The Boss (39 page)

He held open the door for me and dropped his
briefcase in the foyer. "Do you mind terribly if we order in
tonight? I'm a bit tired."

Now that we were standing together in
familiar lighting, I noticed the dark hollows under his eyes, the
slight pallor to his complexion. "Are you okay? You’re not coming
down with that thing I had?"

"Oh, I’m fine. Just a little tired is all."
He smiled bravely, but I felt a cold chill of worry. Every time we
got updates at work lately, it seemed like bad news disguised as
good news. I realized he must have been under an enormous amount of
stress over the past week.

I was determined to make the night as
relaxing as possible for him. Maybe I’d bring up the meeting with
Jake, but not tonight. Not when Neil looked so run down.

We ended up ordering pizza and cheap red wine
and eating cross-legged on the bed in the media room.

"You said media room, I imagined like, a
plasma screen and a rack of DVDs," I said, looking up at the tray
ceiling and recessed lighting. The bed we sat on was surrounded by
movie-theatre-style seats, five behind us, two rows of two on
either side.

"I had this done when Emma turned sixteen.
She and her friends had sleepovers in here." He gestured to the
projector overhead. "Replaced that a few times since then, of
course."

"Oh, of course." I snickered.

"Don't make fun of me for having money," he
scolded. "You'd have more of it yourself, if you'd let me pay for
the pizza."

"No, I have to pay for some things."

He took a swallow of wine. "I forgot to
mention... Emma will be here tomorrow."

"Oh." Well, I’d thought I was feeling better
from my stomach bug, now not so much. Maybe I was just getting an
ulcer from stress. "Emma will be here..."

"Tomorrow," he said slowly, the corner of his
mouth twitching as he gauged my reaction. "But I'd like you to
stay. You two had a disastrous first meeting, and I'd like you to
be able to get along."

I reached for the wine bottle and poured
myself another glass. "Does she live here, or..."

"Part time. She travels a lot, for her job,
organizing events and fundraisers all over. When she's in town, I
very graciously let her stay here, rent free, to prevent her from
moving in with her horrible boyfriend." He pushed the pizza box
toward me and reclined on his side.

I shook my head. "That probably won't work
forever."

"No, you're right. But it has worked for the
past year, so I’m ever hopeful." He frowned up at the projection
screen on the wall, where a happy blonde couple toured a restored
farmhouse. "So, the entire premise of this program is that people
go looking for houses to live in and reject the perfect ones
outright because they're too lazy to paint?"

“That’s about the gist of it.” I covered my
mouth with my hand as I spoke, chewing up my last bite. I dropped
the crust into the top of the box and grabbed one of the flimsy
paper napkins to wipe my hands. "Well,
Sir
, I don't know
what you had in mind for the rest of the evening, but I think I
broke your 'don't get tipsy' rule."

The glasses we'd been drinking from were
bigger than the ones I had at home, and I was fairly certain I'd
drunk most of the bottle on my own.

"Yes, I see that." He reached up, taking my
chin in his hand to tilt my face to one side, then the other.
"You're pink cheeked."

"That's not the wine. It's anger at these
morons." I shrugged his hand off and gestured at the screen. "'We
really liked the Cape Cod, and it was perfect for our needs, but it
had waaaaaaaall paaaaaaper.'"

He laughed. "I can't tell you how much I
needed this tonight."

"Bad TV?"

"You." His smile slowly faded. "I find that
when I'm with you, it's impossible to worry about anything
else."

Oh, Neil
. Maybe that was his problem.
He was too happy to see the colossal mistakes he had made with
Porteras
. Or maybe he saw them, but like an oncoming train,
couldn’t avoid them.

The problem wasn’t the changes he’d made. The
problem was he’d made too many, too soon. I was starting to get a
sense of what Rudy had referred to as Neil’s “forceful
personality.” When he saw something he wanted, he went after it
tenaciously. While that was admirable, it wasn’t always
sensible.

We'd already had the "never ask me about my
business" talk where this subject was concerned, and I so didn't
want to rehash that argument. Not when I was full of red wine and
an alarming amount of pizza - which shouldn't have been a turn on,
but I challenge anyone to not be turned on sitting on a bed, even
casually, with Neil Elwood.

"Do you ever watch porn in here?" The word
'porn' makes me giggle. I can't help it.

"Sophie, don't be juvenile." He sighed
impatiently. "Of course I do. The picture is incredible and there's
no danger of getting semen on my laptop."

I shook my head and covered my face with my
hands, laughing as he got up from the bed and relocated the pizza
box and wine glasses. "Is that something you'd be interested in?
Watching porn and fucking in here?"

It felt like such a natural question, like he
was asking me if I'd like pancakes for breakfast. "Yeah, I think it
could be fun. You know... I've never been with someone who talks
about sex the way you do. I mean, in my other relationships we
could have sex, we just couldn't talk about it like this."

"If you can't talk about it, you damn well
shouldn't be having it," he observed, draining his glass in a
heroic swallow.

"You're right." I got to my knees on the bed.
It was made up with pillows and blankets that matched the burgundy
velvet upholstery of the theater seating around it. "Is there any
reason we can't watch porn and do dirty stuff tonight?"

"None at all." He walked slowly over the to
bed, an uncertain expression on his face. "I'm a bit surprised,
though. I thought women of your generation had a problem with
pornography."

"I'm pretty sure you've seen women of my
generation in porn," I said dryly.

"Well, of course. I only meant..." he paused,
and laughed. "You're a feminist. I assumed that feminists... didn't
care for that sort of thing."

"We're not a hive mind, Neil." I rolled my
eyes at him. "I like porn. Not like, the animated stuff with
tentacles. And nothing super degrading. If you bust out a box of
barely legal girls crying as a specific fetish, I'm probably not
going to be happy about it."

"No, nothing in the 'barely legal girls
crying' genre, I'm afraid." He sat down beside me and reached for
the remote. He hit a button to open up a menu on the screen,
selected "private" and entered a password.

"This is impressive." I looked up at the
projector. "Is there a hard drive in that?"

"Of course. Every porn-loving billionaire in
his right mind is going completely digital these days." He hit
another button on the remote, and a gallery of thumbnail images
popped up. "What are you in the mood for?"

I snorted as I looked at the pictures. There
was a very similar theme going on there. "Looks like redheads are
my only option."

"Oh yes, um," he looked over at me with an
embarrassed, apologetic grin. "I like redheads."

"I hate to tell you, but I don't think I
would look good as a redhead." I lifted one long lock of decidedly
brunette hair. "I could try it, if you want."

"You'd better not," he warned. "Don't ever
change your appearance solely to please me. I love you exactly the
way you are."

"As long as you don't hire some new redheaded
secretary to bend over your desk, I'll be happy." I pointed to the
upper left corner of the screen. "What's that one?"

"Excellent choice," he said, his expression
brightening. "Do you speak French?"

"Not even a little."

"Well, the plot isn't really important. The
dialogue is atrocious." He started the video.

I frowned. "Do you speak French?"

"I do."

"Do you speak any other languages?" This was
a fascinating side to him I'd never really considered before. He’d
probably had a way better education than I'd had.

"Besides English? Icelandic is my second
language, but I’d consider it almost native. I'm fluent in German
and French, I speak some Dutch, a bit of Greek. I can do a tiny bit
of Japanese, but I never quite get it right, and I’m reliably
informed that my accent is awful." He flashed me a smile and hit
another button on the remote to dim the lights. "What about
you?"

"Spanish." I shrugged. "Not fluent, but I do
okay."

"That's perfect then, isn't it?" He sat down
beside me and ran his hand down my back. "I can cover for us in
Nice, you can help us get around Malaga."

I snorted. "Right."

"I'm serious." A slight frown creased his
forehead. "Sophie, I would love to go away on a holiday with you.
To have you all to myself for more than two nights in a row, to
spend all day with you and hold your hand in public without fearing
someone from work is going to spot us. Just to relax with you,
without work hanging over our heads."

"We go to dinner together. We go running
together," I pointed out. But he was right, we were both silently
rehearsing our cover stories the whole time.
Oh, it was meant to
be a business dinner, not a romantic, candle lit one, but the wait
staff wouldn't take no for an answer.
"Maybe that's something
we could do in the future. Go some place warm and sunny, where I
can wear a bikini."

"Where you can sunbathe topless," he
suggested lasciviously. “I’m going to go get a condom.”

“Hurry,” I told him, lying back on the bed
and walking my fingertips down my tummy.

"Never." He leaned down to kiss me, as on
screen the woman in the porn crawled across a bed, speaking softly
to a nude man with a truly glorious physique.

"Wow." My eyebrows shot up. The dude had to
have a twelve pack.

"I'm still here!" Neil laughed from the door,
but it sounded like he was only half kidding.

The actress reached for the actor's erection
and slowly stroked it, whispering her lines. I slipped my hand
beneath my shirt to stroke the curve of my breast.

That’s how Neil found me when he came back,
and he stopped at the end of the bed to watch me lazily circling my
nipple beneath my t-shirt.

I smiled up at him. "What's she saying?"

"Oh, um, that it's all right, her sister
won't find out, but that she's always wondered what he was like in
bed." Neil shrugged and sat beside me. "I told you it was a stupid
plot."

"No more stupid than 'It appears our flight
is cancelled, would you like to get a room with me?'" I teased,
mocking his accent.

He tackle-hugged me, and we rolled together
on the bed. He buried his face in my neck and sucked noisily on my
skin, tickling me, making me squirm and laugh and gasp all at the
same time. Finally, he let up, pinning me beneath him. One hand
went to the top of my yoga pants - I wanted to be comfy on the
weekends, but I wasn't quite ready to spring printed flannel pjs on
him - and slipped inside. My last giggle died away on a contented
sigh as he stroked me. He pushed my t-shirt up with his other hand,
cupping my breast, and covered my mouth with his mouth, my body
with his body.

I smiled up at him as his fingers found my
clit and pressed in slow circles, then I tilted my head back to
watch the video. In this position the picture was upside down, but
it didn't hinder my enjoyment any. The woman on the screen ran her
tongue up and down the man's cock, maintaining eye contact with the
camera as her fingers curled around him, coated in her saliva.

My reaction to the sight was a bone-deep
shudder.

"I prefer scenes like this," Neil said,
nibbling along my jaw. "When it seems genuine. I detest the
over-loud, obviously faked enjoyment in some videos."

"Oh my god," I whimpered, rolling my hips
under him. "I totally agree. I like it much better when it looks
real."

His fingers slipped down, two of them sliding
into me. “This is very real, isn't it?"

"All real," I moaned. "All for you."

"You'll drive a man crazy, talking like
that." He sat up and pulled off his shirt, and I did the same. I'd
taken off my bra when I'd changed out of my work clothes, and his
hands and mouth were on me before I got my t-shirt over my head. I
pulled him back down with me. I loved the way our skin felt pressed
together. I loved the weight of him between my legs, the heat of
his mouth on my nipple, the roughness of his hairy chest against my
belly.

The actress moaned around the shaft in her
mouth, and my throat went dry.

"Hey." I sank my fingers into his hair and
gently tugged. When he lifted his head, I looked him in the eye and
said, "I want to suck your cock."

He grinned at me and leaned up, and I started
to sit up as well. He placed one hand against my chest. "Stay
there."

I watched the screen as he rose from the bed
and stripped naked. The woman in the movie was getting more
enthusiastic now, her mouth bobbing up and down her partner's
glistening erection. Neil came back to the bed and knelt over me, a
knee on either side of my ribcage. The tip of him brushed my lips,
and I opened my mouth, raising my head a little to take him in. I
reached up to grip him, and he intercepted my hand, guiding it to
the side of my breast.

I could take a hint.

I squeezed my tits together around him,
letting my tongue swirl over the head of his cock as he thrust. I
was surprised at how much of a tease it was, not being able to suck
him deep into my mouth. That only made me want to do an even better
job on what I could reach.

Neil's hand snaked down my stomach, into my
pants again, to finger me as he slowly fucked my breasts. I lifted
my hips, rocking under his gentle strokes, whimpering as his other
hand traced slow circles around each of my nipples in turn.