Chapter8
Brianna tilted her desk chair back slightly, carefully rubbing at her eyes for a moment —she didn’t want to smear her makeup—to relieve some of the strain on them. Ethan had been away for an hour already, meeting with some associates at another company about some kind of investment or buy-out or something; she didn’t know the specifics. It meant that there was unlikely to be any kind of major break in the workday, since he’d told her, Cassidy, and Jennifer that he didn’t expect to be back until three.
It was strange to Brianna to think that, after a few short weeks—not even quite a month—she was so used to work-hour trysts that she actually felt disappointed at the knowledge that she was probably going to go without one that day. Amazing what you can get used to, she thought, reaching out towards the top of her desk with her eyes still closed for the tumbler of coffee she knew was there. It would probably be cold, but Brianna had discovered that the coffee from the diner about three blocks from her apartment in Williamsburg—she didn’t even remember the name of the place, but could easily picture its facade in her mind—was unusually good, even cold.
“What are we doing for lunch today, ladies?” Brianna opened her eyes and took a sip of her coffee, glancing at Jennifer.
“I hadn’t even thought about it,” Brianna said, shrugging. In fact, she’d thought—when she got up that morning to get ready for the day—that she and Ethan might meet up somewhere for a quick lunch and then a quick fuck. “The Creative Department is doing a thing—I got an invitation, but it feels weird to go back there.”
“Yeah they’d probably consider you a traitor,” Cassidy said, giving her a quick look. Brianna resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“No—they’re covered, and they get that what Ethan wants, he mostly gets,” Jennifer countered. “Besides, from what I heard, Brianna did so well on her first day down there that they were probably going to be out of work for her to do by the end of the week, anyway.” Brianna smiled slightly at that; of her two new coworkers, Jennifer was definitely the one she liked better.
“I was going to head down to that Ethiopian Sixth—Awash or something?” Jennifer looked from Cassidy to Brianna. “Would it be horribly racist for me to ask if you want to come with?” Brianna snorted.
“I’m not Ethiopian, but Ethiopian food is pretty damn good,” she said.
“No—no, I know you’re not Ethiopian,” Jennifer said quickly. Brianna smiled.
“It’s all good,” she said. “I’d love to go with you.”
“All that stuff’s like stews and things, right?” Cassidy wrinkled her nose, and Brianna shot Jennifer a glance. “I was going to go to Crif Dogs.”
“I went there the other day,” Brianna said with a shrug. She and Ethan had ordered a few things for a quick lunch—or at least, relatively quick—before sneaking back into the office for a tryst. “Let’s do the Ethiopian place,” she told Jennifer.
Cassidy looked mildly offended, but Brianna turned her attention back onto her computer to finish up what she needed to do of her official work before it was time for lunch. She heard nothing—at all—from Ethan in the last hour before the break, so she decided that she would be safe to leave the office, to be with one of her new coworkers. After almost a month on the job, she thought it would be worth her while to at least develop some kind of friendship with Jennifer; she doubted there was a chance that she and Cassidy could find anything in common enough to want to be friends.
“It’s so nice out, let’s just walk,” Jennifer suggested when they left the building. Brianna was a little relieved; neither of her coworkers knew that she had a driver, and she wasn’t yet confident enough of geography in the city to know if the place was in walking distance—and it had been weeks since she took the subway, to boot.
“Sounds good; besides, we need to do something to counteract all the sitting we do,” Brianna agreed. They started off headed north, towards the restaurant, and Brianna had to admit that the brittle sunlight, filtered through the gleaming metal and glass of the skyscrapers, was beautiful.
She’d started to appreciate the city in ways she never expected to: it wasn’t just a noisy, dirty bustle with too many people, or an island of culture and bubbles of exploitation. There were beautiful corners, places where groups of immigrants all seemed to clump together for solidarity, little green spaces—not just Central Park, but Washington Square, McCarren not too far from her own apartment, and other places like that. There was so much to take in, no matter where she went.
“How are you liking it out in Brooklyn? You’re in Williamsburg, right?” Brianna nodded in response to Jennifer’s question.
“Yeah, I lucked out on finding a spot that was reasonable,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re pricing everyone out of that area,” Jennifer agreed. “I know Cassidy’s looking for something in Sunset Park because it’s still at least a little bit reasonable there.”
“Where are you at?” Brianna still hadn’t caught the habit of just crossing at the intersection the way native New Yorkers did—she always waited for the signal, and looked twice just to be extra-sure.
“I’m out in Bed-Stuy,” Jennifer said. “But probably going to have to find another place soon. The building’s talking about selling out, going co-op.” Brianna was still trying to wrap her mind around the issues with gentrification in the city, but she’d overheard more than one person talking about the older apartment buildings being bought up by huge companies, refurbished somewhat, and then flipped to sell units to people with more money.
“That sucks,” Brianna said.
“Yeah—well, not much to do about it, except move around and hope that eventually the whole system equalizes for a few years,” Jennifer said with a shrug.
“Hey, so—I keep meaning to ask, but what’s up with Cassidy?” Brianna had definitely noticed the way the other assistant looked at her, and how catty Cassidy seemed to be just as a matter of course; but she wanted to know whether Cassidy was just a generally unpleasant person or if there was something going on in the other assistant’s life.
“She’s into Ethan,” Jennifer said, shrugging. “I mean—he’s obviously hot, and rich, and all, but she got it into her head that he was hiring her as some kind of Secretary deal—you know that movie?” Brianna felt her cheeks warm up.
“Yeah, I know that movie,” she said blandly.
“Anyway, Cassidy I guess has never really met a man who didn’t want to hook up with her, so since Ethan’s mostly been ignoring her she’s getting bitchy about it.”
“Why? I mean—Ethan’s her boss,” Brianna pointed out.
“I guess she figured that these rich guys don’t hire gorgeous women for their personal assistants just to have a nice landscape for people,” Jennifer said with another shrug. “I figured that Ethan wanted qualified women who looked good for the reason that restaurants do it: gives an impression of power and prestige. Best of the best and all that.”
“That’s definitely the reason most bosses do it,” Brianna agreed. “So Cassidy thought that Ethan was into her?” Jennifer rolled her eyes.
They’d reached the restaurant then, and Brianna mulled over the information as they waited for a table. Awash was doing bustling early-lunch business, most of the white-clothed tables full and the staff darting around to make everything happen.
Like so many of the restaurants in the city it looked to Brianna as if someone had taken over an apartment—maybe a large-ish one—and cleared it out, before putting in tables and chairs. It was a little bit bigger than the entirety of her unit in Williamsburg, so slightly cramped, but the smells coming from the kitchen were more than enough to make up for the lack of space.
After about ten minutes, they were escorted to a table, and Brianna quickly made her choices; even if they had an hour for lunch, they would need to eat fast—they had the walk back to the office to consider. But the staff were working at enough of a clip that Brianna thought they’d at least be able to eat.
They ordered sambusas to start, and Brianna got a combination with doro wat and yebeg alicha—chicken and lamb—and vegetables, while Jennifer got a beef dish and a chicken dish with vegetables. As they sipped spiced tea and water, Brianna felt her phone vibrate in her purse. She wasn’t expecting a message from anyone; but she took the phone out anyway. I set a meeting on your schedule for after lunch, for one, with a project manager at one of my companies. Meet me at my apartment. It was from Ethan. Brianna felt her cheeks heat up again and took a hasty sip of water to try and cover her lack of composure.
“Apparently I have a meeting to go to after lunch,” Brianna said quickly.
“That’s a bummer,” Jennifer said, accepting it with no signs that she doubted the story.
“Eh, it should at least be interesting—it’s with a project manager at one of the other companies Ethan manages,” Brianna said. “But it’s going to be a pain to get across the city right after the lunch rush.”
“Yeah that aspect always sucks,” Jennifer agreed. All three of the assistants—Brianna included—were sent on errands for Ethan Hale; if Brianna hadn’t been with Ethan, or known he was in the office the entire time that Cassidy and Jennifer went out on their own trips to take care of their own parts of the business, she might have suspected that Ethan used all three of his assistants as play-things. Of course unless Jennifer is really hiding something, there’s no reason for her to have said what she did about Cassidy.
The thought of Cassidy turned Brianna’s stomach, but as she sampled sambusas and waited with her injera in place for her main course to arrive, she dismissed the unpleasant-but-beautiful assistant from her mind. Cassidy was just someone who had a crush on the boss and didn’t know how to handle it. She ate quickly, using the excuse of the meeting she had to get to, and parted ways with Jennifer at the entrance of the restaurant after paying; she’d already received a text message from the driver that she could meet him a few blocks from the office, and that he knew where they were going.
It was risky, Brianna knew, to meet with Ethan in the middle of the day that way—but surely it was less risky than their trysts in his office? Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone monitored Ethan’s comings-and-goings very hard, beyond what the official story was. She waited until Jennifer had turned the corner and pulled out her phone to find an alternate route to where the car waited to take her to her billionaire boss; one that would keep her from running into any of her coworkers.
Traffic was lighter than usual, and Brianna arrived at Ethan’s apartment in less than thirty minutes, her heart beating faster in her chest and her face warming and cooling with blushes she couldn’t contain even after a month of consistently being with him. Somehow—somehow—she felt paranoid that someone might see her, in spite of it being the middle of the workday, and in spite of the fact that Ethan’s building was too far from the office for there to be anyone from the company in the area by chance.
She walked up to the building and nodded to the doorman; he’d seen her a few times before—generally in the company of Ethan—and let her into the building without batting an eyelash. It would be interesting to know who he thinks I am in relation to Ethan, Brianna thought. She gave the man a smile and walked into the building. After visiting Ethan there a handful of times the lobby and all its splendor had more or less ceased to make a huge impression on her; all she was interested in was getting to the elevator and punching in the code to get it to take her to Ethan’s floor.
She waited impatiently to get to Ethan’s apartment, trying not to tap her toes or fidget in the elevator as it ascended through the floors. Brianna wondered what had possessed Ethan to ask her to come over in the middle of the day like that—especially when, according to the only schedule she had for him, he was in meetings for two hours. Of course, she thought as the elevator went up the last few floors, Ethan owed her few explanations; he might have just finished up early and decided to kill the remainder of the time having fun with her—and he’d given her an airtight excuse for why she wasn’t in the office when everyone else was.
The door was unlocked when she got to it, and Brianna knocked briefly before entering; Ethan sat on the couch, watching for her, and smiling slightly. “I got tired of rehashing the same bullshit over and over again, so I told them to get me on a conference call when they figured out what they actually wanted to discuss,” Ethan explained, as Brianna came into the living room.
“You could have given me some warning,” she said archly. Ethan chuckled.
“I let you finish lunch, at least,” he pointed out. “Where did you end up going?”
“Ethiopian place on Sixth, with Jennifer,” Brianna replied. Ethan rose to his feet as Brianna stepped closer to him and met her a few feet away from the couch, his hands immediately going to her waist. She’d remembered to pop a few mints in her mouth as she was leaving the restaurant, to kill any aftertaste of berbere or other spices that might be lingering on her tongue; when Ethan kissed her she still had a moment’s worry that he might be put off by it, but his tongue probed her mouth eagerly, as if he hadn’t had a meal of his own yet—as if he were hungry for her.
Brianna gave into the kiss right away, and in a matter of a few heartbeats they were both touching each other, teasingly caressing each other as things began to heat up between them. Brianna felt something inside of her relax as she fell into the pattern she’d developed in her sessions with Ethan over the past almost-month: the way they would start up, the heat building between them as they both became more and more turned on by the moment.
Ethan’s hands moved over her body in expert touches—he’d gotten to know every line, every curve of her, until he knew exactly what she liked and how she liked it, and Brianna had gained almost as good a mastery of her boss’ body in the short time they’d been together.
Ethan worked quickly, stripping off her blazer, eager to get the sober, slightly conservative outerwear off of her and get at the lingerie underneath. Sometimes, he didn’t even bother to take off whatever she was wearing—he was in such haste to get at her, he would simply move whatever was in the way aside and leave the rest of it.
Brianna stripped off Ethan’s jacket, and then his shirt, tossing them aside without even looking, and in a matter of only a few moments, she stood in nothing more than the merry widow she’d chosen to wear that day, her stockings, the g-string that had come with the merry widow, and her heels; Ethan stepped back and sat down on the couch to admire her, smiling as his eyes trailed over her body. Brianna had gotten as far as unbuckling his belt and opening his fly, and the ridge of his erection—straining at the fabric of his jockey shorts—showed through the opening, hard and heavy and promising.
“Kick off your shoes, but leave the stockings on,” Ethan suggested, and Brianna nodded as she obeyed. She sauntered the few steps towards him, giving him a sexy little smile, taking in the sight of his pale skin and the blue veins barely showing under it in different spots on his body with fascination. She stopped right in front of him and raised an eyebrow before sinking to her knees on the rug at his feet. If the sight of his pale body fascinated her, there was one thing that intrigued her even more, and she wanted to get a good look at it again before they moved onto anything else.
Brianna rubbed Ethan’s erection through the fabric of his shorts, giving him a playful little smirk. There was a slightly damp spot along the front of the jockeys, telling her he was already fairly turned on—but Ethan always made sure that Brianna got off as well, at some point during their trysts, so even if he finished quickly Brianna knew she wouldn’t be going back to the office frustrated.
Ethan moaned, encouraging her, and Brianna pulled the fly on his pants more open, reaching past that fabric to slip her hand under the waistband of his shorts. She stroked his hot, hard cock, rubbing the head, and Ethan groaned out louder, letting one hand fall to her shoulder, giving her a squeeze there to encourage her.
Brianna tugged his shorts down, and freed Ethan’s erection, watching it spring fully erect as if it was a military grunt reporting for duty to a four-star general. No matter how many times she saw Ethan’s cock, it always fascinated her: thick and long, pinkish in color, flushed almost purple from the blood flowing into it, the tip gleamed with precum that Brianna was only too eager to taste.
She leaned in and pressed her lips to the head of Ethan’s cock, barely opening them and swirling her tongue around the slightly spongy flesh. Ethan’s hand tightened on her shoulder, encouraging her, and Brianna took him into her mouth bit by bit, sucking lightly as her tongue slithered around him in wet, lazy circles.
She worked her way down, retreating an inch to go two, until she barely—barely—had all of him in her mouth, swallowing to push down the gag reflex. After nearly a month of fooling around, Brianna had learned how to take him—and Ethan was incredibly patient, compared to some of her handful of previous partners.
She took her time, worshipping every inch of his hot, hard cock with her lips and tongue, reaching down to cup his balls in her hand as lightly as she could. Ethan was sensitive there—extremely so—but he loved it when she touched him, and Brianna moaned at the little gush of precum that coated her tongue at the same time that Ethan murmured an almost-wordless praise.
Brianna paid close attention to Ethan’s body, to his reactions as she worked him with her mouth; she felt the way the tension mounted in his hips, the way his body tightened when she jiggled his testicles just slightly, as she pulled back to suck hard at the tip of his cock while her tongue tickled the sensitive underside. Sharp, salty-bitter fluid coated her tongue over and over again and Brianna swallowed it down eagerly, slurping and licking to keep Ethan’s dick as wet as possible.
Just when she was certain that he was on the edge, Ethan stopped her—giving her a gentle push off and away from him. “Motherfucker,” he muttered.
“What?” Brianna looked up at his face, startled at the exclamation.
“Phone,” he said shortly. He gritted his teeth and reached into the pocket of his crumpled pants, around his ankles, and retrieved his phone, looking at the screen. “Son of a bitch. I have to take this.” He gave Brianna a look of bitter disappointment that she knew had nothing to do with her, and then the expression dissolved in an instant, becoming a playful, almost wolfish grin. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stop playing.”
“What? You have got to be kidding me,” Brianna said, shaking her head as she realized what he meant.
“If you’re quiet, there’s no reason for them to suspect a thing,” Ethan pointed out.
“I am not going to suck you off while you take a conference call,” Brianna told him matter-of-factly.
“Not what I was thinking, actually,” Ethan said. “Get up here.” Brianna looked at him doubtfully, but rose from her knees, climbing onto the couch. Ethan guided her onto his lap, legs spread wide around him. He tapped ‘accept’ on his phone. “Sorry about the delay—I was having lunch, since our meeting ended so abruptly,” Ethan told whoever was on the other end of the line.
He waited a few moments, and then slipped his free hand between Brianna’s legs. She almost protested—but he was already on the phone, and she was terrified whoever he was talking to would hear her. Ethan stroked her already-wet pussy through the thin material of her g-string, and then began rubbing her more firmly, slipping his fingers around the elastic material along the side. He found her clit by touch and began working her, stroking just enough to make Brianna’s breath catch in her throat, to make her have to stifle a moan, and then backing off to lightly caress her inner labia just below.
She couldn’t pay any attention at all to the call he was on, and anyway the few scattered comments that Ethan made—with complete composure, as if he weren’t fingering someone at the same time, as if he weren’t hard as a rock, pressed against her—made no sense without the rest of the conversation for context.
Brianna focused on keeping silent as Ethan continued to tease her, sliding two fingers inside of her soaking wet pussy and working her inner walls until he found her g-spot, as his thumb rubbed steadily against her clit. She bit her bottom lip as she struggled to keep from making a noise, aware of the fact that whoever was on the other side of the phone line with Ethan would hear it.
Brianna fidgeted and writhed, pressing her hands against her mouth to muffle even the hot, fast breaths that came with Ethan’s insistent, expert touches. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on staying silent, listening to Ethan’s voice without attempting to make sense of his words as he worked her inside and out, seemingly intent on getting her to make some noise—any noise. Brianna clenched her teeth, feeling herself getting wetter and hotter, more and more turned on by the moment in spite of—or maybe because—the fear of being discovered, of being heard by someone who didn’t even know her.
“...This all sounds much better than what we were talking about, so I think we can wrap this up. I’d like to finish my lunch,” Brianna heard Ethan say, just when the tension of not making a sound was becoming unbearable. A muffled whimper left her lips, and she could only hope that her hand pressed to her mouth had stifled the noise enough for it to not reach the phone, that no one in the conference call except for Ethan had heard it. She opened her eyes and watched as Ethan took the phone away from his ear, and tapped ‘end,’ meeting her gaze steadily.
“I might—might just quit over this,” Brianna said breathlessly, letting out a moan as Ethan’s fingertips rubbed steadily against her g-spot and clit at the same time. Jolts of sensation crackled through her body, and she swayed in his lap, her hips twisting as she struggled against the orgasm she could feel building up.
“Even if I make you come?” Ethan kissed her lightly on the lips and then dropped down to her throat, nibbling at her erratic pulse as he draped one arm around the small of her back, pulling her closer to him. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t thrilling—I can feel how turned on you are right now.”
“It still—it still...” Brianna licked her lips, trying to get her mind to work enough to be able to complete the sentence; but it was impossible to remember what the problem was with what Ethan had done, teasing her that way.
“We’ll talk about it after,” Ethan said, kissing her again. He carefully withdrew his fingers from her pussy and twisted her around, laying her on her back on the couch next to him. The next moment he covered her body with his own, and Brianna remembered that Ethan had been hard throughout the whole conference call, rocking his hips lightly to rub his erection against her leg.
He tugged her g-string down and then in a moment, Brianna felt the heat of his cock rubbing against her inner labia. She moaned as he teased her for a moment longer, rocking his hips, not quite penetrating her and just barely missing her clit. Then—finally—he slid inside of her all at once, thrusting deep in spite of the reflexive spasm of her body tightening.
Ethan pulled out halfway and thrust deep inside of her again, shifting on top of her so that he could reach down and hold her stocking-clad thighs, even as he rested his weight on his knees. He pulled her legs up to his shoulders and rocked his hips in a steady pace, not quite pounding into her but pushing deep inside with every movement.
Brianna moaned out, reaching uselessly towards Ethan and then letting her arms fall back over her head as she pushed her own hips down to meet his eager thrusts. He felt so good inside of her—just like he always did—and for the moment, Brianna could no longer remember what it was she had objected to. Her legs propped up on Ethan’s shoulders meant that every thrust of his hips drove the tip of his cock against her g-spot, making it impossible for her to hold back her climax.
Brianna came, crying out as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her, obliterating all thoughts except for how good she felt. Words left her lips mindlessly: encouragement, praise, pleas. Ethan thrust faster and faster into her as Brianna’s climax intensified, to the point where she almost ceased to enjoy it—and then he slowed down just enough to keep her right at the high point of her orgasm for what felt like forever.
Just as she was starting to wind down, the waves of pleasure beginning to ebb, Brianna felt Ethan speed up again, and heard him groan in pleasure. She opened her eyes and for a few moments—caught up in her own orgasmic sensations—she was transfixed by the sight of her dark, silk-clad legs draped across Ethan’s pale shoulders, her toes pointed behind his head. Then, as Ethan reached his own climax, the pleasure that had started to ebb from Brianna’s body reached its peak again; not as strongly as the first time, but strongly enough that she closed her eyes and threw her head back, giving herself up to it.
By the time Brianna came back to herself, Ethan had collapsed against her, and one of her legs had slid down to the back of the couch while the other had fallen to Ethan’s side, barely hooked around his waist. Hot and cold jolts of sensation crackled through her body in aftershocks, and she couldn’t even remember what it was that Ethan had done that she’d objected to—all she knew was that she felt fantastic. She told herself to remember it later, and closed her eyes again, basking in the warm-honey afterglow of her pleasure.