AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tamara.
She stumbled right into my path. Staring up at me with those huge, frightened eyes. The ultimate prey. The ultimate prize.
I knew I’d take her. I knew she’d fight me. I knew I’d win.
CHAPTERONE
TAMARA
“I can’t believe you’ve been working for Joshua Smith for sixty days and you haven’t seen his dick yet.” Heather, my best friend and neighbor from across the hall, says things like that all the time. And she’s dead serious.
It’s Saturday afternoon. I just got home from the battered women’s shelter where I volunteer once a week. I’m standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom-slash-living room-slash-kitchen, holding up various consignment store dresses to see which one flatters me the most. The mirror was reclaimed from an alley. Dumpster diving, that’s my jam.
“Heather!” I squawk, scandalized.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” she teases. She’s sitting on a folding chair at my tiny folding table, stroking on black nail polish. She’s come over to help me pick a dress for the party at Smith Acquisitions tonight. I’ll be working as a cocktail waitress, and I’m secretly hoping to knock Joshua’s cashmere socks off.
Although I’d settle for a glance and a friendly smile.
I put on my huffy, offended air. “I most certainly have not.”
“Yeah, you have.” She smirks at me knowingly and blows on her nails.
Yes, I have. All the time.
I mean, who wouldn’t swoon over him? The richest man in Manhattan… But that’s the least important thing to know about him. That classically gorgeous face, a Michelangelo carving come to life. That silky hair. All that icy sexiness wrapped in hand-tailored raw silk suits and shod in buttery-soft Italian loafers. His suits arebespoke.That means they’re not only hand-tailored, but they’re also designed, cut, and measured just for him. The fabric caresses his skin the way every woman wishes she could.
And the way he moves. He doesn’t walk—he stalks like a tiger, with lethal grace and an air of chilly aloofness that somehow makes him even more alluring.
And once, a couple of months before I started working for his company, he actually flirted with me.
Never since, though. Now I’m working at his company, apparently I’ve melted into the wallpaper and my vagina has vanished. I’m not a girl. I’m just another office drone to be ignored.
It’s not that I think I put Victoria’s Secret models to shame, but I’ve been told I’m attractive. I’m slim, I have small, round boobs, I have a nice thick head of chocolate-brown hair, thanks to my mother’s good genes, and my lips could legitimately be called “bee-stung”.
The first time I met Joshua, I’d been working as a cocktail waitress at a nightclub called Heaven, an extra gig I took on so I could afford my shoebox-sized studio apartment in Brooklyn. I was trying to make ends meet while waiting for September, when classes started. I was pre-law at NYU, on a full scholarship.
We were in the VIP room. I’d just dodged a man who tried to grab my ass while I expertly balanced a tray of glasses. As I shimmied through the crowd to get away from the ass-grabber, I almost walked right into Joshua.
I caught my tray just before it tipped over, and stared up at him. His ocean-blue eyes met my gaze and pierced the depths of my soul. My heart thudded against my ribcage, and I stood there blinking stupidly and gaping up at him as if I’d just stepped out of a convent and this was my first glimpse of a man.
I had no idea who he was at the time. I just knew he was the most gorgeous and terrifying person I’d ever seen in the flesh, bar none. He had silky blue-black hair and cruel, sensual lips. He was almost obscenely handsome, more like an airbrushed magazine ad than a person.
His dusky blue suit was accented with lavender pinstripes and a lavender tie.
“Very impressive,” he said. His eyes were as cold as an ice floe, but his voice was rich and warm. The disconnect was jarring. In the dim recesses of my mind, I knew which one was true and which one was the lie.
The eyes are the window to the soul. The warm caress of his words…it was a sweetly spun trap. A sticky spider’s web.
“Excuse me?” I said politely. “What’s impressive?”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “The way you dodged him. You saw him out of the corner of your eye—you weren’t even looking at him straight on. Very impressive…reflexes.” His gaze drifted over my body. He left no doubt as to what reflexes he was talking about.
It was true. I had a sixth sense for danger—or at least, so I’d always thought. When you grow up in the kind of neighborhoods I did, it comes naturally after a while. I knew all about skirting the alleyways where faceless men skulked ready to lunge and grab, and the subtler peril of men gliding by in their beater cars and crooning obscene invitations. But, like most people, I’d never suspected that true terror would be wrapped up in an exquisite package like Joshua Smith. I’d thought the most I’d have to fear from a man like that was a broken heart.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “Can I get you another drink?”
“How did you know I’ve been drinking?” He wasn’t holding an empty glass. I could smell the whiskey on his breath.
