Not Safe for Work (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Two nights later, I was no closer to an answer, but I was out of excuses and out of time. I pulled into Rick’s driveway, whispered a prayer that I could get my head together and killed the engine.

As he always did, he came out the front door before I was up the walk.

I faked the most convincing smile I could. “Hey.” I wrapped my arms around him. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you.” At least that wasn’t a lie—I still wasn’t sure I could conjure up the energy to be what he needed tonight, but just holding him and kissing him here on his front porch was enough to shake some life into me. I had been looking forward to seeing him. I just wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable moment when I had to tip my hand.

Not now, though. Tonight, I needed to be what he needed.

We exchanged smiles. Another kiss. No words needed to be said—we both knew what we wanted. Or rather, what I would have wanted in the lifetime that existed prior to facing down my bosses.

In silence, he took my hand and led me inside, and then we were on our way up the stairs, and I felt like shit. This was all wrong. This was…this was not what I wanted.

Red!
a voice screamed in the back of my mind.
Red! Red! Red!

What the fuck? I was following my sub into his bedroom. Why did I feel more like a lamb being led to slaughter?

Oh. Right. Because I was out of my fucking mind. Because I wasn’t here to have sex with my boyfriend. I was here to keep him happy so he’d keep pouring money into the pockets of my firm, in hopes that some of that money would trickle down to me.

I toed the bedroom door closed behind us and begged both mind and body one last time not to let him down tonight.

Rick faced me. “How do you want—” He cocked his head. “You all right?”

Not even close.

His forehead creased, and in a gentle voice, he asked, “You’re still in that funk, aren’t you?”

I leaned heavily against the door. “It’s…” No, I wasn’t going to lie to him. This wasn’t top drop. “Fuck…”

“I can see it, Jon.” He stepped closer. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

You don’t know the half of it.

I forced back the nausea burning its way up my throat.

“Jon.” He looked me right in the eyes. “Talk to me.”

My stomach churned. He wasn’t going to let this go, and I couldn’t blame him. If the roles had been reversed, I’d have been pushing him to talk to me too, especially if he wanted me to participate in a scene with him. I owed him the honesty I’d have expected from him.

“It’s…” I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “The firm knows about us.”

“They…” He cleared his throat. “Come again?”

I dropped my hand. “They know. Someone saw us in the parking garage. They had the security camera tapes reviewed and…” I gestured dismissively. “They know.”

Rick’s eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Have they said anything about it?”

I whistled. “Yeah. Yeah, they have.” This nervous energy was going to drive me insane, so I pushed myself off the door and started pacing across the plush carpet while Rick watched. Running a shaking hand through my hair, I scrambled to put my thoughts in order.

He stopped me with a hand on my elbow. “They’re not threatening your job, are they?”

“Not…not the way you’d expect.”

“What does that mean?”

My stomach somersaulted, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. There was no going back if I tipped my hand now. If Rick knew what the partners had said, if he knew about the ultimatum they’d given me, I couldn’t just rein it back in and tell him to forget about it. What if it pissed him off? What if he confronted the firm?

He stopped behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Just tell me.”

I closed my eyes. After a moment, I faced him. “Look, Horizon Developing pretty much saved Mitchell & Forsyth’s ass. If you hadn’t signed with us, the whole place probably would’ve folded within a year.”

He nodded, brow furrowing slightly.

“And all of us employees have been told from day one that if anyone from Horizon Developing says jump, we say how high.” I exhaled sharply and kneaded my stiffening neck. “For God’s sake, they’ve even gotten on my case when they’ve seen us talking.”

“What? Why?”

“Because every communication between your company and ours has to go through a liaison who’s trained to not fuck things up.”

His lips thinned into a straight line. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. It’s…fucking degrading, but what can you do?” I paused. “Or I guess I should say, what can
I
do?” I cursed the helplessness in my voice—this was not a side I wanted any submissive to see. Or any boyfriend.
Anyone
.

“Okay, so.” He folded his arms loosely across his chest and studied me. “They know about us now, so what are they going to do? Tell you not to see me again?”

“No. The opposite, actually.”

Rick blinked. “Say what?”

I took a deep breath, and my pride shriveled as I revealed the last card. “They want me to keep seeing you.”

“Keep—” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re joking.”

“I wish. Basically, if I want to keep my job, I’ve got to keep you happy.”

I’d never seen Rick’s eyes that wide. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. As if he wanted to say something but couldn’t.

Now it was his turn to start pacing. He made it all the way across the room and halfway back before he spat, “I can’t even fit this all into my head.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m having a meeting with Dion and Lila first thing in the morning.” He shook his head. “No way in hell are we working with a company that treats their employees like that.”

Panic surged through me. “Rick, please. Don’t. If you pull your business from the firm, there’s going to be a hundred people out of jobs.”

He stared at me. “I can’t keep pouring that kind of money into a place that’s essentially blackmailing their own employees.”

And how could I tell him to do exactly that? But if he didn’t… If he pulled his account… If Mitchell & Forsythe lost that kind of money…

“Tell me what you want to do.” He touched my face. “I’ll follow your lead.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “No pressure, right?”

“Well, we have the weekend to figure it out.”

“Do you think that’s enough?” I met his gaze again. “Because I’ve been trying to unravel this all week and…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He caressed my cheek. “You’ve been letting this eat you alive, on your own?”

“What could I do? I didn’t want to put this on you, because I knew it would…” All the air left my lungs. “I knew it would make things weird.’

Rick avoided my eyes. “What does this mean for us, then? Because it’s obviously affecting us.”

“I…” Panic and God knew what other emotions tangled behind my ribs. “I have no idea.”

“Neither do I.” But then he came toward me and slid his hands over my hips. “We don’t have to decide anything tonight. We have time to think things over. No one has to know we’ve had this conversation.”

But you know. And I know.

He touched my face. “I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of fucking this up.”

“Neither am I.” I wrapped my arms around him. “To be honest, the only thing I’m sure of right now is what I want.”

He swallowed. “Which is?”

“You.”

We locked eyes. He held his breath. I held mine.

And finally, I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to me, and his kiss shook all the apprehension out of my body. The bullshit still existed, but for tonight, it was banished. He needed me, I needed him, and nothing else mattered.

Without a word—hell, without breaking the kiss more than we had to—we started pulling off clothes. Step by step, we inched toward his bed. Piece by piece, we stripped away the layers between us.

Wrapped up in each other and not a single stitch of clothing, we sank into bed together. My God.
This
I could handle. Just two naked bodies, two turned-on men, and some lube and condoms within reach.

We wound up one our sides, kissing and stroking each other. Apparently I
could
still get it up.

Why wouldn’t I? I was with Rick. In bed. Naked. Turned on. Of course I could—

Right. That.

I forced those thoughts out of my head and fucked harder into Rick’s hand. “I want to fuck you.”

“Please do,” he breathed. “Please…”

The soft plea gave me goose bumps.

“Get on—” I hesitated. “On your back.”

Rick eyed me, but then he did what he was told, and I was genuinely surprised he’d obeyed. It was like I couldn’t even hear the authority in my own voice anymore. I wasn’t a Dom tonight. I was a submissive taking orders from an invisible Dom and carrying them out on another submissive.

But this wasn’t about being a Dom or a sub. Not tonight. After all, I didn’t have to be a Dom all the time—I’d had a spectacular sex life with Karen, and she wasn’t into kink at all—so I should’ve been able to function now, but I couldn’t. Having the Dom rug yanked out from under my feet had thrown me completely off on every level. Every touch meant something. Or it should’ve been something that it wasn’t.

I told myself I didn’t care who was on top, but every option had subtext and meanings and implications that threatened to kill the mood. I could be on top, but then who was I kidding?

Especially since, no matter which way we spun it, I wasn’t in control in here. Neither was Rick. Mitchell was in control. The fucking firm was in control.

Rick broke the kiss, and the instant he met my eyes, I knew it was over. I couldn’t read his gaze to save my life, couldn’t tell if I was seeing pity or annoyance or straight-up confusion, but it wasn’t a look I wanted to see in a lover’s eyes when I was already second-guessing my every move. When I was questioning my own motivation for being this close to him.

I lifted myself off him. Blowing out a breath, I shook my head and sat up. “I can’t… I can’t do this.”

He pushed himself up onto his elbow. “What?”

“I’m sorry.” I rubbed both hands over my face and then dropped them into my lap. “I can’t.”

He touched my arm, and it took all I had not to recoil from him. “Is this about—”

“You know what it’s about.”

Our eyes met. He grimaced and lowered his gaze.

“I’m so sorry.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “I just…can’t shake…”

“I know. You’ve been a million miles away all night.”

I winced. “I’m sorry.” Why did every apology sound even more useless than the last? “I have no idea what to do about this.”

“Neither do I.” He moved his hand to the side of my neck, and when our eyes met, he said, “We don’t have to do this if you’re not in the mood.”

The shitty thing was, I
wanted
to be in the mood. Desperately. There was nothing in the world I wanted more in that moment than to tie Rick six ways to Sunday, fuck him into the ground and make him come so hard he cried. But I may as well have left my libido in the conference room with my bosses while they’d laid down that ultimatum, and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t make myself want this.

And I couldn’t fake it, and even if I could, there was no way in hell I
would
with him. I refused to give him any less than the real thing.

He pushed himself up and kissed me. “Let’s go get something to eat, maybe have a glass of wine and just watch TV for a while. Sleep on it tonight. We can talk more in the morning.”

I nodded, drawing him in for another kiss. “I could go for another
Golden Girls
marathon tonight.”

That brought a smile to his lips, if not his eyes. “Yeah. Me too.” He took my hand. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll order some pizza, and while we wait, we can find a bottle of wine to go with it.”

I smiled as much as I could. “Sounds great.”

It did sound great. So why did I still feel like shit?

* * * * *

Every night I’d spent here, I’d been thankful that Rick had opted for a smaller bed. Tonight, I wished he’d indulged in a gigantic one. Maybe one with enough room for the two of us and this unrelenting silence that had wedged itself between us. If we were going to sleep this far apart, we might as well not feel each other’s body heat. But what was a miserable night without feeling the presence of someone I wished I could be holding but was too afraid to touch?

We’d barely said two words the rest of the night. The wine had only depressed me, and it must’ve had the same effect on him, since he was pretty sedate after dinner.
Golden Girls
couldn’t get a laugh out of either of us. Finally, we’d given in and gone to bed, and nothing in the world cut as deep as being this close to him and this far from him at the same time.

Fuck. This was stupid. We hadn’t fought. One of us hadn’t wronged the other. But the air throbbed with the kind of tension that followed a screaming match. A metaphorical toothache that had shown up, taken residence and refused to be ignored.

I didn’t toss or turn all night because I didn’t want him to know how restless I was. He didn’t move either, but he sure as fuck wasn’t asleep. Knowing him this well was a double-edged sword—I knew his breathing patterns. I knew when he was asleep, when he was staring at the ceiling, when frustration had him hanging by a thread. Sometimes he drifted off, and sometimes I did too, but when I’d come around again, he’d be awake, and only a few minutes had passed according to the bedside clock. This was going to be one
long
night.

Maybe the shock just needed to wear off. I’d dropped the bomb on him tonight. It needed to sink in for him. I needed to make sense of it myself.

But deep down, I was sure this elephant had set up shop in every room we’d ever be in together, and it wasn’t leaving until we found a way around the ultimatum.

I racked my brain all night but came up empty. Every potential solution promised to make things worse than they already were. I had nothing.

At six, Rick’s alarm brought curses from both of us. He was already awake, and so was I. Neither of us spoke. We showered separately. Brushed our teeth in silence. Dressed in silence. Walked downstairs in silence.