Chapter 7

Ellison

I wanted to take her somewhere that I thought would impress her. There was a traditional gourmet Finnish restaurant up the way that I directed the limo driver to, but honestly think of anything but how beautiful Charlie looked and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The bright red top she wore accented her deep green eyes, and holy fuck, her curves looked amazing in the pants she was wearing, the high waist style was beautiful on her. Her thighs called to me as we sat side-by-side in the limo, and I watched her as she watched the snow, still fascinated by it.

“Enjoying Finland?” I asked.

“The snow is beautiful. I think I might come back sometime, and maybe get snowed in,” she said.

“Make sure you get a fire going,” I said.

“And maybe a good book. Oh! And a blanket,” she added.

“Sounds comfortable,” I said.

Just like my thick dick sinking into her slick pussy.

I shook the thought from my mind and redirected myself to the task at hand. She was my fucking employee and I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. I took Mike out all the time whenever we won over shit like this. The celebratory dinner was a tradition in the business world, and nothing more.

But holy hell, Mike didn’t have the kinds of curves she did. Or a vagina, but that’s beside the point.

I figured this place would impress her. After all, every woman wanted to be wined and dined, right? But, the moment we walked into the place, I saw Charlie crinkle her nose at the atmosphere.

“You alright?” I asked.

“I’ll need a flashlight to get through this place,” she said.

I smirked at her comment as the hostess seated us. She found us a table for two in back, with dancing candlelight on the dinner table and a silk cloth that draped to the floor. The window beside us was tinted with snow gathering along the outside sill, and Charlie lost herself once again in the falling snow.

That is, until the waiter showed up at the table.

“Good evening, Mr. James. I hear it has been a wonderful day for you. Might I interest you in our wine list?”

“Thank you very much,” I said. “Charlie, is there any specific type of wine you enjoy? Maybe the Chateau Ste Michelle, or maybe a nice Château Margaux?”

“I don’t know, you choose, I’m a boxed Franzia kinda gal,” she said.

I snickered and almost spat out my water as I watched the waiter turn up his nose.

“Was that, um—what did you call it?—boxed wine?” the waiter asked.

“It is! The red if you’ve got it,” she said, smiling.

“We don’t carry ‘boxed wine’ here, madam,” the waiter said.

“Then the ‘Chatty Snail’ wine or whatever you called it is fine,” she said.

I brought the wine list to my lips and started laughing into it. Her eyes were sparkling with the frustration she was pulling from the waiter, and I realized then and there that I’d pay whatever thousands of dollars I needed to just to listen to her have a go at that man again. Her wit was astounding and she wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she knew nothing about places like this, and it was incredibly refreshing to be with a woman who, for once, didn’t know shit about this type of lifestyle.

She shrugged when the waiter huffed away, and I doubled over laughing when she called after him.

“And bring me a flashlight when you can! I think your lights are broken in here!”

“Charlie, you’ve never been in a restaurant like this, have you?” I asked, after I was done laughing.

“Nope, and I don’t get why people want to come. The wine is too expensive, I can’t see the menu in front of my face, the candles are a fire hazard, I have three too many forks and one too many spoons, and they never give me enough food. Have you seen this body? It takes work to upkeep these curves.”

I had seen her body, and it was luscious at every twist and turn. Her eyes sparkled while she looked around the room, and I watched her while she took in her surroundings. She was just uncomfortable enough for me to know this wasn’t her scene, but she was courteous enough to not make us get up and walk out.

And when her eyes landed on a couple beside us, I was glad we ended up staying.

“You know, if that wedding ring on her finger wasn’t so big, I’d say they were on the worst first date of their lives,” she said.

Looking over at the man who was scowling at the menu, I could see the woman was talking the waiter’s ear off.

“I bet she’s making sure her dinner has no carbs, dairy, or gluten,” she said.

“What’s there to eat if you can’t have those?” I asked.

“Cardboard.”

Stifling a snicker just as the man looked over at us, we managed to avert our gazes just in time. She did that the entire evening—picking out patrons who fit stereotypes she’d conjured in her mind while we washed down our small plates of food with the bottle of wine she’d chosen, having no idea it had cost me upwards of $3,000.

“I gotta hand it to them, though, that chef can cook. These little portions are astoundingly good.”

“They really are,” I said.

“Now, if he could get me a to-go platter—that would really be great.”

I snickered so hard I started choking on my food, and she slid my water towards me while she egged me on.

“Don’t let it kill you! We didn’t order the cardboard! Don’t die in here! No one’s lowly enough to know CPR!”

I coughed up the piece of meat I was choking on and brought my napkin to my face to cover my laughter. I had to get out of here with her before we truly embarrassed ourselves and got thrown out, so I was thankful when the waiter brought over the ticket for me to pay. All I did was hand him my card without even looking at the tab, and that’s when Charlie’s eyebrows hiked up onto her forehead.

My sixth sense felt another jab coming on.

“Don’t you dare,” I said.

“I wasn’t gonna say a thing,” she said. “It would be nice for me to just throw plastic at lowly people and have them do shit for me without a care in the world.”

“I didn’t throw it at him,” I said, “I handed it to him nicely.”

“Oh, excuse me. It would be nice for me to daintily hand someone a nice slice of plastic before expecting them to do all the shit for me I wanted,” she said.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“And you haven’t stopped me yet,” she said, grinning.

“Have a good evening, Mr. James,” he said.

“Thank you for your service,” I said. I left the man a very nice tip for having to put up with us for two hours, but when we got back to the limo, I realized I didn’t really want my time with her to end. I couldn’t have my way with her body, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy her company.

“Are you warm?” I asked.

“That wine warmed me up, yes. Why?” she asked.

“I figured maybe we could walk back to the hotel. It’s only five blocks up.”

“Oh, a walk in the snow. How romantic. Sure, let’s do it. The last time I walked the streets of Helsinki I’m pretty sure most people thought I was a hooker.”

I waved the limo off to the hotel and we started walking up the street. The street lamps played upon the snow falling to the ground and it cast a beautiful glow along the city and I watched Charlie get lost in the scenery. Storefronts were peppered with snowflakes and couples were walking hand in hand while trying to get out of the cold, and here we were walking down the street while she enjoyed snow for the very first time.

She reminded me a lot of myself, honestly. Ambitious. Funny. Witty. Hard working. She knew what her worth was and wasn’t willing to settle for any less. She had all the makings of the shark I needed at my side during summits like this, and I knew Mike and I could use a woman on the team like that. Women didn’t understand the control they had in a boardroom. They complained about sexual harassment and how they needed to toe the line between flaunting their figures and being professional, but a businesswoman understood how to manipulate that aspect of her career.

Successful businesswomen I’d encountered in my days knew how to dress professionally, but still keep an air of sexiness about them. It disarmed men whenever they walked into a room, and if they threw a little light flirtatious banter into the mix—like Charlie had during her presentation—any woman who wanted to be successful could have any man eating out of the palm of their hands.

And holy hell, she looked sexy as fuck in those pants she was wearing.

We walked silently side by side down the sidewalk until we came upon a live band playing in a pub. The music wafted out onto the sidewalk and I saw Charlie’s hips begin to sway deeper to the beat of the drums. Something inside me beckoned to get her into that bar. I wasn’t ready to let her go yet, not since I couldn’t breach the boundary I wanted to maintain with her, so I figured one last drink wouldn’t hurt.

“Care to venture in and listen to the music?” I asked.

“Can we do that?” she asked.

“We can do anything we want,” I said. “We could take in a night cap and listen to the music that obviously has you so entranced.”

“I’d like that, long as it’s not a lakka,” she said, grinning.

I chuckled as I ushered her into the bar. The palm of my hand instantly migrated to the small of her back and I could feel her pull away from me. We immediately found our way to a booth with a waitress that was waiting to take our orders, and I got myself another glass of wine while Charlie ordered herself a nice hot Irish coffee.

“Irish coffee in Finland. Who knew?” she asked.

“They knew. You didn’t,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” she said.

We got our drinks and bobbed our heads to the music, but I saw her pan her gaze back over to me. Her mesmerizing green eyes hooked onto me until I turned my gaze to her, and I knew the moment she drew in a deep breath through her nose she was going to apologize for last night.

“Look, I know you brushed it off earlier, but I really do want to apologize for my behavior last night. It was incredibly inappropriate, and not at all how I conduct business,” she said.

“Trust me, last night had no bearing on how I thought you conducted business, and I promise you nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive.”

The truth was I wanted to fuck her just as badly as she had wanted to fuck me last night, and the idea that she was sorry for something like that pissed me off. No woman had ever been sorry they’d hopped on this dick after it was done, and part of me reared my head deep within my stomach at the prospect that she thought I was a mistake.

I was Ellison fucking James. No woman that slept with me felt it to be a mistake.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked.

“Wait, what?” she asked.

“Dance with me,” I said. I was honestly surprised I asked her, but there was this deep-seated idea that Charlie actually thought I was a mistake. I took her hand within mine and pulled her close to me by the table, and the moment her tits pressed into my chest I felt something flutter against my sternum. Her wide green eyes danced, searing into mine, searching for signs of something she desperately wanted to be there, and I pressed her deeper into my body just so she understood exactly where I was coming from.

She was a beautiful woman, and the apology that fell so easily from her lips pissed me off more than it comforted me. I didn’t want her to be sorry. I wanted her to be hooked. I wanted my body to fly across her mind as many times as those tits had appeared on the backs of my eyes. I wanted her to rub out orgasm after orgasm in the shower, just like I had to every single morning. This woman drove me wild, and for days I’d tried to fight her off. I tried to tell myself she was my employee and that I’d written the handbook on what was appropriate when it came to interoffice relationships.

But her plump lips were calling to me and her curves were molding to my throbbing muscles. My dick pulled towards her pussy, tenting my pants in the middle of that damn pub while she laid her head against my chest. My toes sizzled with electricity and I could see the goosebumps rising on the back of her neck. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and her body felt like a comforter blanketing me from the harsh winter storm outside.

I wanted to paint my walls with the color of her femininity.

The song ended and I stepped away from her before I took her hand and headed out of the bar. I’d come back in the morning and settle up my tab, but for now I wanted to walk her back to her room. I felt myself breaching a line with her that was absolutely unacceptable, even for my standards, and the more she melded into my body the weaker I felt myself becoming to her.

But, when we got back to her room and she opened her hotel room door with her key, I grabbed her by the waist and twisted her around.

Then, I crashed my lips down upon hers as my arms wrapped around her back and pulled her close.