrives.
I clickaccept.I don’t know why I made the cut for this—the other attendees RSVPing for the event are all higher up in Hughes Industries.
The general reaction strikes me as nervous. Nobody wants to act too excited about Daniel Hughes officially retiring, but they don’t want to underplay it, either. No one seems to know the right smile to use. I’m new here, but it seems to have come out of left field for these people, too.
On a call the morning of the party, Greg lowers his voice. “Hughes Senior has only been making quarterly visits for a few years now. Preferred to let Finn run things almost entirely.”
That explains why Finn looked off at the CEO’s desk. He’s been standing in for his father. Finn was stressed and tired at the meeting we had. Bags under his eyes. He has a reputation for being charming to a fault, but he was angry.My father has even less interest in your feelings about the merger than I do.
I almost asked him what was wrong.
“Then things might not change much,” I say.
Greg runs through a couple more highlights from his illustrious plan for my future. I miss most of it, straining to hear Bristol’s voice in the background of the call. I want to find the nearest empty room and drag her into it with me, but I keep admitting things to her post-fuck that should never be spoken aloud to another human being. It’s hell, because I have no interest in sending her back to her apartment, and I spend half my time wondering if she’s pitying me.
