Afterwards, we lay there in bed, me by his side and running my fingers over his chest.“Well, now I know why you had me take a bath,” I mused.He laughed. “See, it wasn’t so bad, was it?”I poked him in the ribs, and he made a wuUAaah sound as he arched away.“You broke the rules,” I said in a pissed-off voice.“Nooo, I just bent them a little.”“No ‘in’ through the out door.”“I think you came up with that rule for something slightly… larger.”It was true, but…“This better not turn into ‘give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.’”“It won’t,” he said with a smile. “And it wasn’t degrading, was it?”“Nooo, but it was a little bit painful.”“What,” he frowned, “the – ”“NO, NOT THAT,” I said, blushing furiously, not wanting him to name what he’d done to me. “Just the… the spanking part.”“Did you like it, though?”I thought about how to answer. “…yyyyes…”“Ha HAA!” he crowed.“ – but that’s not a license to get all crazy on me all the time,” I scolded him.He grinned. “Only on special
Johnny refused to leave us there unprotected while he went and got the limo, so we took a cab back to the parking lot.“You’re kind of the third wheel here, man,” Connor joked as we all sat scrunched in the back of the taxi.“After what you put me through today, you and I are not talking,” Johnny said. I thought he was seriously angry, but then I caught his eye, and he gave me a wink and a quick smile before turning his face to stone again.We got in the limo and started back towards Los Angeles. Now the feelings that I’d been trying to push away the entire day suddenly reared their ugly head in full force. It was coming to an end.I didn’t have him for much longer.In fact, I would probably never see him again.I snuggled in tight beside him, with his arm wrapped around me, and I tried to be happy, thinking about all the amazing things I’d done and felt in the last 48 hours……but all I could think of was how much I was going to be hurting very, very soon.Connor noticed I was glum,
And then I realized I didn’t have a key.“Ohhh, man…”I went over to the call box with a silent prayer for my roomie to be home. There was no reason she wouldn’t be – despite the Friday clubbing, Anh was more of a homebody. Quiet, dependable, even-keeled.She probably would have said the same about me just a couple of days ago.She answered the intercom cautiously. “Hello?”“Hey Anh, it’s me. I’m here with… my friend…”I saw Connor’s smirk out of the corner of my eye.“…and I don’t have my key. Can you let us in?”“Sure!”BZZZZT. I opened the gate and led the way.Anh met me at the door, eyes wide with curiosity. “Hey!”“Hey,” I said, and gave her a little hug.And then Connor walked up behind me, carrying the bags.Anh’s face went from happy and curious to dumbfounded.I knew why. With his wind-tousled locks and glowing tan, and his gorgeous face and ripped muscles, Connor looked like a movie star out of one of our romantic comedy DVDs.He didn’t belong in our dumpy little two-bedroo
“I just want – ”“You said you wanted me to come with you, but what does that mean? For how long?”“I don’t know how long – ”“Well, give me something – a day? A week? A month?”“I don’t know!” he barked. “We’ll see how it goes!”The ice was growing inside me now, the crystals branching off like the limbs of a tree, filling me slowly. “Oh… I see. I’m just supposed to be convenient, until you get tired of me.”He was really angry now. “I don’t know how long – I just know that, right now, I don’t want ‘forever,’ okay?”If my heart was frozen before, it shattered into pieces when he said that.He must have seen it on my face, because I heard desperation creep into his voice. “That didn’t come out right.”“I think it came out exactly the way you meant it.”“All I’m saying is…”He breathed out hard, then regrouped.“You knew what I was asking Friday night! I said, ‘come with me this weekend.’ Not ‘let’s get married,’ not ‘let’s move in together’ – come with me for this weekend.”“I know th
By the time Anh rushed in, I was wailing like a wounded animal. I was doubled over, holding my stomach, like somebody had stabbed me.It really felt like he had – but in my heart.“Oh my God, Lily, what’s wrong?!” Anh cried out. She sank down beside me on the bed and put her arms around me, and pulled my head onto her shoulder.“He – he – ”But I couldn’t go on. I just sobbed for a minute as she stroked my hair and rocked me gently, like a mother with her child.Finally I could speak. “He… he asked me to quit my job and go with him.”“Um… okay, that’s kinda weird…”“And he offered to pay me. Like a prostitute or something.”I looked at Anh to see her reaction.“Eww,” she said, curling up her lip a little.“I know!” I sobbed. “Like, I don’t know, like I’m a hooker or something!”“Um… this might not be the best question right now… but… he, like, didn’t give you any money for this weekend or anything, did he?”“NO! How could you even think that?!”She looked around at the bags of expensi
Anh gave me a ride the next morning, and the whole time I felt like a prisoner on Death Row, headed for the execution chamber.Add to that I hadn’t slept but maybe an hour or two. Mostly I just cried all night, in fits and starts, until I finally dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion.And the alarm blared five minutes later, it seemed.I’d forced myself through my normal routine – shower, getting dressed, light makeup – but I felt like a zombie the entire time. The only thing that kept me going was the routine itself.It was better than lying there in bed, thinking of Connor. And my possible firing gave me something to worry about besides him.About what I’d lost last night.On the way to the office in Anh’s car, I sat there trying to come up with excuses I could give Klaus, but I couldn’t think of any. My mind, already numb and overloaded, was of no use to me. The only thing it could do was force my feet forward, one after the other… make my hands open and close car doors… tell
Connor stood about fifty feet away, his arms open wide, like, What UP, bro?Klaus whipped around, a look of stark terror on his face.He obviously remembered the voice, too… and the humiliations he’d suffered because of its owner.Toss in the fact that he’d been speaking ill of Connor just a few seconds before, and Klaus was not a happy camper.Me?I was not a happy camper at ALL.Connor strolled over, gorgeous and every inch the billionaire. He wore a tailored, grey pinstripe suit, crisp white shirt, and maroon silk tie studded with a gold pin.I thought he looked a little tired around the eyes… but then I convinced myself I just saw that because I wanted to see it.I didn’t want to believe he could have dumped me and slept like a baby afterward.Although that was probably what happened.I did notice one thing, though, that was undeniable: He didn’t look at me once.He kept his eyes laser-focused on Klaus.Inside, I felt like crying.You can’t even LOOK at me?!But I quickly forgot
I almost went crazy as I sat at my desk, wringing my hands, obsessing about what was going on up in the boardroom.Not least of all because I wondered if anybody noticed a stain on the plush carpet, or if they could detect the lingering scent of sex in the air.“Oh God,” I whispered to myself, and put my head in my hands.Emails went unanswered. I let calls go straight to voicemail.I was a nervous wreck.I played out a dozen scenarios in my head, all of them different in the particulars, but all boiling down to the same inescapable outcome:Connor letting them know that the buyoff was off.Would he tell them that the Teramore job was fake, designed to test the exec comp division?Would he repeat the lie that Klaus had shown him all the files on Friday night?And if he did, what could Klaus do but sit there and take it? Especially after he had lied right to the face of the CEO?And if Klaus sat there, the scapegoat for the failure… just how mad was he going to be when he came out of t