CHAPTER SEVEN
BLAKE
“You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”
- Robin Williams
“Everybody out!”
Queue eye roll.
We’d of course expected CJ to find us at some point. The guys who didn’t know the reason for our gathering looked a little intimidated, but most everyone just rolled their eyes right along with me before filing out of the room one by one until CJ and I were alone. Part of me wanted to call out and beg them to come back. There was so much emotion roiling behind his dark blue eyes. The pit in my stomach and the ever-increasing feeling of dread tried to crawl up my throat, but I forced a smile and swallowed it back down.
Rose had warned me that first day not to fear CJ. At the time I’d thought she was a little crazy for even mentioning it. It never dawned on me to be physically afraid of CJ, even with how intimidating he could be. What Momma Rose seemed to have overlooked was the real danger that CJ posed - my rapidly growing attraction to him. Rose wanted me to keep screwing with him in an attempt to force out his emotions. I hadn’t considered just how much it might end up screwing with me.
Since the very first time I looked at him outside our apartments, he’d consumed my every thought. I’d gone to bed that first night trying to drum up ways to intentionally run into him. My first impression on him had sucked. (Understatement.) I wanted to make a better one. Initially I’d hoped to gain a friend, but the more I laid there picturing his strong body pressed against mine while his big hands trapped my wrists above my head, the dirtier my thoughts became.
The only way I’d been able to fall asleep was to give myself an orgasm while picturing his face. My body was still buzzing from all the very naughty things he’d done to me all night - even if just in my imagination - when I saw him that morning for my interview. Fear that he’d heard me call out his name while in the throws of an orgasm through our thin walls made my heart seize in my chest. the night before or somehow knew all the ways I’d violated his body in my dreams. When he didn’t call me out on it, my nerves settled just enough for me to act like an absolute lunatic. My behavior hadn’t gotten any better since.
Of course, it didn’t help that I was now intentionally riling him up - something I was growing more unhappy about by the day. My fantasies of him were vivid and sprung up during very inconvenient waking hours. The draw I felt to be near him was intense. When we were apart, my chest ached. When he was near, my lungs constricted. No matter the circumstance, I was suffering. I wanted him. Badly.
I honestly wondered how I would survive working with him on a daily basis. Especially when he was looking at me with heat in his eyes that, if I didn’t know better, I’d think was lust. Butterflies took flight in my stomach. And not the normal, sweet butterflies. These were some sort of mutant, kamikaze butterflies, all suicidal and possibly hopped up on speed. They didn’t flutter, they zipped back and forth at warped speed, like they were trying to barrel their way out by force.
He was dressed up again today, sans tie. The grey slacks fit his muscular thighs perfectly and the white button-up dress shirt tucked into a shiny, black belt stretched taut against his chest. I wanted to undo every button with my teeth, unbuckle his belt and slip my hand down his pants to find out what kind of sound he would make when I gripped his dick with my fist.
As he closed the distance between us, I mentally willed him to look down. My already tight tank top was damp with sweat, making it stick to my skin and the built-in bra put my nipples on full display. I wanted him to see the affect he had on me. I wanted to know I had the same on him. One glance at my chest would be proof enough. He’d see the goosebumps spreading across my skin and my nipples straining like they were reaching for him.
Not that I have freakishly long nipples or anything. My nipples are normal sized, not finger-like, I swear.
And that mental image was enough to snap me out of my lust-induced inner rambling.
“Hey, Mr. Jade,” I said cheerfully, thanking my lucky freaking stars that my voice hadn’t come out all breathy and porn star sounding. It killed me to address him so formally. He probably took it as sarcasm. Really, it was my one little compromise. He told me to call him Mr. Jade, and I was already antagonizing him in so many other ways, I figured it was the least I could do.
“What’s going on down here?”
I looked around innocently and shrugged. “Nothing now.”
CJ was amused as ever - as in, not at all.
After more silence than was comfortable, I let out a huff and crossed my arms. “Fine. I mentioned yesterday in passing that I was a pretty good fighter. None of the guys believed me. I’m not one to back down from a challenge, so we decided to come in early so I could kick Liam’s ass. I’m sorry if you’re mad. I hoped since it wasn’t during work hours you wouldn’t care, though everyone did try to convince me that you would be pissed. So if you’re going to be angry with someone, be angry at me.”
“How do you know how to fight?”
I eyed CJ curiously. I’d expected yelling and maybe him threatening to fire me. Him being inquisitive wasn’t a reaction I’d prepared myself for.
“My dad was a cop. He’s retired now, but he always wanted my sister and I to be able to protect ourselves. He taught us some self-defense moves when we were younger. Michelle lost interest and moved on to girlier things, but I liked the adrenaline high so I took some classes. A little Krav Maga, a little boxing, nothing too crazy. If you put me in the ring with a real fighter, I’d totally wind up getting my ass kicked, but I can hold my own when put up against a novice. Or someone like Liam, who claims he isn’t holding back, but totally is.”
I winked and CJ’s eyes widened fractionally. Then he walked away. Well that was rude.
I thought that was the end of it, odd as the interaction had been. But then he surprised me, picking up one of the hand wraps sitting on a table to the side and started unraveling it. When he looked up and saw me watching, he smirked. Not a flirty smirk. No, this smirk had something devious behind it. It scared me as much as it turned me on.
“What are you doing?” I cursed myself inwardly when my voice came out shaky. CJ’s smirk grew.
“Finding out for myself just how good you are.”
“Uhhh, no thanks. I happen to like my new job, and I’m pretty sure punching my boss is a good way to get fired.”
“What makes you think you’d actually be able to get a punch in?”
His taunt was almost enough to spark the competitiveness in me. Almost. The reality of the situation was too heavy for me to ignore, though. No matter what he said or how he acted, I knew CJ didn’t want me there. I wasn’t going to give him any ammunition. Annoying him was one thing. Punching him? Just plain stupid.
“I know I could hit you, but that’s beside the point.”
After rolling his sleeves to his elbows, CJ wrapped his right hand before moving on to the left. He quirked a challenging eyebrow at me. So damn confident. His ability to wordlessly throw down the gauntlet sparked the stubborn side of me back to life. He wanted me to show him how well I could fight? Screw it. He asked for it, so when I made an ass out of him, he couldn’t be pissed.
I’d gotten in a few hits when I was sparring with Liam. Yes, that was partially because he was holding back, but I had been, too. I hadn’t put all my muscle into it. Neither of us wanted to draw blood. It was playful. A ruse to get under CJ’s skin. The possibility of CJ wanting to take a turn on the mats himself had never even crossed my mind. What was his angle here? To see if he could intimidate me? To see if I could take as much as I dished out?
Maybe my being in cahoots with his mom in some hair-brained scheme was screwing with my head. I didn’t normally play games. I was a straight shooter, and there were moments when I was going well out of my way to antagonize CJ that I felt like I was being dishonest.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said when he finished wrapping his hands and made his way over to me. “You can’t fire me for kicking your ass when you asked for it.”
He stepped onto the mat in front of me, his shoes still on. Not safe, since I was barefoot. I started to comment on it, but bit down on my lip to keep from saying something stupid. I knew he had a prosthetic. I’d noticed it that night we met. Was he sensitive about it? Belatedly, I wished I’d asked Rose about it. I aimed to antagonize the man, but…
Oh, hell. Since when do you censor yourself, Blake?
Good point, me. Let’s just ask.
“Can you fight with that?” I nodded in the direction of his leg. His eyes shot up in surprise, but not anger. Good sign. He was, after all, my boss. And if the loss of his leg, or however much of it was missing, was painful for him to talk about, I didn’t want to upset him.
“Who told you?” He asked with genuine curiosity.
“No one. I noticed that first night. It bumped my leg, but I didn’t get a good look. How long?”
Several long seconds ticked by in silence. He seemed to be debating whether or not to answer me. In the end, he didn’t.
“It won’t be a problem. Let’s get this over with.”
I started to say something about putting my shoes back on - I wasn’t about to break a toe and be sentenced to ugly but comfortable footwear for the next month - but he surprised me by toeing off a shoe. He slipped off the black dress sock before removing the other shoe. His pant leg covered most of it, but I could still see the prosthetic peeking out beneath the hem. It looked exactly like the ones I’d looked up after finding out CJ had one. I’d never known much about prosthetics and it surprised me to find how many different variations there were.
“Which model is that?”
“You know a lot about prosthetics?”
I debated whether or not to admit that I’d only learned about them after finding out he had one, but again, holding back wasn’t really my style.
I shrugged. “Not really. I looked them up the other night after we met.”
The air around us was getting a little thick. Not that I minded, but I sensed CJ wasn’t ready for a conversation this personal. He knew I knew about it, so that opened the window for communication later, after he’d let me in a little. If he never brought it up again, eventually I would, but for now I wanted to keep bring back the light verbal sparring from minutes ago.
“Don’t worry, gimpy. I won’t hold back on you.”
CJ stilled, his eyes narrowing. “Gimpy? Really?”
I shot him my most taunting grin. He shook his head but dropped the subject, shaking his arms to loosen his shoulders.
“You ready, tiny?”
My eyes narrowed at the nickname - for his sake. Inside I was squealing and bouncing up and down.
“I’m not that small,” I defended.
CJ’s eyes danced with humor, though his face remained impassive.
“Stalling, tiny? You afraid?”
“Hah!” I scoffed. “Not even a little bit. Let’s do this.”
We bumped fists and began circling each other. He might have had a hundred pounds and several inches on me, but like he pointed out, my small size was actually an advantage. Like so many men I’d sparred with before him, he assumed every punch I threw could be easily blocked. Or if it did make contact, it wouldn’t hurt.
Less than a minute later, I proved that assumption wrong by landing a punch square in the middle of his torso. I’d held back enough for it to be more of a warning punch than anything. No, I wouldn’t be taking him down or giving him any serious injuries, but if he wasn’t careful, he’d at least be walking away with several bruises.
“And though she be little, she is fierce.” Well said, Shakespeare. Well said.
He heeded my warning. Pulling himself in tighter, his form improving. I remained on the offensive, sticking to only using my arms as I continued to circle around him on the mat. He’d yet to even try to swing at me. Annoying. I may as well be fighting a punching bag if he’s not gonna fight back.
After several punches, all of which were blocked, I decided to change tactics. Time to bring legs into the picture. I threw out my left arm, which he blocked easily, but he hadn’t predicted my right leg to connect with his ribs.
It knocked the wind out of him for a couple seconds, and the glare he aimed at me when he stood upright again made me smile.
The next few times he blocked my punches, he was a little rougher than before. He moved quickly and with impressive agility. His prosthetic definitely wasn’t a hinderance. If someone were watching from the waist up, they’d have no clue the man dodging my tiny fists with lightning speed had any sort of physical disability.
Each time I swung and missed, his lips twitched, so I punched harder. Each time one of us became more aggressive, the other would, too. Finally, I made contact, landing a jab to his shoulder. My knee jerked up, but instead of blocking it, he grabbed my leg. I went down quick, landing flat on my back. He stepped forward, looking a little apologetic, which irritated me. So when he offered his hand to help me up, I swung my leg around and hooked it behind his knee.
Watching CJ go down was like watching a massive tree falling in the middle of the forest. I had the urge to yell timber.
He wouldn’t stay down long, though, so I saved the joke for later. Instead I opted to jump on top of him the second he hit the ground, straddling his waist and pinning his arms above his head. It was meant to be funny. To show that I’d won. I realized my mistake the second his eyes connected with mine. The heat in them wiped the smile from my face. In case I was confused as to what kind of heat it was, something hard twitched underneath me, pressing into my bottom. CJ ripped his hands from my grip and dug his fingertips into the flesh of my thighs. It sent an electric current straight from his fingers to my clit.
My hips rolled, pressing my core against his straining erection. It just happened, it wasn’t premeditated. Well, most of what I did wasn’t premeditated, but this in particular really did happen without my realizing it. Even if I’d wanted to apologize or climb off of him, I couldn’t. Not when the hard length of him pressed against the exactly right place. My eyes shuttered closed and a low groan rattled CJ’s chest. His hands inched upwards each time I ground myself down.
I hadn’t participated in dry humping since my teenage years. Either my memories were skewed, or it had never been this enjoyable. Within seconds, he had me on the verge of exploding right there on top of him.
Do not orgasm on top of your boss. Get off, Blake. Off of him, not off as in have an orgasm.
My sub-conscious always had it more together than I did. It would chime in with logic and reason, both of which I would promptly ignore.
Who could listen to sound advice when calloused fingertips were tracing a line from your thighs to your stomach? Not I.
Slowly, inch by inch, my chest lowered until it was flush with his. I rolled my hips again, shuddering when the first warning of orgasm shot through me. CJ’s hot breath fanned across my face. My lips tingled. I wanted to see if he tasted as minty as his breath smelled. Half an inch was all it took and our lips met with a ghost of a kiss.
The someone cleared their throat obnoxiously.
I didn’t have to look over to know it was Liam. Or to know he was wearing a shit-eating grin. CJ’s frown spoke volumes. As annoyed as I was to be interrupted when I was seconds away from an orgasm, it still took everything in me not to laugh at being caught grinding on my boss.
CJ pushed me off of him, stood and adjusted himself then stormed past Liam without so much as a word or a backward glance. Once the door to the stairwell closed behind him, Liam and I looked at each other. And we lost it. Our laughs only got louder when we heard CJ yell through the wall.
“I can still fucking hear you!”
Wiping away tears, I skipped the shower and jogged up the stairs to CJ. I wanted to make sure we were okay. As funny as I found the situation, I very seriously doubted he felt the same way. His office door was closed. I probably should have knocked, but barging into his personal space was what had gotten me the job in the first place. Why stop now?
“Don’t,” he ordered as soon as I had one foot in the door. It took me a second to comprehend what he was saying, seeing as how he was mostly shirtless. He was turned away from me, but I still had a good enough angle to be able to see his sculpted chest and very defined abs. I think he said something else to me, but I was too entranced to do anything but drool. Well, I may have smacked my lips and made some slurping sounds. I could practically feel him rolling his eyes at me. Though CJ didn’t seem like the eye-rolling type. It didn’t matter. He could be whatever type of anything he wanted to be so long as he let me stare at his bare chest all day.
“See something you like?” He asked as he fastened the last button of the offensive fabric covering up the masterpiece that was CJ’s upper body.
Pouting, I mock glared at him. “Of course I did. Your body is magnificent. I would work a lot harder if you would just forgo the shirt from now on.” He snickered, then raised an eyebrow at me when I tried to walk on Jell-O legs. “What? I’m only human. Boss or not, no woman could be this close to all of that,” I gestured to his chest, “without being affected.”
I picked up his discarded shirt, which was sweaty and smelled like his cologne. The mix was so masculine, I might have let out a little moan when I blatantly put it to my face and took a big sniff.
“I’ll take this and get it cleaned for you,” I said, holding the shirt up. I kept the part where I was going to continue sniffing the hell out of it first to myself. “Okay if I take a shower real quick? I brought a change of clothes,” I stopped and asked in the doorway. His eyebrows were furrowed, his lips turning down into an adorable frown.
“You know nothing can happen between us, right? I mean, it’s not that I don’t find you attractive. Er, not saying that I do find you attractive. I just mean, I’m your boss and-”
I laughed. Not a ha-ha laugh, but an, oh-my-gosh-please-stop-talking laugh. Something I did when someone was about to say or do something that I knew would wind up with my feelings being hurt. I didn’t like to be sad - who did? Hearing him say that our almost-kiss was a mistake was the last thing I wanted to hear right then. Fighting my attraction to him was hard enough. If he outright rejected me, it would make it so much harder to keep up with the overly-intrusive behavior that was supposed to be bringing back to life a man supposedly living inside a protective shell.
“No worries, Mr. Jade,” I said quickly with a forced smile, shutting the door a little too roughly behind me so he couldn’t say anything else.
For the rest of the day, and the following three days, I didn’t see CJ once. Not at work, not at our apartment building, and from what I could tell, he hadn’t even been home. I may or may not have used a cup and pressed my ear against our joint wall and listened for an inexcusably long amount of time. I was well on my way to becoming the next member of Stalkers Anonymous. Other than a couple emails where CJ gave me a few tasks to do in his absence, I hadn’t talked to him at all. Even those communications had been short and to the point, despite my efforts to turn them into a conversation. The one time I tried to text him, he threatened to block my phone number.
Since he was being such an ass and obviously avoiding me, and since I had it on good authority that he rarely ever stayed out of the office for so long, I took it upon myself to do a few other tasks not assigned to me.
Like signing CJ up for Facebook and Twitter. Apparently he was adamantly opposed to any and all forms of social media. By the time he figured out what I’d done, it’d be too late. He would be beyond furious, but lessons had to be taught. This lesson? Don’t leave your new assistant unsupervised because you’re too much of a wuss to face your attraction to her.