Ally…

Dread coated my insides like tar the entire time I was drying off and getting dressed. My heart pounded against the inside of my ribs, and my face felt hot. My chest squeezed tight as I tied my shoes, and finally, I stood up, as ready as I would ever be to face the music.

Oh, shit… I’m fired. He’s going to fire me and I won’t be able to pay for Grandma and I don’t know what I’m going to do!

I felt sicker and sicker with every step I took up the hallway, and I didn’t immediately see him. He was sitting in the wingback chair that faced away from the kitchen and my approach. He swirled some whiskey in a glass and said coldly, “Come here.”

Yep. I was fired. Totally. Epically. Fired.

I went around the side of his chair and stopped, equal parts dejected and humiliated. He raked that icy glare over me from head to toe and shifted in his seat, as if unsettled.

He’s disgusted with you… I mean, wouldn’t you be? I thought.

He let out an angry sigh and my gaze bounced from the floor to his, my eyes hot and tight, my vision blurring with unshed tears. He captured my gaze with his and jerked it to the coffee table in front of him in a clear bid for me to sit. I moved quickly to comply, but couldn’t hold still. My knee bouncing rapidly as I tried to do something, anything, to keep myself together; to keep myself from bursting into ugly wracking sobs, to stop myself from throwing myself on his mercy and begging him not to let me go.

“Stop that,” he snapped, and I forced my leg to immediately still, but lost the battle with my tears. I felt them slick down my face, spilling across my skin in twin heated lines. One of the tears splashing onto the top of my thigh and soaking into my legging.

“Please, don’t fire me!” I blurted, and apparently lost the battle when it came to not begging, but I didn’t have any pride. The Point Side projects had stripped that from me a long time ago.

His gaze wandered over me, so cold it burned where it touched and he took a nonchalant sip of his drink. When he lowered his glass, he let out a breath and reached into the breast pocket of his suit, shaking out his handkerchief and holding it out to me.

I reached out and took it as he said dryly, “On the contrary. I have a proposition for you. A rather indecent proposal…”

I wiped my eyes and looked up, bewildered. Did I hear him right? Am I not fired?

“What?” I asked, still not believing what I heard, waiting for him to repeat it.

He pursed his lips and they twisted slightly with impatience as he searched my face. “You’re not fired,” he said for my benefit, “I would actually like to increase your pay.” I took a breath to speak, and he raised a finger, “No. Hear me out.”

I resolutely closed my mouth, half afraid he would ask me to sleep with him. I didn’t know if I could do that. If I would do that… not for money. That wasn’t the woman my grandmother had raised me to be, at all.

“I would like for you to clean like that all the time. I will double your current rate.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, confused and was surprised that I didn’t find myself readily denying him. Instead, I asked, “Like, would you be home?”

“No.”

I frowned, perplexed, and shook my head, not that I was saying no, but more in that I had no idea where this was coming from and I didn’t get it, so I asked him, “If you’re not home, how would you know if I did it? Like, how would you know I cleaned naked? The cameras?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No. In fact, I will show you precisely where they all are and how to disable them upon entry into the condo.”

I blinked and blurted, “But then how would you know I was doing it?” Somehow I was more concerned with the how and why and what of this scenario than I was with losing my job if I said no.

“First off, let me reiterate, your job is safe, Ally.” Oh, shit. He was serious. He never called me ‘Ally’ anymore. It was always ‘Ms. Blaylock.’ “Second, you may tell absolutely no one about this. What goes on in this house is my business. What goes on between us is our business.”

“What other conditions apply?” I asked faintly, still in disbelief but knowing in my heart there had to be more.

“If you say ‘no’, you still have a job. I will never take that away from you unless you breach my trust.”

“Why would I do that?” I demanded, affronted. “I would never do that.”

A faint smile graced his lips, and it made my chest ache for an entirely different reason. I swallowed hard and thought about what he was asking. I mean, I would be lying to myself if I said that I hadn’t had just the slightest bit of deviant pleasure at being nude in this beautiful man’s space. Now, here he was, asking me to do it… trying to pay me more for it…

I did not see this coming, I thought, but I couldn’t deny how flushed the idea made me feel. How my body tingled and ached in delicious ways at the prospect of it.

Still, the why of it bothered me; why would a man like Damien Parnell want something like this? I mean, he wouldn’t even be here to enjoy it… Well, he isn’t here when you get naked and you enjoy it. Maybe it was the same thing? Just the knowing was enough. Yeah, but what happens when the just knowing isn’t enough anymore? I asked myself, and was surprised that the delicious ache at the apex of my thighs intensified rather than diminished. I didn’t quail at the thought. Not until I thought about the money. I mean, right now I needed that money, but I wouldn’t always, would I?

No, don’t think about that Ally… you don’t want to think about that.

He watched me think it over, his expression neutral as he waited for my answer. I swallowed hard and said, “May I think about it some more?”

“Of course,” he said, and I swallowed hard.

“How long do I have?”

“As long as you’d like, but before you walk out that door tonight, I’m afraid I’m going to need an answer.”

I pursed my lips and stared at his whiskey glass, at the way the amber liquid coated the side of it as he absently swirled it. I mean, couldn’t he get in far more trouble for this than me?

I looked back up sharply and said, “I’ll do it… but you don’t have to pay me extra.”

He smiled a secret little smile and said, “Well that would be my pleasure, Ms. Blaylock.”

“Show me how to turn off the cameras?” I asked, feeling a little more solid, a little braver.

“Well, now, that would be my pleasure, too.” He moved to stand and I stood too, abruptly, the effects of the adrenaline wearing off now. My hands felt slightly shaky, and I honestly felt like I trembled all over. He took me to the security panel and showed me how to turn off the cameras after I disabled the alarm. It was surprisingly easy but required I enter the alarm’s code again.

He had me do it twice to be sure that I got it, and took a sip of his drink. We stood there for a moment, in silence and he said, “Look at me.” I rolled my lips and did as he asked. He fixed me with those beautiful dark eyes of his and his voice became low and controlled. Words said just between us.

“You’re safe here, Ally. No judgment, no recriminations. What you do here, what we do here, is between two consenting adults and you may revoke that consent at any time. You want to stop, it stops. No penalties, no harm, no foul.”

“Okay,” I whispered and even though I knew that the words sounded too good to be true, that anywhere else, anyone else delivering them likely didn’t mean them. I knew, deep down, that Mr. Parnell did. He wasn’t lying to me or bullshitting me. He meant it and I could trust what he said.

The moment hung between us, weighted with promise and he touched gentle fingertips to my chin, his eyes roving my face. He smiled slightly at whatever he saw and said, “Your eyes are red from crying. Go splash some cool water on your face. It will help.”

“Yes, sir,” I murmured and his breath caught. He nodded at me to go do what I was told and I did. The more I thought about things, the stranger they seemed to me, but I had to deal with them on my own, process them on my own. I couldn’t tell anyone. Certainly not my grandmother and as much as I loved her, definitely not Dawnie. They wouldn’t understand but this... this whole idea, this whole exchange of power between us, I understood. It tapped into a very basic part of me; it flipped some hidden switch and made me come alive with a tingling rush.

Still, no one could know. Understanding for these kinds of things didn’t come easily to regular people. Well, Dawnie might get it. Not only because of the books that we liked to read, but because she was my best friend and knew me sometimes better than I knew myself. It was strange feeling that way about a man, but here I was, and when it came to Mr. Parnell? The same sentiment echoed. The same sort of darkness in him called to some of my own and I loved it, I was definitely attracted to it, but I was still unsure of it. Not because of anything he had done but more of what other people might think. I mean, what would other people think? Probably nothing good and it was best not to find out.

When I returned to the living room, he stood by the door. The whiskey glass was gone and he held my totes and purse out to me.

“Have a good evening, Ms. Blaylock,” he said, and I swallowed.

“Thank you; you too, Mr. Parnell.”

“I shall enjoy the cookies; thank you for them.”

I smiled at that, my heart lightening, and he opened the door and showed me out.