Beyond Temptation (21 page)

‘Good night, Harold,’ Sheridan broke in sharply. ‘Perhaps we can talk again when you have something to offer me other than a feeble excuse and a weak apology.’ Without waiting for his reply, she stormed towards the restaurant door. She glanced back over her shoulder before leaving, half expecting Harold to be out of his chair and following her.

He still sat at their table, talking to the head waiter and using the contents of his wallet to appease the man. Harold cast a glance in her direction and their eyes met briefly.

She quickly snatched her glance away.

In the cool evening air outside the restaurant she took a deep breath and tried to calm her anger long enough to plan her next move. She didn’t seriously believe he had just lied to get a blowjob. The man was too sincere for that sort of duplicity. However, if she didn’t get her hands on Holbert Manor soon, Sheridan knew that her chances of getting the property would start diminishing. He would become complacent and try palming her off with a bracelet or some other worthless trinket.

Still fuming at his ineptitude, Sheridan hailed a cab and demanded it take her back to the office. She ignored the driver’s game attempts at conversation, glowering fitfully at the back of his head as he drove them through the busy streets. Her thoughts were clouded by such a raging anger that Sheridan didn’t trust herself to speak.

She felt the same when she marched into the office. Her stilettos struck sparks from the polished marble floor. The security guard didn’t trouble her for ID and she guessed that was partly due to the threatening expression on her face. She supposed that with such a distinctive style of dress she was already something of a legend in the building. Her hair and clothes identified her far better than any security pass she could have carried.

But she also knew her legendary temper would be enough to deter security from asking for ID.

The security man was engaged in conversation with a young man whom she vaguely recognised. The young man was trying to look calm and confident but there was a nervousness to his disposition that was clearly apparent, even across the reception hall. He held a BlackBerry in one hand and thumbed the keypad tensely as he stepped from foot to foot. To Sheridan’s well-trained eye he looked like a nervous teenager on his first date. It was only when he glanced at her and their eyes met that she realised it was Wayne.

The recognition touched them both simultaneously.

With a frown of annoyance, Sheridan watched Wayne begin to walk towards her. She nodded a curt greeting and said, ‘Wayne,’ acknowledging him and dismissing him at the same time.

But he seemed to want more than a simple nod. Rushing towards her, he grinned and said, ‘Are you doing some overtime?’

Sheridan ignored him and stepped into the lift. She slammed her fist against the appropriate button and watched the doors begin to slide shut.

He placed a foot in the way of the closing doors and grinned eagerly.

‘My knees still hurt from this morning in the car park,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got bruises in so many places.’

‘You’ll have a couple more if you don’t move your fucking foot.’

He treated the comment as though it was a joke. ‘You said we might be able to do that again if I kept quiet,’ he began salaciously. ‘I’ve spent the day being quiet. What are you doing tonight?’

She felt her upper lip curl with distaste. She hadn’t said they could do it again if he kept quiet. What she had told him, she remembered, was that they wouldn’t do it again if he told anyone. There was a world of difference between the two statements but he was too thick-headed to see it.

‘I have business to attend to tonight,’ she began. She reached for his tie and tugged him into the lift. ‘But I could use a brief distraction,’ she added, before placing her mouth over his. The lift doors slid shut and the elevator started its ascent. With a casual hand, she reached behind him and pressed the stop button.

He stared at her, a slightly alarmed expression straining his features. ‘That might not be very discreet,’ he began hesitantly. ‘If the lift remains stopped for more than three minutes, the security guard tells me, an alarm comes on.’

She grinned, wrapping her fingers in his hair. ‘Then the count has already begun,’ she told him. ‘You have three minutes to please me.’ Pushing his head firmly down, she guided his mouth to her crotch.

His eager fingers lifted her skirt and then tugged her panties aside.

Sheridan leant back against the lift wall, smiling broadly as his tongue touched the dark wetness of her sex. He had proved himself adequate that morning and she was happy to exploit his talents.

Perhaps, she thought absently, his tongue might help to calm the raging anger that stormed inside her.

‘You’re pulling my hair,’ he complained, moving his lips away from her sex.

She pulled harder, enjoying his grimace of discomfort.

‘I’ll tear clumps out of your fucking head if you don’t get your mouth back to my hole,’ she threatened. Glancing at her watch, she said, ‘You have just over two minutes to make me come. Fail, and I’ll have your bollocks for earrings.’

He returned his mouth to her pussy and lapped her intensely. Sheridan groaned as he ran his tongue over the shaved lips. She felt him enter her and she writhed against him. His fingers were brushing gently against her labia and she wondered if he was trying to penetrate her while he used his tongue. She had allowed him the privilege of having his cock between her legs that morning but she didn’t think he would have time to satisfy her in the same way right now. If he was hoping to push her beyond the point by sliding a finger into her warmth, she doubted he would be able to manage it in the short time they had left.

Instead of penetrating her, Wayne used the fingers to pull her lips apart. He held the hood of her clit back and pressed the tip of his tongue firmly against the pulsing nub he found beneath.

Sheridan drew a sharp breath. Her body stiffened and she felt the first prickle of pleasure. For a moment she wondered if she had underestimated him, then smiled at the thought. It was impossible to underestimate a man like Wayne. He was just an erection and a good tongue that needed to be used.

‘More, you pathetic little shit,’ she snapped. ‘I want more.’

His tongue worked faster, inspiring waves of enjoyment that began in the pulsing tip of her clitoris then spread throughout her body like ripples on a pond. Her breathing deepened and she realised she was close to orgasm. Her pussy was sodden with a combination of excitement and his saliva. Her sex felt hot and disturbingly close to climax. She tightened her fingers in his hair and pulled him hard against her.

He made a growl of protest and pushed his tongue all the way along her labia. The slippery friction against her intimate flesh took Sheridan beyond the threshold of pleasure. She moaned as the small tremor of delight washed over her.

‘How was that?’

She glanced down and saw him staring expectantly up at her. His lips and lower jaw were coated with her juices and his white shirt was speckled with a spray of her musk.

‘That was adequate,’ Sheridan allowed. She tugged her fingers from his hair.

He grunted wordless annoyance at the small praise. Climbing awkwardly from the floor, he asked, ‘Do you still fancy that date tonight?’

Sheridan pressed the lift button, sending them back towards the ground floor. ‘There’s no need for us to have a date tonight, is there?’ she asked innocently. ‘I’ve just had an orgasm. What else can you offer me?’

He stared at her, his mouth agape. The lift’s bell rang and the doors slid open behind him. She placed her fingers beneath his jaw and pressed his mouth closed.

‘Keep that shut or we’ll never play again,’ she reminded him. She pushed his chest gently, making him step back out of the lift. Slamming her fist against the button, she watched the doors close on him.

‘Wait!’ he called. ‘If you’re going up to the office, could you ask –’

She stared blankly at him as the doors cut him off. If she had been forced to look at his pathetic expression a moment longer Sheridan believed she would have lost her patience. With someone like Wayne, she knew she could extract a lot of pleasure from making him suffer. It was only because she still had a reputation to maintain in the offices of
Art
that she avoided having a confrontation with him.

Alone in the lift, she dismissed him from her thoughts and tried to think of the best way forward with her plans. Harold had said that the title deeds might be in Robyn’s office. Sheridan didn’t think she would be able to find them but she had to look. If she didn’t get the paperwork into his hands soon, she could see him cooling from the idea of giving her such a generous gift. She doubted he would want to pass up on the chance of all the rewards she was supposedly offering but there was too much at stake to gamble on something as flimsy as a doubt.

The elevator’s bell told her she was on the magazine’s first floor and Sheridan stepped briskly between the doors and marched down the corridor. A handful of offices were still alight with full neon glory but she put this down to sloppy morons being the last to leave. There was even a light on in Robyn’s office. Sheridan was grateful for that piece of luck. She wouldn’t have to search nervously in the dark as she tried to find paperwork pertaining to Holbert Manor.

She stepped boldly into the office and glanced curiously around. Gayle’s empty reception desk filled the first part of the room, a clutter of untidy papers covering the surface. Robyn’s desk was behind that. Sitting at it, she would have her back to the expansive city skyline that was just beginning to flicker and glow beneath the twilight sky.

Sheridan glanced at the shelved walls, wondering if one of the tatty grey box files might contain the treasure she sought. It was a place to start, she told herself with forced optimism. Once she had the paperwork she could take it to Harold, pretend that Gayle had found it for her after a casual enquiry, and then encourage him to make the appropriate amendments to the property’s ownership. Those thoughts were motivation enough and she walked behind Gayle’s desk to begin her search.

‘Sheridan?’

She whirled on hearing her name. In the doorway, holding a cup of coffee from the vending machine, Gayle stared at her with a peculiar expression.

Sheridan gave a tight grin, quickly searching her mind for viable excuses to explain her presence.

‘Thank God it’s you,’ Gayle said, her smile quick and unaffected. ‘I thought that creep Wayne was back up here pestering me for a dinner date.’

‘Oh.’ Sheridan could think of little constructive to say as she tried to find a believable reason for being in the other woman’s office. ‘I’ve just seen him downstairs. Is he waiting for you?’

Gayle ran weary fingers through her hair and made a disgusted face. ‘The man’s a bloody stalker,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve told him to get lost so many times and he just thinks I’m playing hard to get.’ She shook her head then took a slow sip from her coffee cup.

Sheridan could sense the impending question before it was delivered. It was the one she was dreading.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Shouldn’t someone be asking you the same question?’ Sheridan replied quickly. An idea was formulating in the back of her mind but it was difficult trying to talk about one subject and think about another at the same time.

Gayle shrugged, stepped towards her table and put her coffee cup down. ‘Robyn left a load of stuff on my desk before she left and I’m still trying to plough through it. I don’t know when she’s due back but I daren’t leave it just in case.’ With a sad smile, she added, ‘Besides, it stops me having to run the gauntlet of walking home past Wayne.’

Sheridan nodded. The idea that came to her was daring and audacious but she couldn’t see how it would fail. Gayle was already showing that she reacted badly to sexual pressure. Because of that, Sheridan could see that there was one way to get the woman out of the office and leave her free to search the place for the elusive title deeds.

Taking a bold step towards Gayle, Sheridan smiled down at her.

‘I came here for a reason,’ she began softly. ‘I didn’t dare to say anything during office hours, but I’ve drunk a lot Dutch courage this evening and now I’m ready to say it.’

Gayle studied her uncertainly. There was a curious frown on her lips as she met the woman’s eyes. ‘I’m intrigued,’ she admitted. ‘Go on.’

Sheridan suppressed her predatory smile. Instead, she feigned the innocent naiveté to which Harold was so susceptible. Pretending to swallow nervously, Sheridan took a step closer and stood suggestively close to Gayle.

‘I’ve never said this to another woman before,’ she lied. ‘But you excite me, Gayle. You excite me, and I want you.’

With a sudden movement she pressed her mouth against the other woman’s and began to kiss her. She saw Gayle’s eyes open wide and quickly pushed her tongue between the woman’s lips. Gayle remained limp beneath her and Sheridan guessed she had terrified the poor creature with her overt come-on. She thrust her tongue deeper into the woman’s mouth, daring to stroke Gayle’s arm in a luridly intimate manner. At the same time she twisted her body, forcing Gayle to endure the sensuous pressure of breasts being squeezed against her as she was embraced. When Sheridan eventually took a step back, she saw that Gayle stood rigid, looking as though she had been turned to stone.

It was difficult to suppress her mirth, but Sheridan managed it before she dared to speak. She knew how to react now, apologising for her behaviour at first, then trying to qualify it by telling Gayle how irresistible she was. If she did that, Sheridan knew she would only have to reach out to give the woman a reassuring hug and that would send her fleeing from the office like a startled rabbit. Sheridan could see all of those things happening as she stared into the woman’s stunned face.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Sheridan began, speaking in the weak voice that always got Harold to do exactly as she wanted. She could see a flicker in Gayle’s eyes and guessed the woman was preparing to run. ‘I just find you so –’