Chapter Nine
HOW COULD BETTE have worked for him for two years and Simon still know so little about her? When he’d hired her, he’d checked her references and résumé. But now he had to pull up her employment file again to refresh his memory. She’d worked in fashion houses before she’d worked for Street Legal. Her degree was in fashion.
He’d dated a couple of design assistants. They didn’t make much. That was the reason he’d figured she’d quit the fashion house and applied for the job as his executive assistant. She could have worked as a model if she hadn’t been able to break in as a designer. She looked amazing in all the lingerie she wore.
The image of her standing in his office in just that black bra and G-string held together with bows flashed through his mind again. Hell, that image had never really left his mind. She was so damn sexy. And much too distracting...
He needed to find out if she really was the mole, especially now with the guys putting pressure on him over getting involved with her. What if she wasn’t?
Would she—could she—sue him for seducing her? Of course she’d seduced him first, though. Why?
Had she realized that he was onto her?
He pressed the intercom button on his phone.
“Yes?” Her voice filled his office, just like her scent and her image did.
“I’d like to see you...” In the flesh and not just in his mind. Due to the meeting with his partners, he hadn’t seen her yet this morning. And there was a strange tightness in his chest.
She hesitated a long moment before replying with, “I have to finish a couple of things first.”
“Are you stalling?” Maybe she didn’t want to see him as badly as he wanted—as he needed—to see her.
She sighed. “No. I was distracted this morning with a visit.”
Who had come to see her?
“Who was your visitor?” he asked. In the two years she’d worked for him, he couldn’t remember anyone ever coming by to see her.
From what she’d said, her family didn’t approve of her moving to the city. So they probably never visited. What about friends? He’d never met any of them. But then it wasn’t as if they were dating or anything.
After another long pause, she replied, “Your partners.”
He suppressed a groan. Why hadn’t they trusted him to handle this—to handle her—on his own? After all, he was the managing partner. And that was because Street Legal had been his idea. He’d come up with the plan back when they’d all been living on the streets:
Go to college.
Get their law degrees.
Start their own practice.
They should have trusted that he would do whatever necessary to protect that practice. Of course doing Bette Monroe was no hardship.
“Bette, I need you in here right now.” As he said it, a chill chased down his spine. He really did need her.
She sighed again, a sigh of frustration, and murmured, “I’m coming.”
“Not yet,” he said, then promised, “but you will be.”
“Simon!” She admonished him, but there was amusement in her voice. And it certainly wasn’t long before his door opened and she hurried inside.
Did she need him as much as he needed her?
He damn well hoped so—because he didn’t like this feeling, as if the balance of power had shifted in her favor. As if he needed her more...
That wasn’t the case, he assured himself. He needed the truth. He needed to know if she was, indeed, the mole.
“What did you want?” she asked as she strode over to his desk, her heels clicking against the hardwood floor. She wore another of her pencil-slim skirts with another cardigan. The skirt was gray, the sweater a deep purple. He wondered more what she wore beneath them.
“You,” he said. “I want you.”
Her lips curved into a smile. “Simon...”
But she didn’t protest. Instead, she walked around his desk and pushed back his chair. And he knew she wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.
Instead of unbuttoning her cardigan or wriggling out of her skirt, she reached for the zipper on his pants as she dropped to her knees in front of him.
His cock swelled and pulsated, begging for the release he knew she could—and would—give him. But he couldn’t let her seduce him again. He had to be the seducer.
This time he wanted more than sex from her. He wanted the truth. He didn’t believe she was really falling for him. If he demanded it, would she tell him everything? Would she finally answer his questions and be completely honest with him?
Was she capable of complete honesty, though?
So few people really were.
He caught her hand before she could tug down his zipper and held it in his for a long moment. She stared up at him, her dark eyes wide with surprise.
“I thought that’s why you called me in here.”
“Then why didn’t you come running?” he asked. “If you’re really falling for me?”
She smiled her siren’s smile at him. “Sometimes it’s more satisfying when we have to wait.”
Like the day they arrived at the office and had to get out of the car. That had been one long damn day.
He shook his head. “I’m not a patient man, Bette.”
“I’m patient,” she said. “I waited two years for you to notice me.”
Had she really, though?
He pulled off the glasses she wore and dropped them onto his desk. Then he reached for the pins in her thick, luxurious hair, letting the silken tresses fall down around her shoulders.
“Or did you spend two years trying to make certain I wouldn’t notice you?” he asked.
And that smile curved her lips even more.
She was the most challenging woman he’d ever met. How hadn’t he noticed that about her? He’d seen her beauty despite her attempts to disguise it. But he’d never realized how clever and conniving she could be.
“Some men like the librarian look,” she said.
He nodded in agreement. “I am some men,” he admitted. Then he reached for the buttons on her cardigan, flicking them open to reveal the lacy camisole she wore beneath. It must have been designed by the same maddening person who designed her lingerie because there were little bows on the pink lace. “I also am the some men who love lingerie.”
Her smile widened even more. “You love my lingerie?”
His breath shuddered out in appreciation. “Oh, yeah.” But after pushing the cardigan from her shoulders, he reached for the bow that held up her camisole in the back. After he tugged it loose, it slipped down and revealed her naked breasts. “But I love your body even more.”
Love. The word felt strange on his tongue. But in this case it wasn’t a con. He really did love her body. It wouldn’t betray him like her clever mind or her greedy heart might.
He flicked a fingertip over her nipple and it tightened in reaction. Her body could keep no secrets from him. He knew exactly what pleased it.
What pleased her...
He spent a long time on her breasts. Massaging the fullness of them, teasing the tight nipples. She moaned and wriggled and arched and finally she gasped as she came—just from his playing with her breasts.
He’d never known a woman as responsive as she was, as passionate. Or as generous.
She kept trying to undress him, reaching for the buttons on his shirt or the tab of his zipper. But he caught her wrists and locked them together in one of his hands, holding her back.
Then he moved his other hand between her legs. He stroked over the lace covering her mound. That was all he did, stroke his fingers over and over across the mound and over her clit. And she came again, nearly sobbing his name.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked. “Why?”
“You act like I’m punishing you,” he said with a slight grin.
“Are you?” she asked.
If she was the mole, he would punish her. But this wasn’t punishment. “This is pleasure, Bette. Don’t you know the difference?”
“Pleasure is better if it’s shared,” she told him. And she tugged her wrists free of his grasp. Then she attacked the buttons of his shirt and the zipper on his pants.
After stripping off his clothes, she rolled a condom onto him. He wasn’t sure if she’d found the condom in his pants or if she’d brought it with her. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but feeling the pleasure she’d promised him—that he knew she could deliver.
His body was wound so tight that he didn’t move. He stayed in his office chair, his bare ass against the supple leather. And she straddled him.
As she guided his cock inside her, she settled onto his lap and released a shaky breath. He sank so deeply into her this way, was joined more completely with her than he had ever been. She must have felt it, too.
Her brown eyes widened in shock and pleasure. “You feel so damn good...”
He shook his head. “Are preachers’ daughters supposed to swear?”
“I do a lot of things preachers’ daughters aren’t supposed to do,” she told him. “Like you...” Then she kissed him, her tongue sliding between his lips like he slid into her body.
He arched his hips, thrusting up as she moved with him. Their mouths mated like their bodies—in a frantic rhythm. The chair creaked and rocked and threatened to break beneath the weight of their bodies and the crazy motion of them. But Simon only bought the best, so it held up.
And he tried to hold on...to his control. He tried to wait. But she kept rocking and bouncing and driving him out of his mind.
The tension wound so tightly in his body he felt that he might break before the chair. Like he might just snap...
She cried out and tensed as her inner muscles convulsed and clutched at his cock. Then heat rushed over him. She was coming. He tried to hold off, tried to give her more orgasms. But then his body stilled as his control exploded. And he came, her name on his lips.
He’d tried to seduce her. But just like every time before, she wound up seducing him. She was so damn hot. So damn sexy...
“Oh, Simon,” she murmured as she settled her head against his shoulder. “You really are trying to make me love you.”
That had been the new twist in his plan. But just like the seduction, he had to make sure it went according to plan. That she was the one who actually fell for him. Not the other way around...
* * *
Bette could have used Simon’s private bathroom. But after the encounter she’d just had with him, she needed some space. Some perspective and some cold water splashed on her face. When she’d said what she had to him...
It hadn’t been premeditated. It had just slipped out. Like she’d meant it.
But she couldn’t mean it.
No. She’d just spent too much time too close to the sun, to the heat and passion that was Simon. So she needed to cool off. She rushed into the staff bathroom and headed toward the sink.
The doors of two of the stalls were closed, and the occupants spoke to each other. She shuddered in disgust. Apparently, she was in some ways still the repressed preacher’s daughter.
“So how long do you think it’s been going on?” the occupant of one stall asked the other. “The entire two years she’s worked for him?”
The other woman laughed. “I don’t think so. How could she have stayed when he was dating all those other women, too?”
“Maybe she has no pride.”
Oh, my God. They were talking about her. She stiffened with the very pride they didn’t think she possessed.
“He’s Simon Kramer,” the first woman said with a lustful sigh. “For him I would have no pride, either.”
“She’s so damn lucky,” the other agreed with a lustful sigh of her own. “I would love to work for and under him.”
Bette had no idea who the women were, but if they were so eager to work for Simon, why hadn’t they applied for her job?
“Well, you know he’ll be done with her someday, just like he’s been with all his other women. Maybe she’ll summon some pride and quit then, and her job will open up.”
“I can only hope.”
A toilet flushed. Then another.
Bette could have turned on her heel and hurried out of the room. But despite what they thought, she had too much pride to run from the gossipy women. As the stall doors swung open and they stepped out, she stared at both of them.
One gave a nervous laugh and remarked, “We didn’t realize you’d come in.”
And she wondered about that. Even growing up in a small town in the generally friendly Midwest, she’d known mean girls. While these women hadn’t been girls for a while—they were easily ten years older than her twenty-eight—they could still be mean. And they were obviously gossipy.
She shrugged. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have stopped you if you had.”
The woman’s eyes widened at her boldness. “Well, of course we wouldn’t—”
“What do you expect?” the other interrupted. “You’re screwing your boss.”
“He won’t be my boss much longer.” Just a little over four days. It didn’t matter to her that Simon hadn’t posted her position. She wasn’t staying beyond the two weeks even if he hadn’t replaced her.
One of the women tilted her head and gave Bette a fake sympathetic smile. “Oh, he’s already dumped you.”
Bette laughed. “I gave my notice before we even started...”
What?
They weren’t dating. They had only shared that one meal together. They’d never attended a show or a movie together. No. They weren’t dating.
They were just having sex and lots of it.
But she was fine with that. Dating would make it real. And it wasn’t real. It was just a dream, a very real dream. But that dream needed to end soon or it was bound to become a nightmare.
She was afraid—very afraid—that she wasn’t conning him anymore with her warnings that she was going to fall in love with him.
She was conning herself to think that she wasn’t.